Style: avant-garde metal, progressive metal, chamber music, progressive rock, Romanticism (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rush, Mertz, Liturgy
Country: California, United States
Release date: 1 August 2025

What makes metal metal? Indubitably, it’s some blend of attitude, riffs, lyrical themes, instrumentation, and “heaviness” (that last one is to say, you know it when you hear it). Until 2020, I would have thrown in distortion to the list of essential characteristics, but Kaatayra’s Só Quem Viu o Relâmpago à sua Direita Sabe, currently still my album of the decade, changed that as a fully acoustic yet recognizably black metal album. New avant-garde metal band Rintrah push my conceptions of metal even further, abandoning even the harsh vocals of Só Quem. That’s right, The Torrid Clime is classical acoustic guitar, drumming, and reedy, belted clean vocals. So what makes Rintrah metal? 

Their unabashed veneration for the Romantics. I mean, ask anybody; Romantic poetry is hella metal. But seriously, since metal’s earliest days, its practitioners have been neoromantics, intentionally or not. The genre’s acolytes are obsessed with individuality and freedom of expression, an idealization of the past and the exotic (through incorporations of folk music, for example¹), and, above all, a singular desire to attain the sublime. Metal mainstays—crushing heaviness, screamed and growled vocals, blast beats, crazy displays of guitar wizardry, singing of gore and nihilism—all act to make you, the listener, feel small compared to the display of sonic power. As eminent Romantic philosopher Edmund Burke said: “Whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.”² Like Romanticism, metal is, at its heart, a rebellion: against the shackles of a boring life, from the very start in the industrial hellscape of Manchester. It’s designed to make you feel something profound, with heaviness as its modus operandi.

Simply put, metal is obviously Romantic, and Rintrah fully embodies the philosophy more explicitly than any other band I’ve ever heard, so those dulcet acoustic guitars and blast beats are more than enough to be metal to the philosophical core. Rintrah’s Romantic aesthetic is, in a word, audacious. Adorning the album cover of The Torrid Clime’s is the 1818 painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich, a work which is literally first on Wikipedia if you search “Romantic art.” The lyrics across Rintrah’s debut record are pulled from various Romantic poets—William Blake, Percy Shelley, Emily Dickinson, Lord Byron, Charles Baudelaire, and Charlotte Smith.³ There is even a Mertz piece, “Nocturne, Op. 4, No. 2,” on the record fitted in as a mid-album interlude. 

So yeah, The Torrid Clime is pretty damn metal, although musically it’s a far cry from what I’d expect. There are no grandiose orchestrations here à la Mahler, Mendelssohn, or Dvorak. Classical guitarist Justin Collins manages to make his instrument sound like a harp, while Arsenio Santos on bass (Howling Sycamore) gives The Torrid Clime a Rush-like rhythmic edge. The vocals provided by Otrebor (Botanist) and William DuPlain (ex-Botanist) are also Rush-y, powerful, nasal-y tenors; like Geddy Lee, I could see Otrebor and DuPlain’s vocals being a sticking point for listeners. Yet their delivery of the various poems is admirable, with drama, bombast, and spot-on cadence. It’s quite the bardic performance, in fact, and one could easily imagine one of the vocalists with the charmingly strummed guitar lines traveling city to city performing their poetry.⁴ The guitar tones are succulent with plenty of technical embellishment, keeping the music quite harmonically complex. During the faster moments, like those in “Ozymandias” and “On the Giddy Brink,” I even hear strong hints of Kaatayra with the rhythmic intricacy of the guitar parts—not to mention the wonky rhythms of tracks like “The Chariot.” The compositions are also full of masterful transitions which perfectly underscore thematic shifts in the text, such as the transition between the main riff and the softer, richer one in “Fearful Symmetry.” 

For much of The Torrid Clime, the frantic blast beats are in wonderful juxtaposition with the calmer classical guitar and breathily belted vocals, but at times Otrebor’s drumming becomes completely detached from the plot as Collin’s guitar and Santos’ bass fall out of rhythmic contact with him—the vocalists are off doing their own thing in the stratosphere most of the time, regardless. Rintrah’s unique combination of sounds works in its favor until their delicate synergy becomes unraveled. Thankfully, for most of the tracks on The Torrid Clime, Rintrah stay in their lane, letting those euphonious guitar lines, thumping bass, unique vocals, and blast beats all interact with surprising cohesion. The tracks that change up Rintrah’s characteristic sound are also strong points on the record: instrumental “Nocturne, Op. 4, No. 2,” blast-less slow track “Mutability,” and a cappella finale “Into an Echo.” Even within the band’s focused sound, one can never know what to expect. 

The Torrid Clime is a unique album driven by guitars that sound like harps and charismatic vocalists who could travel town to town in some idyllic reimagining of the past. Fraught with gentle tension and unruly percussion, The Torrid Clime doesn’t induce the sublime as obviously as in lots of metal but rather in a wholly unexpected way; as I kept returning to the album, it revealed itself to me in the dramatic performance of the lyrics, in the percussive transitions between riffs, and in the complex, expansive chords. Rintrah is an intriguing project, undoubtedly not for every metalhead, but for those with an open mind and an appreciation for the philosophical, the sublime awaits.

Recommended tracks: Fearful Symmetry, On the Giddy Brink, In Tempests, Into an Echo
You may also like: Botanist, Forêt Endormie, Howling Sycamore, Kaatayra
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp

Label: Fiadh Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook

Rintrah is:
– Justin Collins – guitar
– Otrebor – drums, backing and lead vocals
– William Duplain – lead and backing vocals
– Arsenio Santos – bass

1. The Romantics’ glorification of the past, promotion of shared heritage, and emphasis on extreme emotion all contributed greatly to the rise of nationalism. This is also how I believe NSBM became such a problem in the black metal world. Metal’s full embrace of the Romantics’ philosophy comes with its negatives, too. ︎
2.  From A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. ︎
3. Rintrah don’t even quote some of my favorite basic-bitch Romantic poets like Colerdige, Wordsworth, and Keats. Definitely look into all of these Romantic poets, though! ︎
4. The bard is a common Romantic motif in their exaltation of the past. ︎

The post Review: Rintrah – The Torrid Clime appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Artwork by: Peter Mohrbacher

