Style: Progressive death metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Septicflesh, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Strapping Young Lad, Children of Bodom
Country: United States (NY)
Release date: 4 July 2025

What’s in a name? The walls of my music library are lined with bands whose creative output I passed over for years due to their terrible branding. Septicflesh, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Bedsore… the list goes on. I’ll never understand why so many good artists choose to debase their projects by naming themselves after bodily functions or necrotic diseases. While I may be more prudish than many in the metal scene (I judiciously save up swear words for special occasions and avoid them in everyday use), I’ve nonetheless learned that sometimes, you have to set aside preconceptions based on a band’s name, and let the music speak for itself. And who better to come gushing forth from the underground metal scene to help me enact this principle than the campily-named Pissectomy?

Setting aside for a moment the troubling medical implication of a pissectomy (where is the piss going? Does the procedure make you unable to piss, or does it cause a constant stream to be siphoned from your body?), Pissectomy’s name was clearly chosen for shock value. The band’s early output leaned into this, with deliberately subversive and urine-based lyrical themes and a sample-heavy, drugged-out noisegrind style. However, the adage of “let it mellow if it’s yellow” seems to have shaped Pissectomy’s style and restraint over time, as the latest record holds a surprising amount of refinement under the toilet-seat humour.

Pissectomy is nominally a one-man project helmed by Jason Steffen of New York and South Korea¹, but much of new release Electric Elephant Graveyard is brought to life by a cast of hired guns from Fiverr (an online marketplace for freelance service providers) and similar platforms, and the result is intriguingly genre-fluid. The first two tracks on the album are lavishly outfitted in sympho-death grandeur—think of the aforementioned Septicflesh or Fleshgod Apocalypse—but then the orchestra quietly slips out the back before the third track, “Sharkstar”, without so much as a tuba case banging against the doorframe on the way out. Save for a subtle reprise of some strings in album closer “Singularity”, the rest of the album relieves itself of symphonic elements, offering up riffs and licks galore with predominant influences from death metal titans like Cannibal Corpse and Children of Bodom, plus dashes of power, thrash, and prog.

For all of Pissectomy’s crude branding, Electric Elephant Graveyard is surprisingly restrained in its use of urinary humor, and it’s certainly not evident in the music itself. The tracks are layered, and even in a single offering like the seven-minute “Starstorm Omega”, multiple stylistic themes from fantastical power metal pomp to rhythmically itch-scratching, proggy helter-skelter are deployed thoughtfully. If you were not privy to Pissectomy’s subject matter, you could listen to almost the entire album without noticing any overt nephritics. Occasional lyrical groaners like “rest in piss” or “war and piss” are easy enough to miss. The jig is up, however, on the rather overtly-named “Pissrealm Antichrist”, where a layered vocal chorus repeatedly chants “all hail piss and shit”.

With Pissectomy’s freelanced cast of contributors, who exactly deserves credit for the various elements of Electric Elephant Graveyard is cloudy². The vocal duties, for instance, are shared between Steffen himself and at least one guest contributor, Topias Jokipii. Whatever the division of labour, the results are dynamic and versatile. There’s a simperingly evil D&D-grade sorcerer flavour to the spoken word on “Pissrealm Antichrist”, Cannibal Corpse-esque torridly deep pigsqueals on “Sharkstar”, and a gritty clean vocal refrain on “Sharkstar” that sounds like King Diamond pitched down an octave or so out of the screeching falsetto stratosphere. The guitar work, though, might just be number one. Steffen is clearly having a blast, and moments like the indulgently sprawling solo in “Welcome to Dead End” or the tightly coiled, chugging bursts on “Starstorm Omega” demonstrate equal parts laudable musicianship and clever composition.

