Jason Bieler shines on star-studded sonic adventure Songs For The Apocalypse

Former Saigon Kick guitarist Jason Bieler joins the Baron Von Bielski Orchestra to provide food for future thought on Songs For The Apocalypse

Jason Bieler & The Baron Von Bielski Orchestra: Songs For The Apocalypse
(Image: © Frontiers)

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After a conventional start with hard rockers Saigon Kick (who scored a US hit with the ballad Love Is On The Way in 1991), Jason Bieler found mixing up styles more challenging, and his 1998 solo debut Houston We Have A Problem was a fine metal/drum‘n’bass mash-up. 

He’s pursued this policy on various projects, to the point where it’s often difficult to categorise his music.

He’s got the ear of other musicians, though, as the membership of the Baron Von Bielski Orchestra confirms; Todd La Torre (Queensrÿche), Dave Ellefson (Megadeth), Devin Townsend and Pat Badger (Extreme), Jeff Scott Soto and Bumblefoot (Son Of Apollo) are just some of those bringing their diverse talents to Bieler’s cleverly wrought riffs and themes that are more melodic than they might first appear.

Regardless of this album’s fortunes, expect to hear Bieler’s ideas on other people’s records over the next couple of years.

Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.