Style: Progressive Technical Death Metal, Technical Death Metal, Death Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rivers of Nihil, Kardashev, The Zenith Passage, Allegaeon, Vale of Pnath
Country: California, United States
Release date: 13 June 2025

The intersection of death metal and science-fiction has always felt a tad strange when viewed from on high. When most people hear “death metal,” they undoubtedly think of aggressive music centered on viscera, violence, and, well… death. Knuckle-dragging riffs, blast beats, and Cookie Monster vocals. The genre hardly feels like it would pair well with the grand and often philosophical aims of the science-fiction genre. Yet, thanks to early pioneers like Atheist with 1991’s Unquestionable Presence and Cynic with 1993’s Focus, death metal showed its capacity for expansion, its ability to adopt an ethos closer in proximity to sci-fi’s. Nowadays, progressive death metal is nothing new, with acts like An Abstract Illusion, Blood Incantation, Horrendous, and Kardashev offering grand and expansive material focused on far more than simple blood and guts.

Lurking among this galactic pantheon of heady prog-deathers is California’s Fallujah. Blending together clean vocals and introspective synth-baked passages with space-bending guitar acrobatics, monstrous growls, and warp-capable drumming, Fallujah carved out their nexus in this strange interstitial space between death metal’s brutality and sci-fi’s “thinking man’s” ideals starting with 2014’s celebrated The Flesh Prevails. Subsequent releases only strengthened this position, the band undiminished despite numerous lineup changes across the years. Having last left us with 2022’s spellbinding codex, Empyrean, Fallujah have emerged from the void once more to impart on us their sixth full-length. Does Xenotaph represent a continuing ascension into the stars, or have the thrusters begun to fail?

I don’t think we need to alert Earth of any imminent impacts; after clearing the semi-intro track, we get hit with “Kaleidoscopic Waves,” a ripping piece of progressive technical death metal that erupts against the ears like a star gone supernova. The band unleash a fusilade of computational guitar work and hull-cracking percussion against soft beds of atmospheric synths while vocalist Kyle Schaefer shreds reality and soothes the celestial wounds alike with his arsenal of growls and cleans. The rest of Xenotaph plays out similarly across the forty-two minute runtime, though that’s not to say every track is simple repetition. Cuts like “The Crystalline Veil” see Schaefer bringing in metalcore-coded cleans atop stitches of jazzy death drumming, while follow-up “Step Through the Portal and Breathe” includes several grooved-out sections (including an extended bass solo) as the track vents the death metal-heat sinks to exude The Contortionist vibes. Then there’s penultimate track “The Obsidian Architect,” whose production crushing drops bring to mind acts like Humanity’s Last Breath, before offering some of Schaefer’s most melodic cleans and punk-y screams. They also throw on the vocoder for some especially alien spoken word-style bits.

Anyone familiar with Fallujah’s past works will ultimately find little of surprise here, but there’s something breathtaking about their approach on Xenotaph nonetheless—like watching a star collapse in horror before marveling at the painterly sight of the cosmic aftermath, colorful gases tracing esoteric frameworks against the deep-black of space. For my money, they’ve stayed a largely consistent act since The Flesh Prevails¹—no mean feat for any band, but especially one as technically-minded as Fallujah. Of course, there’s a capacity for sameness in progressive music that I think sometimes goes overlooked, and “consistent” can veer dangerously close to that. Xenotaph finds ways to keep things interesting—the heightened use (and more varied style) of cleans from Schaefer, along with some of the aforementioned flourishes populating several of the tracks. But by and large this is another Fallujah record; spacey, ferociously technical, whiplashing from moment to moment like a spacecraft caught between multiple gravitational pulls. If you like your songs to be identifiable, whether by riff or some semblance of easy-to-recognize structure, Xenotaph may struggle to meet your measure with its ever-shifting, mercurial forms. Also, the album can come across as fairly loud, bordering on wall of sound at times, though the mix is dynamic enough that nothing ever really gets drowned out.

There’s little Xenotaph will do to alienate fans, I think—unless for some reason you’ve become sick of metalcore vocals, but then I would argue Fallujah haven’t been the band for you since 2014. That said, I could see listeners sitting on both sides of the proverbial galactic fence: those who welcome the album’s consistency, happy to have more of a band they appreciate, and those who have perhaps grown a bit weary with the band’s direction. I fall more towards the former camp. A Fallujah record always feels like a pretty big deal to me, and Xenotaph is no exception. Though the album does little to tread any truly new sonic ground for the band, sometimes a journey needn’t be new to still be exciting. Fallujah have cultivated a strong identity for themselves, wreathed in atmospheres of celestial splendor and terrestrial violence alike. Maybe someday down the line, the adventure will wane, but that time hasn’t come yet. Xenotaph is a trip worth taking.

Recommended tracks: Step Through the Portal and Breathe, Xenotaph, Kaleidoscopic Waves, The Obsidian Architect
You may also like: Eccentric Pendulum, Cosmitorium, Cognizance, Irreversible Mechanism, Virvum, Freedom of Fear
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Nuclear Blast Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Fallujah is:
– Scott Carstairs (guitars)
– Evan Brewer (bass)
– Kyle Schaefer (vocals)
– Sam Mooradian (guitars)
With guests:
– Kevin Alexander La Palerma (drums)

1. A controversial opinion given the critical reception to Fallujah’s 2019 LP The Undying Light. ︎

The post Review: Fallujah – Xenotaph appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive metal, djent (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Artificial Language, Animals as Leaders, I Built the Sky, Intervals, Polyphia
Country: California, United States
Release date: 30 May 2025

Trends come and go, such is the way of life. For the electric guitar virtuoso, the popular style of the time has shifted in several distinct eras over the past sixty years. Emulating the human voice with expressive phrasing, bends, and vibrato like the blues greats (Hendrick, Beck, Clapton) turned into shred (Van Halen into Becker, Malmsteen, Friedman). These days, the rage is Polyphia-inspired “internet shred” in which the modern virtuoso shoves every complicated guitar technique they can into each “riff” (Henson, Nito, Abasi). Just as we collectively roll our eyes at Yngwie-style shred today, the current style has grown cliche—style above substance.

