For Alpha Galates singer Matthew Wagner, things have come full circle.

Formerly known as The Hollow, the progressive rock group from Toronto released its new album, A Stimulus For Reason, earlier this year to some critical praise from the likes of Megadeth's Dave Mustaine and especially Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson, the latter one of Wagner's musical heroes.

"The first album I ever owned was when I was six, my grandmother bought me it," Wagner says. "She was pretty much blind so she let me pick out whatever album I wanted so I bought The Number of the Beast. I got home and my mom was freaking out. I've been a huge Iron Maiden fan my whole life so you can't really get a better review than that."

Alpha Galates, performing tonight at Toronto's Bovine Sex Club as part of Canadian Music Week, says the new record was originally the final part of a planned triple-concept album which started while still called The Hollow.

"We sort of shifted songs at different points and right up to the last minute we changed and swapped some songs on it," Wagner says. "Then when we really listened to it we decided to make it one album instead of having three."

The new album contains lengthier and complex progressive rock-meets-metal pieces such as Entrophy and Chaos and Love Despair, both surpassing the 10-minute mark. Another track, Natio, appears on a soundtrack for the video game Halo III.

One of the songs Wagner seems most pleased with is Standing.

"We had the idea floating around for a long time and then it just coalesced," he says. "We worked over the idea for a period of a couple of years and finally we just sat down one day and hammered out the final parts. It's a song about when big changes happen in your life and realizing it's not the worst thing that could happen."

The idea for the song's video, directed by Margaret Malandruccolo, was based around an old John Carpenter movie. But Wagner wasn't thrilled during the shoot.

"We did it in this old recycling plant on St. Clair and somewhere, it was probably like minus 15 (degrees Celsius)," he says. "It was fun for the first little while but we were pretty cold. In the video you see our breath so it was freezing. It's not (computer generated) Titanic breath."

Another plus Alpha Galates had in making A Stimulus For Reason was producer Joe Barresi, who has worked with Tool and Queens of the Stone Age.

"He went through all the stuff we had done and made it into a cohesive album," Wagner says. "He's very talented and gave it the overall sound we were looking for. It's a very complex album with lots of parts and he made everything fit properly."

While Wagner says the live show is a bit trickier given the music's intricacy, the addition of guitarist Rowan MacPhail and keyboardist Harmony fleshed out the band's style.

"The Hollow was more like a metal band and with this band we're trying to be whatever we want to be," he says. "We don't feel restricted in our genre."

Alpha Galates will tour the U.S. with Montreal band GrimSkunk later this spring and a tour overseas is also in the works, a region Wagner would love to break into. For now the band is content with playing CMW but is treating it like any other gig.

"I just enjoy playing any show," he says. "It's fun but a lot of young bands put too much weight into those things (CMW) when it's just a gig."