Their 1999 debut "The Great Divide" and its follow-up "Liberation" (2001), both released on the Magna Carta label, were well received by fans of progressive music with a metal twist worldwide. But instead of simply continuing to follow the path they had successfully taken, the New York band wanted to renew themselves musically. "We wanted to get more involved with songwriting, explore other musical fields. That didn't fit with what the label wanted anymore," guitarist Jimmy Pappas says. Singer and keyboardist Josh Pincus adds, "When recording albums for Magna Carta, we always tried to balance the progressive, wild parts and the structured songwriting parts. Everyone in the band liked the 'songbands,' as I call them: Kansas, Rush, also Deep Purple, Black Sabbath. They are all based on really good songs with high recall value. After the two progressive albums with Magna Carta, we felt a bit limited, so we decided to focus more on writing catchy songs."
So the musicians put Ice Age on ice for the time being and first tried out something new in secret, before they tried to publicize this now more song-oriented music under the name Soulfractured from 2004 to 2006. "That didn't quite work out," summarizes Jimmy Pappas soberly. As a result, the band took a break: "Life took its course, some of us started families, we all had other jobs." But it was clear to all, he says, that they would eventually move on. "In 2015, we got together at our drummer Hal Aponte's house for a barbecue. We brought our instruments, started jamming, and that got everything rolling again," Josh Pincus says. Two years ago we went into the studio, where the rehearsals and recordings for "Waves Of Loss And Power" began without any label requirements or time pressure ...