That’s why Syncatto’s—solo project of Artificial Language’s guitarist Charlie Robbins—2021 record A Place to Breathe was a revelation. Robbins certainly used his fair share of flamboyant technical wankery, but each technique served the song as Robbins contorted earworm melodies in uniquely brilliant ways, particularly with his Latin influences and the incredible guest contributions. A Place to Breathe is easily one of the top instrumental progressive metal albums ever. Since that record, Syncatto has released an EP and an LP, both rock solid releases continuing in the general direction of A Place to Breathe, although neither quite recapturing the brilliance. Does Memento continue Robbins’ streak of breaking ground in the modern virtuoso scene?

Firstly, Syncatto largely drops the Latin influences in favor of a Middle Eastern flair on Memento. The Phrygian riffs Robbins plays, like on “Hollow” and “Mother of God,” are genuinely inspired, particularly when he goes Middle Eastern djent. The highlight of the album is on the latter half of “Change of Wind”; the track randomly transitions to a new age flute, but what seems like a misguided attempt at quirkiness quickly turns into the coolest djent passage I’ve heard in years, mixing Animals as Leaders’ thumping and Syncatto’s melodic touch to create a heavy contrast for the flute. Each time Robbins drops the bottom out of a track, I’m stunned that he’s able to innovate the stale djent sound—“Codex,” specifically, reverts to Robbins’ Latin mode, and he performs a breakdown using palm-muted acoustic guitar. He’s still got moments of innovative, flashy brilliance.

On the other hand, at least half of the tracks are little more than boring, wanky Polyphia rip-offs. Syncatto excessively slides, taps, and alternate picks in dwiddly, contorted “riffs” which, while still using his superb sense of melody, grow extremely tiresome as they don’t build good songs. Each nugget is made for the YouTube short or Instagram reel or TikTok tiktok, but they don’t string together with any sense of cohesion. None of the eleven short songs on Memento feel fully fleshed out, and rather sound more like a collection of fun djenty breakdowns and noodly, brain-melting guitar parts. The worst offender is “Ritual”: the track has what sounds quite literally like an NF beat and your basic Polyphia-inspired guitar parts on top of it, but I guess that’s what the kids consider “hip” these days. 

On Memento, Robbins continues his trajectory toward instru-stardom. The LP has objectively stunning virtuoso musicianship, his signature handle on crafting succulent, catchy melodies, and even a masterful approach to djent involving more melodic craziness in the palm-muted riffs than purely rhythmic. Yet the trendy style of onanism preferred by Gen-Z right now has ensnared another fantastic guitarist, and Memento—for its many strengths—also has several of Robbins’ weakest tracks ever. Lay off the Reels, my friends.

Recommended tracks: Change of Wind, Hollow, Codex
You may also like: Widek, Pomegranate Tiger, Lux Terminus, Sam Mooradian
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: independent

Syncatto is:
– Charlie Robbins (everything)

The post Review: Syncatto – Memento appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Dissonant death metal, technical death metal (harsh vocals)
For fans of: Artificial Brain, Ulcerate, Gorguts
Country: California, United States
Release date: 21 March 2025

Dearest Chairman Christopher,

It has once again come to my attention that the Subway’s Division of Psychological Warfare has received its quarterly budget of six pesos. This, as I’m sure you are well aware, is down from last quarter’s nine pesos. You speak of misappropriation of research funds, yet I distinctly recall the commissioning of a statue of Garm in our new headquarters. Which we still have not found.. Furthermore, I find your incessant demand to “not continue research on IQ-dropping dissonant death metal” to be more than insulting. As such, I will be handing this in as a response to the research on 4/4-time signatures and major scales, a treatise on a hive-mind entity called Burning Palace and its byproduct known as Effigy. Please see the tape enclosed and listen to its contents as you read this letter. I give this to you not as a gift, but in hopes that you hate it so much, I can be free of this prison known as The Progressive Subway, and my talents in IQ-dropping phenomena can be appreciated elsewhere.

My co-researcher Andy promptly gave this to me after your vile letter of demands, and mumbled something about how “the British hate dissonant chords”. I must be honest, I don’t know what he says most of the time. After the incident last week, he merely sits and stares at the wall, occasionally making cooing sounds when he hears a nice riff. Fortunately, for both him and me, the most recent transmission on our docket had plenty. Its name: Elegy, and rest assured, you will hate this.

Allow me to explain this phenomenon to your soft, malleable brain. Burning Palace occupies the space of their aural brethren, Artificial Brain, with dashes of influence from the transmitters known as Sunless. This aural oddity has effected our test subjects in similar ways to the mighty Replicant, sending our unwilling participants into a blind, frenzied rage upon listening. Chairman, you do not understand the freedom that comes with hearing a riff like the one that starts ‘Birthing Uncertainty’. The absolute bliss of unlocking that primal state of man is something you and your “pop sensibilities” could never understand. You hear screeching guitar, gurgling and banging drums, but what I hear in this opening song is a knack for song structure.

Burning Palace are akin to Ulcerate in that structure and atmosphere triumph over all in dissodeath. Too often do these bands find themselves tangled in a web of their own minor intervals and tritones, forgetting that sometimes, a headbanging riff solves all. ‘Transversing the Black Arc’ gave our test subjects seven straight minutes of headbanging, arpeggiated riffing and blackened, foggy atmosphere. At approximately four-and-a-half minutes, one test subject burst into flames from the song’s title drop and the godly riff that’s underneath it. The transmission’s blackened atmosphere is on full display here, recalling barren technological hellscapes not unlike what the intern Justin’s office looked like after his first day. Despite the more cerebral nature of the seven-minute opus, Burning Palace proceed with ‘Suspended in Emptiness’ which rid our subjects’ brains of any wrinkles they may have had left. What starts as a jaunty bass riff becomes a rampaging, blast-beat laden verse that evolves into lead work that I’d dare to call catchy and melodic.

There is little fat nor filler to be found on Elegy, with the transmission being a tight forty-four minutes long. The only flaw I can possibly find is the sheer primal aggression of our subjects began to wane at the closing title-track, which may either be from exhaustion or recovery from the four-hit combo prior. ‘Sunken Veil’ is sure to leave you convulsing and bleeding from the eyes with its sprawling, heavy chugs and bass-tapping, so perhaps ‘Elegy’ is there as a means to attempt to recover one’s sanity at the end of this transmission. If you’ve made it that far and not lost your mind, dear Chairman, then perhaps you are stronger than I perceived.

