Style: Power metal, progressive metal (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Stratovarius, Queensrÿche, Fates Warning
Country: Texas, United States
Release date: 27 June 2025

As any musician knows, actually writing music is only part of the album cycle. To craft a successful record, deep thought must be given to the recording process, the mixing, and the mastering, otherwise there’s a much slimmer chance of your vision truly coming to life. Texas prog metallers Transcendence were quite cognizant of this when penning their planned-for-2020 record, Nothing Etched in Stone. Intended to be a singular piece, recording and mastering issues surfaced from the constraints of the pandemic. After five years, the group has finally gotten the chance to re-record and distribute the album, with the caveat of splitting it into two parts. Does Nothing Etched in Stone, Part I etch itself into the progressive metal monolith?

Nothing Etched in Stone effuses a classic heavy metal sensibility—glimpses of Queensrÿche emerge in vocalist Brian Dixon’s timbre and in the straightforward, riff-heavy approach to songwriting. Choruses are the compositional focal point, as the surrounding sections serve as a buildup to these moments led along by the vocals. In many cases, Transcendence feels more closely aligned with power metal than it does progressive metal with its relatively compact runtimes, focus on melody over technicality, and energetic sensibilities.

The lack of showboating or complex song structures is not to say, however, that Nothing Etched in Stone is a dull or featureless listen. The vocals in particular are a standout, Dixon imbuing his performance with charisma and energy. On “Take Control”, he takes on a Timo Kotipelto-style (Stratovarius) approach full of excitement and large melodies, while “One Fear” interplays djenty grooves with brooding vocal lines. Closing ballad “Ruins… Before the Dawn” best showcases Dixon’s versatility, as he is given room to both pull back and punctuate: the harpsichord plays nicely with his varied performance, shining a light on the more delicate aspects of his voice and juxtaposing the more in-your-face lines from previous tracks with an impassioned and heartfelt atmosphere.

Ironically, though, many of the tracks in between end up falling flat precisely because of Dixon’s energy. Despite his charisma and distinctive timbre, there is a sense of homogeneity as his execution sits at a single level across almost all of Nothing Etched in Stone. “Ruins… Before the Dawn” is the central exception to this rule, indicating that Transcendence are fully capable of writing dynamic and layered pieces if they so choose to. Maintaining the excitement of the first two tracks is challenging without any variation; in the case of Nothing Etched in Stone, little room is given for more delicate, restrained passages and virtually no extra oomph is given to climaxes. As a consequence, the record is rendered a bit stale for most of its runtime.

The backing instruments don’t fare much better, often lacking the charisma or prominence of the vocals. Transcendence’s chorus-focused approach means that in many instances, the music becomes an afterthought, particularly when taking into account the overabundant mid-paced tempo comprising the bulk of the album’s runtime. The pacing is also done no favors by the relatively pointless intro track, nor is it helped by the two consecutive interludes before “Ruins”, which do little more than derail the album’s compositional arc. However, the band manage to break out of their confines on occasion, whether it be the surprising instrumental switch-up halfway through “Last Solstice”, the melodic, high-energy guitar leads on “Take Control”, or the temperamental djent grooves on “One Fear”. Additionally, “Voices in the Dark” features energetic guitarwork along with a solo which interplays nicely with the vocals, and the use of harpsichord and a bass-forward chorus on “Ruins” adds a tinge of baroque flavor. 

More so than remastering and perfecting the recording, Nothing Etched in Stone, Part I needs to be tweaked to make room for more exploration of highs and lows. Were the band to utilize more dynamics by giving space to recede in intensity or push its sound a bit further, the record would be a thoroughly enjoyable slab of chunky power-prog. Nothing Etched in Stone is evidence of Transcendence‘s potential as songwriters, especially when executing the dreaded ballad, but unfortunately, these highlights are marred by an overall homogeneous listen. Knowing that this is only half of the whole piece and pacing issues have already emerged gives me concern for the fate of the upcoming Part II, but I will remain optimistic—nothing is etched in stone, after all.

Recommended tracks: Ruins… Before the Dawn, One Fear, Take Control
You may also like: Pathosray, Conception, Enbound, Lancer
Final verdict: 6/10

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

Label: Cosmic Fire Records – Facebook | Official Website

Transcendence is:
– Kirk Wood (bass, vocals)
– Derrek Edwards (drums)
– Jeff Ford (guitars)
– John Howser (keyboards, piano)
– Brian Dixon (vocals)

The post Review: Transcendence – Nothing Etched in Stone, Part I appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Art rock, progressive pop, electro-industrial (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Radiohead, Invisible, The Smile, Aphex Twin
Country: Texas, United States
Release date: 11 April 2025

In music, with experimentation comes freedom. I know, no shit, right? But hear me out. Any piece an artist creates establishes a context for their later works: how much less of a disappointment would Obscura‘s latest trash fire have been were it not for their back catalog of tech death masterpieces? And how surprising would the uplifting post-rock of Anathema‘s The Optimist have been without their extensive history of moody, lugubrious alt rock? Wholly disinterested in comparisons to their older works, progressive rock legends The Mars Volta took this truism to its logical conclusion on their 2022 self-titled LP, completely eschewing the progressive rock and post-hardcore of their early career for Caribbean-flavored art pop. With such a radical shift in sound, how do you even create a context in which to understand a piece? The quick answer is, you can’t easily, and you’re forced to look at the artist through fresh eyes to be able to say anything particularly meaningful or interesting. With their new groundwork laid, The Mars Volta have the freedom to experiment however the hell they want, making a firm statement that they are untethered from their past as a progressive post-hardcore mainstay. What do they do with this newfound freedom on latest release, Lucro Sucio; Los Ojos del Vacío (Dirty Profit; The Eyes of the Void)?

