Pharaoh drummer/High Spirits main man Chris Black is nothing if not productive. In addition to those bands and a few additional, less high-profile acts, Black has a new project called Aktor and Paranoia is the band’s debut. Where Pharaoh is an epic Heavy Metal outlet and High Spirits a more Hard Rock avenue for Black’s music, in Aktor he embraces a lot of spacey, electronic elements, combining the iffiest parts of the 70s and 80s in one place. Because Black is singing and Hard Rock is the end of the spectrum, Aktor’s material leans toward Paranoia is not dissimilar to High Spirit’s latest You Are Here at the root of things. Where it is different is in the keyboards and prog-rock stylings that hearken back to trippiness of Hawkwind, the unwelcome synthesizers of Signals/Grace Under Pressure-era Rush and the plain overindulgence of Yes. Add some truly terrible songwriting rife with limp riffs, clunky vocal lines and a dull production and this album is just as horrible as those influences have the potential to be. Some songs are nothing more than vehicles with which to inflict crappy keyboard effects on unsuspecting listeners. There’s no flow and the whole album feels disjointed and unsettling. I hope Black abandons this project entirely because there is nothing here worth your time.