Consider this my letter of emancipation from your clutches and “genre diversity”. You will rue the day you asked me to research anything but the most brutal music possible, and I hope this is a lesson to you and your kin. The Progressive Subway has made itself an arch-nemesis in my name, one who understands the inner complexities of transmission such as Burning Palace. You must understand, though you may hate this immensely, I find it to be a mark of what happens when your IQ drops low enough. You sit and talk of “no more metal”, but I then ask you, what would your world look like without chugs or screams? Think on it, Chairman.

Your slave and enemy,

Head Researcher Zacharius

Recommended tracks: Traversing the Black Arc, Suspended in Emptiness, Awakening Extinction (Eternal Eclipse), Sunken Veil
You may also like: Afterbirth, Wormhole, Replicant, Anachronism
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Violence in the Veins – Bandcamp | Facebook

Burning Palace is:
– Chris Derico (bass)
– James Royston (drums)
– Josh Kerston (guitars, vocals)
– Ian Andrew (guitars, vocals, keyboards)

The post Review: Burning Palace – Elegy appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: experimental rock, noise rock, post-rock, post-punk, avant-folk (mixed vocals, spoken word)
Recommended for fans of: Sprain, Swans, A Silver Mount Zion, Slint, Maruja, Talk Talk
Country: California, United States
Release date: 1 May 2025

Stitched together out of thousands of hours of studio recordings, Talk Talk’s 1988 painstakingly crafted masterpiece, Spirit of Eden, was a landmark album for post-rock. The band sat in a blacked out room equipped with an oil projector and strobe light twelve hours a day for several months, listening to the same six tracks on repeat; session musicians would jam for hours on end only for Talk Talk to use mere seconds of the result; and the group recorded with a twenty-five person choir only to decide “nah, this ain’t it.” Spirit of Eden is a mosaic, and the tiles are treasures plundered from endless hours of tapes. That the project came together as seamlessly as it did is remarkable—one could not listen to Spirit of Eden for the first time and discern that it was sutured together note by note.

To create their debut record Motherfucker, I Am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”…, Shearling—born out of the recently defunct noisy post-rock band Sprain—have similarly sewn together segments from hundreds of hours of largely improvisational recordings. The result is a single, monolithic (Motherfucker is a single sixty-two minute track) slab of noisy post-rock, avant-folk, and obnoxious British post-punk.

Motherfucker is cinematic in scope, driven by the lyrics which cover a bifurcated narrative—one side about Idaho; the other, Eden. Prosaic yet poetry, the wordsmithing is intriguing with the two stories weaving in and out of each other in a stream-of-consciousness rambling. Occasionally, the poetry touches on brilliant. Highlights include: “And the spots on our Appaloosa¹ hide / Might be mistaken for constellations at night / By obligated stars and half-imagined lines / Splattered intentionally there against the night sky” and the vulgar honesty of “I know I’m naked / Eve’s cunt obscured now / By the branch of a huckleberry bush / Adam’s cock now / So tightly sheathed by a palm frond / Before the mirror I too place a hand over / My little Appaloosa / Tucked silently away in his little stable.” The storyline reads as an allegory for queer shame from growing up in Idaho—the Appaloosa taking on an apotheosized and subverted role². The intricate symbolism is maddeningly dense, however, and some of the literary devices are implemented on the amateurish side, albeit fitting the crazed descent into madness of the storytelling.

The bard of this chaotic story, Alexander Kent, provides an impassioned vocal performance that will make or break the album for many. His first vocal entry after the first 4:00 of instrumental noodling, dissonance, and feedback is an incredibly unpleasant moan. From there, he ranges from dramatic spoken word to the rambled shouting of a madman, from operatic croons to gruff, almost-growled barks and wailing moans. His voice drips with pain—maybe some malice—from years of shame and stigma, and the screams can be cathartic (the intermittent large climaxes are the prime examples), but for an unfortunate portion of the time, Kent’s atonal shouts and vocal deliveries are grating, horrific for listening; he needs to save the aggressive shouts for the crescendos lest they ruin their gravitas… which they certainly do. The godawful singing fits the vulgarity and verisimilitude of the lyrics, but Kent should focus on a more subtle delivery when the music calls for it. 

The music on Motherfucker traverses a diverse range of influences. The record is spliced together from a mix of phone-recorded demos, jams, live recordings, and traditional studio sessions, Shearling carefully attempted to put together the recordings into a cohesive sonic epic à la Talk Talk… emphasis on attempted, though. The songwriting of Motherfucker transcends stream-of-consciousness into the nonsensical. Climaxes materialize out of nowhere; Pharoah Sanders-esque saxophone parts or home-made Gamelan bells are equally as likely to be played by Shearling; ethereal industrial styles reminiscent of Lingua Ignota make their appearances in between the abrasive noise rock; and non-Western drumming styles may transition into glitchy electronic beats. Nary a consideration is made for transitions, either. Even the final five minutes after the final epic climax—the clear high point of the album is from 38-46 minutes as the bass pulsations lead into increasingly potent doses of screaming and crushing instrumentals—feel like they have little thought put into how they fit into the flow, with flatulent, deflated horns and some final random screams closing out the track. Shearling ensure the listener never knows what’s coming next.

Producing an album sewn from several different recording methods proves difficult for Shearling, too. Unlike Spirit of Eden which feels impossible to know was blended together as it was, Motherfucker’s collage never coalesces completely. Whatever instrumental section currently backs the vocals is unduly emphasized in the mix, and the clash of dynamics and styles renders Motherfucker a disappointingly and disjointedly assembled album. Shearling achieved an opus as haywired as it is intense, yet they get lost in the sauce doing so, the songwriting too scatterbrained for its own good. 

Many post-rock albums have suffered from over-ambition in the past forty years, and Motherfucker suffers for it, too; yet, Shearling have certainly achieved something admirable here—granted, over-long, insane, and extremely challenging (and frankly painful). To improve on the deep compositional flaws, Shearling ought to look back to Spirit of Eden. Finally, that Motherfucker is part one of a massive two-part epic must be mentioned. Clearly, Shearling are overflowing with ideas—hundreds of hours of them—so I hope they manage to restrain themselves without losing the ambitious charm so central to their identity.

