Style: Progressive Deathcore, Technical Death Metal (Harsh Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Fallujah, Rivers of Nihil, Black Crown Initiate, An Abstract Illusion, The Contortionist (early)
Country: USA (Nebraska)
Release date: 25 July 2025

Ben’s Raincoat is a legendary item that prevents one debuff and instead grants a temporary barrier for ten percent of maximum heal-oh shit, wrong review. Ahem. 

Named after an item from indie rogue-like game Risk of Rain 2 (great game by the way), Ben’s Raincoat is an American progressive death metal/deathcore band who describe themselves as a “Rogue-Like band with permadeath”. Well, that’s not a very helpful description, but suffice to say, Ben’s Raincoat obviously has a passion for gaming and music, so they’re alright dudes in my book. Radiant Cliffs is the debut EP from the five-piece tech death startup, and right off the bat, some comparisons are readily apparent. 

Perhaps the simplest way to sum up Ben’s Raincoat’s style is by saying that it sounds like half of the band’s favorite Fallujah album is Empyrean—abundant with modern technical rhythm guitar work and atmospheric lead guitar/synth textures—and the other half’s favorite is Leper Colony, with its crushing breakdowns and a more chug oriented approach to riffing. Radiant Cliffs’s riffing style consists mainly of arpeggiated melodic structures, and is often accompanied by soaring leads, blast beats, and double bass, forging ahead until they are inevitably interrupted by some form of deathcore breakdown. “Plunder” acts as a compelling thesis for such an approach: a swelling synth intro blooms into the main theme of the song—a 16th note tremolo that outlines the central chord progression—which returns later in expanded form for the chorus. I enjoy how each chorus is composed of straight 16th notes while every other part of “Plunder” has more of a cantering triplet feel, giving the song an engaging and satisfying structure. Ben’s Raincoat’s riffs are at their best when they focus on outlining and enhancing a song’s structure and melodic progression, or when straying further into galloping metalcore territory (“Material Possessions”, “Chorus of Flies”), and “Plunder” has both sides in spades. 

As with many a debut EP though, there are questionable exploratory moments that sound like Ben’s Raincoat didn’t quite know how to flesh out an idea, or otherwise fit certain parts together cohesively. Riffs will sometimes stray into odd deathcore-infused djent territory that feels at odds with the rest of a song’s structure. Take the intro riff to “Material Possessions” as an example: a stilted 16th note pattern jumps over awkward intervals that compose a melody which sounds more akin to an early 2010’s solo bedroom djent project than a modern tech death group. One of my favorite riffs of the EP follows immediately afterward—a shimmering downward cascade of 16th note groupings of three—giving a slight whiplash effect to a high point due to the somewhat clumsy pacing. Similarly, “Ignition” opens with an out of place hardcore riff bereft of any form of lead guitar or synth texture, leaving the track sounding like an unfinished soundscape in the context of the rest of Radiant Cliffs when the obvious intent was to be a firestarting thrasher.. Deathcore breakdowns occur on nearly every track, ranging from climactic (“Chorus of Flies”) to derivative Lorna Shore ripoffs (“Horticulture”), another symptom of the inexperience and inconsistency common on debut releases.

Besides Fallujah’s dreamy riff-laden atmosphere and Lorna Shore’s formulaic breakdowns, the other main point of reference to be found on Radiant Cliffs comes—somewhat surprisingly—in the form of vocalist Dominik English’s uncanny resemblance at times to Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan. English has a massive range which he fully utilizes, and is able to pull off the same form of half-distorted “goblin” singing that Ryan is so well known for. At times, the vocal performance verges on the stereotype of deathcore vocal olympics, but English has a great sense of pacing, injecting his performance with plenty of layering and variety in an intelligent and natural manner, fully justifying his utilization of the tropes. While such a performance goes hand in hand with the core tech death and deathcore conceit of Ben’s Raincoat, it also has the unfortunate side effect of further illuminating the neophytic qualities of Radiant Cliffs. 

Fear not though, Ben’s Raincoat. You were raised in the crucible of rogue-like gaming. Sure, there are plenty of weak moments to go along with the strong, but the strong has great potential to be refined into something unique and compelling. You have the opportunity to take everything you’ve learned from your debut EP and do even better on your next playthrou-errr, release. There are a number of small details that shine through the tropes—such as the spectral piano over the chugging riff in “Chorus of Flies”, or the nostril inhale before the track’s climactic final breakdown—that blow the winds favorably in your direction. All that’s left is to continue working, exploring, and respawning until you’ve perfected your build. Something something meta progression.

Recommended tracks: Plunder, Material Possessions, Chorus of Flies
You may also like: Abiotic, Krosis, Ovid’s Withering, Serein
Final verdict: 5.5/10

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

Label: Independent

Ben’s Raincoat is:
– Jared LeGier (Bass)
-Geddy Johnson (Drums)
-Jace Krajicek (Lead Guitars)
-Nick Jordan (Rhythm Guitars)
-Dominik English (Vocals)

The post Review: Ben’s Raincoat – Radiant Cliffs appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album art by Roi Mercado

Style: Progressive Metal, Djent (Instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: TesseracT, Cloudkicker, The Helix Nebula
Country: United States, Ohio
Release date: 13 May 2025

Djent is a genre (or is it?) that has infiltrated its way into a myriad of neighboring styles within the progressive metal scene, slowly seeping through the cracks in its foundation. What essentially started as Meshuggah worship has undergone a slow and somewhat painful metamorphosis, transcending beyond a simple palm muted, syncopated guitar technique into an expansive musical language all its own. The journey to this point has been rife with failed experimentation, alchemical genre-mixing, and a steadily evolving intervallic language that seems to have come to its logical conclusion in the form of “thall”—another style about which to argue genre legitimacy. The bulk of djent’s growth took place from around 2006 through the mid 2010’s, with bands like Textures, SikTh, TesseracT, Periphery, Uneven Structure, and Vildhjarta all putting their own spin on the core techniques that constitute its sound and superimposing said techniques onto a variety of unique soundscapes, showcasing the style’s versatility, and solidifying its genre status proper.

