Yukon Progressive Metal artist Rick Massie is back with his new full length album Guided To An Imperfect Light, releasing Friday, june 3rd, 2022. Rick’s arc as an artist hasd always been to defy expectations, shatter norms, and keep his ever-evolving sound moving down a path he has chosen. Stream the full album here at Ghost Cult!
Rick comments:
“Guided to an Imperfect Light” is a dark (and at times joyous and inspiring) soundtrack to the complexities of day-to-day life, experiences and emotions. This is Rick Massie’s second album, the follow-up to 2020’s “Eclipse”. Musically, it reaches across the realms of progressive rock, black metal, hard rock, and doom metal. Lyrically, the songs explore themes of unexpected darkness and sadness, loss (and hope for the future), struggles to move forward, and the need for self-care and wellness, and the power of positivity and love. And most of all – hope – and the belief that even in the darkest of times, things will get better.
Rick says:
“The album is partly inspired by the long, dark winter days. However, it’s also inspired just as much by the bright rays and deep blues of sun shining at -40 degrees – the kind of light that seeps deep into your soul.”
“This album isn’t too much of a departure from my first album, “Eclipse”. However, it definitely refines the vision, and feels less scattered. With “Eclipse” I ventured into many unknown musical territories – but with “Guided to an Imperfect Light” I reined in the experimentation and created a musical journey that blurs the lines between prog, rock, doom and black metal. And often, all those genres occur within the same song.”
“This time around, I experimented more with vocal styles and techniques. There’s a lot more backing vocals and harmonies, and some pop-rock inspired vocal patterns that just seemed to fit perfectly over a crunchy seven string. It certainly doesn’t sound like pop music, but I had been listening to so much Marianas Trench and the Darkness that I found some of their influences creeping in, but without turning the album into a pop-metal record. The influences are subtle, but they’re there, if you listen closely.”
“Guided to an Imperfect Light” contains 7 tracks and clocks in at just over 58 minutes. Each song is structured as a journey, with little to no repetition of sections, verses or choruses.
The artwork for “Guided to an Imperfect Light” was created by Yukon-based artist Priska Wettstein / 8 Ravens Studio during the dark of winter in late 2021. The image perfectly captures the mournful yearning for light, even when the light you need might be glowing, hidden, behind you.
Rick says:
“I’ve loved Priska’s artwork for years, in fact, I would say she has been my favourite artist since I stumbled across her work online. The fact that she also lives in the Yukon is a lucky coincidence. I was apprehensive to reach out, since my music is fairly “unusual” I think, and I expected that there might be some hesitancy to have artwork associated with such “extreme” sounding music. However, it turns out that Priska had heard my music already, and was completely interested in creating art to capture the essence of the album.”
“There were several images from Priska’s website that I really wanted to use, however, she offered to create something new, something inspired by the music. And I’m so glad I waited – the artwork perfectly captures the balance of dark and light we find in our lives, while also highlighting the concept of experiencing a strange type of loneliness, even when you’re not alone.”
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