Recommended tracks: it’s a one track album…
You may also like: Cime, Natural Snow Buildings, Ken Mode, Sumac & Moor Mother
Final verdict: 4/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: independent

Shearling is:
Alexander Kent: Vocals, Engineering, Production, Cover Art Design, Guitar, Synthesizer, Trombone, Samples, Hammered Dulcimer, Banjo, Harmonium, Accordion, Singing Saw, Percussion, Taishogoto, Organ, Glockenspiel, Mellotron, Mandolin, Autoharp, Piano, Bells
Sylvie Simmons: Guitar, Synthesizer, Organ, Hi-C Programming, Samples
With guests:
Wes Nelson: Bass, Upright Bass
Andrew “Hayes” Chanover: Drums
Rachel Kennedy: Vocals
Mate Tulipan: Tenor Saxophone, Trombone
Ian Thompson: Alto Saxophone

1. The state horse of Idaho with a splotchy hindquarters resembling a Dalmatian. ︎
2. I mean, check out that album cover. In the context of this being a queer narrative, it is certainly striking. ︎

The post Review: Shearling – Motherfucker, I Am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”… appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: technical death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Soreption, The Zenith Passage, Psycroptic, Vale of Pnath
Country: California, United States
Release date: 9 May 2025

Let’s do some estimating, shall we? According to my meticulous book-keeping, I’ve heard 596 technical death metal records. Rateyourmusic claims there have been 4399 tech death releases since the first one in 1988, but their count includes various music videos, compilations, and singles, while my count is restricted to LPs and EPs. Of course, RYM is an incomplete resource, so I’ll hand-wavily assume their archives miss about as many tech death records as they extra count miscellaneous, non-album releases. Thus, I’ve heard about 14% of all the tech death ever released. At this point, a band has to carve out their own niche if they want to stick around my listening rotation—it’s a numbers game. 

Ominous Ruin are just another tech death band, and I could name a hundred bands that sound like them; however, against the odds, Requiem stands out from the crowd because of its quality alone, and I will avoid using any comparisons in this review as a sign of respect for the band. Intricate, groovy patterns manifesting in staccato flurries of notes coalesce from the fretboards of guitarists Alex Bacey (Odious Mortem) and Joel Guernsey (Axial). Their winding riffs move concentrically due to the combination of scale climbing and frantic shifting of audio channels. The two shredders often break free from their groovy staccato rhythms into furious bouts of synchronized trem picking, exciting phrygian leads handed off like a hot potato between the two (“Eternal”), or blazing fretboard fireworks (aka solos, my favorites of which are in “Architect of Undoing” and “Requiem”).

Drummer Harley Blandford is the true star of the show, however, his indefatigable blast beats and shifting rhythms providing Ominous Ruin with all the momentum necessary to push those spiraling guitar parts forward at their sporty tech pace. Blandford pounds away with endless verve and in an impressively metronomic performance for Requiem’s speed—and he nails the difficult balance of groove and uber-velocity. Vocalist Crystal Rose doesn’t have the most range with her harshes, but they’re sufficient; meanwhile, bassist Mitch Yoesle (ex-Inanimate Existence) can hardly be heard—a damn shame. From what little I can hear of his playing, like at the beginning of “Fractal Abhorrence,” it’s wicked, but alas, this oversight is Requiem’s greatest misstep. 

Impressively, the album flows from track to track seamlessly. Pacing is historically a weak point for tech death bands in my mind, so Requiem is a breath of fresh air in this regard. Ominous Ruin realize the importance of rest, too, implementing a couple well-placed interludes (“Bane of Syzygial Triality,” “Staring into the Abysm”) as well as calmer sections (intro of “Architect of Undoing”), helping to stave off any possible hints of monotony. The band even spread out the strongest cuts to be beginning (“Eternal”), middle (“Architect of Undoing”), and end (“Requiem”), so the forty minutes fly by with bangers all over the place.

So is Requiem a unique record? No, definitely not. But the album shows that Ominous Ruin are a serious tech death force with the superb songwriting and pacing skills to prove it. Ominous Ruin are only on their sophomore album, too, so they’ve still got plenty of time to find something that better makes them stand out from the crowded scene—and time to hire an outside producer (Bacey handles production and writing in addition to guitar) so that we can hear the bass in all its glory. You can trust me that this one is worth checking out, even for the most jaded tech fans among you.

Recommended tracks: Eternal, Architect of Undoing, Requiem
You may also like: Inanimate Existence, Deeds of Flesh, Stortregn, Aronious, Shadow in the Darkness, Deviant Process, Axial, Aethereus, Anachronism
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Ominous Ruin is:
– Mitch Yoesle (bass)
– Alex Bacey (guitars)
– Harley Blandford (drums)
– Joel Guernsey (guitars)
– Crystal Rose (vocals)

The post Review: Ominous Ruin – Requiem appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Cover art by Courtney Trowbridge
Logo design by Garret Ross

Style: Thrash Metal, Progressive Metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Trivium, Orbit Culture, Sylosis
Country: USA (California)
Release date: 25 April 2025

Modern thrash metal is always hit or miss, and for good reason; the genre has been around nearly as long as metal itself has existed as a broader style of music. One could (and many do!) argue that all of the good ideas have already been taken, and that anything released after some arbitrary point in the 90’s is derivative slop. This does not stop bands from trying their hand at the style though, often introducing outside influence in an attempt to spice things up. Wisdom & Fools are one such group, a California based progressive thrash metal duo who describes Prophecy on their bandcamp page as “36 minutes of breathtaking modern thrash.” Well, I quite like many a modern progressive thrash metal album, and my respiratory rhythm has been far too stable for far too long if you ask me. Maybe a debut by some young blood in the scene is just what I need in lieu of an asthma flare up. Can Prophecy match the thrilling exhilaration of a particularly intense coughing fit? The short answer is no. The long answer is contained within Prophecy’s 36 minutes of undercooked thrash metal writing.

