Juno award winners Crown Lands are a Canadian duo who, despite the limitations of numbers, still manage to produce an amazing sound. The two musicians between them play everything themselves, with Kevin Comeau performing on guitar, bass and keys while Cody Bowles sings and plays drums and occasional flute. Kevin says that when the finance becomes available, they’ll add a drummer to the mix to free up Cody, and as he, Kevin, wants to utilise the keys more, they’ll maybe add a guitarist as well. Whatever happens, the sound they currently make with only two is quite remarkable.
Crown Lands are storytellers, and there’s a sci-fi narrative running through the album. If we’ve understood it correctly, Apocalypse follows the rise to power of ‘Blackstar’, the ruthless military enforcer within an entity known as ‘the Syndicate’, and tells of his victories over the Dragon Riders of Karagon, and also of the loss of his family in the civil war. The album thus explores the ending of an era and the uncertain beginning of another.
This album, due 15th May 2026 via InsideOutMusic, follows on from 2023’s Fearless (though they did put out the EPs Ritual I and Ritual II in 2025), and it’s clearly targeted at fans who enjoy old school classic and prog rock. Their music gives a hearty nod to the past, with an undeniably heavy Rush influence circa the A Farewell To Kings / Hemispheres period permeating the album, alongside the occasional touches of Led Zeppelin. With Cody Bowles’ high vocal register, he even manages to achieve the distinction of sounding like Geddy Lee on the track ‘Foot Soldiers of the Syndicate’, and like Robert Plant circa ‘The Battle of Evermore’ on the prog-sounding ‘Through The Looking Glass’.
The music veers towards overt complexity but doesn’t follow bands like Dream Theater down the rabbit hole of occasionally being too complex. ‘Blackstar’ is pure classic rock, while ‘The Fall’ (“I feel Blackstar closing in, and the seas are rising”) is a superb piece with some splendid guitar work from Kevin Comeau.
They quieten things down with the mainly acoustic ‘The Revenants’, with a cello adding a mournful touch, before they re-enter Rush territory again when title track ‘Apocalypse’ kicks in. With its sonic landscape, it’s the spiritual son of Rush’s Hemispheres. If you like Rush and their more progressive playing, this one’s for you. It’s a sprawling 19-minute epic with plenty of intricate chord changes, big intense riffs, and synths that evoke varying moods throughout, alongside some softer sections, and it brings the saga to a conclusion: “the world is darkened by the shadow of death, Blackstar’s hammer marks their final breath.”
Whether Crown Lands, as fellow Canadians, are simply paying homage to Canada’s finest, or are just blatant plagiarists, is one for the listener’s interpretation. However it’s perceived, this is an album which combines the ability to put across a compelling story through the medium of some very powerful rock music.