There were many a branching path that djent explored during its adolescence, some more niche than others, and some seemingly forgotten to the annals of syncopated time. The Bulb demos are perhaps the best representative of a particular niche of one of the genre’s earliest investigative forays: atmosphere-focused instrumental djent. Bulb’s demos are somewhat paradoxical in the sense that, at the time, they were massively popular, single-handedly inspiring a swathe of bedroom guitarists toward their instrumental explorations; at the same time, they were nearly instantly rendered redundant by these same newly empowered musicians as they realized that what they were playing was basically just Meshuggah with more tonality. The end result was a shockingly frantic evolution of sound. Widek, Nemertines, Returning We Hear the Larks, Walking Across Jupiter, Polarization, Cloudkicker, Their Dogs Were Astronauts, Cold Night for Alligators, Sithu Aye, and many other projects like these have been all but forgotten, mere grains of sand in a desert of chugs, yet their influence on djent’s trajectory cannot be denied.

Antediluvian Projekt, solo project of John Heckathorn, nestles within this assemblage of atmosphere-driven instrumental djent, and if I had been told that Atlan Blue was some obscure demo from 2011, I wouldn’t have given it much of a second thought. Atlan Blue shares the inquisitive, probing nature of adolescent djent, haphazardly smashing djent guitar techniques into a bedrock of jazz fusion and drenching atmosphere, and utilizing a jazz noir-esque trumpet as its main gimmick. Antediluvian Projekt, like so many of its genre peers past, brews its influences together to wildly varying degrees of success; there are moments of inspired, meaningful realization, yet so much of Atlan Blue leaves me scratching my head in confusion at its choices. 

After a meandering intro track, “Atlan Blue” starts strong with a bass and piano groove that constantly oscillates between a bar of 5/4 and a bar of 9/8, a roiling sea for the djent guitars to swim within. Clean guitar solos weave between the bass, piano, and distorted guitar groove; trumpet is ever present in the background; and electronic elements further add to the melting pot of texture, resulting in an interestingly varied sonic landscape. “What Does Truth Fear” follows, and is similarly effective in its textural language, switching between a beefy low-tuned guitar rhythm reminiscent of recent Vildhjarta, and a more understated groove that could have been lifted straight from any TesseracT album. Again, trumpet and electronic production elements add depth to the sound, and the revolving structure of the songwriting manages to maintain the listener’s attention while keeping in step with the focus on atmosphere. 

Unfortunately, the remainder of Atlan Blue does not live up to its decent first impressions. “P0W3R” recycles the exact same riffs from “What Does Truth Fear”, slightly changing the trumpet lines and adding an electronic drum beat as an intro that I’m pretty sure is the exact same rhythm as one of the riffs, just played significantly faster. The result is an odd interlude track that could have just been tacked onto the previous song as a climax, but is instead a forced detour into unnecessary bloat. Instead of regaining his footing after the stumble, Heckathorn doubles down with “T3MP0R4L 0SCILLAT0R”, the longest track on the album, and also the one where the least happens. The listener is treated to over seven minutes of meandering shoegaze—still with the ever-present trumpet—and any semblance of momentum that Atlan Blue may have had up to this point is unceremoniously squandered. 

The remaining few tracks are further explorations of the sound initially presented on “Atlan Blue” and “What Does Truth Fear,” though I am hard pressed to even care enough to reach this point of Atlan Blue after a few listens. On the occasions that I do, I am rewarded not so much with an interesting textural melting pot, but more with a clouded beaker of unfocused distillation. Heckathorn’s trumpet playing is competent, and he has the chops to pull off the gimmick of trumpet djent, but the melodies played often have seemingly nothing to do with the rest of the music, and this problem is especially exacerbated on the back half of Atlan Blue. The trumpet is simultaneously the main selling point and seemingly an afterthought in the songwriting, leading to a bizarre feeling of fundamental discontinuity. What remaining actual guitar riffs there are become shadows of their former selves, falling prey to the insidious curse of hackneyed djent stereotypes. The slightly above average drum performance is perhaps Atlan Blue’s biggest saving grace, though it is not nearly enough to fortify the whole structure from falling in on itself by the album’s end. 

Antediluvian Projekt does indeed fit snugly within the old order of atmospheric instrumental djent: quirks, inspirations, and shortcomings all. Atlan Blue reads as a billet-doux to a long-lost lover, one whose familiar memory still lingers in everyday modern scenery, providing comfort and pain in equal measure. Through rose colored glasses, Atlan Blue can be a temporary succor for those plagued by the nostalgic longing for the perceived golden age of djent. With slightly more focus, though, the illusion shatters, and we are left with a stinging reminder of why, perhaps, so many bands become forgotten in the polyrhythmic ebb and flow of time.

Recommended tracks: Atlan Blue, What Does Truth Fear?, BR3AKAWAY
You may also like: Returning We Hear the Larks, Walking Across Jupiter, Bulb, Mouse on the Keys
Final verdict: 5.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Antediluvian Projekt is:
– John Heckathorn (Everything)

The post Review: Antediluvian Projekt – Atlan Blue appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album Art by Paige Weatherwax

Style: Avant-Garde Metal, Progressive Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Between The Buried and Me, Devin Townsend, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Mr. Bungle, Diablo Swing Orchestra
Country: United States, TN
Release date: 11 April 2025

Flummox are a band that defy singular definition. Are they death metal, bluegrass, circus music, musical theater, power punk, or psychedelic rock? If your answer is “all of the above—and then some,” you’re only beginning to grasp their ambition. Over a decade ago, Alyson Dellinger and Drew Jones birthed this Frankenstein of a band in the unlikely crucible of Tennessee—a state steeped in musical tradition. With the creative spark of new members and several years of maturing, Flummox hit their stride with 2022’s Rephlummoxed. With all its surreal, avant-garde grandeur, that album left one lingering question: how do you follow it up?

