User:Licanora/sandbox

Crossing the Rubicon is an American, Instrumental Progressive Metal band founded in 2013 by guitarist and then drummer AJ Ryan.

Formation and early years (2011-2013)
In the later months of 2011, Alejandro Licano departed and subsequently disbanded the group Catalyst, which performed frequently at The Attic Club, in the Kettering, Ohio area. After a decade of frustrating setbacks with groups, amidst the advent of djent and an instrumental rock revival with groups emerging to prominence such as Animals As Leaders, Alejandro went solo and started Crossing the Rubicon with the hopes of finding an outlet through more DIY music ideas and the freedom to explore textures in musicality and song-writing. The Attic Club served as a popular ground to develop relationships with musicians where Alejandro was able to meet with Jonathan Carpenter (The Contortionist), Cameron Maynard and other musicians who would eventually become guest collaborators on future Crossing the Rubicon ventures. The earliest developments of music, or demos under the moniker of Crossing the Rubicon was the now relic The Inner Journey : Morpheus. Alejandro began work on was set up to be the debut LP record The Oneiroi, which was originally a 9 song album focusing on a more Avant-garde metal approach to an instrumental album, rather than the Progressive metal sound he would eventually develop as the group evolved. The Oneiroi was a strong presentation of ideas mainly sampled from his time in Catalyst, a djent based metalcore act with a taste for progressive metal. The songs were long, conceptual and mostly able to attract the attention of listeners. The reception of this LP work was distinct from latter works as this was mostly known by early supporters of Catalyst, close knit friends in the online music community and was strongly criticized for its weak production quality, poor direction and sense of guitar work. Overall The Oneiroi remains catalogued as a darker lesser-known work in the totality of Crossing the Rubicon but was removed from official discographic cannon in 2017, amidst concerns from then guitarist Deven Jahnke that the sounds of this early effort were too far removed from the quality that works after this presented.

The Oneiroi is a concept album that was released in November of 2012, based on several intermingling concepts of Alien abduction and its possible relationship to Sleep paralysis and/or Hypnagogia. Included in the opening track Fac Sapias Et Liber Eris(Greek for "Be wise and you will be free") are sounds from the Voyager Golden Records  whose contents were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University in 1977. Its meaning was to depict the notion that our exploration of space has a resounding similarity to our inner journey with N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT). The album's concept was well received by early fans, and typically adorned as cult-classic of random favorites.

Matter, Live performance and new line-ups (2017-2020)
Due to COVID-19 and having a more distanced approach to working together, the band subsequently fell into a hiatus which lasted 6 months, before reuniting to develop work on Anthologies Vol. 1.

Band members
Current
 * Alejandro Licano – guitar, production (2012–present)
 * Dave Woehrle – bass (2017–present)
 * Josh Durke – saxophone (2018–present)
 * Zack Mann drums, percussion (2020-present)

Former
 * AJ Ryan – drums (2012–2015)
 * Bradley Joseph Hutchinson – saxophone (2016–2017)
 * Steven Morris – guitar (2017–2017)
 * Deven Jahnke – guitar, synth, programming, production (2017–2020)
 * Cory Williams - drums, percussion (2019-2019)

Session Players
 * Johnny Ciardullo (Carcosa, One More Slice, ex-Galactic Pegasus) bass (2016-2017) "Bloom", "The Sum of All Things"
 * Shane Cabrera (ex-Violent By Design) - drums (2017) "The Sum of All Things"
 * Eric Michael Hickman – piano, synth (2020) "The Oneiroi"

Live Performances / Touring Musicans
 * Jacob Morgan - bass (April 13, 2019)

Timeline

Studio albums

 * Matter (2018)

Extended plays

 * "Ascension" (2015)
 * "Bloom" (Special Edition E.P.) (2016)
 * "Anthologies Vol 1." "Unreleased" (2021)

Singles

 * "Afterglows (Of the Greatest Explosions in the Universe)" (2014)
 * "Chrysanthemum" (2015)
 * "Bloom" (2016)
 * "The Sum of All Things" (2017)
 * "Time Lapse" (2019)
 * "The Oneiroi" (2021)

Guest Artist Collaborations
Ascension (E.P)


 * "Levitation" (2015) ft. Chris Aldridge (Burn The Dead)
 * "Levitation" (2015) ft. Spencer Barnett (ex- Under the Combine)
 * "Levitation" (2015) ft. Eric Webber (Bohemian Funk)
 * "Levitation" (2015) ft. Chris Aldridge (Burn The Dead)
 * "It's Biodigital Jazz, Man" (2015) ft. Jonathan Carpenter (ex- The Contortionist)
 * "It's Biodigital Jazz, Man" (2015) ft. Mark Hawkins (Devolved/Robots Pulling Levers/SoulCycle)
 * "Chrysanthemum" (2015) ft. Nikhil Singh (Shavasva)
 * "Chrysanthemum" (2015) ft. Paul Ozz (Paul Ozz)
 * "...And He Built a Crooked House" (2015) ft. Tomáš Raclavský (Modern Day Babylon)
 * "...And He Built a Crooked House" (2015) ft. Chris Catharsis (SoulCycle)
 * "AnthropoScene" (2015) ft. Madison Jones (ex-Parallax)
 * "AnthropoScene" (2015) ft. Keigo Yoshida (The Blue Prison)
 * "AnthropoScene" (2015) ft. Andrey Sazonov (Amogh Symphony/Halcyan)

Bloom (Single)
 * Dylan Fürr (Dylan Fürr Band)
 * Chris Gordon (Bam Margera)
 * Jimmy Van Cleaf
 * Kee Poh Hock (Replacire, ex-Native Construct)
 * Diego Hernandez Sierra (Mauna)
 * Alex Campbell (Seek Irony/ Warner Bros. Records)

Matter (L.P.)
 * "Enthalpy" (2018) ft. Adam Bentley (Arch Echo)