JOURNEY SET TO DELIVER A MASTERFUL ECLIPSE MAY 2011

from melodicrock.com

Journey's new album Eclipse is set to deliver a heavier and darker tone and is confirmed for release in North America May 24 via WalMart outlets. A worldwide release will follow via Frontiers Records on or close to that exact date. The album features 12 tracks, one of which is an instrumental. The rest is all new material written over the last 18 months by guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist Jonathan Cain, with help from frontman Arnel Pineda.
The album was produced and record by Kevin Shirley and mixed by David Kalmusky. Rumors suggest it is quite a lengthy record, with one source stating the album was: "more rock...longer songs..."

Comments from the band have begun to appear, with Neal Schon quoted by VH1 as saying: "The record, it's been done for a while. It sounds amazing. I'm in love with the record, which I haven't said for a long time. I was very involved with this record. Jon Cain and I wrote the whole thing with a little help from Arnel. You know, I really fought for this record to be the way it is. It's a rock record. It's built for the places we're about to play. We're playing a lot of big shows – South America and Europe – and we're going to be touring the whole world on and off for two years. So with the addition of Arnel, we've become more of an international band which has been really great. We busted all kinds of markets wide open. So I wrote for what I felt we were missing in our show. We've got a lot of hits to play and we have to play those but there's plenty of time to do some new stuff too so we're gonna mix it up."

Jonathan Cain last week tweeted: "Journey rehearsals ended today--band sounds great! New songs kick butt--lookin forward to rockin Vegas." Cain also talked to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, describing the album as: "a concept record with some spiritual themes to it. Pretty tough, hard-hitting stuff. This is Journey with big combat boots on. And helmet and a rifle. [Lyrics] searching for soulfulness and enlightenment and love and all the stuff that Journey's about. But the album also has a larger dynamic sweep with some darker stuff in there. We just felt like it was time to send a message to the world about how we feel about life in general," concluding with stating that the album incorporates Hindu principles of Tantra, "the belief that life is kind of a weave, a circle of energy, a life force that's woven with the universe in all of us. We dove deep into it. [The album is] ...one of those headphone records."

Fans attending this weeks show in Vegas will get an exclusive preview of 3 new songs from the album. Stay tuned for more.