To understand how Southern Progress attempts to answer the album that preceded it, we first need to examine the structural blueprint of both records. Rephlummoxed built its identity on sprawling, multi-part compositions—songs whose lengths have a floor of five minutes and a ceiling of fourteen. The vast song lengths give the band’s pandemonium room to breathe, allowing the manic ambition to unfold at full scale. What emerged was bold, momentous, and endlessly engaging—a charismatic, aural riot fully earned by its ambition.

The architecture of Southern Progress sharply deviates from the long-form approach. Gone are the whimsical interludes and sprawling epics, save for the final song; in their place, Flummox attempt to use a leaner, more streamlined framework, with most tracks hovering around four to five minutes in length. None of the band’s genre-blurring mastery is lost—there’s still enough stylistic whiplash and personality to earn the approval of Mike Patton or Frank Zappa—but something about this new structural gamble doesn’t quite work.

A dissonance of expectation permeates this album, manifesting as a subtle but persistent disconnect between form and function. Everything that made Rephlummoxed soar feels truncated here. Something essential in the magic of their chaos gets lost when it’s compressed to the length of a standard pop rock song. That tension leaves many tracks feeling like incomplete snapshots of something greater, or ideas that might have been better served by embracing more conventional songcraft.

The first two tracks of the album, “What We’re in For…” and “Southern Progress,” immediately showcase the record’s fundamental confusion. The former opens with proggy, deranged grooves, then settles into a gentler, swing-inflected rhythm. From there, it pivots back into metal grooves that almost carry a sense of symphonic grandeur—only for Flummox to completely kill the momentum by abruptly oscillating between still sound samples and disjointed riffing, before trailing off into a full minute of ambient drift. “Southern Progress” then kicks in with an almost whiplash transition, fusing proggy power punk, death metal, and sludge. It starts off promising but soon collapses into a series of metal breakdowns that occupy far too much of the track’s runtime, before hastily returning to its original theme and ending without resolution. Both songs feel like fragments of a greater idea, pieces that would have been better served by being combined into one longer, more ambitious work.

Following these disorienting misfires is “Long Pork,” which assaults the listener with monolithic, sludgy riffing that drones through your bones, steadily building in intensity before attempting a vaguely post-rock crescendo. The whole endeavor falls flat because there either isn’t enough material to properly earn the climax or the song ends immediately upon reaching it.

Southern Progress closes with its longest track, “Coyote Gospel,” clocking in at just over eight minutes. Flummox clearly aimed to end the album with something grand as it’s a concept song tackling the hypocritical, cynical reality of Christian society. What they actually delivered, however, is a track that confuses concept with songcraft. “Coyote Gospel” comes across as a smorgasbord of ideas whose disjointedness outweighs its charm and gets in the way of any kind of momentum it could possibly build.

A few glimpses of coherence appear on this record. “Siren Shock” locks onto a well-structured, quirky southern metal aesthetic, with riffs that draw from the most charming corners of country rock—only amped up into a glorious rodeo that sounds like it could trample the stars out of the sky. “Executive Dysfunction” blends imperious sludge with tongue-in-cheek nods to Mr. Bungle, before shifting in its second half into lush prog and symphonic black metal. It’s chaotic, but perfectly balanced and fully realized, a rare moment where Flummox’s madness feels not just unleashed, but sculpted.

Ultimately, Southern Progress feels like the work of a band whose ambitions outpace their understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses—caught between the pull of vast ambition and the demands of focused brevity. Structurally, much of the album sounds like what you’d get if you hacked a random four-minute section out of a fifteen-minute Between the Buried and Me epic and tried to pass it off as a self-contained statement. Instead of embarking on a glorious journey across ten different dimensions of bedlam, you’re handed fractured, short-lived fragments of aimless indulgence. The ineffable eldritch opossum that defines the soul of Flummox can’t be contained within earthly constraints—it must either tame itself to speak the common tongue, or fully embrace its madness. But it can’t do both.

Recommended tracks: “Siren Shock”, “Executive Dysfunction”
You may also like: OMB, Schizoid Lloyd, öOoOoOoOoOo, Victory Over the Sun
Final verdict: 5.5/10

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

Label: Needlejuice – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Flummox is:
– Alyson Blake Dellinger (vocals, guitar, bass)
– Chase McCutcheon (guitar)
– Max Mobarry (guitars, vocals, fretless acoustic bass, keyboards, midi programming, percussion, trumpet, sound design, scoring, editing and production)
– Jesse Peck (keyboards)
– Alan Pfeifer (drums)
With guests:
– Jo Cleary (violin)
– Melody Ryan (flute)
– Braxton Nicholas (tenor saxophone)
– Eric McMyermick (accordion)
– Angela Lese (flute)

The post Review: Flummox – Southern Progress appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album art by Dan Schaub

Style: Mixed Vocals (mostly clean)
Recommended for fans of: Dance Gavin Dance, Royal Coda, Maroon 5, Coheed and Cambria
Country: Utah, United States
Release date: 17 January 2025

Your friend is a prodigy at Harvard University: He has a perfect GPA, is the leader of the school debate team, and is one of the most productive research assistants at the institution. With a lightning quick mind that quickly answers every question the professor asks, your friend has a destiny to accomplish something great in the world.

He’s not without his weaknesses though: You take him to a frat party on a dare, and things don’t go smoothly. At some point, humorous discussions about football are met with stilted silence from him. At another point, he got the idea that pickup lines were cool, and completely made an ass of himself to some poor woman. A deeply one-sided conversation about the theoretical limits of quantum physics happened, which was met with people distracting themselves with memes on their phones. Eventually, he just leaves the party, and you kind of regret bringing him in the first place. This unfortunate analogy describes Mend, and Eidola’s journey to it.

