Composer Bear McCreary releases metal album "The Singularity: Ekleipsis"

Emmy-winning composer Bear McCreary released "The Singularity: Ekleipsis," the second album in his metal-inspired Singularity project, featuring guitarist Steve Vai, Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez, Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump and his younger brother Brendan, who sings on half the tracks, the Los Angeles Times reported. McCreary, best known for scoring "Battlestar Galactica," "The Walking Dead" and the "God of War" video games, called the album "a temper tantrum of a record from someone who had been writing music for other people for 20 years."

Where the first "Singularity" double album tied into a graphic novel and featured guests like Serj Tankian, Corey Taylor and Joe Satriani, "Ekleipsis" isn't built around a single narrative. "I wasn't setting out to write a concept album again," McCreary said, "but there's something immediate in all the lyrics," many of which grapple directly with the world listeners are living in now.

The collaborations run wide: metal band Gojira's Joe Duplantier joined the McCreary brothers and the Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices choir on "Black Box," while the high-energy "Pray for a Storm" grew out of an improvised session with drummer Stewart Copeland. "Let's all go into your studio with nothing," McCreary recalled telling Copeland, aiming to build the song entirely from what came out of that unplanned jam. Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith co-wrote the anthemic "Cool Kids" with McCreary, a session that eventually pulled in Slash as well.

McCreary's metal education started two decades ago over dinner with Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian, who told him, "I know you. You're a guy who loves Sepultura," pointing him toward the Brazilian death metal band. His brother Brendan has become central to the project since. "My brother's my secret weapon," McCreary said of his work on the album's rock material, crediting him as a co-writer on much of the album, including "One Fine Day," which Brendan wrote about their family's experience in the Armenian diaspora, while Sanchez wrote the lyrics for "Sweet Misery."

McCreary studied under composer Elmer Bernstein for nearly a decade, organizing his archives and auditing his senior classes for three years at USC's Thornton School of Music. He credits Bernstein less with technical training than with showing him "the life that I could envision myself having," a lesson he still applies: "The giant theme that I wrote for 'God of War' can be played with one finger on a piano," he said, arguing a strong melody matters more than production or volume.

McCreary takes the material on the road for an eight-date West Coast Singularity tour beginning in September, with a Los Angeles stop on Sept. 17, following an appearance at Germany's Wacken Open Air festival. The same busy stretch of L.A. music coverage that carried his profile also included Jimmy Eat World tours 25 years of breakthrough rock album "Bleed American" and Punk duo the Garden turns aging into a badge of honor on album "Bootleg".