Douglas Docker’s massive Mystic Technocracy project moves on with the release of Season 2: The Age of Entropy. It’s been a while since Season 1: The Age of Innocence and most certainly worth the wait as The Age of Entropy delivers the goods in fine style.
In case you may not have come across Dockers Guild before – Douglas Docker is the man behind it all. The Dockers Guild is a monster progressive metal “space opera” which will develop over 5 “seasons” and 4 “books” for a total of 9 albums.
Season 1 was superb. I’d been waiting on Season 2 news eagerly for years – then probably around a year or so ago Douglas opened a crowd funding campaign for Season 2. I threw in a few quid and true to his word, Douglas has duly delivered – and how. As the name suggests – Dockers Guild is an ensemble cast of musicians along the likes of say Ayreon or Avantasia. For The Age of Entropy Douglas recruited the likes of Sascha Paeth, Joel Hoekstra, Nita Strauss, Anneke Van Giersbergen and Amanda Somerville to name but a few to lend their considerable talents.
Douglas goes up to eleven any beyond with his keyboard skills too. He’s all over it with a variety of keys, synths and more. For me he’s up there with anyone you’d care to mention.
The music is outstanding progressive metal indeed as the Mystic Technocracy story unfolds over the seventy five minute running time the scale of it all is breath taking.
The mostly spoken Terminus kicks it off to set the scene before K475 W.A.M. – which is progressive/symphonic/neoclassical reworking of Mozart’s fantasy piece. Douglas revs up the keys and Joel Hoekstra shreds all over it.
As then we get in to the main story which is over a series of “episodes” the delivery and variety is superb. We have it all from some reasonably gentle stuff to melodic to full on prog to symphonic to neoclassical to proper heavy stuff and everything in between.
For example Lucy is an infectious melodic rocker with some edge to it as it punches along, Die Today being one of the heavier numbers with some real bit to it and we have Le Chemin – a reggae style with a funky bass line and the lyrics in French.
Oh: and an excellent cover to Machine Messiah from the under-rated Yes album Drama.
If sweeping, complex prog metal is your thing – you can’t go wrong with The Age of Entropy. As a taster, listen to Die Today:
The album is available in various formats via the Dockers Guild web site or Bandcamp page:
https://www.dockersguild.com/home
https://elevaterecords1.bandcamp.com/album/the-mystic-technocracy-season-2-the-age-of-entropy
Next up we’ll be back to good old New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Today the Black Rose Walk it How You Talk It CD/DVD arrived. It’s been a bit of a wait for it to get here from Sonic Age Records – not their fault as the delays caused by the postal worker strikes we’ve been having here in the UK. Have some other stuff held up for the same reason.