Interview by Kris Peters
Corey Glover has long been recognised as one of the finest vocalists of the modern era thanks to his role as frontman for Living Colour. It would be both easy and understandable for the singer to remain in the comforting confines of Living Colour, where his vocal prowess will always be beyond reproach, but Glover has never been one to rest on his laurels.
Teaming up with guitarist Mike Orlando from Adrenaline Mob, Glover has started a fresh, vibrant project called Sonic Universe that allows him to display his chops in a different environment, with different musicians, to no less overall effect.
If the two lead singles I Am and Higher are anything to go by, Sonic Universe sees Glover step into more hard rock territory, with both songs an extension of his work with Living Colour without rewriting the rulebook to excess.
With Sonic Universe's debut album It Is What It Is scheduled for release on May 10, HEAVY scored some Facetime with the legendary vocalist to chat about his new project and more.
"All these songs are pretty personal," he began. "This song Higher, for example, is Mike's ambition at making a metal Gospel tune, and he got the right people to do it, I guess (laughs)."
We ask Glover to tell us more about Sonic Universe and how it came to be.
"Me and Mike met on a cruise, on the ShipRocked cruise, we were both stowaways on that," he laughed. "I saw Mike playing and his guitar playing was like 'Holy Shit, who is that dude?' I was like, I gotta meet this guy, so I met Mike, and it turns out we all have a bunch of mutual friends, and we know a bunch of people so it was like 'look, let's get together and do something at some point'. And that was just before the pandemic. Some time after that, we got together. I would go to his place and studio called Sonic Sound, and we just banged out a bunch of tunes over the course of two years."
In the full interview, Corey discusses Sonic Universe in greater detail, runs through each track on It Is What It Is individually and tells us more about it, why they decided to introduce the world to Sonic Universe with the song I Am, the album from a musical perspective and what they were going for, touring plans and more.