Expedition One

Expedition One is the first Metalite album built as one story from end to end. AFM's announcement places it in 2055, in a world where the "transparent citizen" has become real and physical and mental health increasingly decide how a life goes. A renegade team drawn from the intelligence services, the military and breakaway tech executives, led by five commanders, plans an escape to distant planets. The mission is to carry humanity off a ruined Earth, and what follows is a run of things nobody expected and a completely new understanding of what life is. Premberg has explained where the idea came from: people kept telling the band their songs sounded cinematic, so he set out to write something that would arch back over Heroes In Time, Biomechanicals and A Virtual World and tie all three together. He says it was awkward at first and that once the shape of the story was settled they were happy with it. In the same announcement he notes that the band's sound had moved a long way in four or five years, the production quality above all. The sixteen songs hold both halves of the band. "Blazing Skies", "Aurora" and "Free" are the tight, familiar Metalite; "Sanctum Of Light", "Outer Worlds" and "Paradise" are the ones meant to surprise. And "Utopia" is the first instrumental they have ever recorded. Lea Larsson was on drums at this point, and Jacob Hansen mixed and mastered the record at Hansen Studios, as he has every one of them. The singles ran long. After "Hurricane" and "Take My Hand", which were already out, came "Disciples Of The Stars" on 23 June 2023, "Blazing Skies" on 18 August, "New Generation" on 6 October and "Aurora" on 24 November. A lyric video for "Cyberdome" arrived on release day itself, 19 January 2024. Marquee Inc. released the Japanese edition two days before the rest of the world, on 17 January, as MICP-11842. Its sixteen tracks are the international ones; "Take My Hand" and "Hurricane" are bonus tracks that the international digital edition also carries, so for once the Japanese CD adds nothing the others do not have.