We are so proud to release the first part of the Pulse of a Nation Graphic Novel/Score! Anyone who is a fan of our album Pulse of a Nation can order the graphic novel at the store page.

Don’t have the album yet? You can get both the album and graphic novel together in one package and save some of your hard earned money.

Just head over to the store page at www.BenLevinGroup.com and scroll down to see what’s available.

Here’s a preview of this amazing work:

Dear fans and friends,

After many hours of re-assembling my freshly melted face, I decided it would be a good idea to make the graphic novel available for pre-order.  So just click here if you’d like to order your fresh delicious copy of the Pulse of a Nation Graphic Novel.

-Ben

That’s right friends, the first volume of the Pulse of a Nation Graphic Novel/Score is almost here.    I am so grateful to Greg Bowen for being a part of the Ben Levin Group team and making this incredible piece of art.  When I got the books in the mail today my hands melted, my face imploded, my genitals inverted, and my heart squirted.  On December 7th, the book will be on sale exclusively at www.BenLevinGroup.com

I am really looking forward to getting this into your hands!

-Ben

Dear friends and friendly fans,

I would like to announce that I am going to be posting short stories and songs to www.BenLevinGroup.com in the blog section on a regular basis.

Ben Levin Group has been evolving at a rapid pace.  So much so that we have three albums released and two more recorded that will be coming out over the next year.  By the time those albums come out, I will have an additional two hours worth of music that will be on cue ready to release, but due to logistical reasons, won’t be able to come out till 2 years from now.

The music has one central focus, which is to tell stories.  Most of these stories are too big and elaborate to convey in anything less than a full-length album, which as I noted, takes a really long time to finish.  However, throughout the year I write a lot of little stories and am going to be using the website to get those to you.

These stories will be short pieces of music, prose, and hopefully sometimes comics as I have been working on my drawing.  In order to make sure I don’t start releasing anything that’s below my standard of what’s release-worthy, I won’t promise a weekly or monthly schedule of releases, but will put them online as they are finished.

Thank you for always showing so much enthusiasm and I hope you enjoy what’s on the horizon!

-Ben

Thank you so much to Rockstar Weekly for this amazing review:

http://www.rockstarweekly.com/cd-review-ben-levin-grup-pulse-of-a-nation.html

“It takes a lot of gusto and ambition to make a concept album. Seamlessly melding together an album’s songs so they not only compliment one another but form a cohesive musical narrative as well. A daunting task to be sure but one that allows the artists a tremendous amount of creative freedom. Concept albums are by their very nature highly experimental pieces. For a band that claims on their website to have been “founded on the notion that there is still some unique noise to be made”, experimentation should be the name of the game. The Ben Levin Group is a Boston based alternative rock band with an artistic bent and a classical twist. Their third album to date, Pulse Of A Nation is haunting sonic chronicle of mankind coming to terms with an impending apocalypse.

For the next 72 hours, we will be recording our next album Invisible Paradise and finishing some of the tracking for Freak Machine and Bent Knee’s first album.  Invisible Paradise is my most classically influenced piece and it really stands out from everything else I’ve written.  I am excited to start tracking!  The recording schedule for the next three days at “The Record Company” in Boston will be really intense, check it out:

Here is a cool Ben Levin interview by Bart from Lords of Metal magazine:

Welcome and thanks for sending your record to us! Coming from the USA, have you ever been to Europe or are these your first steps in getting ready for a tour around here?
We haven’t made it out to Europe yet, but we certainly plan on getting a European tour going in the coming years. Right now we are just trying to get the word out to people.

Could you tell our readers some more about the genesis of the Ben Levin Group, and by extent also your own genealogy as a guitar player?
Since I was a kid I have always loved thinking up crazy stories. I tried making my own comic books, and really enjoyed movies and video games with great characters. Although I had been making weird noises on piano and saxophone for several years, it wasn’t until I started playing guitar at age fourteen that I reallized that music was the best way for me to tell stories. I became obsessed with guitar and wrote tons of music about all kinds of subjects. With a handheld four track recorder I wrote an album influenced by Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, and Steve Vai about Cain and Able from the old testament. I also wrote another guitar heavy album about a space ship that was supposed to save a portion of mankind before the sun exploded. I started bands and performed my music throughout high school, and when I started my first semester at Berklee College of Music, I formed Ben Levin Group. At first we played the music from our album ‘Departure’, which is a collection of short instrumental pieces each with their own mini story. However, after my first two years of school I got tired of writing that way and started composing long form forty minute sets at a time. These long pieces allowed me to better express myself and my stories because it is possible to develop musical themes over the course of an entire show rather than in a limited five minute window. So far I’ve written three of these forty minute epics which we perform at our shows now. ‘Pulse of a Nation’ is the first one I wrote, then there’s ‘Invisible Paradise’ and ‘Freak Machine’.

Now, to get done with the nasty question: I read your (interesting, by the way) report on auditioning for the Lady Gaga band. I couldn’t help but wonder what made you decide to do it. Was it the mere idea of touring the world? Or of getting your name known? Or do you also consider it to be good for you as an artist or guitarist? Feel free to elaborate on this question.

Check out this awesome video review of “Pulse of a Nation.” (They start talking about the album at 12:45)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lisxQbsAXJY

Here are some of our favorite quotes about the new album: