Style: Drone, ambient, post-rock (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Sumac, Sunn O))), Swans
Country: Connecticut, United States
Release date: 1 August 2025

A ghost yearns for escape from the house in which they died, contemplating the weeds that grow over their grave; a man sees the reflection of a familiar yet contorted face in place of his own in a bathroom mirror, slowly eroding his sanity; at the end of a hopelessly long corridor, blasphemous rituals force prophecy out of the mouth of a severed head. Stories of haunting tie a past that cannot be ignored to the present, occupying spaces both physical and mental. Kayo Dot‘s latest record, Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, lives wholly in this haunted world, casting incorporeal shadows on doorways through amorphous, experimental post-rock and shrill, brittle drone. Can Kayo Dot exorcise the ghosts of their past, or will the specter of half-truths loom forever?

Reuniting the lineup from Kayo Dot‘s 2003 debut Choirs of the Eye, flashes of the group’s past manifest in elements of Every Rock. The spoken word passages that adorn “Oracle by Severed Head” and lengthy ambient piece “Automatic Writing” recall the poetry present in many of Choirs‘ pieces. The freeform post-rock from the debut is let even further off the reins as “Oracle by Severed Head” and “Blind Creature of Slime” contort notions of song structure and rhythm into something even more obscure and unrecognizable. What is noticeably new, though, is the presence of sonoristic drone pieces, sitting in high-pitched and microtonal chords for lengthy periods accompanied by hoarse harsh vocals. Lyrically, Every Rock is teeming with the paranormal, crafting imagery around desecrated bodies (“Oracle by Severed Head”), a paranoid decay of wellbeing (“Closet Door in the Room Where She Died”), and entities bubbling with indiscriminate hatred (“Blind Creature of Slime”).

The signature compositional style of Every Rock is one of sheer intractability: well-defined beginnings and endings seldom appear across its extended pieces, and tracks are labyrinthine in structure. Opener “Mental Shed” immediately introduces harsh vocals and gleaming organs with no fanfare, suddenly transporting the listener into a painfully bright liminal space that stretches endlessly in all directions. The only musical footholds are clambering percussion and faint, ephemeral woodwinds. “Closet Door in the Room Where She Died” embodies a similar form, being led along by shrill keyboards, menacing strings and woodwinds, and wailing shrieks from Jason Byron; occasionally, a ghastly choir vocalizes in response to the maniacal ramblings of the narrator. From this Lynchian compositional approach arises an ineffable discomfort and occasional terror as the scant elements that engender a sense of familiarity either quickly fade away in wisps of smoke or melt into something unrecognizable.

Every Rock‘s post-rock tracks are similarly esoteric, albeit with an execution based on heavy use of free-time rhythms and asynchronous accents. “Oracle By Severed Head” gently introduces jangly guitars, splashing drums, and placid woodwinds which ebb and flow around Toby Driver’s diaphanous vocals. Everything plays in the same oscillating rubato but on wildly different accents, as if the constituent parts are a stewing suspension where each component is magnetically repelled from the other. Near its end, strings congeal each element into a towering behemoth as the track builds into a massive climax. “Blind Creature of Slime”, on the other hand, is compositionally stubborn, sporadically iterating on a single guitar phrase underneath a forceful and powerful vocal performance. The track begins on its highest note, wrapping its tendrils around the listener’s consciousness and forcing them to face the narrator’s blinding hatred, but spins its wheels for a touch too long. There is an intentionality in its repetitious unease, but by the end, I’m broken out of the suspension of disbelief needed to buy in to “Blind Creature” fully.

Working in tandem with the subtle evolution in Every Rock‘s tracks is the overall album pacing. Many of the record’s most stunning moments are born from the contrast and transition between drone and post-rock. The transition from “Mental Shed” to “Oracle by Severed Head” feels all the more cathartic and dreamy due to the intense release from the former’s shrill synthesizers into the latter’s hazy and relaxed instrumentation. The petering out of “Automatic Writing” makes the explosive introduction of “Blind Creature of Slime” even more intense. Additionally, the break in the piercing organs in the final third of “Closet Door in the Room Where She Died” creates a stark and powerful silence after they etch into the listener’s consciousness for ten-plus minutes. The longest track, “Automatic Writing”, is comparatively weaker when looking at the other drone tracks. In concept, the piece is compositionally brilliant, slowly coalescing its constituent parts from a blurry fuzz into wistful ambient passages with longing poetry, delicate soundscaping, and ascendant group vocals; I just wish it reached homeostasis more quickly. Its mammoth introductory segment evolves at a glacial pace—even Driver’s vocals are rendered textural as notes are held out for remarkably long intervals. Were “Automatic Writing” edited down, it would likely have the same emotional impact as the aforementioned tracks, but stands as a bit too meandering to fully earn its runtime as-is.

Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason is a brilliant, though occasionally flawed, marriage of the relatable and the surreal. Ultimately, the record chooses not to exorcise its ghosts, but instead invokes them, asking the listener to share the space and embrace the discomfort of that which is unknowable and irresolute. By cleverly subverting ideals of song structure, rhythm, and tonality, Every Rock fully embodies the liminal spaces inhabited by that which haunts us.

Recommended tracks: Oracle by Severed Head, Closet Door in the Room Where She Died
You may also like: Khanate, Alora Crucible, The Overmold, Natural Snow Buildings
Final verdict: 7.5/10

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

Label: Prophecy Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Kayo Dot is:
– Toby Driver (vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, organs, clarinet, flute, drums)
– Greg Massi (guitars)
– Matthew Serra (guitars)
– Sam Gutterman (drums, vibraphone, percussion)
– Terran Olson (clarinet, saxophone, flute)
– David Bodie (percussion)
With guests:
– Jason Byron (vocals, track 3)

The post Review: Kayo Dot – Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Artwork by: Benjamin König

Style: Atmospheric Black Metal, Doom Metal, Psychedelic Folk (Mixed vocals, mostly clean)
Recommended for fans of: Alcest, Myrkur, Opeth, Panopticon, Primordial, Ulver
Country: Finland
Release date: 13 June 2025

A fun fact about me: I love a fun ghost / skeleton / creepy homie on some cover art. The crimson bone-buddy getting his bask on fronting The Last Ten Seconds of Life’s Soulless Hymns, Revocation’s spoopy tomb gracing Deathless, The Tritonus SkeleBell dominating Hooded Menace’s sixth LP; each one factored heavily into my listening interest. For as much as the music has the final say, never, ever underestimate the power of an attention-grabbing album cover. Maybe it matters less these days with the popularity of auto-shuffles and (probably AI-generated) playlists, but for me, careening towards middle-age and still fond of making record store hauls, artwork is the first thing I experience before ever considering “play.” And the best artwork often tells us something about what we’re getting into, a sort of visual preview of the aural secrets about to be uncovered.

So, when Nocturne—the seventh release by Finnish atmoblack doomsters Hexvessel—was recommended to me, I took one look at the ghosty fellow casting the ol’ “spectral sprinkle” over that sleepy, snow-capped hamlet isolated amidst a moody charcoal expanse and knew I had to give the album my time. Unfamiliar with Hexvessel and their oeuvre but with all my folk / black metal radars going off, I was eager to see if Nocturne’s musical offerings proved as winsome as the endearingly dreary (endrearing?) artwork. Or would this zesty spectre leave me dusted with disappointment? Grab your soul salt shakers, and let’s have a taste, shall we?

What struck me almost immediately upon firing up Nocturne (aside from the frustratingly ubiquitous practice of pointless openers in metal—titled “Opening,” no less) was how interrelated the music and artwork feel. Songs roll over the horizon like ghostly clouds, sketched in rainy-day hazes of fuzzed guitars, sprinkling in delicately-plucked folk acoustics amidst the ebb and flow of roiling black metal tremolos and hail-storm blast beats. Glimmers of death-and-roll cut through the gray on tracks like “Inward Landscapes,” adding spurts of energy to the haunting, often funereal backdrop of wailing guitars, doleful bells, and ritual-esque timbre of vocalists Mat Kvohst McNerney and Saara Nevalainen. Baleful synths carve out images of forlorn worship houses from the formless charcoal landscape (“A Dark and Graceful Wilderness”), wherein one could imagine frightened villagers huddling, seeking some measure of safety as this leering spectre drifts, steadfast and resolute, across their homes—I’m reminded of Count Orlok’s shadow falling upon Wisborg in Robert Eggers’ Gothic masterwork, Nosferatu (2024). Supplying terror not through red-teethed violence, but rather via sheer enveloping presence.

There is a mournful, otherworldly quality to Nocturne’s atmospheric blackened folk, especially in softer cuts like “Concealed Descent,” where morose acoustic guitar and violin take center stage alongside McNerney’s wistful cleans. The paganic dirge of “Unworld,” with its lurching, Brave Murder Day-era Katatonia opening riff, chanted vocalizations, and smoky heft, constructs notions of grandeur in decay; this small storied town, perhaps built upon the bones of ancient edifices, sundered by slicing winds of black metal aggression amidst the deliberate marching of funeral doom aesthetics. By the time closer “Phoebus” blows through, there’s nothing left, our spectral harbinger having folded man’s scaffolding back into the architecture of the (other)natural world. In many ways, I’m brought to the doorstep of Panopticon’s folk / black metal crossroads, except replace twangy americana with the dreamy plucking that seems to signify Finnish folk,¹ then toss in some slow and dolorous doom vibes for added flavor. Hexvessel have set out with a particular sonic palette and aesthetic in mind, and they do nothing to disturb it across Nocturne’s near-hour of play.

