Dream Theater are one of the few bands that have occupied the pinnacle of prog metal for what feels like an eternity. Only rarely did they run out of steam - instead, they always managed to move the bar of the genre a bit higher. Also on "A View From The Top Of The World" they enjoy the view from their throne, which no one will deny them so quickly, even in view of 15 million albums sold

Instead of asking frontman James LaBrie or the all-embracing guitarist and producer John Petrucci for an interview, this time eclipsed's interview partners deliberately chose two other band members: drummer Mike Mangini and keyboardist Jordan Rudess. Striking with both of them: They answer general questions about Dream Theater's new, fifteenth album rather succinctly, but as soon as they are asked to describe their specific perspective, they can hardly be stopped in their flow of words - and bring many an interesting facet to light.

As already announced last year, JOE BONAMASSA and his team moved to New York City after the album "Royal Tea" was recorded in London's Abbey Road Studios. Actually native terrain for the blues rock superstar born in the state of New York, he has succeeded again there with "Time Clocks" a special album. We chatted with the exceptional guitarist about this, as well as his eagerly awaited return to the world's stages and the future activities of some of his side projects.

Roger Taylor used the Corona pandemic to finish his first solo album in eight years. The surprising thing: "Outsider" comes up with some unusual brooding, but partly also political songs. Enough material for an interview with the Queen drummer

Warren Haynes, one of the most successful representatives of modern Southern Rock, has recorded a pure blues album for the first time with his band Gov't Mule, which will be released on November 12. In the interview, the 61-year-old guitarist and singer talks about the genesis of "Heavy Load Blues" and encounters with his idols.

eclipsed: "Heavy Load Blues" was recorded live at Power Station New England on analog tape. Is that a vintage recording studio?

Legendary rock bands often prove to be extremely long-lived. This is also true for the German krautrock-prog-anarchist troupe Grobschnitt. Not only did they resurrect as a trio in 2019 under the name Grobschnitt Acoustic Party after their second breakup in 2012 - now they're also celebrating a whopping five decades of band history with a big exhibition in their hometown of Hagen and three birthday videos on their homepage. In an interview with the three founding members Lupo, Eroc and Willi Wildschwein we talked about the genesis of the band and their name, their musical development, their extraordinary shows and their most famous composition

On New Year's Eve 2020, French electronic pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre performed as an avatar in a virtual version of the world-famous Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral - a VR experience that set the stage for a concert broadcast live from a studio. 75 million viewers watched the live broadcast of the multimedia event, which was unprecedented in this form. With the album "Live In Notre-Dame VR - Welcome To The Other Side", the spectacle can now be relived purely acoustically on CD or visually on Blu-ray

On the album "Hungarian Pictures" (2019) music producer Leslie Mandoki realized the original ideas of the two ex-Soulmates Jon Lord (Deep Purple) and Greg Lake (ELP) to create an ambitious fusion of Prog and Jazz after the classical example of the Hungarian Béla Bartók (instead of the Russian Modest Mussorgski - we remember ELP's "Pictures At An Exhibition" from 1971). To this end, he has now made "Utopia For Realists", a so-called "visual album" that fuses the Soulmates' concert film for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with animated paintings as well as landscape shots to create a new kind of experience. Together with animator Gábor Csupó, Mandoki once fled through the Iron Curtain from Hungary to Germany in 1975

eclipsed: How was the feedback from the prog scene on "Hungarian Pictures"?

It's no wonder that the Abacus of 2021 sound musically different from those of the early 70s, when the band from Hamm in North Rhine-Westphalia gained a certain degree of popularity in the German rock scene. While the sound was once dominated by Kraut, Folk, Jazz and Rock, now the more opulent sounds in the style of Magnum and Kansas prevail. Responsible for this change in style is keyboardist Jürgen Wimpelberg, who joined the group in 1979. Even then, only bassist Klaus Kohlhase was still on board as the only founding member, who then struck sail at the beginning of the 80s. Since then, Wimpelberg has been the captain of the Abacus cruiser, if one remains in maritime parlance. At the same time, the 69-year-old is also the executor of the estate of the shamefully underestimated innovative combo, whose first-generation members split up in a dispute in 1976, and is responsible for the reissues of the early material.