Within the first minute and a half of its runtime, Prophecy already comes across as disjointed and half-baked. Starting with the aptly named “Escaping Eden,” titled—I assume—after the track making whatever I was doing just before hitting play seem like paradise in comparison. A mid tempo 16th note tremolo awkwardly kicks things off, stumbling towards one of the most boring thrash riffs I’ve heard in a long while, and culminating in what I think is supposed to be a chorus but could also just be a bad metalcore breakdown. On a cursory listen, the fumbled songwriting may be redeemed somewhat by the proficient and at times even impressive performances, but they fail to bring any real staying power.

Wisdom & Fools’ guitar and vocal duties are handled by Philip Vargas, who is equally competent at both, and whose riffs are often mirrored by bandmate John Ramirez’s bass rumblings. The two have good chemistry, though the lack of a live drummer ends up dragging both of them down. Vargas’ vocal performance sounds like a mix between Ihsahn and New American Gospel-era Randy Blythe (Lamb of God); it’s a surprisingly versatile timbre, but the performance ends up being disappointingly monotone as Vargas never seems to take full advantage of his range. Both members seem to have handled production duties, and they’ve done a decent job at it, though it is quite loud and similarly exacerbated by the programmed drums. 

As “Escaping Eden” plods along, revealing Wisdom & Fools’ performative quirks, it also betrays their so-called “progressive” take on thrash metal, which boils down to phrases having extra beats tacked on at the end. Sure, it works the first few times, but eventually you come to expect it, and the “progressive” elements become stale and predictable. “Children of Disgrace” is somehow even more lacking in the songwriting department. Stilted thrash riffs trudge ahead and culminate in another chorus that misses the mark, except the chorus here is much worse; the intro riff comes back, but boringly simplified for some reason, and the band completely drops out at the apex of the phrase, killing all momentum only for the vocalist to rasp out the title of the song as if it were made by a 2000s hip-hop producer. “The Devil in a House of God” continues the trend of questionable choruses, this time with a riff that is lifted straight out of Celtic Frost’s “Into the Crypts of Rays,” which just confuses me more than anything. The ending of the song, though, is the first moment on Prophecy that made my ears perk up, because Wisdom & Fools stops playing riffs for a moment and focuses on an ostinato melody in the lead guitar with descending power chords providing a nice harmonic context. It turns out Wisdom & Fools actually have a knack for simple yet effective melodic development, and moments like this pop up periodically over the rest of Prophecy’s runtime, though they are not quite enough to salvage the banal thrash writing they accompany. 

The title track has the most potential as a thrash metal song proper, housing some of the better actual riffs on Prophecy, but is once again dragged down by the programmed drums. Prophecy’s drum parts are stilted and awkward, settling into beats that are impossible to get used to despite their repetition. One gets the sense that these drum parts were not written by a drummer, and most of the problems with Prophecy could be dampened or straight up solved by just getting a live drummer and a bit more of an intimate production. The back half of Prophecy is thankfully better than the front, but this is because Wisdom & Fools seem to forget that they are supposed to be a thrash metal band, and start writing metalcore songs that just kind of flirt with thrash metal techniques. Really, Prophecy sounds like a metalcore outfit who set out with the intention to write a raging thrash metal record, but ran out of steam halfway through and resorted back to writing metalcore. “Divinity” through “Perpetuals” is a decent run of songs when compared to the rest of the lot, and proves that Wisdom & Fools strengths lie in their melodic sensibilities, not awkward thrash riffs. Unfortunately, this streak doesn’t last, and Prophecy ends leaving a sour taste in my mouth with the unnecessary, derivative, and aptly named “Husk”. 

At the end of the day, Wisdom & Fools lack the bite that is required of this style of music, and even the occasional inspired lead guitar line isn’t enough to save them. The thrash riffs are mediocre, and the programmed drums drag the entire experience down even further. As it stands, Prophecy is an underdeveloped debut with lots of room to grow, though I’m worried that, in this case, dredging through the mud in search of pearls may not be a worthwhile endeavor. 

Recommended tracks: Prophecy, Divinity, Thorns
You may also like: Death Mex, Arsena, Venus
Final verdict: 3.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page

Label: Okända Öden Records – Bandcamp

Wisdom & Fools is:
– John Ramirez – Bass, Production
– Philip Vargas – Guitars, Vocals, Production

The post Review: Wisdom & Fools – Prophecy appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Artwork by Nick Steinhardt

Style: blackgaze (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Lantlôs, Møl, Sadness, Harakiri for the Sky
Country: US-CA
Release date: 28 March 2025

Whether you’re a black-metal purist, a blackgaze-hipster, or simply a fan of innovation in music, you’ve probably run into the story of Deafheaven at some point—the story of how they released an album with a pink cover filled to the brim with pretty melodies while also being undoubtedly rooted in black metal. I am, of course, talking about their 2013 album Sunbather, a black metal opus flavored with indie rock and screamo inspiration that also spawned some of the most toxic arguments in every music forum of the time. Just have a look at the reviews for the album on Metallum and you’ll find no middle point between 0s and 100s. Some took this new idea with open arms and celebrated it to no end, while more purist fans of the genre flat out rejected it as not kvlt, an embarrassment to metal. 

Where did I lie in this whole mess? Well, I got into metal in 2017, so I showed up to this war like Troy Barnes arriving with pizzas into a burning apartment. The comment warfare in random Loudwire videos addressing Sunbather certainly made me curious, and I approached it with an open mind. Not to my surprise, the purists were wrong, and I experienced one of the coolest releases of the decade whilst not paying attention in biology class. Deafheaven really knew how to deliver chaos with a hopeful tone. The lyrics were interesting, the structure of the album was impeccable, and every song left you feeling like you had just experienced an epic journey where you found hope in the darkest of times. Despite exploring territories both gritty and dreamy in subsequent works, Deafheaven never seemed to reach the level of critical acclaim born from that one pomegranate pink album. Not until this year, at least, as Deafheaven’s latest release, Lonely People with Power, has generated an equally fervent discourse in the music sphere. Bear with me as I try to explain why this LP has put our blackgaze buddies back on top of the music critic websites.

