Gary Sohmers – Beasties: A Sci-Fi Rock Opera

By RingMaster Review on August 19, 2022 • ( 0 )

On the brink of planetary destruction, an otherworldly impulse rallies humans and their out-of-control beasties to save terra firma from corporate destruction in the midst of a concert in Central Park.

That is the premise to Beasties: A Sci-Fi Rock Opera, the rock experience created, crafted and conducted by US producer, musician, author and entrepreneur, GARY SOHMERS. Its tale brings a collection of dilemmas and characters sculpted in a real world hell-bent on destruction and brought to voice by a cast of singers including Dave Bickler, Chris Farlowe, Barrence Whitfield (The Savages), and Liz Proteau. With Tom Majesky on guitar and the release orchestrated and arranged by Bill Holloman, mixed by Paul David Hager and produced by Sohmers it is a collective experience which only adds to the drama and imagination of Sohmers’s lyrical tale.

Musically and in its character, Beasties: A Sci-Fi Rock Opera is a proposition which is like a mix of War Of The Worlds, The Little Shop Of Horrors and Banana Splits and with a message to embrace from the first moment the and opening seconds of Even The Cool Succumb, the EP is real fun. A relatively short track littered with hooks, melodic webs and vocal character in its three minutes, it is a teasing theatre of enterprise, the song a stage like roar of sound and suggestion.

Equally the following pair of Good Old Friend and Stand Up And Be Counted presents a theatre of musical celebration and thoughtful contemplation, again with stories which openly relate to our real world whilst the release continues to craft its own cartoonish realm. Both songs present curiosity and temptation with every twist and turn, the first bred on inner musing within a soulful rock ‘n’ roll setting. Its successor is a call to rise up in defiance and equally a celebration of that resistance and one’s inner warrior, hope fuelling the galvanic cry.

It all makes for a highly enjoyable encounter for ears and the imagination, a proposition calling out for a full cartoon show to embrace its rousing soundtrack.

Beasties: A Sci-Fi Rock Opera is available now @ https://garysohmers.bandcamp.com/