New Album in 2023
Final vocals are now being recorded!
The ANABASIS, a collaborative studio project by Barry Thompson (music) and George Andrade (lyrics) would like to announce the impending release of their 2nd full-length studio album, "The Battle - An Opioid Story." Barry dug deep into his dark past and brought to life many of the intense and dangerous situations he found himself in at times in his younger days. Addiction lead to some very dark and disturbing places that even today are difficult to talk about, never mind write an album about. Many of the scenes in this piece are lifted directly from episodes in Barry's distant past, back in the decadent 80's.
Our album is a fictionalized accounting of some of the turmoil that categorized the author's life until his mid-30's. To tell the story our storyteller, George Andrade drew some some of Barry's most harrowing tales from "the other side of the tracks" as some would say. Our story has 4 main characters, The Mother, The Father, The Daughter and The Drug Dealer. Each with their own baggage and issues. At the beginning of the album The Father is just getting out of jail after after spending yet another year in the clink. Meanwhile, The Mother has been grappling with their rapidly spiraling Daughter's new drug addiction and affinity for being a stripper to make money for drugs.
Without giving away too much of the story let's just say that there is an epic struggle of wills between father and daughter and the story gets very, very dark in the middle of the album, but ultimately it finishes in an uplifting and hopeful manner worthy of its epic, bombastic end chills-inducing ending.
All in all we feel that while Back From Being Gone was a fine album, this new one stands head and shoulders above the first one. We've upped our game on every level. More vocal harmonies and counterpoint vocals than you can shake a big stick at and if you're worried that there is only a single traditional "epic" song at 21 minutes and change, keep in mind that the rest of the tracks, on average, clock in at somewhere between 6 and 9 minutes, many of them being mini-epics in their own rights.
We offer this album as a commentary on the state of today's epidemic. Fentanyl has become the 2nd leading cause of death amoung people under 30 with suicide being the #1 cause. And we're pretty sure at least some of those suicides were ultimately brought on by the ravages of Fentanyl on the human body, mind and spirit.
There is a better life out there for everyone who is sick and suffering on the streets. We offer this album as a hopeful commentary on possibilities, not just the bad stuff, but the good stuff that can happen when sick people are treated as sick people instead of being treated as "junkies" who deserve no sympathy. Addiction is a disease just like cancer is a disease. We don't look down on people who have cancer and we shouldn't look down on people who are stricken with addiction. Contratry to what many misguided people believe, addiction is not a choice. It's no more of a choice than having green eyes is a choice. Some folks are born predisposed to addiction. This has been proven in the field of medicine, which is why the American Medical Association classifies addiction as a disease.
We don't want to argue with you over symantics. We just want you to show some compassion to suffering addicts and alcoholics, just as you'd show compassion to those suffering from other diseases like cancer or diabetes.