A worthy contemporary to the likes of Dance Gavin Dance, Royal Coda, and Hail the Sun, Andrew Wells and his crew are a serious force in the Swancore scene, which is a particular strain of progressive post-hardcore. Their progressive qualities are exemplified by songs like “Contra: Second Temple” off of Degeneraterra, or “Caustic Prayer” off of The Architect, which are brimming with lush colors, busy and dense riffing, Andrew Well’s anthemic and lyrical voice, and songwriting that defies convention by strongly deviating from chorus driven structures. With an incredibly strong series of albums starting at their sophomore release, Eidola have proven themselves as a talented and consistent band with a definitive sound, and are now setting out to try something new.

Mend is a part of a duology which seeks to explore territory beyond the band’s definitive progressive trademarks. The first album in the duo, Eviscerate, incorporated aggressive metalcore influences in order to better describe the darker side of human nature. Mend, on the other hand, is an exploration of the light side of human nature, drawing from both rock sensibilities and straight-up pop music. Given that their sound is already quite bright, this is the only way they could push their sound forward towards something even more luminous.

All the components of a good album are here: vocal harmonies, sensual melodic lines, a stronger push towards a verse-chorus-verse structure, a variegated sonic palette, and a sprinkling of harsh vocals. Mend’s potential is exemplified in both “The Faustian Spirit” and “Godhead: Final Temple”. The former starts with a few sensual guitar lines, before moving into a build that is brimming with ideas: beginning low key and slightly stationary, and gaining intensity with Andrew’s cries and an almost total sense of evolution. Then the chorus hits, and it could rock a stadium with the resolution of the tension built before. “The Faustian Spirit” then demonstrates its sophistication by not merely reiterating the verses, but approaching each repetition of the chorus with totally different ideas while still remaining coherent.

Unfortunately, these two songs are flukes; the songwriting for the vast majority of the tracks struggles with middling attempts at choruses, incompleteness, questionable endings, and the occasional embarrassment. “Empire of Light” is seriously marred by Andrew’s Adam Levin aping: Singing ‘I don’t give a fuck’ repeatedly doesn’t come off as sexy as he thinks it does. “Blood in the Water” labors through an awkwardness; the initial transition to the chorus feels like a complete after-thought, and while the chorus itself has a marvelous quality, each subsequent verse and reintroduction feels poorly thought out and confused. “Prodigy”’s entire problem is that its chorus has the intensity of something that should have been a verse leading to somewhere greater.

This was an experiment for Eidola: A delving into something more conventional while not selling out completely. The result ranges from listenable to totally confused, with a tiny sprinkling of greatness. If the band were to return to this kind of sound in the future, there would need to be a serious effort to know the line where pop goes from cool to cringe, a bigger emphasis on build ups and coherency, and a commitment to choruses that stand out in intensity.

Recommended tracks: The Faustian Spirit, Godhead: Final Temple
You may also like: Makari, Meliorist, Senna, Galleons
Final verdict: 5.5/10

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

Label: Blue Swan – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

band in question is:
– Andrew Michael Wells (vocals, guitar)
– Sergio Medina (bass, guitar)
– Matthew Hansen (drums)
– Stephan Hawkes (producer)

The post Review: Eidola – Mend appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album art by unknown

Style: Post-metal, hardcore, progressive metal, alternative metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Ocean, Cult of Luna, A Perfect Circle
Country: Germany
Release date: 24 January, 2025

I’m about to admit a cardinal sin that will strip me of all metal cred: I really fucking love alternative metal, especially when it’s good. Any day of the week, I can get down with A Perfect Circle, Tool, and System of a Down more than most of my reviewer compatriots can. I make fun of our glorious leader Sam for listening to Breaking Benjamin, but it’s because I too wished to find my place in ‘The Diary of Jane’ once upon a time. However, when I take a risk on alt metal, I end up with trash ninety-nine percent of the time. That one percent nets me something like Chevelle’s NIRATIAS, but that’s few and far between—especially when we’re dealing with the underground.

But why do I like the horrendous subgenre known as alternative metal? Despite being the de-facto tech/prog-death guy of the Subway, simplicity gets me sometimes. A catchy, anthemic chorus against a backdrop of screamed verses gets the neurons firing more than I care to confess, and that’s exactly what ‘Idol’, the opener of Causes did for me. The sudden shift from screams to a chorus that sounds just like A Perfect Circle driven by guest female vocalist Hannah Zieziula was enough to sell me on the album, but was it enough to net it within that one percent of, dare I say, good alt metal?

Like practically the entire subgenre, Causes is junk food metal, and while that could sound like an insult, they’re leagues ahead of their contemporaries Sleep Token and Jinjer. Unfortunately, Causes plays it incredibly safe. There aren’t any “riffs” as much as there are chugging rhythms backed by simple lead lines. There isn’t any crazy rhythmic fuckery in the drums, and I’m not even sure the bassist showed up to the studio. The real star of the show is the vocalist, who like the rest of the band, isn’t credited anywhere on the internet. He shifts from growls reminiscent of a gravellier Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates) to the silky cleans I’d expect of a hardcore/alt metal act.

Causes never tries to reinvent the wheel, and Haven wouldn’t need to if the album wasn’t so plain. ‘Leash’ is about the furthest the band veers into the post-metal-tinged sound they’ve promoted for themselves, and I’d only say so because of the breakdown and buildup that follows. But even after listening to Causes multiple times now, I struggle to remember much of anything besides the choruses of the first two songs and much of the third. Everything after these first three relatively cohesive pieces falls apart under the weight of subsequent tracks.. There are only so many tricks that can keep my attention from waning, and Haven use them all up in the first 18 minutes of the album.

