Canadian progressive rock duo Crown Lands have never done things the easy way, and their new album, Apocalypse, out May 15 via Inside Out Music, makes that abundantly clear. Built by two people, Kevin Comeau on guitar, bass, and bass pedals, and Cody Bowles on drums and vocals, it’s a boldly cohesive concept record that pushes their sound into more expansive territory than anything they’ve attempted before.
The album moves through diverse sonic landscapes, from the cinematic instrumental opener “Proclamation” to the driving urgency of “Foot Soldiers of the Syndicate,” through the melodic weight of “Through the Looking Glass” and “Blackstar,” and out the other side into the sprawling 19-minute closer “Apocalypse” itself, a multi-part epic that gives the duo room to fully stretch out.
Robert Cavuoto spoke with Bowles about how it all came together, and the drummer and vocalist didn’t take long to get to the heart of what makes writing as a two-piece both liberating and genuinely difficult.
“The power of two is a beautiful boon because we can riff off each other and there’s no one else to tell us no or give us any other input,” Bowles said. “When we write together, everything we make is made live in the room. It’s just our pure chemistry together where we piece things together, we figure out what works, what doesn’t work, and there’s this really beautiful alchemy that happens. We find a 15-second passage with an amazing riff that becomes one of the parts in ‘Apocalypse,’ and then we stack that against something else, and we have a working open demo session where we’re live recording everything, testing everything, ABC-ing everything, and deciding what part goes next until we get to the end of the song.
“There is a downside to a lack of true democracy. If one of us doesn’t want to do something and no one concedes, nothing happens. But that limitation actually becomes a strength if you can surmount it and create around it. If I hear something Kevin does and I say we really need a chorus, and he says no, I don’t think we do, I say, fine, I challenge you to make a chorus. And then he makes one. It becomes ‘Blackstar.'”
That particular track had been sitting in their ecosystem for years before Bowles finally pushed Comeau to finish it, and the same dynamic shaped “Beardless Part One,” where another challenge to write a bigger chorus produced one of the record’s most striking moments. It’s a creative friction that, rather than stalling the band, keeps pushing them further than either would go alone.
The two-piece setup itself was never a deliberate choice so much as an organic one. Bowles originally planned to just sing, having never done so before he walked into a jam session with Comeau at around age 19. “A voice came out, and I was like, oh shoot, this is amazing,” he said. “I got to keep doing this.” He had been a drummer his entire life, his father’s favorite band was Rush, and he’d been listening to them almost exclusively until grade eight. When Comeau started playing kick drum with his foot to keep the beat during their early blues rock jams, Bowles took over the kit almost by accident. “Kevin said, ” What am I going to do with my foot? And he started playing bass pedals. And I was like, you know what, I’m going to sing and play drums. Screw it. I learned how to sing while playing drums. It’s kind of just like a product of the environment.”
The vocal comparisons that tend to follow Bowles around, particularly to Geddy Lee and Robert Plant, are ones he accepts with some humility but also genuine context. His blues rock influences pulled him toward Steve Marriott, John Fogerty, and Plant early on, while the band’s progressive pivot brought Lee‘s angular melodic sensibility into sharper focus. “I lean toward it almost instinctively,” he said. “But it’s all just me.”
For Apocalypse, the band made a conscious decision to abandon one of their longest-held rules: if you can’t do it live, don’t record it. The shift began with their Fearless record, when Comeau insisted on adding bass guitar alongside everything else and then promptly had a custom double-neck built to perform it. By the time Apocalypse came around, they had fully committed to putting the art first and figuring out the live arrangements afterward. That meant complex harmonies Comeau can’t easily replicate on stage, layered instrumentation requiring creative workarounds, and ultimately the decision to bring in two additional touring musicians to help bring the material to life in a live setting. “We decided, you know what, this music is going to outlive us,” Bowles said. “We’re going to make music for the sake of the art, and how we figure it out live, we’ll get there.”
That artistic freedom is all over the record’s individual tracks. “The Fall” grew out of a riff Comeau was playing that initially felt a little too close to Pink Floyd‘s “Run Like Hell,” and the course correction produced something that married Floyd‘s atmospheric quality with a more Kiss-influenced drum approach from Bowles, who credits Peter Criss as a direct inspiration on the track. “Through the Looking Glass” took shape around a massive chorus melody that Bowles had been reluctant to pin any specific lyric to, until a conversation in the studio with producer Nick landed on a dragon imagery concept Bowles had initially dismissed entirely. “I was saying no the whole time,” he admitted. “And then I was like, okay, I lost the bet. Upon the dragon’s wings, we fly. Whatever.” The song became one of his favorites on the album.
The vintage gear the duo leaned on throughout recording also played a significant role in shaping the record’s character. Comeau brought in original Moog synthesizers, old Taurus pedals, and vintage Leslie cabinets, while Bowles tracked portions of the album on a 1970s Slingerland black gold kit alongside a more modern-sounding setup used for the title track and other material. “We definitely lean toward the classic-sounding gear,” Bowles said.
The concept threading through Apocalypse acts as a prequel to the band’s earlier material, telling the origin story of their overarching villain, the Syndicate, and its figurehead, Blackstar. “That angular riff became ‘Blackstar’ because it sounded angry and mean, almost like a montage of him conquering other worlds,” Bowles said. “And ‘Through the Looking Glass’ sounded like the good guys, the ebb and flow before the Syndicate arrived on their home planet.”
Releasing the 19-minute title track as the lead single was as deliberate as everything else on the record. “People statistically wouldn’t get to it if we just threw out the whole record without having a spotlight shone on it,” Bowles said. “So we shone a spotlight on it. We put it out first as a statement: we just did two instrumental records, but we haven’t lost the plot. We’re a prog band. Here we are with our new prog label, Inside Out. Here’s this amazing story that we came up with. Live with it, digest it, read it, and get it.”
Apocalypse is available for pre-order now at this location.