While there is some level of tonal coherence across Electric Elephant Graveyard, as Pissectomy keeps up a steady flow of momentum, a clearer sense of identity would help the record to better coalesce. Pissectomy is a former noisegrind band blending elements of symphonic, power, death, thrash, and progressive metal into their sound. And while Steffen clearly has reverence for all of these genres, the crossing of the streams can be a bit much. There’s even an acoustic guitar interlude, “Astronomy”, which is lovely but lands rather disjointedly in the album’s entirety. Perhaps some of the vignette-based songwriting from Steffen’s noisegrind roots is hampering the development of a cohesive whole. The individual elements succeed, but a step back to take in the big picture across the album’s forty minutes could help everything stick together.

 If given ten guesses as to what a band named Pissectomy would sound like, I wouldn’t have come close. While I still wouldn’t rush to pop this album on the aux, Electric Elephant Graveyard’s balls-to-the-wall energy, as well as veneration for the various genres influencing Pissectomy’s sound, makes for a surprisingly charming listen. Sometimes, you have to be prepared to flush your assumptions down the drain.

Recommended tracks: Welcome to Dead End, Sharkstar, Singularity
You may also like: Shadecrown, Sigh
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Independent

Pissectomy is:
– Jason Steffen (guitar, vocals)
– Topias Jokipii (vocals)
– People from Fiverr (other assorted instruments)

1. Steffen is currently stationed with the US military in South Korea as a fighter pilot. ︎
2. Like your pee might be if you’re dehydrated. ︎

The post Review: Pissectomy – Electric Elephant Graveyard appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive metal, jazz fusion (instrumental, mostly instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Jacob Collier, Liquid Tension Experiment, Animals as Leaders, Car Bomb, Meshuggah
Country: Germany
Release date: 25 April 2025

Why cover a song? Be it artistic appreciation, a business decision to gain exposure, or out of obligation to the tradition, the cover track is a mainstay for many artists, yet one often relegated to being an album’s bonus track. Bringing cover tracks to the forefront of an album, however, is risky; that comes with the pressure of living up to several of your musical and creative idols. Panzerballett try it—do they match the originals? 

German jazz fusion/prog metal group Panzerballett cover plenty of legendary songs from progressive metal and classical music alike on Übercode Œuvre, putting their signature twist (a whole lot of rhythmic and melodic absurdity) on classics like Meshuggah’s “Bleed,” Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” Planet X’s “Alien Hip Hop,” and Vivaldi’s “Summer.” That is to say, the songs—some of which are already extremely difficult pieces—become unfathomably complicated to the non-music theorizer. I’m sure the guys in Panzerballett would talk about their music in the same way Jacob Collier talks about his, but in a German accent instead of Collier’s whimsical British one—twattishly pretentious while blissfully unaware that theoretical mastery doesn’t translate to being good.

As I see it, there is one main way to critically assess a cover: how does this add to the song’s canon? Panzerballett’s takes on the classics are certainly novel (barring the Planet X one), but they screw up what makes the original songs successful and are, accordingly, entirely terrible. No metal artist needs to cover Vivaldi, it’s been done ad nauseam (sorry, Angel, that includes you, too). One cannot possibly pull off two covers of “Ode to Joy” because they will always be a waste of time; why on God’s green earth would I listen to a prog metal version of one of the most celebrated pieces of music of all time that defeats its elegant simplicity by making it polyphonic, polyrhythmic masturbation? Other choices, such as the “Alien Hip Hop” cover, are even more baffling. Panzerballett take what is undeniably one of the most rhythmically and harmonically complicated progressive metal songs ever and try to make it more challenging to play. At what point does art become an exercise in onanism? That moment is long gone in Panzerballett’s rearview mirror. And I’m afraid the Planet X cover is the clear highlight of Übercode Œuvre because the original song was already good and they don’t change it all that much—a pointless recreation but not bad.