This isn’t to say Causes is bad, more that Haven is just having a bit of an identity crisis. Bands rarely fuse the pummeling, brisk nature of hardcore and prog to great success because the two styles are constantly at odds with each other, and it’s exemplified here. ‘Wesen’, coming hot off the heels of ‘Leash’, may as well have been left on the cutting floor, as should’ve interlude track ‘Theia’. The former only serves as a foray into electronica to give the album a tad bit of eclecticism, the latter simply a poor buildup into the closer. The last two real songs on the album have all but run out of steam, and in an attempt to drag along its runtime, end up feeling bloated and unnecessary. ‘Rue’ should build into a fist-bumping chorus a la A Perfect Circle’s ‘Pet’, but seems to lack any direction in its overlong seven-minute runtime. Its singular string chug of a main riff began to grate on me by minute three, and by the time its screamed refrain came once more, I found my attention elsewhere. Meanwhile, closer ‘Ankou’ nearly captures that energy the first half of the album had, but flows through too many glacial repeated sections to keep it up.

I’ve ragged a lot on Causes because I hear a band who’ve just nearly got it. It, in this case, being a cohesive and enjoyable sound. Haven are pulled between the post-metal leanings of Hippotraktor and alt metal stylings, and once they’ve figured this tug-of-war out, they can then focus on capturing that lighting in a bottle they had going in Causes’ first few songs. The aggression and skill at building to a chorus is there, but the songwriting suffers as a lack of identity rears its ugly head early on. I can only give a disappointing verdict, and a bunch of well wishes to Haven in the future.

Recommended tracks: Idol, Causes, Leash
You may also like: Hippotraktor, Seyr
Final verdict: 5.5/10

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

Label: Argonauta Records – Official Website

Haven is:
– I can’t find credits anywhere on the internet. Haven please DM us on Instagram so I can add them!

The post Review: Haven – Causes appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Between the Buried and Me, The Offering, Nevermore, Scar Symmetry
Country: Texas, USA
Release date: 16 August 2024

You know what novel is overrated? Frankenstein. I’m sorry, Shelley stans, but I found it turgid and overly self-piteous. I know it was written in the ‘year without a summer’ (alongside Byron’s apocalyptic epic Darkness) but come on, things weren’t that bad. And yet, I respect the hell out of that book because it birthed an entire genre, and its central ideas are baked into our culture: that man should not play god, but that if we do then we owe a duty of care to that which we create. However, there’s another, simpler lesson in Frankenstein, one which many a prog band would do well to heed: stitching a bunch of bits together doesn’t make a consummate whole; it might even make a monster. 

Texas trio Framing Skeleton’s songwriting approach on third album Misery Prelude: The Prince Eternal is similar to the scattershot style of early Between the Buried and Me, borrowing the band’s theatrics, too, but their sound is rooted in something a little more on the 2000s melodeath to metalcore spectrum; shades of The Offering (particularly in Jeremy Burke’s powerful vocal performance which also recalls a young James Hetfield), Trivium, and even Insomnium rear their head at times, their eclecticism making it hard to pin them down to any one sound. For example, “Blood Sport I: First Loser” showcases gothic flavours with its ticking synths and bold piano chords, while “Blood Sport II: Starvation” recalls the lascivious industrialised nu metal of Korn. Indeed, those two tracks showcase Framing Skeletons at their most successful even if the genre variability speaks to the overall disunity of their style. Elsewhere, however, there are problems. 

We start with a bizarre pacing issue: the first four tracks of the album are comprised of one twelve minute instrumental suite, the first of which is an overture of impressively uninteresting riffs from the album to come. At least the overture serves a purpose, the other three tracks feel completely superfluous—the spoken word in “III. Euphoria’s Requiem” could be important to the album’s story, but it’s a struggle to hear in the mix, and the playing on these tracks doesn’t really represent the talents of the band. Couple all this with the fact that Misery Prelude… is seventy-five minutes long, and we’re spending over a sixth of the album’s runtime on what is essentially a perfectly serviceable but hardly mind-blowing warm-up routine. 

Things improve when we get to the album proper: “Altruistic City” opens so energetically that it feels like we’ve entered a different album altogether. Drummer Bryan Holub’s pulsating drum performance kicks things into a higher gear, and Burke’s distinctive, raspy cleans offer a melodic throughline. He genuinely impresses with harshes inspired by but stronger than Tommy Giles, and is willing to take risks, such as the Leprous-esque operatics on the opening of “Walking Crown” or the eerily harmonised a cappella on “Specter of Origin”. The only problem is in the mixing of multiple vocal layers, which often sound ill-blended and, as a result, a little pitchy relative to one another. Nevertheless, from “Altruistic City” to “Blood Sport II: Starvation” a strong run of tracks dominate; by no means perfect—“Reflections of the Deathless” speaks to the ongoing and baffling affinity that prog bands have for marigolds—but a great improvement on the instrumental openers. 

However, as we get further in the album we get more Proggy, and it’s on these longer tracks that Framing Skeletons really lose focus. An impressive flamenco section on “Walking Crown” is pleasingly well-integrated into the overall track, but a second flamenco section that sojourns into full-on samba on “Chrysalis” comes across as more gimmicky and simply doesn’t feel contextualised within the wider song. “Chrysalis” especially begins to wander through so many sections that it becomes hard to follow the thread, and “The Vault” epitomises the issue: a succession of riffs and licks that are great in isolation but don’t feel meaningfully connected, just a jarring progression of sonic non-sequiturs. However, overcoming their attention deficit doesn’t always work out either: the thirteen minute epic “Specter of my Origin” closes with ninety seconds of a single chant, the relief when it’s over quashed by a lovely but totally unnecessary piano coda. By the latter stretches of the album, every new section starts to feel like it’s only there to spite the listener. 

