The Opium Cartel premiere video for new single In The Streets with Prog

(Image credit: The Opium Cartel)

The Opium Cartel have premiered their video for their brand new single In The Streets with Prog. The track is taken from the band's upcoming album Valor, which is to be released through Apollon records in June. You can watch the video in full below.

The Opium Cartel is the art rock/pop side project from White Willow's Jacob Holm-Lupo and Valor is their third full-length release.

"It's a record about naïve but brave dreams," Lupo tells Prog. "These are songs about the hubris and optimism of childhood and youth. That period of life where everything seems sure to happen just the way you imagine: You will fall in love with the most beautiful girl in the world and she will love you back. You will become a pilot or an astronaut or defy gravity in some other way. You will explode into a world of colour and wonder. You will never be disappointed or let down. You will take every risk without fear of failure.

"Musically the album takes inspiration from a variety of predominantly 80s sources, from The Blue Nile and Shriekback, via late Roxy Music to the prog-pop of 80s Alan Parsons Project and Camel. The period feel is amplified by Holm-Lupo’s use of exclusively hardware synthesizers iconic to the era, like the Oberheim Matrix-6 and Yamaha DX7."

Valor features a string of special guests including Zuma's Alexander Stenerud on a cover of Ratt's What's It Gonna Be, Airbag guitarist Bjorn Riis, vocalists Ole Øvstedal and Silje Huleboer, Wobbler drummer Lars Fredrik Frøislie, singer Leah Maercu from Israeli prog metallers Tillian and Holm-Lupo's own daughter Ina A.

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.