Masking & Extraction

Spastic Ink originally consisted of ex-Watchtower member Ron Jarzombek (guitars, programming, composition, lyrics & production), Pete Perez on bass and brother Bobby Jarzombek on drums (both coming from Heavy Metal band RIOT). With this line-up they released their first all instrumental album Ink Complete. For their second album Ink Compatible which took them more than four years for its making singer Jason McMaster (ex-Watchtower) plus a bunch of well known guest musicians like Daniel Gildenlöw (Pain Of Salvation, Marty Friedman (Megadeth) or Jens Johansson (Malmsteen) have been added up. The music on both of their albums which are masterpieces in Technical Metal is very intricate combining influences from multiple music genres…

Simultaneously more pop-oriented and experimental than either Ghost in the Machine or Zenyatta Mondatta, Synchronicity made the Police superstars, generating no less than five hit singles. With the exception of "Synchronicity II," which sounds disarmingly like a crappy Billy Idol song, every one of those singles is a classic…

In the early '80s, another wave of backward-masking hysteria hit the national scene, with unfounded claims that popular rock bands intentionally hid Satanic messages in their records. ELO had already been hit with this rumor for a song on their album ELDORADO, and on the following album's "Fire on High," Jeff Lynne deliberately placed an obvious backwards message. Because the initial prank worked so well, Lynne did not only did it again in this album's opening–the message is simply the album's title–but named the album in honor of the hysteria. SECRET MESSAGES proves that Lynne's artistic vision, like his sense of humor, was undimmed. Tracks like the psychedelically tinged "Loser Gone Wild" and the delicate "Bluebird" are as strong as anything he'd previously done, and the rockabillyish "Rock and Roll Is King" even pays tribute to the '50s-influenced style of his former bandmate Roy Wood.