The production is as much of a farrago as everything else: the mix is solid if somewhat lo-fi and, for want of a better term, nineties sounding. While the drums are a little too loud in the mix, the snare verging on St. Anger levels of annoyance at some junctures, Ethan Berry’s bass is nicely audible and the instruments and vocals are mostly well cared for. There’s also the aforementioned pitchiness in some of the mixing of multiple vocal layers: on “Blood Sport I: First Loser” they let the song down, on “Blood Sport II: Starvation” the vocal mixing is great.

Framing Skeletons are clearly very talented performers and, stylistically, Misery Prelude: The Prince Eternal is a concatenation of things that probably shouldn’t work as well together as they often do. However, the Frankensteinian stitching together of so many ideas leads to bloated songs in an album that’s both less than the sum of its parts and unjustifiably long. It’s a strange contradiction to find oneself enjoying so many aspects of an album and yet feeling so constantly pushed away by its many flaws, but with some polish and focus to put meat on their bones, Framing Skeletons could go far.

Recommended tracks: Walking Crown, Blood Sport II: Starvation
You may also like: Apeiron Bound, Witherfall, Into Eternity
Final verdict: 5.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

Framing Skeletons is:
– Jeremy Burke – guitars, vocals
– Bryan Holub – drums, backing vocals
– Ethan Berry – bass, backing vocals

The post Review: Framing Skeletons – Misery Prelude: The Prince Eternal appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive Metal, Power Metal (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Myrath, Symphony X, Angra
Review by: Dave
Country: Germany
Release date: 29 March 2024

A sense of place is crucial when evoking prosody in music. Symphony of Enchanted Lands would have been much more bland had it not evoked the feeling of riding a dragon over lush green hills, and Darkspace’s moniker would be virtually meaningless if they didn’t embody overwhelming dread in an incomprehensibly vast and empty space. So what happens when power/prog veterans Ivory Tower completely forgo their experience in spacey settings to explore a new location?

Ivory Tower have been at it for a long time, gracing us with heavy-hitting space power metal as early as the late 90s in the style of a more raw predecessor to Pagan’s Mind or a Damnation Game-era Symphony X minus the Symphony, accompanied by spectacularly cheesy album covers like 2000’s Beyond the Stars, with its space chess pieces that weave through meteors crashing into a distant planet. Over the years, their songwriting style has remained fairly consistent, using energetic chugs to advance verses and making room for the vocals to soar over the choruses, exploring this sound even up to 2019’s Stronger. Heavy Rain, however, represents a change of setting, Ivory Tower leaving their well-tread late 90s space power metal sensibilities for a dreary desert setting with accompanying AI album art and a more modern and straightforward sound akin to recent Myrath output.

Unfortunately, what Heavy Rain is unable to do that Myrath’s Karma does accomplish is execute this style in an interesting way. Virtually every song here retains a mid-paced clip with chugging guitars that adhere to a relatively narrow tonal range while new vocalist Francis Soto reliably sticks to a gruff timbre. Like the desolate monochrome desert depicted on the album art, the sonic palette of Heavy Rain is limited in a way that makes the experience as a whole bland and unenjoyable. Acoustic guitars make their presence known on occasion, but they serve more as an intro to tracks that are quickly obscured by a sandstorm of mid-paced, down-tuned chugs. While the catchiness of a song like “The Tear” etches marks into the earth that leave an impression, the presentation on tracks such as “Monster,” “Holy War,” and “Black Rain” is quickly smoothed away into dunes by the desert wind.

However, even in the middle of a featureless desert, there is still beauty to be found. The one saving grace on Heavy Rain is the vocals: despite sitting in a relatively similar range across the runtime, the vocal performance provides an overwhelming majority of the moments of interest. Soto’s timbre and delivery is perfect for this style of metal, his gruff style adding a sense of power to the music. The instrumentals in the opening verse of “The Destination” award space to Soto’s catchy vocal pattern to create one of the more engaging moments here. “The Tear” includes moments that let both the vocals and the instrumentation shine, including a chorus that uses interesting yet subtle vocal effects to add drama and intensity, along with a fun bridge where the vocals interplay excellently with the guitar work, showing promise that Ivory Tower can make this style work.

Nothing on Heavy Rain is offensive. It reads as a transitional album more than anything, showing that Ivory Tower are unafraid to explore new ideas, but execute them in a way that comes off as inexperienced in this style. I won’t count them out just yet, especially given the promise of a good modern power/prog style with the addition of Francis Soto’s vocals, but the desolate and monochromatic sensibilities incorporated into a genre that relies on energy and color results in an an album that I am not interested in revisiting again. I’ll just look at pictures of the desert instead.

Recommended tracks: The Tear, The Destination
You may also like: Anubis Gate, Pagan’s Mind, Jack the Joker
Final verdict: 5.5/10

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

Label: Massacre Records – Facebook | Official Website

Ivory Tower is:
– Thorsten Thrunke (drums)
– Sven Böge (guitars)
– Björn Bombach (bass)
– Frank Fasold (keyboards)
– Francis Soto (vocals)

The post Review: Ivory Tower – Heavy Rain appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive death/black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Opeth, Ne Obliviscaris, Enslaved
Country: Switzerland
Release date: 1 March 2024

Year: 10,191 AA (After Andy)

I, the Emperor of All Known Prog-Death, Zacharius IV, sit bored atop the Åkerthrone. Each time one of my humble servants brings me a concept album, I promptly have them executed for it pertaining to fantasy, as I have listened to far too many tales of ancient heroes and mystical swords, and what I truly crave is a space opera concept. One that thrives on the tales of intergalactic war, planetary empires and melodrama with a technological backdrop. I suppose I could ask one of my servants to bring me Dvne’s Etemen Ænka or Vektor’s Terminal Redux for the hundredth time, but I truly crave something new.

