GRAND RAPIDS PRESS
Local Spin of the Week: Muskegon's Holloway
Posted by John Sinkevics | The Grand Rapids Press May 08, 2009

To say Muskegon's Holloway knows just how to balance intricate prog-rock stylings with dynamic pauses, themes of "metaphorical imprisonment" and all-out hard rock would be an understatement.

These guys -- Ross Morgan, Shawn Julien and Josh Morgan -- play with surprising confidence and technical prowess on their debut CD, "Illusions."

Tinges of Porcupine Tree, Tool and Coheed can be found on the concept album, with lyrics based on events from the childhood and adult life of Ross Morgan.

Today's featured track on "Sound Check," "The Visitor," starts with some eerie-but-lilting piano before unleashing a thunderous wall of electric guitars.

Get more information about the band at www.hollowayband.com or myspace.com/theholloway.

The group, which has added keyboard player Kevin Schaner since recording the CD, performs a special acoustic show at 7 tonight in Hot Topic in Muskegon's Lakes Mall.

REVUE MAGAZINE - MAY 09
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
J. Bennett-Rylah

Holloway is confusing, and I'm not saying that in a negative way. First, you'll get the album Illusions and the artwork, custom-painted by Susan Van Sant, looks pretty goth. Barren landscape of foreboding trees, a beautiful raven-haired woman in a flowing white dress and gold mask fading into an alternate reality where the trees are dead and covered in haunting black birds. Here, the figure of the woman is repeated again, except naked, which is where the only perky thing about this album cover comes into play. With track titles like "Plague Marks" and ""In Dreamscapes of the Dead," your expectations should be set for black eyeliner.

However, the album sounds like an epic, prog rock concept album. Heavy, riff-happy guitar, pounding drums juxtaposed against fairytale piano and interesting effects. It's musically complex without about being inaccessible. It's a hard rock album, but it's not always a hard-rock album. It's got its climaxes and its resolutions. The vocals, though, sound like they've wandered off the last pop punk album. High-pitched, sans growl, melodious and expressive. Yet the lyrics are loquacious and delve beyond the usual song subject matter -- like embalming! (Okay, so it is a little goth.)

You'll just have to listen to it yourselves, okay?

MUEN MAGAZINE, JUNE 09
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Holloway "Illusions" (MUEN): Review

A visual masterpiece at first glance with haunting cover art by renowned artist, painter, Susan Van Sant, Holloway’s debut L.P. entitled “Illusions”, does not disappoint. With melodically structured songs massaging ones heart and rearranging deep dark thoughts on the surface that hide within us all, Holloway delivers a tasteful progressive rock sound fashioned through precise quality instrumentation.

Ross Morgan (guitars, vocals, drums) delivers breathy vocals that bring new life to a typically over saturated rock sound through a deeply personal feel that screams, “Do or die”. I listened; wondering how, Ross Morgan’s mind worked it out so diligently and patiently to incorporate the never lifeless time changes in the drumming with the offbeat but utterly matching guitar and vocal work. Perhaps losing his mind while writing and arranging “Illusions” lead him to the ample name of which we the listeners are given in “Illusions”, a title worthy of the magic that Holloway creates on this real life concept album.

A haunting over all tone lingers throughout on this debut that sounds nothing like the stereotypical debut. The surgically precision that Josh Morgan (Bass., Programming, String Arrangements) and Shawn Julien (Guitars) bring to the highly emotional sounds of Ross Morgan, make “Illusions” an enriched montage of rock dramatics, usually not within the translation capability of a band creating their freshman L.P.

Written and recorded at Seaway sound Studios in Muskegon, MI. Holloway never stray far apart musically. With arrangements written and delivered with a whole backdrop of dramatic sounds, mixed and mastered at Fascination Street Studios in Orebro Ian, Sweden, by metal sound Jedi, Jens Bogren (Opeth, Soilwork and Katatonia).

“Illusions” is a musical transplant of hurt, pain and hope that often destroys the artists’ that attempt to create so close to the heart. “Illusions” is an untypical album by an untypical band.

Check out Holloway’s pure expressive rock sound on the band’s web site at: www.hollowayband.com or on Holloway’s MySpace at: www.myspace.com/theholloway. I suggest a listen and look at the band’s first single, “The Visitor”, available in newly released video format, for a closer look on what makes this one of a kind concept album an ear catcher that is rapidly on the rise in many radio charts.