The covers of “Bleed” and “Ode to Joy” (both versions) are among the worst progressive metal tracks I’ve ever heard from capable musicians, a pair of blazing guitar solos from Rafael Trujillo (ex-Obscura, Obsidious) in “Bleed” aside. The Meshuggah cover utilizes annoying horns to create a melody that simply wasn’t in the original song, while the rhythm section plays something in a time signature I couldn’t dream of figuring out—the result sounds as if it were recorded drunkenly despite the instrumental wizardry. Moreover, Panzerballett add atmospheric guitar parts in dissonant chords, ringing out like out of tune bells above the din, heralding the end of good music. Again, I’m sure the harmonic polyphony is genius technically, but it’s more masturabatory than even Jordan Ruddess at his worst.

“What could adding in the motif from William Tell’s ‘Overture’ possibly add to ‘Bleed’?” one might ask. And they’d be justified because it’s eclecticism for eclecticism’s sake. “Ode to Joy (Vocal)” starts promisingly with a warped vision for the track, Andromeda Anarchia’s (Folterkammer, La Suspendida) vocals operatic and eerie, but the track almost instantly devolves into Guantanamo Bay-level torture. While assuredly not actually out of tune and out of time, it sure sounds like it. Between the added phone hold-music jazz, drum solos, and “poorly harmonized,” warbling sopranos, I cannot think of a worse way to sodomize one of the most celebrated pieces of music in history—and that’s before Panzerballett start djenting all over the place.

The original compositions on Übercode Œuvre (yes, it’s not completely a cover album) are ok, fairly run of the mill for this style of fusion prog metal. “Seven Steps to Hell” and “Andromeda” are easily identified strong moments on the album: convoluted and with irritating saxophone and djent parts, but stronger than their surroundings nonetheless. The Ballett are a better ensemble as jazz composers than metal ones (despite the obvious metal pedigree). Their style doesn’t translate to djent and distortion well.
We all like some wank in the prog metal world. I can throw down to freaky microtonality, and I think cover tracks can be fun. But I cannot think of a worse attempt at any of those three things at once than Übercode Œuvre, an offensively terrible listening experience so far up its own ass Jacob Collier might blush.

Recommended tracks: Seven Steps To Hell, Alien Hip Hop, Andromeda
You may also like: La Suspendida, Sarmat, Ckraft, Planet X, Exivious
Final verdict: 2/10

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

Label: independent

Panzerballett is:
Jan Zehrfeld: guitars, vocals
With:
Virgil Donati: drums
Marco Minnemann: drums
Morgan Ågren: drums
Anika Nilles: drums
Florian Fennes: sax
Anton Davidyants: bass
Jen Majura: guitars
Andromeda Anarchia: vocals
Rafael Trujillo: guitars
Sebastian Lanser: drums
Joe Doblhofer: guitar
Chris Clark: vocals
Conny Kreitmeier: vocals
(taken from ProgArchives, I cannot find an official declaration of lineup)

The post Review: Panzerballett – Übercode Œuvre appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive metal, jazz fusion, avant-garde jazz, free jazz, technical death metal (mostly instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: John Coltrane (late era), Weather Report, Imperial Triumphant, John Zorn
Country: New York, United States
Release date: 21 February 2025

Although born out of Western “art music” (i.e. classical and jazz), prog has long shunned a critical aspect of jazz: improvisation. Our favorite bands in the prog and metal scenes are anal with their precise compositions, unwilling to leave a single detail out of their control in an obsessive chasing of perfection. That’s what made the Big Apple’s Sarmat so refreshing when they hit the scene in 2023—although playing something texturally prog metal, the extended live jam session which made up their debut EP Dubious Disk was fully jazz in its improvisational spirit. After a more concentrated, composed tech death release later that year, Sarmat are now back with Upgrade, their second live-in-studio album of improvised fusion metal.

At two tracks and twenty-one minutes, Upgrade is a pocket-sized but powerful statement reaffirming that jazz composition with metal instrumentation can work and should be attempted by more bands. Of course, not all groups have the collective talents of members like Steve Blanco (bass, Imperial Triumphant), Ryan Hale (guitar), and James Jones (drums). That power trio alone present a heroic display on their instruments, contorting modal jazz into a distorted hellscape. Sarmat have other talented collaborators, though, like trumpeters Jerome Burns and Oskar Stenmark, as well as my personal favorite performer on Upgrade, Niko Hasapopoulos on upright bass. The members of this demented jazz collective are clearly all experienced jammers, their playing tight and in sync despite the fluid “compositional” style.