To say my interest was piqued when my loyal imperial servant, Samuel of House Philips, brought to me an album which he claimed boasted “dynamic songwriting” and “long ass runtimes” atop of a space opera theme was undeniable. I raised a brow as he gently slid the large wax disc brough to him as an offering by this band, Mathilde, onto the Imperial Large Wax Disc Player and stepped aside.

I closed my eyes as the opening synths began to play, and they promptly shot open as ‘Mise En Orbite’ exploded into blast-beat laden, tremolo-picked goodness. My laughter in amazement was so loud that even the neighboring star-system could likely hear it. Surely, this was the album I had been so patiently waiting for since my entry into the Court of the Subway. This was my golden goose, an album so good that I would decree it a 10/10 in imperial ratings.

Then, the album kept going, and I began to lose track of which song was which due to them all blending together. The distant space-bards of Mathilde play an underwritten style of the most valuable subgenre in the universe. All the pieces of good songs are here, but Mathilde is far too ambitious for their own good. Halfway through ‘Mise En Orbite’, I began to check my chronomatrix to see how much time had passed. It feels far longer than it should due to actual lack of dynamics. The crown jewel of my empire, Opeth, understands where to place their heavy and soft sections. Mathile understands this to a certain extent, as the breakdown and buildup near the end of the opener proves so. But there seems to be far too much empty space (heh) in between the beginning and end of this twelve-minute song where nothing of interest happens.

’32 Decembre parte I’ does slightly better with a mere 5-minute runtime, and sees Mathilde consolidate their efforts into not making a song as long as possible, but as interesting as possible. A bass tapping section leading into galloping snare and synths would sound incredible without the vocalist sounding as though he suffered a recent breakup. I understand the emotive nature of Mathilde’s bard-craftings, but his constant one-tone, pained scream makes this album almost headache inducing.

‘Mathilde’ and ’32 Decembre parte II’ should feel like the sweeping album closers they’re supposed to be, but everything falls flat because of underbaked songwriting. While the individual sections would make for great parts of a song, they don’t quite fit together as nicely as I’d like. Take the section that lasts from about 2:30 onward in ‘Mathilde’. They let the song breathe for far too long, and the payoff nearly five minutes later doesn’t make up for lost time. The song should be cut two minutes short, and would be far better off for it.

Overall, Mathilde is far from talentless. They are clearly ambitious and talented enough with the drive to make a 5 song, nearly hour-long debut. But their songwriting is still young, and as such, falters. They want to make a long song without enough good ideas to fill it up. Perhaps, in a few years’ time, they will bring an offering worthy of the greats, as I’ve found the embedded concept to be fascinating. For now, though, I will have Samuel executed for a mediocre offering. Until next time, Mathilde.

Recommended tracks: Mise en Orbite, Mathilde
You may also like: Dessiderium, Aquilus, Disillusion
Final verdict: 5.5/10

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

Label: Independent

Mathilde is:
– Cedric Pretat (bass)
– Axel Vuille (drums)
– Louis Linares (guitars)
– Colin Humair (guitars)
– Anton Simon (keyboards)
– Alessio Giuliano (guitars)
– Romaric Gendre (vocals)

The post Review: Mathilde – 32 Decembre appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: technical death metal (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: technical death metal, The Artisan Era, Dream Theater, Imperial Circus Dead Decadence, Spawn of Possession, First Fragment (no YMAL needed since if you’re still here, you know all the bands)
Review by: Andy
Country: Japan
Release date: 1 December 2023

I so desperately want to flex my technical death metal knowledge. Everybody who’s ever talked to my peer Zach for more than five minutes knows that he LOVES Opeth and also that he’s heard every single tech death band ever. Well, I’m jealous that people don’t associate me with the genre. As a result, I picked up Somnium de Lycoris to review, a Japanese tech band releasing their debut, In the Falling Hours, so that I could namedrop their similarities to Deviant Process, Bloody Cumshot, Aronious, The Beast of Nod, NYN, Vomit the Hate, Widow’s Peak, Equipoise… yeah, Somnium de Lycoris haven’t really carved out much of a niche yet.

For the most part, In the Falling Hours is STUPID tech, the endless stream of solos and riffs so fast, flashy, and melodic that the barrage of notes seems to be quickly approaching the number of atoms in the universe. There is no subtlety or art to the composition, only an ungodly, deafening onslaught of unrelenting metal. Somnium de Lycoris sounds like every tech death band you’ve ever heard at different points in the album—from the Spawn of Possession percussive vocals and contrapuntal noodling of “Beginnings and Endings” to the Equipoise-y “Obstacles in Our Path” to the tight Soreption-groove of “The Bridge to Nowhere.” The virtuosic skill on display is off-the-charts, but that’s kinda the baseline for the style, so I’m not very impressed by the endless wankery anymore.

Where Somnium de Lycoris does start to break the mold is with their odd melodic flourishes, incorporating elements of both Dream Theater and Japanese power metal; in fact, if I hadn’t ever seen Somnium de Lycoris were Japanese, I still reckon I could’ve guessed because the piano parts feel so redolent of the insanity of Zemeth or Imperial Circus Dead Decadence. The clear highlights of the album, as seen in the recommended tracks, push the piano and prog metal influence the furthest, and they stand out in a sea of similarity, and a sea it is; at just over an hour, this is longer than Relentless Mutation and Bleed the Future combined. Intense music like this needs to breathe, especially if approaching anywhere near the hour mark, but Somnium de Lycoris rarely stop to smell the roses: they drive by them in a hypercar at four times the speed limit. In the Falling Hours is thrilling for a couple minutes, particularly because it starts with the best track on the album—instrumental opener “What Lies Beneath” which mixes sickening melodic trem picking, clean guitar solos, tech death bass, literal Dream Theater worship, and insane major key Japanese power metal-type progressions—but the novelty quickly wears off, and as a long-time tech listener I just want a slower jazzy passage or even the dreaded interlude track. This album is suffocating.