REVIEW YOU.com, July 09
Ray Van Horn, Jr. for Review You

Michigan’s Holloway (once known as Avitus) which houses brotherly principals Ross and Josh Morgan plus guitarist Shawn Julien have a mission in mind with their debut album Illusions. Beyond extending their music into cross-changeable media via proposed poetry, film, visual art and online tools, Holloway seeks to reinvent modern prog rock and metal by stripping it down to the basics and sculpting from the primers.

While their debut single “The Visitor” is structured identically to Queensryche’s title track “Empire” only with a different sway to the primary melody, Holloway comes to the table with figurative vibes akin to Dream Theater, 3, Staind, Coheed and Cambria and Underoath on Illusions.

Sometimes Illusions mixes up power prog with emo punk on the title track or “In the Dreamscapes of the Dead” and sometimes Holloway jacks up the volume with AOR-reminiscent tones blended with pop punk, using “Plague Marks” as an example. The difference for Holloway on “Plague Marks” is its sensibility to fuse some slinking percussion on the bridge before hammering the track home.

Illusions gets its audience’s attention right out the gate with a superb guitar-happy detonation on “Non-Inception” before opting for more ear-coaxing verses and a hooky chorus. Group leader Ross Morgan switches his vocal delivery from early twenty-something croon to a bellowed roar deafening enough to match the explosive opening which makes a reprise before “Non-Inception’s” last verse.

Illusions’ storyline, per the band, is “about a guy who loses his girlfriend and he essentially gets trapped with finding her soul, contacting her dead soul.” Aiming high with a cinematic mindframe for this album, Holloway best serves this purpose on the dark and graceful “The Current,” which slowly builds upon a melancholic piano line with high-end, swooning vocal tones from Ross Morgan and perfectly-sprinkled xylophone sublets.

While “Teeth & Tongue” and “The Gauntlet” adopt a jagged flavor somewhere in the middle of Queensryche and Staind, one of Illusions’ finest-written tracks follows afterwards with “May My Actions Be Seen.” “Actions” is rather busy considering its mid-tempo pace, yet the crunching layers and detailed note patterns Holloway heaps with each escalating bar is brought to climax then jerked back to start position for another build-up.

Opening their veins for their listeners, Ross and Josh Morgan seep past wounds into Illusions, primarily exorcising past heartache from the loss of their mother. Ross Morgan especially utilizes the various media around him to convey the emotional wreckage his muse (and straightforwardly his and Josh’s feelings) wrestles with.

Illusions’ cryptic cover art (reminiscent of something between Heironymous Bosch, Tim Burton and the old Hammer horror flicks) courtesy of Susan Van Sant projects the horrific sentiments the Morgan brothers wish to share with the world through the vehicle of their aggrieved muse.

The final mix of Illusion was overseen by Jens Bogren of Fascination Street Studios in Sweden, master polisher behind the work of established metal leaguers Opeth, Katatonia and Soilwork. Suffice it to say, Bogren’s touches on Illusions is one of the reasons it sounds as professional as it does.

For the listener’s purposes, the Morgans’ bloodletting on Illusions is mostly visceral stuff considering it could’ve gone in a weepier direction. Illusions is powerful at times and depending on how deep the Morgans want to push the limits with this project, their album could find itself a sleeper hit in the underground.

RECOIL MAGAZINE - MARCH 09

This five-piece prog-metal band’s disc tastes of Deftones, Porcupine Tree, Coheed, Tool, etc… the usual suspects for the genre, though this certainly is an original blend which evidences careful thought and hard work. Eschewing the deliberate awkwardness of ancient prog-past, this disc mashes together all of its modern musical influences concisely and with maturity (as much as rock ‘n’ roll will allow), hiding the seams with which it sews itself together. As Dream Theater (unintentionally) was a reminder of the ‘80s’ excess, this does so with the late ‘90s and early 2000s – shred was dead and bands were pushing what basic math and drums could do together – a logical conclusion to thoughtful aggression. Check out hollowayband.com for downloads. — Ryan Cunningham / Recoil Magazine (www.recoilmag.com)