Further distancing themselves from their post-hardcore sensibilities, Lucro Sucio sits closer to Radiohead‘s Kid A with added touches of latin jazz, electro-industrial à la Death Grips, and Aphex Twin-flavored ambient/IDM. Tense-but-subdued instrumentation, effect-laden vocals, and a surrealist bent create the feeling of traversing a trepidatious and vast steppe that gets intermittently swallowed in psychedelia. Tracks like “Reina Tormenta” (Storm Queen) and “Alba del Orate” (Dawn of the Madman) urge along frenetic percussion while other pieces are happy to indulge in dirging, weightless lethargy, such as “Maullidos” (Mews) and “Voice in my Knives”. Keyboards are also prominent, acting as the main melodic thread alongside Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s vocals. Lucro Sucio‘s tracks come together as a singular piece that flows from moment to moment, attached by interstitial asides and moved along by textural exploration.

While verse-chorus structures do manifest on tracks like “Morgana” and “The Iron Rose”, their presence is secondary and almost incidental in comparison to the use of texture as a tool for progression. “Enlazan la Tinieblas” (The Darkness Binds), for example, touts a subdued maximalism thanks to its generous use of electronic and organic sounds in a relatively hushed framework. Little to no negative space is left as every bit of sonic real estate is occupied by a percussive symphony performed by a thousand skittering bugs; by its end, the bevy of layers capitulates to overblown industrial bells, all of the flitting blips and bleeps completely overtaken in a blinding and inescapable light. A segue through bizarre looped voice effects leads into following track “Mictlán” (The Underworld), which responds to this textural complexity by stripping it all away and opening the space up for glowing and minimalist ambience under Bixler-Zavala’s vocals. Some tracks even squeeze both approaches into their comparatively short runtimes: “Cue the Sun” is fairly open and spacious, keeping its textures in restraint until a chaotic and jazzy instrumental break bullies its way into the otherwise tranquil atmosphere.

The backbone that allows Lucro Sucio to explore texture without completely losing focus is the use of a subtle flow, consistently revisiting a handful of atmospheres. Opener “Fin” establishes an ethereal and tranquil sensibility for tracks like “Mictlán”, “Voice in My Knives”, and “Morgana” to safely return to after the more turbulent explorations on “Enlazan la Tinieblas”, “Alba del Orate”, and “Detrás la Puerta Dorada” (Behind the Golden Door). Additionally, small interludes help to bridge otherwise unrelated tracks through the use of repetitive and extended sections that fade slowly between ideas. “Poseedora de mi Sombra” (Possessor of my Shadow) tethers “Voice in My Knives” to “Celaje” (Cloudscape) by beginning with the languid atmospherics of “Voice”, but becomes gradually encompassed by a lopsided jazz break that ends in keyboard flourishes hinting at the main melodic ideas of “Celaje”. However, some tracks only work as a segue due to their lack of direction: “Detrás la Puerta Dorada” feels like a spiritual successor to “Five per Cent for Nothing” off of Yes‘ Fragile, a short burst of chaotic chords and staggered meter in a frantic jazz framework. There’s a shocking amount going on, but it’s too cacophonous to make any sense of, and so the track only really works to bridge “Un Disparo al Vacío” (A Shot Into the Void) and “Maullidos”.

Lucro Sucio‘s most captivating tracks have a self-contained progression while working within the record’s larger context: “Celaje” appears as a relatively simple and languid track at first blush, but closer inspection reveals trippy time changes and subtle shifts in mood. Introduced with slow rhythms and vocals drenched in watery reverb, increasingly frequent drum fills pair with a shredding organ until the song opens up massively through spacey keyboards. The track then slows down into plaintive vocal melodies underlaid by sparse but thumping bass before being suddenly pulled back into its establishing idea, expertly transitioning from section to section despite its short runtime. “Un Disparo al Vacío” goes through a similar progression, starting with forward percussion and building into a fervent vocal performance with a killer guitar riff. Unfortunately, the guitar is held back by the subsequent quiet drum production, which—while still quite captivating—stops this ‘drop’ of sorts from having the staggering punch it could have had.

Despite a stellar flow and willingness to revel in its atmospheres, Lucro Sucio‘s focus on texture can sometimes make memorability a challenge. Like trying to recall an exciting dream that continues to fade from your consciousness, it’s often easier to remember the emotions associated with a track than it is to remember any specific melodies or moments. Catchy vocal lines help to anchor compositions and expansive synth chords immediately bring the listener back to Earth after a hallucinatory aside, but these aren’t much more than snippets in the grand scheme of the record. Ironically enough, Lucro Sucio’s exceedingly smooth progression is quite difficult to map out because of how heavily the album leans into its hazy, surreal aesthetic: is that track a reprise, or is it just similar enough to an earlier moment that it activates the same neurons?¹ One gets the sense that the record is intentionally oblique and standoffish, unwilling to be understood except by its most dedicated listeners.

Lucro Sucio; Los Ojos del Vacío sets itself far apart from anything in The Mars Volta‘s back catalog, fully embracing the newfound freedom in their refreshed songwriting approach. While glimpses of their core sound are undoubtedly present, the use of texture as a driving musical force and the consolidation of each track into a free-flowing singular piece shows an eagerness to experiment even after two-plus decades of collaboration. Lucro Sucio is mysterious, engaging, and sonically rich, and despite some missed opportunities and struggles with memorability, it’s difficult to see the record as anything but a successful and artistically whole experiment. The Eyes of the Void stared, and The Mars Volta confidently stared back.

tRecommended tracks: Celaje, Un Disparo al Vacío, Reina Tormenta/Enlazan las Tinieblas, Cue the Sun
You may also like: Kayo Dot, Bend the Future, The Mercury Tree
Final verdict: 7.5/10

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

Label: Clouds Hill Music – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

The Mars Volta is:
– Cedric Bixler-Zavala (vocals)
– Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (guitars)
– Eva Gardner (bass)
– Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez (percussion)
– Leo Genovese (keyboards, piano, saxophone)
– Linda-Philoméne Tsoungui (drums)

1. This actually happened to me on my first ten or so listens of Lucro Sucio: I had a ‘Mandela Effect’ moment with “Morgana”, as I could have sworn it was reprising ideas from earlier in the album. Upon closer inspection, it’s the first time that those ideas appear anywhere, an experience I’ve never had with a record. ︎

The post Review: The Mars Volta – Lucro Sucio; Los Ojos del Vacío appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

No artist credited

Style: darkwave, singer-songwriter (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Oceans of Slumber, Dead Can Dance
Country: Texas, United States
Release date: 21 February, 2025

With each release, Oceans of Slumber continue to be possibly the most frustrating band in all of the prog sphere for me. On paper, their sound should be incredible, and every member of the band has more than enough talent to make masterpieces, Between ever-shifting genre conventions, production that toes the line between mediocre and outright bad, and albums that are far too long for their own good, I just can’t seem to make them stick. They have moments of fleeting brilliance, like ‘Decay of Disregard’ from 2020’s The Banished Heart and the title track of Where Gods Fear To Speak, where I feel an incredible band just waiting to poke through. This all being said, why do I have such a fixation and frustration with them in particular? There are plenty of middling prog bands I could furrow my brow at, so why them?

The reason is Cammie Beverly has a voice that can reduce even the manliest of metal dudes to tears. She is, indisputably—and even with the reputation OoS holds in my book—one of my favorite clean vocalists in the entire scene. She adds a soulfulness that I don’t often find in prog cleans, and her band knows that well. The Banished Heart continues to be my favorite effort due to the sheer number of songs that let Cammie shine, combined with the band’s most varied and creative song selection, even if the album is overly long.

Since I’m trying to expand my horizons a bit (see, I’m not reviewing prog death!), I figured this would be the perfect album to sink my teeth into. At a measly twenty-eight minutes, House of Grief is dwarfed by even the shortest OoS album, and to me, that’s a big plus in its favor. Another positive is every song is chock full of the siren-like croons and soulful musings Cammie Beverly is known for. I can’t knock the vocals on this album, even if I tried my very hardest to find a flaw, but House of Grief suffers from the exact same problem as every Oceans of Slumber album.

Take the album’s title track and opener for example: a very pretty song in its own right, yet completely propped up by a vocal powerhouse to a fault. A melancholic piano and simple drum beat drive the song, save for the strings near the middle, but it all floats around in limbo, and before I know it, most songs are over before I feel they’ve started. ‘For the Sake of Being’ dashes this fault for most of its four-minute runtime, the track arguably the album’s standout, with an electronic drone and string plucking eliciting as much Dead Can Dance as it does a calmer Massive Attack. However, the building crescendo towards the song’s back half builds to nothing, leaving me feeling as though this was a repurposed OoS clean section.

This album has no through line, just like every OoS album. All twenty-eight minutes of this album glide by, with varying standout moments in between, but nothing holds it all together. A collection of incredibly pretty songs, melancholic atmosphere, all riding on Beverly’s vocal talent and that alone. The choral refrains of ‘House of Grief’ and ‘Paraffin’ sound undeniably similar, with the latter adding a bit more dramatic flair; but by the time I’ve reached that point, I’ve already found that the album lacked the variance or creativity that make certain Oceans of Slumber songs click.

‘Another Room’ is yet another standout, mixing up the tempo near the beginning before letting Cammie unleash the bluesy wails that every fan of hers loves. But it falls right back into the same beginning section right after, making the entire song feel half-baked and unfinished, especially given the short runtime. There’s nothing that makes me want to come back to this album, which would be less frustrating if this were someone with a fraction of the talent, but Beverly could command so much more attention. I find the standout moments fleeting between even more moments of sullen plodding, which I shouldn’t be saying about the driving force of an incredibly popular and well-respected prog band.