For starters, the sound of Lonely People with Power is… harsh. Even the heaviest tracks on previous LPs don’t compare to ‘’Doberman’’ or ‘’Magnolia’’; these songs have minimal blackgaze undertones and are simple black-metal bangers through and through. Everything is spot on here, be it the creative and energetic drum compositions from Daniel Tracy, providing a big sense of urgency and franticness, or Kerry Mckoy’s intricate guitar work that always manages to keep things interesting with a mixture of furious tremolo picking and agonizingly relentless melodies. Even when the lighter, dreamier moments of previous albums come, they usually function as huge climaxes after minutes of unrelenting tension. 

The entirety of Lonely People with Power feels like a short film of sorts, and these climaxes have a near-cinematic feel of experiencing a turning point in the story that keeps you on your toes, awaiting the next twist that is about to arise. Further exhibiting this cinematic vibe, Lonely People flows seamlessly whilst also utilizing breaks, silences or interludes before any larger shifts in sound. The ‘’Incidental’’ tracks all but confirm a three-act structure with how well they set up introduction, confrontation, and resolution. A particular highlight is “Incidental II”, in which a quiet, somber interlude is interrupted by a barrage of industrial sounds, expressing a sense of distress within the album’s story. This major tension setter effectively prepares the listener for the strongest point of the album—the tracks ‘’Revelator’’ and ‘’Body Behaviour’’. The former has a riff that will stick in your brain upon first listen and nag you until you hit replay, along with a melody that expresses panic and distress, which follows along the lyrics of self-loathing and irreparable ego and builds upon the previous track’s distressing atmosphere. On the other hand, ‘’Body Behaviour’’ leans as close as ever to their sound from Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, particularly its chorus that fuses dream pop and black metal. 

All the while, George Clarke delivers the best vocals of his career. Whether taking the lead or acting as a rhythmic addition to the chaos, each lyric is delivered with passion and anger, further raising the album’s already unbelievable intensity. Take, for example, the track “Amethyst”, where two minutes of spoken word build up allow for him to make a huge, dramatic entrance. Clarke sounds like an anguished man who’s desperate to stay alive, and the lyrics match, putting you in the shoes of a salvaged being who will not stop searching for a “glow”. Following its title, the album portrays people whose hunger for power consumes them to the point of being unable to form meaningful relationships or find a higher purpose in life. These people then try to find meaning and connect with others through morally dubious means—the exemplary “Body Behaviour” for instance explores two powerful men attempting to bond over the sexualization of women.

The only flaw I can pinpoint is that the album takes a bit to get going, with the first fifteen minutes or so missing the highlights of later tracks. But this slower start lends an even bigger punch to Lonely People’s middle and ending parts, making what follows all the more impactful. The whole album functions as one big blackgaze track in that sense, with the first half building unrelenting tension and the second finally releasing it all in incredible catharsis. And boy is it a payoff, for its second half is perfection. The penultimate track ‘’Winona’’ brings the listener an extreme amount of catharsis with what is arguably the album’s best climax. The track’s build-up thrives in its simplicity, scaling things back mid-song to a beautiful acoustic guitar melody before exploding with distortion and tremolo picking, unleashing a barrage of emotions while re-working that same melody. The climax itself is vintage Deafheaven—major-key melodies with black metal shrieks that make you feel like gravity no longer exists and you can finally float away into heaven. And if that wasn’t enough, closing track ‘’The Marvelous Orange Tree’’ delivers a slower, yet equally epic and heavenly atmosphere with dream-pop vocals and a blackened but mellowed out sound.

Twelve years ago, Deafheaven caused a rampage in the metal community with the controversial Sunbather. After the dust settled, a general consensus formed: Sunbather is a modern classic. And yet, Deafheaven refused to recycle their formula, opting to always offer something new with their releases. The fruits of innovation grew for over a decade and brought us yet another masterpiece in Lonely People With Power.

Recommended tracks: Revelator, Winona
You may also like: Skagos, Together to the Stars, Asunojokei, Constellatia, Violet Cold
Final verdict: 9/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Roadrunner Records – Facebook

Deafheaven is:
– George Clarke (vocals)
– Kerry McCoy (guitars)
– Chris Johnson (bass)
– Daniel Tracy (drums)
– Shiv Mehra (guitars, keyboards)

The post Review: Deafheaven – Lonely People with Power appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive death metal, blackened death metal, deathgaze (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Kardashev, Fallujah, Ne Obliviscaris
Country: California, United States
Release date: 7 March 2025

Allow me to begin this review with an apology. When I reviewed Dawn of Ouroboros’s last output Velvet Incandescence back in 2023, I gave it a 4/10, and that score remains the most egregious underrating of any review I’ve written for The Progressive Subway. I think I was just disappointed with how their sophomore output stacked up against their debut, but with some time between my review and subsequent listens, I ended up finding Velvet Incandescence an actually decent album; sure the production had its fair share of flaws and the compositions could have been a bit more elegant, but the album had an array of melodic hooks that held my attention through my extensive listens. So when I saw another release from Dawn of Ouroboros, I knew it could be a twofold chance for redemption: a chance for the band at a higher score and a chance for me to write a review that does their album justice. So how does Bioluminescence fare?

From the first notes of the title track and opener, one thing is clear—and it’s the production. Dissonant guitar riffage rings out as a wicked blast beat constantly shifts in and about itself and walls of ambient reverb wash over the listener, but nothing gets lost to my ears. When Chelsea Murphy’s harsh vocals enter, they too are crystal clear, adding a crisp heaviness to the cathartic fretwork. The production especially stands out on tracks like “Poseidon’s Hymn” and “Dueling Sunsets” where electronic and symphonic elements join the fray without once getting muddy; tambourine even gets thrown in there once or twice. If I were to change just one thing about this album’s mix and master, I’d have simply widened its dynamic range. For an album that vacillates between such delicate and bludgeoning moments, it shouldn’t be limited to such a small range of volumes. Still, Bioluminescence alleviates my biggest criticism of its predecessor within just a few notes.

Musically, Bioluminescence sits in a similar space to Velvet Incandescence with its deathgaze sound, to use a term coined by Kardashev. And Kardashev remains one of the most apt comparisons for Dawn of Ouroboros thanks to the band’s consistently propulsive drumming, atmosphere-focused guitarwork, and duality of harsh and clean vocals. When individual elements do rise from the core sound, like during the solos on “Nebulae,” the moment is memorable but nothing to write home about. Bioluminescence is music focused on atmosphere, not technicality, and its appeal is in its texture and tension.