Which brings us to perhaps my only true gripe about Nocturne: like Spectral Bae closing in to sprinkle the town with his damnedruff, Hexvessel’s assemblage of fuzzy, doomed-out atmoblack tunes have a tendency to drift across the consciousness. Multiple times, I lost track of where I was in the album, lulled by a particular folky moment or vibed-out bridge before being shocked back into awareness by one of McNerney’s intermittent harsh cries or an equally intermittent energetic drum run. Sometimes, I found myself halfway across the album; other times, still wrapped in the ashen folds of a longer thread (“Sapphire Zephyrs,” “Inward Landscapes,” “Mother Destroyer”). This makes the album something of an “easy” listen, a record to throw on and just chill out to, despite the large swaths of razoring guitars and blasting snares. Lacking measures of more “conventional” structures, this is hardly an album to inspire sing-alongs, or even headbanging. There are no real central riffs, no sense of verse-chorus-verse dynamics for a listener to grab on to. This lends Nocturne an organic quality, affording a pleasantness to the experience—a dream-like effect—even if I’m often left struggling to remember where I was in the aftermath. More mood-setting than neck-snapping.

Fans of groups like Enisum, or fellow Prophecy partners Ceresian Valot will certainly find much to enjoy about Nocturne. Hexvessel thrum with the kind of naturalism that tends to lurk, perhaps overlooked, in black metal; everyone remembers the church burnings, the edginess, but this genre has been more than religion-bashing, murder, and hate crimes across its many storied decades. Nocturne, with its gloomy moods and pagan, almost druidic nature vibes, represents one of my favorite breeds of black metal. More about the journey than any singular sonic destination, Hexvessel’s latest may struggle to maintain my full attention at times, but there’s something to be said for the kind of album you can just… float away on. A fine dusting, indeed.

Recommended tracks: Unworld, Phoebus, A Dark and Graceful Wilderness
You may also like: Blood Ceremony, Ceresian Valot, Enisum, Nechochwen, Wolvennest
Final verdict: 7/10

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

Label: Prophecy Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Hexvessel is:
– Mat Kvohst McNerney (vocals, guitars, songwriting)
– Kimmo Helén (piano, keyboards, strings, guitars)
– Jukka Rämänen (drums, percussion)
– Ville Hakonen (bass)
With guests:
– Aleksi Kiiskilä (lead guitars)
– Saara Nevalainen (female vocals)
– Yusaf Vicotnik Parvez (lead vocals, “Unworld”)
– Juho Vanhanen (backing vocals, “Phoebus”)

1.  Assuming Finnish folk sounds like the kind Finnish metal bands employ. ︎

The post Review: Hexvessel – Nocturne appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

No artist credited

Style: Doom Metal, Progressive Metal (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Ghost Brigade, Sunride, In The Woods…, Lunatic Soul
Country: Finland
Release date: 23 May 2025

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve picked up in my years as a critical assessor for fiction manuscripts¹ is that a work should be reviewed for what it is or tries to be, rather than what you want it to be. For example, when my dad first watched The Mummy (1999), he hated it because he expected a horror film. Once he accepted the movie for what it was trying to be—an action-horror comedy—he ended up enjoying it. This is a philosophy I’ve tried to carry over in my various creative engagements, whether that’s with movies, music, or video games, and one I’d like to think I’ve been fairly successful with in my critiques. However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have expectations of my own when I saw that former members of Ghost Brigade had formed a new band.

For those unaware, Ghost Brigade were a much-beloved Finnish melodic death/doom band who released four albums between 2009-2014, then promptly went on hiatus before permanently disbanding in 2020. Their third LP, Until Fear No Longer Defines Us, remains my one and only experience with them—a muscular brew of gloomy doom and deliberate melodeath—but it was potent enough that seeing the name “Ghost Brigade” associated with this new venture was sufficient to stoke interest in me. Thus we arrive at Ceresian Valot and their debut Uumen—Finnish for “depths.” Let’s go spelunking, shall we?

Within moments of hearing opener “Ajattomuus / Rajattomuus,” wisps of Until Fear No Longer Defines Us’ doleful menace haunt the grounds on which Ceresian Valot tread, mostly in the mournful extended guitar lines, methodical yet flourishing drumwork, and the atmosphere of thoughtful melancholia that settles over the track like a hazy graveyard mist. As we wind into a soft electronic backbeat and clean vocals (sung entirely in Finnish, across the album), however, Ceresian Valot begin to reveal their layers. Uumen eschews melodeath entirely in favor of a folkier, more ambient approach defined by gentle looping guitars, often sharing space with the light fluttering of electronic percussion. The acoustic drums provide much of the album’s punch, partially due to their placement in the mix, securing the album’s mid-tempo thrum alongside the bigger riffs. Notes of Lunatic Soul texture the synth work (“Taivaankatsoja,” “Uumen”), standing in as a quick vector for the album’s light Gothic haze.

