Proving that music transcends all barriers – including time – Kee Marcello has recently put together a new project that although a stand-alone entity, still bears more than a passing resemblance to the band in which he made his name some three decades ago.
Marcello is, to date, best known for his work with melodic rock megastars Europe, having played on The Final Countdown, but looks set to relaunch his brand and music with his latest project Out Of This World.
Taking their name from the hit album of the same name by Europe, Out Of This World is much more than a rehashed version of Europe circa 2020.
It paints a fresh sonic landscape, incorporating some of the elements that made his former band such a formidable outfit on the world stage, but has assembled a team of musicians around him that are proof alone that his musical vision lays much further and deeper.
Tommy Heart (Fair Warning), Ken Sandin (Alien) and Darby Todd (Devin Townsend, Gary Moore, The Darkness) complete Out Of This World, with Deep Purple’s Don Airey lending his keyboard talents to the bands upcoming debut album which will be released on January 14, 2022.
Following the release of Out Of This World’s debut single Hanging On, Marcello sat down with HEAVY to talk about his new band, and take a trip down memory lane as well.
"Musically this is ten newly written studio tracks and some live tracks. The live tracks are kind of funny because me and Tommy Heart, we met doing a different project back in 2007. That's where we discovered each other. I had never worked with him before. We really got it on together, it was almost like a brother relationship. I wanted to bring in Darby and Ken into the mixture because I thought that would be amazing band, so we actually did a gig - the only gig we've done so far together - and it was the Heat Festival in Germany. A couple of days before we all met up in Gothenburg in the studio to rehearse and we did that and it was like everything it seems with this band, easy as pie, so after doing the set a number of times we had some time over and I just happened to have three new songs. I said can we try them out? So, I played back the songs and they really dug it and before the night was over, we had the basics for three songs - Twilight, Lighting up My Dark and In A Million Years. I believe that day was the day that the band was born. We didn't have the band name yet, but that's when the band was born. We did that gig, which is actually the live songs you hear on the release, so we were like peas in a pie from day one."
In the full interview, Kee runs us through Out Of This World’s music in greater depth, naming the band, his time in Europe, why the debut album was released in Japan earlier this year but not until January for the rest of the world, assembling the band and why he chose the current members, playing live, adapting to COVID and more.