Further contributing to the lack of breathing room is a brickwalled production full of the common pitfalls of modern tech. The sound is overly polished with inorganic drums, and every instrument equally weighted at all times creates a deafening wall of sound (note: so that’s where the term brickwalling comes from). The benefit is that the bass is always audible doing unholy, sexual things with the guitar and piano, but it comes with the cost of tremendous listening fatigue. I love a lot of the ideas and riffs—like the surreal piano and main riff of “Obstacles in Our Path,” which also solos as hard as hecking Equipoise—but the album so clearly sounds like a debut, youthfully ambitious yet with no control or finesse.  

At the end of the day, I know I’ve got a pretty bad bias toward tech, and I want to score this higher than I will. I enjoy it a lot—when the power and prog metal influences come out most of all—but I prefer to have some semblance of objectivity as a reviewer, and In the Falling Hours needs some serious work. It has three absolutely amazing tracks—as well as a real standout moment in the triple pinch harmonics at 4:50 in “No Shade of Gray”—but also a sea of indifferentiable riff-lunacy that ends up closer to cacophonous noise than anything else due to its lack of intricacy from inexperience.   

Recommended tracks: What Lies Beneath, Obstacles in Our Path, The Calm Before the Storm
You may also like: see FFO (but for real Bloody Cumshot, Equipoise, Deviant Process, The Beast of Nod, NYN, Aronious, Widow’s Peak, Soreption, Vomit the Hate, Replacire, Zemeth)
Final verdict: 5.5/10

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

Label: Enigmatic Diversity Records – Bandcamp

Somnium de Lycoris is:
– Mari (keyboards)
– Tomo (guitars)
– Iori (vocals)

The post Review: Somnium de Lycoris – In the Falling Hours appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: speed/power metal, symphonic black metal, some prog (mixed, female vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Emperor, 90s Hellenic black metal, early German power/speed metal, faster USPM acts like Riot, Agent Steele, etc.
Review by: Sam
Country: Florida, United States
Release date: 13 October, 2023

Out of all the metal subgenre combinations, black metal and power metal historically have had surprisingly little overlap. I’ve always found this strange as the genres share plenty of similarities to make the mashup work: fast tempos, a melodic inclination, and a shared fascination with fantasy works and epic scenery. Really all you’ve gotta do is pull out the tremolo every once in a while as you abuse the double kick, turn your YEEAAAHHHs into shrieks and you’re already halfway there. I’ve only ever encountered a handful of groups who’ve attempted this, and none of them feel like they managed to push the boundaries on what’s possible. Is Faethom up to the challenge?

Well, one thing’s for sure, and that’s that the guitarwork is absolutely killer. Nearly every song has multiple memorable riffs, ranging from nasty speed metal neck breakers, to groovy, heavy/power metal style power chord bashing, to spidery prog riffs, to thrashy tremolo, and more, and when it comes to solos there’s plenty of ripping bursts of shred. Our 80s metal inclined readers will find plenty to love in Chaosmorphogoria (say that three times fast I dare you). For nearly every misstep there is on this record, there is another amazing riff waiting around the corner to make up for it. The only track that didn’t land for me at all in this regard was “Goregantuan” with its plodding main riff and mediocre symphonic black metal strumming. For basically any other track though it’s riffs galore.

The core sound of this group sits somewhere in between 90s symphonic black metal, early German power/speed metal, and prog. What’s interesting is the use of 80s horror/sci-fi sounding synths which give the music a dorky charm. They work nicely in tandem with the riffs, trading the spotlight with the guitar using campy synth lines and filling out the atmosphere with spooky and/or epic horror patches otherwise. “Blackfire Star” and “Feral” are great examples of Mariela Muerte’s versatility on keys, showing both her talent for lead melodies and creating atmosphere. The real winner is the instrumental “Final Cosmic Warcry” which is a fantastic flurry of gripping horror synths and speedy guitarwork. And on a minor note, the interludes are tastefully done as well. The intro and outro are pure dungeon synth, and “Untraversable Force” is a lovely acoustic instrumental with medieval atmosphere akin to what you’d hear from Manilla Road.

There is one very big elephant in the room however, and that is Mariela Muerte’s clean singing. Her harshes sound great, but dear lord she sounds awful when she sings. Her tone lacks any form of beauty and her melodies are bland at best and utterly lifeless at worst, some of the most blatant offenders being the verses in “Ancient Powers That Be,” the chorus in “Goregantuan” (truly emphasizing the gore part of its title), and whoever thought it’d be a good idea to have her sing a ballad part in “Feral.” Faethom embraces the 80s in more ways than one, which unfortunately includes the trend of awful singing. I was tearing my ears out over the production too at first, but I’ve since warmed up to its deliberate old school style, though I warn you that it won’t be for everyone. Besides the bass, all instruments are clearly audible and have a comfy lo-fi charm. 

To get back to my question in the introduction, I don’t think Faethom quite reach the edges of what I imagine power/black metal could be, but I also don’t think they were aiming for that. Chaosmorphogoria is an album that aims to cram in as many killer riffs and solos as possible, and lighting them up with dorky synths and some prog elements. In that regard, they mostly succeeded, but please for the love of God do not let Mariela sing again I will SCREAM.

Recommended tracks: Blackfire Star, Feral, Final Cosmic Warcry
You may also like: Malokarpatan, Stormlord
Final verdict: 5.5/10

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

Label: Independent

Faethom is:
– Mariela Muerte (vocals, keyboards)
– David Diacrono (guitars)
– Bill Bryant (guitars)
– Evie Austin (bass)
– Brian Wilson (drums)

The post Review: Faethom – Chaosmorphogoria appeared first on The Progressive Subway.