When the guitars take a more central and metallic role (“Pohjavirtauksia,” “Karavaaniseralji,” sections of “Ajattomuus / Rajattomuus”), Uumen shows its teeth, establishing a strong sense of groove and rhythm, practically lassoing one’s neck and forcing it into a lurching bang. The electronic elements also feel the most empowered here, laying themselves out as a velvet drape upon which the guitars can carve out fresh shapes of measured aggression and doleful melodies. Alternatively, cuts like “Uumen” and “Hyoky” present something of a musical dead-end; anemic electro-beats and thin cleans operating as interludes to Uumen’s more impassioned (and lengthy) pieces. Their inclusion might feel more inspired were the album keen to draw on harsher elements. With more aggression flowing in the mix, this would create a palatable necessity for such ambient detours. Stacked against the comparatively lighter—and dronier—touches of Uumen’s chosen aesthetic, however, I’m not entirely sold on their inclusion.

That said, as mentioned, it’s important to try and take things at the value by which they wish to sell themselves. Ceresian Valot are not Ghost Brigade, nor are they particularly interested in being so. Yes, there are notes of that former band lurking around, but I believe this says more about the associated members’ style and internalized approaches than any active effort to resuscitate their previous sonic adventures. Uumen, according to the band, stands as “dynamic and multidimensional with a broad range of sound and vision [including] alternative, rock, progressive, and various genres of metal.” Which brings me to a different issue, connected entirely to Uumen’s ambitions. In book reviewing, I’ve learned that the more “awards” a book touts in its marketing copy, the higher chance the content will be poor. Likewise, I’ve learned to read band promos with a similar level of wariness. Thankfully, Uumen is hardly a bad album—in fact, I’ve found it rather pleasant to listen to, its vibes decidedly relaxing despite (or perhaps because of) their melancholic intentions. I just think the band’s aims have outpaced the album’s reach, is all. Uumen is a doom metal album, feathered with touches of folk and echoes of electronica to help secure its progressive tagging. Pick any of the non-interlude tracks off the album, and you’ll have experienced all the strata of Uumen. Moody, driving riffs; mournful guitar lines; dreamscape electronics; punchy, methodical drums; all wrapped around clean vocals that never really move the needle off of “gentle.”

And you know what? I’m fine with that. Do I wish Uumen were more of what made Until Fear No Longer Defines Us so special to me? Sure, absolutely. I miss the interplay between Ghost Brigade’s deep, melodramatic cleans and monstrous growls. The way the heavy melodeath riffs and thundering kitwork instilled a sense of urgency and danger—and just pure Gothic epicness—to everything. Ceresian Valot seek a more introspective route. And while the decision to root the lyrics in Finnish might harm my ability to read into the accuracy of that approach, I respect that the band wanted to try something different from what (most of) them had created before. Uumen may not be a perfect album—it’s a tad one-dimensional, the vocals are underwhelming, and the programmed bits struggle to justify themselves in meaningful ways—but I can’t sit here and act like I didn’t glean enjoyment from what it wanted to be. What it was: forty-four minutes of chilled-out Gothic doom.

Recommended tracks: Taivaankatsoja, Karavaaniseralji, Valojuovat, Pohjavirtauksia
You may also like: Church of the Sea, Error Theory, Year of the Cobra, Hermyth
Final verdict: 6/10

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

Label: Prophecy Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Ceresian Valot is:
– Ville Angervuori (bass)
– Wille Naukkarinen (guitar, programming)
– Panu Perkiömäki (vocals)
– Veli-Matti Suihkonen (drums, percussion)
– Joni Vanhanen (keyboards, vocals, programming)
– Tapio Vartiainen (guitar)

1.  A fancy way to say “book reviewer” ︎

The post Review: Ceresian Valot – Uumen appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Gothic metal, progressive metal (mixed vocals)
FFO: Green Carnation, Ulver, Borknagar, Amorphis
Country: Norway
Release date: 11 April 2025

In the Woods… have been in those woods for such a long time, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they may have gotten lost out there. Various incarnations of this Norwegian gothic metal outfit have come and gone since their formation in 1991. Born of the same womb as the great Green Carnation¹, the two bifurcated sometime after their birth (I’m pretty sure that’s not how biology works, but cut me some slack; I’m not that kind of woman in STEM), with members going their separate ways as two distinct projects. Each band went on to develop coherent but distinct sounds, both foundational to the development of gothic metal in Norway. After numerous personnel changes, genre shifts, a fourteen year hiatus, and seven albums, In the Woods… on Otra are not the same band that they used to be, neither in membership—only drummer Anders Kobro remains from the original lineup—nor sound. 

