presence marks the band's triumphant return with a 77-minute sci-fi concept album over a decade in the making, telling the story of a space-faring colony searching for a new home planet after earth is struck by an apocalyptic event dooming all of its inhabitants and rendering it unsuitable for life. the story is split up into three main chapters, as well as prologue and epliogue sections, using segues known as "records" to act as transitions between story segments.

the album features a much improved recording style over previous efforts, as well as the band leaning even further into their progressive rock influences by way of compositions that feature even more offbeats than what was found in natural disaster, and the band's longest single song to date, hitting the 20 minute mark.

though this album came close to never being produced, we are thrilled with how everything turned out, and hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed creating it.

the digital booklet containing the lyrics and accompanying story can be downloaded here.

this is the calmer's debut album, and was the crowning achievement of the band for over a decade. after our first album as figurehead, we now felt we had the freedom to focus much more on musicianship, hence the length of time spent working on it.

there is also a story told within the lyrics and artwork of this album. natural disaster is primarily about a young man and a very unusual series of events. this central character finds his life unremarkable and is somewhat lonely and morose. he finds little joy in his life, except on his morning subway ride to work where he shares a half hour with a beautiful girl he longs for, but cannot bring himself to approach. with the rest of his life empty, he became fixated on this girl. one night, he is abruptly woken up by his alarm clock at an unusual time. when he groggily looks out his window, all he can see is the sky filled with alarmingly dangerous looking storm clouds and an utterly deserted city underneath. more shocking than these discoveries is the very deep and powerful feeling he has to find the one light in his life regardless of anything else.

"creative differences" marks the first album by the original three members of the calmer.  with this entire album recorded in less than a week, it was mainly a sample of what was to come after we got used to playing together. this cd was certainly a learning experience for us, and though we believe we've surpassed it tenfold with our subsequent offerings, there are definitely some good catchy songs on this album (and if you listen closely, you may even catch the reference natural disaster makes to one of the songs).

since this was our first effort and we really had no intention to make money off it, we offer this entire album free for download in mp3 format.