Like I’ve said this entire review, I can only walk away from this with a sigh of disappointment. I was hoping that Cammie Beverly had a project I could hold up high in the musical archives of my brain. Her voice continues to be one of the best in the scene—and continues to be wasted on albums that have little to no overall vision. A clear display of vocal talent, which is basically her on every Oceans album, isn’t enough to win me over. Without anything else to truly talk about, this record feels mostly empty to me. 28-minutes of music that floats along without much of a highlight anywhere to be found. With the sheer weight of Beverly’s voice, and her many, many years composing music, all I can remain is indifferent to this album. 

Recommended tracks: For the Sake of Being, Paraffin, Another Room
You may also like: Marjana Semkina, Ophelia Sullivan, Exploring Birdsong
Final verdict: 5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

Cammie Beverly is:
– Cammie Beverly (everything)

The post Review: Cammie Beverly – House of Grief appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive Metal, Post-hardcore, Jazz Fusion (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Thank You Scientist, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Mars Volta
Country: Texas, United States
Release date: 14 September 2024

Jazz fusion has a reputation for being slick, cool-as-a-cucumber, and generally uplifting. Take examples like the ultra-clean backdrops of the Local on the 8s segment on the US’s Weather Channel, the slew of Japanese fusion that ranges from Fox Capture Plan’s exhilarating piano pyrotechnics to Shigeru Suzuki’s tranquil Pacific island-inspired new music, or the upbeat nightlife aesthetic conjured by video game music such as the Twilight City theme from Wave Race 64, all of the above exuding optimism and an overall joie de vivre. However, our more studied listeners know that there is a seedy underbelly to fusion, found in places like the “waiting room of hell” jazz utilized on Kayo Dot’s “Vision Adjustment to Another Wavelength” or the manic dissociation on The Mars Volta’s “Cassandra Gemini.” Texas-based Euphonia fall much closer to the latter camp, immediately throwing the listener into a dark swirling abyss in the first few seconds of debut Euphonia: is the album a euphonic experience as advertised despite its unsettling first impressions, or does Euphonia live solely in cacophony?

The best way to describe Euphonia’s style is “weaponized fusion”: similar to The Dillinger Escape Plan before them, Euphonia utilize frenetic jazzy ideas in a metal framework to articulate complex negative emotions, with tracks like “Cacophony” and “Bug On Back” pinballing the listener around jagged and intense passages, other tracks conveying lyrics through creaky vocals about estranged love and self-frustration. However, unlike Dillinger, Euphonia spends much of their time in instrumental pieces with less than half of Euphonia’s tracks featuring vocals, and when they are used, they are rarely if at all harsh, save for a scream at the end of “It’s a Confession” and another near the end of “Decompression Sickness.” Euphonia take time to break outside of their “weaponized fusion” mold as well with quiet math rock pieces (“This Isn’t Just a Prayer”), smooth jazz contemplations (“Springtail”), and lamenting post-hardcore (“Decompression Sickness”).

The imagery conjured by Euphonia is heavily influenced by its pervasive tension and overarching sadness, the sound of waking up intermittently through the night from bad dreams, taking enough time to stare at the moon through your window and recoup your senses before being tossed into the next nightmare. In Euphonia’s beginning moments, “Bug On Back” rattles the listener around frantic drumwork and tense pulsating guitars before tumbling into a featureless void; follow-up “Euphony” teeters back and forth between paranoid saxophone flourishes and glimmers of calmness and peace before the listener is jarred awake on “This Isn’t Just a Prayer,” surrounded by little but a dark bedroom and the sound of your own thoughts. And like a bad dream, the experience morphs around itself in ways that are frightening and difficult to understand, occasionally to Euphonia’s detriment when the more chaotic passages give little to anchor the listener. Faint glimpses of optimism certainly make themselves known, but the oppressive atmosphere ensures these moments are few and far between.

“It’s a Confession,” despite being the shortest track here, ends up being the most engaging: beginning with a brief descent into deconstructed Thank You Scientist-flavored madness, the track quickly coalesces into intense and angular grooves before soaring triumphantly into an Agent Fresco-style reprise of “This Isn’t Just a Prayer,” proving to be the most exciting and climactic moment of Euphonia. The well-defined conclusion helps to give the song a sense of progression despite its nonlinear structure, especially in comparison to many other tracks which are given a bit too much space to play and end up feeling unfocused; the explosive songwriting on “Confession” wholly prevents this. Moreover, the intense instrumentals imply necessity for a more powerful vocal delivery, and as a consequence lines are delivered with more conviction than when delivered in the more breathy vocal style, even topping the track off with a cathartic scream. In less than two minutes, Euphonia manage to speedrun all the high points of their style and deliver the best vocal performance on the album.

Though credit has to be given for the clever interplay of motifs and ideas throughout Euphonia, creating a remarkable sense of cohesion in the piece as a whole despite the chaos, on a moment-to-moment basis, the music can be a little difficult to follow. Even after multiple listens, song structures feel inscrutable and loose at best: there’s never any bad moments by any means, but there’s often very little that ties individual tracks together, a particularly glaring problem on the instrumentals, which aren’t granted the benefit of being grounded by vocals. The biggest exception is instrumental “Springtail,” which slowly evolves its ideas and satisfyingly marinates in its tranquil mood. Moreover, the vocal performance is not exactly my cup of tea: again, there’s nothing bad about the vocal performance, but the two main vocal tracks “This Isn’t Just a Prayer” and “Decompression Sickness” mostly reside in a breathy and too-close-for-comfort vocal style that detracts from the music. I much prefer the full-throated performance on “It’s a Confession,” and would love to see further incorporation of this vocal style in future work over the delicate breathy style on other tracks.

Euphonia are no strangers to irony, as “euphonic” is not the first word I would use to describe their chaotic mix of progressive metal and jazz fusion. It’s clear from the performances on Euphonia that they are having fun with it, too, despite the dread-inducing atmosphere that sits over the album. Unfortunately, the music’s chaotic nature works more against it than it does for it, indulging in labyrinthine song structures that quickly lose the plot, and when the songwriting is more restrained, problems with the vocal performance surface, leaving me in a bit of a bind with Euphonia as a whole. I love the ideas presented here, but Euphonia have a bit of workshopping to do to really perfect their sound.

Recommended Tracks: It’s a Confession, Springtail, Decompression Sickness
You may also like: Poh Hock, Intercepting Pattern, Consider the Source, Exivious
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

Euphonia is:¹
– Ezra Rodriguez
– David Alvarez
– Patrick McNally

1. The band is listed out on their bandcamp, but it is not indicated on their websites who performs what. Please reach out if you know more! ︎

The post Review: Euphonia – Euphonia appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Hi guys! It’s truly an honor to be speaking with such legends of prog! To get us started, how did you experience the 80s metal scene at large as a young band playing at the same time as Slayer, Celtic Frost, Venom, and Death? I figure that you have better insight than anybody! What are some of your favorite memories from the olden days of metal?

Jason: Our young minds were overblown with excitement, as we somehow got the call for the opening slots for a lot of the up and coming groundbreaking bands. Celtic Frost, Voivod, Trouble, King Diamond, Anthrax and more. We were having a blast. We just did our thing and then loaded out and enjoyed witnessing bands that rose to staggering heights throughout the years. Fun times for sure.

Ron: I remember lots of gigs with WatchTower, Helstar and S. A. Slayer. I was in S. A. Slayer at this time. We had the infamous Slayer vs. Slayer gig in San Antonio. That was probably the highlight for me.

Doug: For sure, some of our mid-1980s shows in Texas at long-gone but iconic venues like the Ritz in Austin and the Cameo in San Antonio are great memories. Going back to the beginning, we had a blast playing local parties, with a mix of some of our very early original songs and a lot of cover tunes by Rush, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon, Raven and all of the incredible bands from that era.

I’ve seen you refer to your vocals as “pissed off Geddy Lee” before: were Rush a big influence on you, and, if so, what’s your favorite Rush album? Which other progressive bands inspired you to break the boundaries of metal at that point in 1984/85?

Jason: I love the first six records by Rush; 2112 might be my “go to” Rush record, but the things they were doing that were even just a bit more ‘rock n roll’ I still enjoy to this day. By the time they reached Moving Pictures, another great record that jumped the line between prog metal and radio friendly rock, I was already starting to get into weirder and heavier metal. By the time 1983 came, it was more about Euro metal and, above all, Bay Area thrash. The new wave of British Heavy metal encouraged me to stick to the rock n roll vibe in my voice, but also to go beyond and try things. Venom and then Raven, with guttural punk throaty stuff and then super high twisted screeching, I tried to mix. 

Ron: Rush is my favorite band of all time. Just like Jason, the first albums all the way up to Moving Pictures. Signals had a bit too much keyboards, so that’s when I drifted off. My favorite Rush albums are 2112, All The World’s A Stage, A Farewell To Kings and Hemispheres. Rush was also the band that introduced me to writing music with Morse Code (“YYZ”) which led to writing with all the alphabet, phone numbers, names, street addresses, etc… and later all 12 notes (12-tone). So that all pretty much destroyed my way of musically thinking LOL. I also listened to Al Di Meola quite a bit.

Doug: Rush was definitely the biggest influence for me. I remember listening to A Farewell to Kings for the first time and it was life-changing, pretty much what made me start playing. The period between All The World’s A Stage through Exit…Stage Left was just unmatched, an incredible band at the top of their game. I’d probably choose Hemispheres as my all-time favorite album. Some other progressive bands like King Crimson, UK, and the Bill Bruford solo albums with Jeff Berlin were also influential.

I have also seen critics hate your “pissed off Geddy Lee” vocals. Have any creative insults been directed at Watchtower? And are there any creative compliments that have stayed with you?

Jason: The “insults” were rather expected. I was barely singing at that early point, it took a bit to figure out how to do what I was trying to do with any real power. So, then to get spit at for how crazy I wanted my vocals to be with the crazy riffs I was writing melodies over, I took it with a grain of salt. I still listen to John from Raven and lots of old Geddy Lee. It’s wild how those guys just took what Plant, and Halford and Ian Gillan and the like, to a crazy psychotic new level. So, if I got thrown out, maybe they dealt with some haters, too.Ron: That all goes with the territory. Do something that’s not too common and you get crucified for it. Since I love Geddy’s voice, anybody who says Jason sounds like a pissed off Geddy, I’d take that as a compliment. I remember the first time I heard Jason’s vocals on the Energetic Disassembly songs, I pictured this demented looking gigantic rat with humongous balls screaming his ass off while holding a microphone. And yes, that’s a compliment. I remember some magazine reviews of WatchTower mentioned that we couldn’t write songs, that it was just a bunch of notes. I guess since we didn’t have common structures for songs, they had a hard time grabbing on to something.

Doug: It definitely seemed to be a “love it or hate it” thing. There are a couple of one-star reviews of Control and Resistance on Amazon that are pretty funny. I think one of them said something like, with that album progressive metal had hit an evolutionary dead-end like a two-headed fish, LOL.

WatchTower’s influence has been instrumental to the formation of the progressive metal world, inspiring big names such as Dream Theater, Symphony X, Cynic, Atheist, and Devin Townsend and continuing to inspire new bands. How does it feel to look upon an entire genre and hear your influence on its development?

Jason: That part of the story is, was, completely unexpected. Discovered early by a few folks, Chuck Schuldiner, Gene Hoglan, Tom Warrior and Mike Portnoy, who are some of my heroes who truly have helped create and keep alive the ideas of keeping heavy music/ loud rock music from becoming stagnant, they all carry or carried the flag for us. Mind blown again. We were just kids.

Ron: It’s really cool for me when I see so many kids on youtube playing songs that I’ve written and/or recorded, whether it’s songs by WatchTower, Blotted Science, Spastic Ink or solo material. I also totally dig it when a younger band comes to town and I sometimes end up on their guest list and I get to hang out with these kids.

Doug: It’s not at all anything we could have expected when we were writing those songs! 

Where’d the band name come from? It’s snappy and memorable.

Jason: I believe Doug came up with that, if memory serves me correct. I love it. There is the idea of an observation post, and the reports cannot always be good. Usually the lyrics and music were all together attempts to destroy mediocrity. It also had the message that art should be fun and wild and not just a painting of some fruit in a bowl.

Doug: I saw the word watchtower in a book at school, and it just kind of stuck in my head, and when we needed a name it just fell into place. It’s a little unusual but it goes along with the idea that even in the early days we observed and wrote about things going on in the world.

Do you prefer hyper-technical music in your daily listening as a contrast to what you perform yourself, and/or do you prefer playing it? Who do you all listen to regularly?

Jason: I listen to everything, and then again, I listen to nothing. Music is a life for me that never ends. So, after working on music, teaching music, or mixing, etc, I do not want to hear much. I have to change gears often. So, to be truthful, I listen to lots of classic rock. Maybe yacht rock.

Ron: Same here. I listen to all sorts of things. Since I teach guitar, I have to learn and play all different kinds of music. Some of the newer/current guitarists and bands are doing some really creative things, I just wish there was more focus on bands rather than all of these individual accolades, especially with guitarists. I recently saw Entheos live and they blew my socks off.

Doug: I’m all over the place with the music I listen to. There are good songwriters and good musicians in every genre and it just depends on whatever mood I’m in. Sometimes it’s stuff I grew up with like Rush, sometimes it’s newer bands like Knower.

Being in and out of a band for decades I’m sure you’ve accumulated a handful of stories from the studio and on the road: any favorites?

Jason: Well, stories, I don’t know where to start, or how interesting they would be, and another way to say that would be, wait for my book!  I have learned about how to perform, record and write and teach music, from all of my experiences. Getting to work with some of the people I looked up to growing up, has been a cool trip and an honor.

Ron: That’s a loaded question but I guess a highlight (lowlight) for me was on the WatchTower European tour in ’90 we had a few gigs where we played in our underwear. The gig in Rotterdam is online. Another lowlight was my knee going out of place twice at my 3^rd WatchTower gig.  

Doug: A particular show that stands out for me was a show we played in Dortmund, Germany as we were finishing up recording Control and Resistance in Berlin. It seemed like everyone we met had driven a long distance to see us, mostly only knowing our music from the tape-trading scene. It was really mind-blowing to us that anyone even knew who we were, just some random band from Texas that had never been overseas before.

You guys have been a band for quite a while, and prog metal’s fanbase is more diverse than it’s ever been thanks to the internet. How do you view prog metal’s developments over the years—from Dream Theater to djent to whatever Polyphia’s doing, the genre has undoubtedly diversified. How do you view the development of progressive metal and of music in general?

Jason: Honestly, I feel a bit out of touch. Polyphia is incredible, and the fact that they came from something…what was that? I feel that the most barbaric thrash, or the sludgiest dirge metal, comes from something else. When it was created by a small group of players coming together to make noises that fit together so well is freaky and beautiful. So, It has to be my honest answer, that mind bending specifics of the genre, of what mean progressive, I am at a loss these days. Meaning, I just cannot keep up with the proggers!

Ron: Well, it’s definitely changing. I guess that would happen over a number of decades. Again, due to the internet I think there’s too much individualism happening. Some of these top players on the net aren’t even in bands, and that’s what it used to be all about.

Doug: Like Jason, I’m probably a little out of touch with all the latest hot prog bands, but I know I’ve heard some pretty crazy and impressive music over the years. There are some phenomenal young musicians and bands in the scene.

This one’s for Ron, but I’m curious what his musical background is to perform how he did in 1989 on Control and Resistance and then a few years later on legendary releases with Spastic Ink and Blotted Science. I’d also love to hear from the man himself if he can elaborate on how he has such a unique style in metal: any song with Ron is instantly recognizable. What’s the secret behind the tone? I also know he builds his own guitars: does he view himself as a tinkerer of a guitarist? What’s your process with regards to building your own instruments? 