The shorter of the two tracks, “Serum Visions,” is superior to the preceding title track. On “Serum Visions,” Blanco drops his meaty bass for sci-fi synths, allowing for the elegance of the upright bass to clash with the wailing trumpets and power chords, and the synth-laden atmosphere creates a perfect backdrop for Sarmat to spawn their music ex nihilo. “Upgrade” is inferior precisely because of this: it’s less free, more composed. With a long section built around a variation of “Landform” from Determined to Strike (their full-length album), “Upgrade” takes the banger tech death riff and attempts jam variations of it in an unbecoming way. Moreover, Ilya Beklo’s gutturals enter during the last third of the song, making the ending seem completely disjointed from the first two thirds of the track—the vocals sick for a death metal release but more distracting than anything on a proggy release such as this. Their inclusion is frustrating, taking away from the sharp jazz focus and turning to a more Zorn-esque, pretentious eclecticism. The more composed sections suffer next to the organically improvised moments. 

However, what separates Sarmat from the jazz greats of olde is the band’s lack of energy: yes, this group is noisy, benefiting from distortion, but only Jones’ drumming satisfies my craving for the transcendent experience of live free jazz. Upgrade desperately needs more along the lines of his frenetic, chaotic performance. At times, the rest match his intensity—especially Ilya Belko’s haunting screams put through inhuman distortion effects, from there stealthily breaking loose into a dramatic trumpet solo, at 3:40 into “Serum Visions”—but overall, despite the noise, nobody in the group really commands focus. In that sense, Upgrade could benefit from its performers alternating in a roundhouse fashion trading off solos like on Coltrane’s Ascension. Upgrade is too egalitarian with the focus, leading to fewer highlights and not showcasing the performers’ individual excellence. 

Sarmat’s vision is valiant, and Colin Marston’s as-always excellent in-studio production provides the sound with crisp clarity, but the jam doesn’t excite me nearly as much as Dubious Disk did a couple years ago. While the EP isn’t so much an upgrade of Sarmat’s sound, the mission is clear: jazz and metal will collide in improvetory fashion, and Sarmat will lead the charge.

Recommended tracks: Serum Visions
You may also like: Behold the Arctopus, A.M.E.N., Dischordia, Tatsuya Yoshida & Risa Takeda, Electric Masada
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: I, Voidhanger – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

James Jones – Drums: Tracks 1 and 2
Steve Blanco – Bass Guitar: Track 1, Keytar: Track 2
Zachary Blakeslee-Reid – Guitar: Track 1
Ryan Hale – Guitar: Track 2
Niko Hasapopoulos – Arm, Upright Bass: Track  2
Oskar Stenmark – Trumpet: Track 1
Jerome Burns – Trumpet: Track 2
Ilya Belko – Vocals : Track 1

The post Review: Sarmat – Upgrade appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: dissonant death metal, technical death metal, progressive death metal, brutal death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Gorguts, Blood Incantation, Ulcerate, Devourment, Portal, Defeated Sanity
Country: United States-IL
Release date: 25 October 2024

Death metal’s evolution branches into two distinct paths: intelligent complexity or leaden heaviness. The boundaries are pushed from both of these sides. As far as complexity, bands try to one-up who can go fastest (it’s always Archspire) or create the most intricate compositions (Ad Nauseam, for my money), and for heaviness… well, it’s a steamrolling competition, punches thrown as various slams, breakdowns, and the like. Both sides are fun, and they often overlap (see Defeated Sanity, Nile); but that’s usually the tech/br00tal side, not the disso/brutal one. Chicago’s sci-fi death metal aliens Gigan, though, write music that’s firmly between Ulcerate and Devourment, an oppressive, monolithic blend of chaotic and crushing death metal. Is this the ideal blend of smart dissonance and smooth-brained heft? 