In nearly all aspects, Bioluminescence is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor, but it does fall into one familiar trapping: the clean vocals are poorly enunciated to the point of comedy, and the track “Slipping Burgundy” is the worst offender by far. As soon as one presses play, they are bombarded by a perversion of the English language as every vowel shape becomes some form of “ah” or “uh” regardless of the word. I’ve seen memes making fun of indie vocalists by calling their unique inflections “singing in cursive,” but if an indie vocalist sings in cursive, Murphy sings in hieroglyphics. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt; maybe she needed an emergency root canal the same day that they’d booked the studio for vocal sessions, or maybe Murphy is the namesake Ouroboros attempting to sing around the tail in her mouth. Regardless, the cleans take songs like “Slipping Burgundy” and the title track and render what could have been impactful moments into unadulterated comedy. What’s even more confounding is that Murphy does occasionally deliver well enunciated cleans, like towards the end of “Dueling Sunsets” where her belts in conjunction with the song’s climax create an album highlight. Blessedly, Bioluminescence contains just little enough of Murphy’s strange cleans for me to still give this a positive score in good conscience. 

For an album where no individual element stands out, the compositions and production must do the heavy lifting, and Dawn of Ouroboros has delivered the goods in those departments. I do struggle to recall more than a few key moments even after my several listens, but I fear that’s more of a failing of “deathgaze” than it is of Dawn of Ouroboros as a band. If you’re a fan of Fallujah and Kardashev, I fully recommend Bioluminescence; and Chelsea Murphy, if you’re reading this, sorry for the jokes.

Recommended tracks: Dueling Sunsets, Bioluminescence
You may also like: Dessiderium, Serein, Vintersea, Caelestra
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Prosthetic Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Dawn of Ouroboros is:
– Tony Thomas (guitars, keyboards)
– Chelsea Murphy (vocals)
– Ian Baker (guitars)
– Chris Stropoli (drums)

The post Review: Dawn of Ouroboros – Bioluminescence appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Artwork by: Inge Schuster

Style: progressive rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Spock’s Beard, Kansas, Big Big Train, The Flower Kings, Genesis, E.L.P.
Country: United States-CA
Release date: 14 February 2025

Listening to progressive rock ain’t easy. Here at the Subway, we cover all sorts of stuff which quickly devolve into much more “disagreeable” sonic territory than our rock forebears, but to the average person even our introductory classics are baptism by fire: I mean, have you heard the opening minutes of Close to the Edge? Only the biggest bands in the history of our musical niche have had any mainstream success, and no group comes into prog expecting to make it big—it’s part of what makes the genre so enjoyable. Every new band is a passion project and artists rarely, if ever, drop musical authenticity for approachability. The genre will always be an enjoyable challenge to engage with because of the musical geniuses drawn to the style out of a love for its history and sounds. 

Friend of All Creatures, on the other hand, is recognizably progressive rock but is so safe even the uninitiated could listen and be bored. Songwriter John Boegehold and his crew are clearly enamored with the classics, both old (Genesis) and new (Spock’s Beard), but Pattern-Seeking Animals take the template and erase the bite, creating an overly melodic nothingburger. Friends of All Creatures is recognizably prog by virtue of playing into trite cliches. Helmed by Ted Leanord (Enchant, Spock’s Beard) whose voice is practically synonymous with 90s to mid 00s neo-prog, Pattern-Seeking Animals are pretty much an iteration of the post-Neal MorseSpock’s Beard sound—particularly because all but one member of Pattern-Seeking Animals was or is in the Beard.

If you don’t live under a rock shielding you from the trends of semi-modern progressive rock, you already know precisely what Friend of All Creatures sounds like. If you have found such a valuable stone, I’ll fill you in: imagine your favorite non-freaky (ie not King Crimson) melodic prog band from the 70s (preferably Genesis or ELP), take out emotional variation and instrumental virtuosity, and then replace it with heaps of bubbly, melodic aural junk food. The package sounds professional and competent but it’s wholly unsatisfying. Pattern-Seeking Animals’ main problem is a tendency to luxuriate in lethargic sections for swaths of the album. For instance, twelve-minute epic “Another Holy Grail” is largely fueled by retro synths and a slow pace, focusing on an amorphous key progression or tepid vocal line—but as soon as it picks up the pace at 4:00 and again around 7:50, the track suddenly becomes more engaging.

Despite coming across as a vapid take on progressive rock, Pattern-Seeking Animals are seasoned professionals come their fifth album, and the production value is superb, balancing the layered songwriting with aplomb. The strong production comes across in the rich orchestrations of ballad “Down the Darkest Road” and the whimsical closer “Words of Evermore.” Moreover, while the compositions are a tad too meandering, Pattern-Seeking Animals are certainly skilled songwriters: parts of the album which sound simple—like the intricate vocal lines starting around 2:10 into “The Seventh Sleeper”or the climax post-2:45 into “Days We’ll Remember” with a sing-along Enchant-esque chorus but engaging harmonies—but are actually quite complex upon further investigation.

Pattern-Seeking Animals are passionate, fully capable professionals, but they ought to dream bigger and perhaps take some more cues from their influences instead of taking an aggregate middle of their collective sounds and flattening them to a style of “ambiguous melodic” prog. Despite their experience, Pattern-Seeking Animals are clearly still seeking the winning formula—or pattern, if you will—for progressive rock.

Recommended tracks: Down the Darkest Road, The Seventh Sleeper, Words of Love Evermore
You may also like: Jacob Roberge, Neal Morse Band, Transatlantic, Southern Empire, Moon Safari, Enchant, Unitopia, Barack Project, Motorpsycho, Echolyn, Kaipa, Beardfish
Final verdict: 5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: GEP – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Ted Leonard – lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar

Dave Meros – bass, backing vocals

John Boegehold – keyboards, synthesizers, mellotron, programming, guitar, mandolin, backing vocals

Jimmy Keegan – drums, percussion, backing vocals

The post Review: Pattern-Seeking Animals – Friend of All Creatures appeared first on The Progressive Subway.