The Fierce And The Dead: Live USA 17

The invitation to play the renowned RoSFest in Gettysburg, PA, came a big surprise for English instrumental prog experimentalists The Fierce And The Dead, a show that is now available on the new album Live USA 17. At the time they were still an underground band, cherished by a small knit of musos and music geeks who sang their praises to mainly deaf ears. All that would change in 2018 with their breakthrough album The Euphoric, their third full-lenghth studio release that garnered rave reviews in leading prog magazines. The RosFest show was a special treat for the band, a change to road test some of the songs from that as yet unreleased album as well as choice cuts from If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving to Morecambe and Spooky Action.

Kicking off with 1991, with a few stumbled notes as they were finding their bearings, the band went down like a storm. Hitting the Americans over the head with post-rockers like Spooky Action and the towering power of Truck and soothing them with the pastoral The Wait they build their set like a classic English mansion: balanced, yet with plenty of hidden rooms and weird details. Ending the set with the latest two episodes of their "Part" compositions they made their mark as the cream of English prog inventors. Live USA 17 also is the last hurrah of their pre-keyboards phase that started with the release of The Euphoric. Live albums sometimes serve as a stop-gap release, but this is a document of a band that is always busy writing the next chapter, trying new things and reinventing the tried-and-true material.

The Fierce And The Dead:
Matt Stevens: guitar and noises
Steve Cleaton: guitar and other noises
Kev Feazey: bass
Stuart Marshall: drums

Live USA 17 will be released on October 4 via Bad Elephant Music (CD, digital). Everyone pre-ordering the album will get a bonus track and people ordering the CD get a special signed postcard.

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