The Neal Morse Band

NMB are releasing their much-anticipated fourth album, Innocence & Danger, on 27th August 2021. With NMB's previous two releases being concept albums, it's perhaps remarkable that Innocence & Danger is a series of unrelated songs, but drummer Mike Portnoy says "After two sprawling back to back double concept albums in a row, it was refreshing to get back to writing a collection of unrelated individual songs in the vein of our first album." Indeed, making this album came easy to the band; while the initial inspiration came particularly from Bill Hubauer (keyboards) and Randy George (bass), the ideas flowed from everybody from there on, as George recalls: "I am excited about the level of collaboration that we achieved on this one. We even went in with a lot of ideas that weren't necessarily developed, and I think in the end we have something that represents the best of everybody in the band." In fact - like its two acclaimed predecessors - Innocence & Danger is a double album by inspiration, rather than design, as Portnoy explains: "As much as we wanted to try and keep it to a single album after having just done two double albums, we wrote so much material that we found ourselves with our third double album in a row! That's pretty prog!" There is also plenty in Innocence & Danger to excite those prog fans who have a thirst for epics, as Neal Morse explains: "There's one half hour epic and another that's about 20 minutes long. I really didn't realise that they were that long when we were recording them, which I guess is great because if a movie is really good, you don't realise that it's three hours long! But there are also some shorter songs: some have poppier elements, some are heavier and some have three part acoustic sections. I'm excited about all of it, really," The album's title came from some impromptu guide vocals that Morse sang over some tracks in the studio which the whole band liked because the phrase reflected the diversity of the music. Morse also found a new freedom in lyric writing on this album, partly because of a recent meeting with Prog legend Jon Anderson: "I did a podcast with Jon and three days later I was writing some of the lyrics for this album and the words just rolled out: so it's a little more free form, a little more avant garde." Six years on from The Grand Experiment, Morse is more enthusiastic than ever about the talents and contribution of his fellow band members on Innocence & Danger: "The band is really so extraordinary - and is such an amazing team: Mike's drums are huge, Randy's bass playing is an ever-solid foundation and Eric's vocals are becoming crazy good now: often I'll sing the verse, Eric sings the chorus, Bill sings the bridge and Eric will bring it home. It seems to work really, really well. And both Bill and Eric's soloing is amazing: they have really hit it out of the park on this record." Vinyl fans will be delighted to know that Innocence & Danger will be available on that format as well as CD - including another behind the scenes 'Making of...' DVD. NMB (The Neal Morse Band) NMB was formed in 2012, featuring long-time collaborators Neal Morse (vocals, keyboards and guitars), Mike Portnoy (drums, vocals) and Randy George (bass), as well as Bill Hubauer (keyboards, vocals) and Eric Gillette (guitars, vocals). The band's first album, The Grand Experiment, showed both a freshness and maturity that was further developed in 2016's The Similitude Of A Dream, 2019's The Great Adventure and 2021's Innocence & Danger.