These days, In the Woods… offer up a somewhat mellower iteration on their blackened doom-metal roots, and bear comparison with a host of other bands: there’s a fair bit of Green Carnation-ish melodicism and emotional poignancy even in the instrumental deliveries; some Borknagar-ian blackened explosivity; and warmly inviting poppy Ulver-esque tones. Though I may be running out of suffixes to adject-ify band names, In the Woods… are far from running out of inspiration, with cohesive songwriting that draws freshness from their various influences without needing to reinvent the wheel.

While opening track “The Things You Shouldn’t Know” establishes the playbook for Otra, sprawling over eight minutes with cavernous, melancholy riffing and a deft display of vocalist Bernt Fjellestad’s versatility, it’s the following track “A Misrepresentation of I” where these elements start to synergize to their full potential. With an uptick in tempo, shades of Amorphis peek through, and the vocal harmonies in the pre-chorus at 3:40 are delectable. My one quibble with the track—and I apologize if you are one of those who normally ignore lyrics and I’m now ruining this for you, but misery loves company—is that nobody noticed the missing syllable in the word “misrepresentation”, either while writing, or the six times that Fjellestad repeats it during the song.

Mispronunciations aside, Fjellestad’s vocal performance is dynamic and versatile. His growls roil with a bubbling bog-monster potency evocative of Amorphis’ Tomi Joutsen (see the punchy, syncopated growls at 2:10 in “The Crimson Crown”), while he slides effortlessly across a honeyed clean vocal range, especially satisfying in the upper register (2:16 in “Come Ye Sinners”). Best of all, the balance and interplay of these elements seems to be fine-tuned from 2022’s Diversum; here, harsh and melodic passages interweave mostly seamlessly, with the exception of “The Kiss and the Lie”, which struggles with a more jarring vicissitude. 

Indeed, Otra is the band’s second album with their current lineup, and this comparative stability bears fruit across the board: the whole instrumental package is smooth. One might expect a heavy, crushing sound from dual guitarists André Sletteberg and Bernt Sørensen. But they instead inhabit a more chambered and timeless sonic space, a hall of mirrors echoing with riffs that ripple and reflect rather than pummeling, evoking more rock than metal with a light hand on the distortion. They also have a bit of a penchant for power chords; whether sweeping under the scorching growls in “The Kiss and the Lie” or more subtly in “The Crimson Crown”, these harshen the edges and lend a sense of foreboding to the musical landscape.

To my ears, the style of songwriting that In the Woods… have cultivated since their reunion is one with a high floor and a relatively low ceiling. That’s not to say that Otra doesn’t have its flowing peaks, but more so that the band takes only calculated risks, making for music that’s easy to like and somewhat harder to love. Fans of original In the Woods… may miss their truly avant-garde bent, but modest variations on the playbook like the delicate pop-Ulver stylings in the intro of “Let Me Sing” or the rock ‘n’ roll groove of “Come Ye Sinners” variegate the palette without colouring too far outside the lines.

Otra’s sepia-soaked cover depicts the river in Norway for which the album is named. The scene is melancholy, vivid despite the lack of colour, and timeless; all qualities that permeate the album’s forty-six minutes. Thirty-four years after first setting out, In the Woods… may never fully return to where they began, but somewhere out in those perennial woods, they’ve learned how to dwell in the introspective melancholia of the spaces between then and now.

Recommended tracks: A Misrepresentation of I, Let Me Sing, Come Ye Sinners

You may also like: Novembre, Throes of Dawn, Octoploid, Barren Earth

Final verdict: 7/10

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

Label: Prophecy Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

In the Woods… is:

– Bernt Fjellestad (vocals)
– Anders Kobro (drums, percussion)
– André Sletteberg (guitar)
– Bernt Sørensen (guitar)
– Nils Olav Drivdal (bass)

1.  Whom I have also had the privilege of reviewing for this website ︎

The post Review: In the Woods… – Otra appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Artwork by Noirs Dessins

Style: post-black metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Alcest, Deafheaven, An Autumn for Crippled Children, Violet Cold
Country: Canada
Release date: 08 February 2025

It really is strange to write reviews in this blog about bands like Unreqvited. They definitely have enough of a fan base that you’d think anyone into the band’s genre would know about them, but they’re also tiny in comparison to prog/black metal giants that need no introduction here. How do you begin this? Do I have to give you the whole explanation as to what they do and what they’re good at? Do I just jump to talking about the main changes to their sound and reviewing the meat of the album? I believe the name must at least ring a bell if you enjoy post-black and have ever actively searched for more bands past the Alcest/Deafheaven duo. But, for the uninitiated…

Unreqvited have been a mainstay in the post-black metal scene for the better part of a decade now. Known for their ability to create larger than life soundscapes that capture a simultaneous co-existence between beauty and agony, their instrumental approach to the genre has always had them leaning closer to the post in post-black. They’ve been incredibly prolific as well, with nine LPs in nine years, all having something that differentiated them from one another. Whether it’s the cinematic approach on Mosaic I, the orchestral elements in Empathica, or the more blackgaze-y influenced sound in Beautiful Ghosts, you know that when they release a new album, you’re bound to hear some changes in their sound. A Pathway to the Moon was released after the longest break between albums in the band’s existence, and it offers perhaps the band’s biggest change yet: Vocals! 

