Audio By Carbonatix
To call A Life of Science “ambitious” would be an understatement. The Phoenix band’s debut concept album, The Apneist, has grown into a multimedia project that spans both coasts and makes the cross-promotional efforts of bands like Coheed & Cambria seem almost underwhelming by comparison. A Life of Science released The Apneist digitally on iTunes in late April, but that marked only the first stage of a multi-tiered assault on the senses that is slated to include a film, a novel, and a comic book series — all based around the album’s storyline.
The creative force behind A Life of Science is the duo of singer/bassist James Keenan, 25, and guitarist Zakk Geist, 24. The longtime friends met in grade school and have been musical collaborators since their early teens. They began writing music for The Apneist in 2007, eventually bringing drummer Angel Garcia and guitarist Scott Passamonte onboard to complete the lineup. The scope of the project expanded as the songwriting progressed, Keenan says.
“Originally, we were just going to do your classic concept album, with the story and lyrics,” he says. “Then, as we started telling everybody about it, we really started to get attached to the story. (Our friends) were like, ‘Why stop there? Why don’t you do a comic book and a video and really make this as multimedia as possible?’ We were like, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, right. Sure, we’ll do that.’ But then we started to realize, wait a minute, so-and-so writes novels. Wait a minute, we know video production people. Wait a minute, we can do this.”
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Wed., June 3, 6 p.m., 2009