Like Ulcerate, Gigan are a three piece whose drummer is the hero: Nate Cotton of Gigan is an absolute monstrous presence behind the kit. While the other instrumentalist (guitar, bass, xylophone, theremin, synthesizers) Eric Hersemann makes a whole lot of noise to create a hazy labyrinth, Cotton goes ham atop it with relentless blast beats and often takes up the focus as a soloist of sorts. “Trans-Dimensional Crossing of the Alta-Tenuis” opens up with three minutes of atmospheric death metal guitars and bass while Cotton beats his drums in endlessly varied pitter-patters and explosive flurries of triplets. Other tracks like “The Strange Harvest of the Baganoids” start similarly, and the violent deluge of percussion is the highlight of Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus. In addition to the ridiculously sick drum fills that permeate the album, vocalist Jerry Kavouriaris complements Cotton well with his percussive barks, and the science fiction tales he recites are engaging and fun.

Speaking of the lyrics, they’re often rather prescient and meta; for example, “Square Wave Cognition” opens with the line, “madness, disorientation and confusion / upended cognition.” This album will cause all of these effects on the listener. The album is complex and shifty like Ulcerate, it also is produced like you’re inside of a cement mixer being thrown around in the pitch black with liquid concrete and is suffocatingly heavy like Devourment. Occasionally Gigan become recognizably tech death like in “Square Wave Subversion” and there are prog flourishes like how Afterbirth are prog—the sci-fi metal classics of theremin and vocoder, specifically—but overall it’s murky and enveloping noise. Gigan utilize all sorts of whooshing sounds, background synths, and distorted guitars to fill the space, and it’s a weighty experience that drowns you in sound.

I certainly want my death metal to be overwhelmingly heavy, but overall Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus is a collage of noise from which it’s almost impossible to extract melodies or memorable riffs, even the breakdowns being lost. The worst offender is the ten-minute centerpiece “Emerging Sects of Dagonic Acolytes” which takes a leap beyond the overwhelmingly chaotic death metal straight into several minutes of swirling noise—A LOT of swirling, disorienting, filthy noise. Noise can be good, creating chaos and the dramatic soundscapes this sort of music needs, but when it takes away from the death metal parts, it becomes a problem for me. Thus, while the inclusion of the sound effects and overly layered instruments are acceptable and would be a neat songwriting tactic to close out a track, the extended noise sections kill the album’s flow, making sections of the album drag on far too long (the doomy intro to closer “Ominous Silhouettes Cast Across Gulfs of Time” is another). This is Portal’s approach to extreme metal, especially on their most recent releases, so fans of the Aussies should love this, but I can’t count myself among them. Ironically, despite being so dense I can hardly figure out what’s going on at several points, I think Gigan suffer from repetitious bloat more than anything else. 

In theory, Gigan should hit me like two continental plates colliding and make me put on my thinking cap while I beg for more aural punishment, but Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus can’t decide to what degree to be mercurial. I lose the plot in the buzzsaw of the guitars and the elaborate compositions, but I never find myself bewildered and beaten—just mildly bored waiting for the next distinct solo or riff, really anything that rises out of the turbulent murk. This album is certainly an anomaly, but it won’t be my go-to for brutal dissonance.

Recommended tracks: Square Wave Subversion, Katabatic Windswept Landscapes, Erratic Pulsitivity and Horror
You may also like: Artificial Brain, Mithras, Flourishing, Wormed, Diskord, Fractal Generator, Mitochondrion, Ingurgitating Oblivion, Warforged, Anachronism, Infernal Coil, Afterbirth, Wormhole
Final verdict: 6/10

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

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Gigan is:
Eric Hersemann – All electric, acoustic and bass guitars, theremin, otomatone, synths, lyrics, concepts and madness.

Nathan Cotton – Drums, percussion and Sunny weather.

Jerry Kavouriaris – Vocals and violence.

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