The impact of this change is felt immediately in the first minutes of Pathway; Instead of what would normally be a slow, dramatic instrumental build-up to set the scene, a minimal backing track supports the heavenly voice of William Melsness, who takes centre stage to create a heavenly atmosphere in a short overture. After the serene, ethereal opening, “The Antimatter’’ shatters that tranquility pulling the listener into a stark, near void-like soundscape. This trope really is about as post-black 101 as it gets, but the sharp contrast between both styles is something that wasn’t usually present in Unreqvited’s previous releases. Whereas previous works would see both the styles of black metal and post-rock co-existing, “The Antimatter’’ has these completely different ideas actively fighting each other. The first black metal chops leave a big impression on the listener; they come right out of the gate by displaying a sound so theatrical and dramatic that it may just get confused for a Xanthochroid song. Orchestral touches are spread all around the album in general, and they really add an extra layer of freshness to this release’s heaviest moments. Oh right, the tracks now have vocals, and I am a big fan of the harshes present as well! They are way grimmer than what I’ve come to expect in post-black metal, and their presence really adds to Pathway’s void-like soundscapes. 

I sadly have less positive things to say about the clean vocals. They’re serviceable by all means but fail to deliver that final kick to release all the tension that was built up during the harsher sections. Cleans in this genre can bring a lot of dynamism to the table, but here they’re mostly flat choruses with little to no memorable melodies. These cleans also expose one of my pet peeves with this album; its production. Whilst there’s nothing that sounds bad, it is simply far too clean and generic. I am far from a black metal purist, but previous Unreqvited releases had found that perfect middle point between clean instrumentals while also having a bit of rawness to it, especially to enhance the moments of absolute tension. And this flaw in its production is most obvious when the clean vocals are meant to express any type of strong emotion and fail to deliver. I will however admit that this production style fits Pathway’s lead single “The Starforger” quite well. A poppy, heavenly song with very serviceable choruses which leave a lasting memorable impression; it certainly works far better in a polished atmosphere where the clean vocals can deliver a catchy melody on top of very simple moody guitar licks. 

I know most of my feedback has been about the first half of this album and the reason is because the second half really doesn’t have a lot of noteworthy things to mention. The two distinct styles initially settle for a pleasant middle point in “Void Essence / Frozen Tears”, with the clean sections being especially memorable. However, the production still takes something away from the harsher melodies, and the track starts a very slow approach towards ending this journey. Whilst never getting close to being bad, the dipping point in the final three songs is felt, as every time I finished this album I was left with very little to say about this closing trio. One repeats the typical post-black 101 formula we’ve mentioned, only far slower and incredibly focused on its pop aspect; one’s a one minute interlude; and to close things off we get a very slow, albeit sonically pleasant closing track. “Departure: Everlasting Dream” does thrive with beautiful orchestral elements that give the feeling of ending a difficult journey and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but it would’ve served the album better had it not felt like we were already out of that tunnel fifteen minutes ago. 

All in all, A Pathway to the Moon delivers a pretty listening experience that’s too front-heavy to really strike a chord with me. The addition of vocals is a success, but Unreqvited still need to learn how to structure an album around them, as the flow of A Pathway to the Moon leaves a bit to be desired.   

Recommended tracks: The Anitmatter, The Starforger
You may also like: Nishaiar, Skyforest, Mare Cognitum, Vestige
Final verdict: 6.5/10

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

Label: Prophecy Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Unreqvited in question is:
– William Melsness (all instruments)

The post Review: Unreqvited – A Pathway to the Moon appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive metal, gothic metal, doom metal
FFO: Katatonia, Pain of Salvation, Anathema, In the Woods…
Country: Norway
Release date: November 2001

Iconic albums can be great for many reasons. They may take us on fantastical journeys, dazzle with virtuosic musicianship, or give voice to feelings we thought nobody else had ever felt. And as metal fans, like most humans, we tend to get excited about things we love, which is why words like “seminal”, “gem”, “masterpiece”, and “underrated” get thrown around like they’re a dime a dozen in the musical discourse. So naturally, I’m going to use all those words in today’s post about Green Carnation.