Ron: Most of the stuff that I’ve written over the past few decades has been focused around writing with 12 note systems. I even have a few apps out that set up rows and progressions using all 12 notes and create backing tracks. I’m writing a book right now on my 12-note technique writing, hopefully done by the end of the year. As far as building my own guitars, I just got tired of playing the same shaped guitars that too many players play, and came up with my own design and specs. Would be cool to have my own line of guitars one of these days, but no sign of that as of yet.  

You all were not only the most technical and progressive metal ever at the point of your debut, and you were also mostly teenagers! Did Watchtower have aspirations/expectations on being career musicians or was your success a surprise?

Jason: It is [not] always easy to recall our plan, because I do not remember having one at all. Speaking for myself, I was so happy to just play loud music with people I adored, who were as happy as I was just rehearsing the same songs over and over. It did not even matter if it was a cover song, or an older original piece, or something we had just come up with. Just to be creating sound, creating something from nothing, by banging on wood and wire, was and still is, the attraction.

Ron: I think I’ve always wanted to be a career musician, but more of an artist who creates releases based on concepts, and evolving from album to album. That’s mostly due to Rush, who with every album went in a different direction. Spastic Ink was set up to have more albums based on the ‘Ink Complete’ and ‘Ink Compatible’ concept. Blotted Science was also set up with ‘The Machinations Of Dementia’ and ‘The Animation Of Entomology’. Too bad both projects lasted only two albums. I had so many more ideas for concepts that just never happened.

Doug: Honestly, I don’t think we thought super far ahead as teenagers, but it just seemed like something we’d keep doing since it was such a big part of our lives.  

Rick: I can’t say I ever really had a plan, beyond playing more gigs and keeping the momentum going as much as possible. Being a “path of least resistance” (pun intended) kind of person, and without any specific goals for the band or for myself musically, I never really had any big dreams. Just plugging away and enjoying the experience was enough. As I got older I realized that I wasn’t driven to become a career musician, being more of a dabbler than a serious student of the art.

How early did each of you pick up your chosen instruments given your abundant skill at such an early age?

Jason: I got my first bass guitar at age 12. As early as age 9, I was figuring out some scales on an old stand up piano. I never applied much of my discovery, until much later. I am still discovering. 

Ron: My first instrument was piano, which I took up in 2^nd grade. I switched to guitar a few years later when some football friends said that guitar was a much cooler instrument. My mom was kinda pissed about it, but she did get me a Les Paul and a practice amp. I had a few guitar lessons playing ‘Old Grey Goose’ and ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’,  but dropped them and started figuring out KISS songs.

Doug: My first instrument was violin which I played for a couple of years in middle school orchestra, but I wasn’t really serious about it. I started playing guitar around 8^th or 9^th grade and just jammed with other kids in my neighborhood. I knew Rick from those circles. When we met Billy [Billy White, guitarist from 1982-86], the original plan was to have Billy and me switching off between guitar and bass. But once I started learning a few bass lines, I immediately gravitated towards that instrument and realized my musical brain was more suited to bass, so Billy became our full-time guitarist, LOL. 

Rick: I joined my 6th grade school band as a means to get out of class one day, and when the band director asked each of us what instrument we wanted to play, I didn’t have a clue, so I blurted out “drums”. Turned out I kinda had a knack for it, so I kept going with it throughout middle and high school. It wasn’t until I heard “Cygnus X-1” when I was a freshman in high school that I really got excited about playing drums. It was the early Peart influence that set the initial direction of my style.

For Rick and Doug, how did your approach to songwriting changed between Energetic Disassembly and Control and Resistance? And then—probably more substantially—how did your songwriting develop over the decades? When you look back at the first two albums, is there anything you wish you’d done differently (we wouldn’t change a thing!)?

Doug: Some of the songs that ended up on Control and Resistance were written even before we recorded Energetic Disassembly, but the batch of songs on Energetic were from a slightly earlier period of our songwriting and seemed to fit together. There were a lot of songs from before the Energetic era that didn’t make the cut and were only recorded as demos or not at all. Many were part of our live setlist after we wrote them but eventually dropped off for newer songs that we liked more. When Ron joined the band, he was driving up to Austin from San Antonio so we had to be a little more efficient with writing, although there was quite a bit of bouncing ideas off each other. Probably the thing I would go back and change if a time machine existed would be the sound production on both records.

Rick: On Energetic, for me it was about playing fast and aggressive all the time, with lots of Peart style fills. That evolved somewhat as we continued writing for Control. I became less interested in just slamming out fast stuff, and more interested in writing and playing parts that had unique interplay with the rest of the instruments as well as leaving more space. In hindsight I wish that I had been more discriminating in the studio on both recordings. I really dislike recording so if it was half-ass decent I’d let it go just so I could move on to the next song. I guess you could say I’m an imperfectionist. 

There seems to be some discrepancy with the release date of Energetic Disassembly, and it’s important, not only because we’re nerds about cataloging release dates, but also because there’s a friendly rivalry between you and Fates Warning over having the “first” ever prog metal album. I’ve heard November 84, February 85, and November 85. Which is the real one?

