Antenna

After the success of Jupiter in 2000, RCA approached the band about their next record. They signed, but kept a working relationship with Hydra Head, which had released everything before it and went on distributing the back catalogue. The album carries further what Creative Eclipses and Jupiter had started: spacey, progressive tendencies and clean melodic singing, with the heavy metal element pulled back. Guitarist Adam McGrath has put the shift down to both physical and creative limits — the singer Stephen Brodsky had concerns about what years of harsh vocals would do to him, and the band were tired of being filed under metalcore and made to play among those acts. Where Jupiter had four days, Antenna got three months of basic recording and six months in all. McGrath later compared the majors with the small labels: "RCA tried harder to get things done, but more people wanted to put their fingerprints on our record." "Anchor" was the lead single, its video starring the actor Richard Edson. The band played the second stage of Lollapalooza in 2003 and then toured Europe supporting Foo Fighters and Muse. The running order here is the original's as printed.