After releasing massively unheralded full-length album The Audio Medium in 2002, exceptional and instrumental prog group The Cancer Conspiracy spent two years replacing stolen gear, finding a new bassist, and writing new material. Now, three years following its completion, the band’s swan song is set for release in the fall through Radar Recordings.
Titled Ω (Omega), the album is billed as The Cancer Conspiracy’s final eight songs. Original bassist Brent Frattini, who left in 2003 to join hardcore outfit Daughters, was replaced on the new material by Johnny Northup (The Octave Museum, The Burning Paris). Northup joined the band’s other founding members, guitarist Daryl Rabidoux and drummer/keyboardist/saxophonist Greg Beadle, to lay tracks down in 2004.
Unfortunately, the group’s former label, Big Wheel Recreation, ceased to operate that year, and the material was stuck in legal purgatory. But Radar and Gilead Media have come to the rescue; Ω should be issued before the end of 2007. One of the album’s songs, “Untitled #4,” can be heard below.
Though it appears that The Cancer Conspiracy won’t reunite, Rabidoux, a former member of hardcore/metal band Drowningman as well as a recording engineer and co-owner of Strangeways Recording Studio, recently relocated to Providence, Rhode Island, where Frattini and Daughters reside. Beadle now drums for Township, a four-piece group inspired by 1970s rock and roll.
The Cancer Conspiracy: “Untitled #4”
www.myspace.com/thecancerconspiracy
Radar Recordings: www.radarrecordings.com