Major Parkinson - Valesa Chapter II: Viva the Apocalypse is out today!
Major Parkinson - Valesa Chapter II: Viva the Apocalypse is out today!
If you are in Oslo, Norway today treat yourself with a ticket to their release-party at Vulkan Arena. Further details here. We have gotten a big load of fresh new merch as well!
Valesa – Chapter II: Viva the Apocalypse! finds Major Parkinson stepping out of the neon-lit dream of Velvet Prison and into something far more visceral. Recorded largely live, with the full band locked into the same room, the album surges with renewed physicality — youthful energy reborn, horns blazing, grooves twisting, and a raw immediacy crackling through every track.
Where Part I gazed into a retro-futuristic mirror-ball, Part II smashes it. This chapter becomes a mythology of showbiz seen from the outside: fame as fever dream, America as haunted carnival, utopia as slow-motion delusion. The album speaks from the vantage point of the observer rather than the participant — a Greek chorus watching the spectacle unravel with one eyebrow raised and a dark joke on their lips.
Formats: Vinyl, CD, Cassette.
Merch and their back catalogue here
The first half basks in the grotesque glamour of celebrity culture, the unholy marriage of ambition and spectacle — an assertive display of pop music twisted into hitherto unknown shapes. Then, somewhere between a psychedelic desert mirage and the ghost of Timothy Leary whispering cosmic riddles, the ground gives way. The record fractures into a feverish descent: a trip to hell in a limousine, a comet falling in slow motion, a final act performed in a collapsing theatre.
But for all its chaos, Viva the Apocalypse! is strangely joyous. It’s fun, unhinged, alive — equal parts darkness and light. What you hear is a rock band at full tilt, dancing on the fault lines amidst the absurdity. And as a new installment in the ongoing Valesa saga, it points toward doors still waiting to be opened, leaving the world wider, stranger, and even more unpredictable than before.
Read a great review here: 9/10 - The Prog Mind