As an ardent live music fan, I keep a spreadsheet tracking over 300 live metal performances I’ve attended with an obsessive degree of detail. For others, scrolling through this sheet might be a source of some concern regarding my mental state (and the health of my eardrums). But for me, it’s a window into countless reminiscences of fond live music memories. Amongst these, one of the greatest to date took place at ProgPower USA in 2016 where I witnessed Green Carnation performing the entirety of their 2001 album, the sixty-minute one-track wonder Light of Day, Day of Darkness. Though the show took place almost ten years ago¹, the solemn appreciation that I cemented for LoDDoD has remained to this day.

Veterans of the Norwegian progressive metal scene, Green Carnation have drifted across various subgenres since their formation in Kristiansand in 1990: death metal, death-doom, acoustic, hard rock. Light of Day, Day of Darkness sees the band charting a course that touches on elements of progressive, gothic, and doom metal. From the opening bars, the album is brooding and melancholy; otherworldly synths, whispers, and guitars are overlaid with the sound of a baby’s cries. Though there are miles to go and many themes to explore over the next hour, there are no real shifts in style or full stops in the momentum; the direction is set, and the first-rate lineup of Green Carnation members and guests will be our guides.

While he does not hold compositional or lyrical credits for LoDDoD, Kjetil Nordhus’s lead vocal performance nonetheless resonates with dimensions of anger, tenderness, grief, and wonder across LoDDod’s sixty minutes. And he strikes a rare balance, weaving into the instrumental tapestry seamlessly with a poignance that doesn’t demand to be the centre of attention. Indeed, the ensemble of performances from Green Carnation tends toward understatement: there are chugging, down-tempo guitar riffs aplenty, mid-range vocal lines, subtle keyboard touches. This makes the rare extravagant moments like the sprawling, mournful guitar solo at 42:10 feel all the more earned and laden with gut-wrenching emotion. As well, Anders Kobro’s drumming plays a role not necessarily typical of bands in the gothic death/doom sphere. It’s catalytic, insistent; it drives the other instruments forward when they long to linger pensively on a certain theme.

Some of the power in Light of Day, Day of Darkness as an epic lies in the fact that it is not mounted on the shoulders of any grand, fanciful concepts. We aren’t jettisoning humanity off a dying planet into space, or trying to avoid our own death after experiencing mysterious premonitions (with much love to Seventh Wonder, Haken, et al.). Rather, the album is grounded in a realm both soberingly realistic and tragic: it explores founding Green Carnation member and guitarist Tchort’s feelings about the death of his young daughter and the birth of his son. The lyrical path trodden across the album’s sixty minutes passes through peaks and valleys—the wonder and joy of one child’s arrival, soured by the guilt and sadness of remembering the other.

A notable detour from LoDDoD’s main route happens around 33:10, where we seem to fall into the dream conceived by the narrator. Smokey saxophone undulates, parallel to but seemingly a world apart from Synne Larsen’s (ex-In the Woods…) ethereal, mostly wordless vocal performance. In the course of my research (ie., reading Reddit threads) for this post, I was shocked to see so many comments besmirching this section of the song, calling it filler or out of place. For my money, the passage is artfully executed and the inescapable melancholy on display here seems to bubble up to the surface from the same fathomless depths explored throughout the course of Light of Day, Day of Darkness. As we prepare to surface from this polarizing dreamlike detour, a tentative conversation between guitar and saxophone pulls us back to the waking world. Neither one wanting to shake us awake, the two trade gingerly back and forth for a few measures before another chugging riff finally rends the stillness. And this is the elegance of the album and Tchort’s vision: with as many as 600 samples and sixty tracks in the mix, LoDDoD could easily be too much. But the elements are intertwined with such scrupulous attention that whether it’s a guitar solo or a sitar interlude (51:30), each thought flows smoothly into the next.

Nearly twenty-four years after its release, Light of Day, Day of Darkness is a treasure trove of masterfully crafted and emotionally resonant progressive metal. Insouciant attributions of the accolades “gem”, “masterpiece”, and “seminal” aside, Green Carnation are unshakeable from their position on the Mount Rushmore of underrated Norwegian prog bands. (See also: Conception, Pagan’s Mind, and Circus Maximus.) Equally as exciting to me as the opportunity to revisit this wonderful album is the fact that the band is still making music: with rumblings of a new album on the horizon, and a return to ProgPower USA this year, I can only hope that there are many more captivating musical journeys for new and old fans alike to venture on with Green Carnation.

