Los Angeles-based hard rock outfit Gemini Syndrome is currently on their last tour in support of their current record, and before they head to the studio the finish a concept project, they’ll play in support of a former WWE Superstar and his band.
Gemini Syndrome will open for Fozzy, the Atlanta metal group fronted by Chris Jericho, during an evening of music that starts at 7 p.m. today in the Chandelier Lobby F.M. Kirby Center in downtown Wilkes-Barre.
Gemini Syndrome’s lead vocalist Aaron Nordstrom said his band, which lost two original members in recent years, is tighter than ever.
“We’re basically a family,” Nordstrom said. “We’ve spent the last eight years together.”
The group’s debut album “Lux,” was released in 2013 to positive reviews from critics and fans like, and their 2016 effort, “Memento Mori,” continues the songwriter’s quest to complete something meaningful and reflective.
“It means ‘Remember that you have to die,’” Nordstrom said of “Memento Mori.”
Gemini Syndrome’s intent, he said, was to create a three-record trilogy with the concepts being birth, life and death.
“Lux,” he noted dealt with birth, while “Memento Mori” catered to life and “the aspect of mortality and being present in the moment.”
“The next record will have to do with death and transformation,” Nordstrom said.
The songs, although focused on a theme are not contrived, Nordstrom said. Rather, the compositions are spontaneous and pull from life experiences that come at the time of writing.
“For ‘Lux’ I was writing about my upbringing, my childhood years,” Nordstrom said. “It was very easy to focus on what was present in my experience. In the time that has passed from ‘Memento’ to now, there’s been a lot of death in my life and in the industry. There’s been a lot that lends itself to writing that concept record.”
Around the time that rock icons Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington took their lives, Nordstrom lost a close friend to suicide.
“When you look at others dying around you, it’s humbling,” he said. “Death is the final equalizer and none of us have control over it.”
Nordstrom notes that he doesn’t mean the discussion of these phases of life to be morbid. The philosophy he subscribes to maintains that energy can neither be created nor destroyed and that the energy that constitutes a life must go somewhere.
While the band caps off their tour and prepares to go into the studio to complete the trilogy, their fan base grows with appreciation for their blend of post-grunge and metal and anticipates their finished work.
In the meantime, Nordstrom said, touring with Fozzy has been “fantastic.”
“(Chris” went out of his way to stop me and introduce himself,” Nordstrom said of the first night of the tour. “He was the most polite, gentle person I’ve come across in a long time.
“He’s a wall of a human being. Coming from his background, you think of this tough guy, and I’m not saying he’s not tough, but he’s the most friendly, hospitable guy you’d want to meet.”
Nordstrom is scheduled to be on Jericho’s podcast in the near future.
