Neal Morse recently announced the release of ‘Sola Gratia’, his new solo progressive rock con-cept album, for the 11th September 2020. Originating from a seed planted in his mind about writing a record based on the apostle Paul, ‘Sola Gratia’ quickly came together at the beginning of 2020. The album sees Neal working with long-time collaborators Mike Portnoy, Randy George, Eric Gillette, Bill Hubauer and Gideon Klein.

Today sees the launch of the first single ‘In The Name Of The Lord’, and you can watch the video now here:

Neal comments: “As I was gathering a bunch of random ideas in February for this album, when I got home and started to put it together, the riff that starts this song was the very first thing I recorded. I couldn’t play the riff and sing at the same time so I wrote it separately. The chorus came from some ideas I had while early morning walking in Sydney, Australia. 

Lyrically, I am fascinated by the conversion of Saul of Tarsus to Paul the Apostle. The fact the he starts off persecuting christians and then becomes the guy who writes most of the New Testament is a rich story..there’s so much to it…it may become a series!”

The title ‘Sola Gratia’ of course has echoes of Morse’s 2007 epic ‘Sola Scriptura’, about the life of Martin Luther, but was in fact originally the result of a simple marital misunderstanding: “I was talking to my wife Cherie about debuting this new piece at Morsefest 2020 (Morse’s annual fan convention in Nashville) and she said she thought it would be good for me to do a solo al-bum. However, I thought she said ‘Sola album’ and – because some of the new ideas involved Paul’s aggressive pursuit of the early Christians, I could see a link to some of the themes of per-secution in ‘Sola Scriptura’.”

The music was recorded ‘virtually’ in April 2020 at the height of the Coronavirus lockdown with long term collaborators Mike Portnoy (drums) and Randy George (bass): “It’s the first album we have ever made remotely: I sent them the basic tracks and asked if they wanted to rearrange things, but they just said ‘No, it’s great!’, so they just played to it and sent their parts back over. It wasn’t an easy way to make an album, but creating always has its challenges, no mat-ter how you do it.”

As Morse explains, it was this process that decided that ‘Sola Gratia’ was to be a Neal Morse al-bum, rather than being credited to The Neal Morse Band: “With the Neal Morse Band, the whole band works together on the writing, and while Eric Gillette plays some guitar and Bill Hubauer has added some keyboards on this one, neither of them wrote – or is singing – on this album.”

Pre-order now here: https://nealmorse.lnk.to/SolaGratia/

The full track-listing is as follows:

Preface
Overture
In The Name Of The Lord
Ballyhoo (The Chosen Ones)
March Of The Pharisees
Building A Wall
Sola Intermezzo
Overflow
Warmer Than The Sunshine
Never Change
Seemingly Sincere
The Light On The Road To Damascus
The Glory Of The Lord
Now I Can See/The Great Commission