Recommended tracks: Perhaps a controversial pick, but I’ll go with “Light of Day, Day of Darkness”

You may also like: Throes of Dawn, October Falls, Subterranean Masquerade, Communic

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

Label: Prophecy Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Green Carnation was:
– Terje “Tchort” Vik Schei: acoustic guitar, electric guitar
– Bjørn Harstad: lead guitar, slide guitar, ebow
– Stein Roger Sordal: bass
– Anders Kobro: drums
– Kjetil Nordhus: vocals

1. Am I Getting Old? ︎

The post Lost in Time: Green Carnation – Light of Day, Day of Darkness appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive Metal, Melodic Death Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Opeth, Insomnium
Review by: Christopher
Country: Germany
Release date: 4 November, 2022

Dreams are a pivotal human concept; often they seem to describe something deeply personal to us, and sometimes they’re just downright weird, the idiosyncrasies of our subconscious borne out as abstractions that are borderline incomprehensible to others and often to ourselves, too. And yet dreams are a central facet of culture going back centuries, whether used in psychoanalysis or as a narrative device in film and literature. Naturally, musicians draw on dreams too, but to draw on such an explicitly visual phenomenon sonically presents a unique challenge. 

This brings us to the legendary German outfit Disillusion. When they first dropped their fourth album, Ayam, they sat above our metric for underground inclusion (we specialise in bands with under 20k Spotify monthly listeners). But Spotify listeners are fickle and Disillusion have, criminally, dropped back into our underground realms. So I quickly bagsied them for this missed albums feature, much to Zach’s chagrin (Zach, our handsomest reviewer, wrote a great retrospective on their first album Back to Times of Splendor and yes ladies, he’s single).

Ayam is dense, ethereal, hard to grasp. I’ve listened about twenty times, and new depths emerge each time. Much like its central “dreams are oceans” metaphor, Ayam is vast and flowing; benthic dream-presences lurk within its depths waiting to subsume you, insights and emotions dart beneath the surface slippery as fish. The musical journey is reminiscent of that on The Ocean’s Pelagial, which employed a descent through the ocean’s pelagic zones as an analogy for the human condition; Disillusion’s take meanwhile is less obviously structured—we are always adrift in Ayam; be it dream or ocean, we are ever lost.

Ayam presents a welcome symphonic presence, whether it’s the rapturous brass on “Am Abgrund”, the mournful strings on “Driftwood”, or the lone trumpet singing out its lament on “Abide the Storm”—these additions add to that oceanic scope. Indeed, the entire composition has a very symphonic sensibility; it’s hard to think of the music in terms of its constituent instruments so much as one grand orchestration. Nevertheless, many musical moments stand out such as the chaotic shred solo on “Tormento”, the jagged main riff of “Abide the Storm”, and the accented acoustic percussion that opens “Driftwood”. Everything on this record sounds superb, thanks to the infallible ear of the masterful Jens Bogren. Disillusion’s supreme command over their music has been apparent ever since Back to Times of Splendor, but their reliance on self-production has held them back; Bogren lets Ayam shine with piercing lustre. 

Andy Schmidt’s vocal performance is frankly incredible. His cleans have a resonant depth and power and yet a softness, as on the opening of “Am Abgrund”, that acts as a contemplative weapon. But his harshes truly impress. His barked, rhythmic spoken word is clear and punctuative, his lyrics evocatively poetic yet delivered with controlled savagery.

I puzzled over the meaning of Ayam for some time. This isn’t a narrative-led concept album, rather a thematic exploration of an analogy; an evocation of the terrifying underbelly of the subconscious. Our minds remain as unexplored as the planet’s oceans. There are only dream glimpses to be had and questions to be asked, but within that oceanic soulplace there resides both sublimity and terror. “You shall never reach the open sea” opines Schmidt on “Nine Days” and that’s about as close to a conclusion as Ayam gets on the matter. This foretold dreamplace, the self-actualised enigma, is something we will chase forever but never find. We live in its wake, aware of its absence but unable to articulate what it really is. None of us is a totality; the dark matter of the conscious keeps us alien to ourselves. Or maybe I’m reaching; Ayam is an ambiguous, thought-provoking record, very much open to interpretation—I’m sure a dozen listeners would find a dozen different ways to analyse it. Perhaps that’s the highest praise I can offer: that Disillusion have crafted something as confoundingly fascinating, personal and worthy of analysis as our own dreams. 

Disillusion’s masterpiece was a long time coming; they’ve always been great, but hiring Jens Bogren to handle the mix bestows the fathoms of sound and lyrical murkiness that await the prospective listener with palpable depth. To conquer both dreams and oceans in one record is an immense feat, one that Disillusion prove eminently capable of achieving, making Ayam perhaps their best record yet, a grandly ethereal contemplation in sonic form, bobbing on the waves—adrift, alone, and beautiful.  

Recommended tracks: Am Abgrund, Longhope, Abide the Storm
You may also like: Wilderun, The Reticent, Descend
Final verdict: 9/10

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

Label: Prophecy Productions – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook

Disillusion is:
– Andy Schmidt (vocals, guitar)
– Ben Haugg (guitars)
– Robby Kranz (bass, backing vocals)
– Martin Schultz (drums)

The post Missed Album Review: Disillusion – Ayam appeared first on The Progressive Subway.