Jason: I recall being in the studio (Cedar Creek, South Austin, TX) finishing up things in Nov. of 1984 and by October we were having a release party. Then I see it listed as a January 1985 official release because that is when our distributors had received the product and had put it in line at stores. November 1984 sounds a little bit early for us to call it an official release. We did have a cassette tape we shipped out all over the place with MELTDOWN and TYRANTS IN DISTRESS on it, because those were recorded first and in a different studio, engineered and mixed by Kerry Krafton. That is where the Nov. ‘84 timeline comes in.

You haven’t rested on your laurels and have been busy in various projects since the 80s. What are some of your favorites? I know several of us here particularly love Blotted Science and Howling Sycamore. Do these bands speak to a desire to play several styles of music? Does your Watchtower experience come out when composing for other projects?

Jason: I make it no secret that my earliest years in WatchTower were like school for me, as a full musician, a writer, a composer, all of it. All of it started with those guys. I find that composing and working with other artists, collaborations, has also shown me there is not one way to write a song. Any style of song, I can learn something. These guys showed me how to appreciate that part of music. And. I loved working with Davide Tiso and HOWLING SYCAMORE, a total blast singing those incredible songs. Davide let me just soar all over, anything I wanted to sing melody wise. His music and lyrics were a breath of fresh air for music. And for myself.

Ron: I do get involved in other projects, but they all pretty much center around proggy/tech rock/metal. Blotted Science was different for me because I wanted to get a lot heavier (blastbeats, drop A tuning, etc…) but Spastic Ink and my solo material is similar to WatchTower musically, it’s just more structured. When I write with WatchTower it’s different than other projects because it’s usually face to face bouncing ideas off of Doug and Rick, so musically everybody makes contributions whereas with Blotted Science it’s all long distance writing via emails and mp3s. It’s collaborative but just not the same as live interaction. The Blotted Science guys were never in the same room until 8 months after Machinations was released. I am currently working on another solo CD, which is a follow-up to my 2^nd solo CD Solitarily Speaking Of Theoretical Confinement.

Doug: After WatchTower went into hiatus after Control and Resistance, I was asked to join a funk/rock/rap band called Retarted Elf that traveled around the region and had a decent following. It was a completely different style of music, but when I started writing with them, there were certainly some things that carried over from my experiences with WatchTower.

Our site’s focus is underground progressive metal—who are some smaller bands you want to shout out? Friends, bands in the local scene, people who have opened for you, etc! We (and our readers) want them all!

Jason: I have not done a whole lot with these guys, as far as playing shows, I guested on a song on one of their releases, and would like to mention VESPERIAN SORROW. I do not know what kind of music it really is, but it is over the top. It skips over lots of genres, from symphonic proggy death metal [to] soundtrack music, with incredible musicianship that holds up against anyone. They are from around here in central Texas. Please look them up.

Ron: I don’t really have a Spotify and Apple account so I only hear what is on the net while I’m browsing around, or what students may bring in. As I mentioned before, most of what I see online is lots of guitarists doing their own thing, and not a lot of them are in bands. 

Doug: I’m a little out of touch with who are the latest hot bands, but I know I hear some pretty great stuff come up randomly through the algorithm on my music app.

Stick with me for a hypothetical. You’re packing your luggage to leave home for a tour from Texas, and you see a scorpion in your luggage. What are you doing? (I’m begging for advice as this recently happened to me in Tucson, and I haven’t opened my luggage since).

Jason: Immediately spot the creature, use a handheld vacuum cleaner to suck up the creature. It should not harm the creature too badly, then empty the chamber outside, a ways from your house.

Ron: I’d start singing ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ and see if it responds. If it’s a beetle, I usually sing “She Loves You yeah, yeah, yeah.” Yes, that has happened before. No it didn’t respond.

Doug: Scorpion venom is one of the most valuable and expensive liquids on the planet, but I don’t think I’d be able to figure out how to extract it safely. Instead, I’d name the scorpion Uli.

Rick: Brush it away and let it go. Or stomp on it. I live in a rural environment and have been stung by scorpions many times, it’s a non event. Less painful than a fire ant bite.

Finally, when is Concepts of Math, Book II, are you doing the classic prog trope of titling a suite Part 1 and leaving out its sequel? ;).

I’m sure you’ve heard about the WatchTower album Mathematics that never happened. Well, that Concepts of Math EP is 5 of the 11 songs that were supposed to be on the full album. Will we ever get those last 6 songs recorded? Probably not. But if we ever did, I’d think that we’d put all 11 songs together as they were planned, with each first letter of each song title spelling out MATHEMATICS. Releasing a book 2 or part 2 just destroys the whole concept. 

Our thanks to Jason, Ron, Doug, and Rick for their time. All of us here at the Subway look forward to future projects of yours, WatchTower or otherwise!

Links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

The post Interview: WatchTower 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 thrash metal, technical thrash metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Voivod, Crimson Glory, Coroner
Country: United States-TX
Release date: 6 November 1989

The four short years between Energetic Disassembly and Control and Resistance saw a changed progressive metal landscape. No longer were Watchtower alone: Fates Warning and Queensrÿche reigned supreme; USPM bands like Savatage and Crimson Glory picked up some flourishes from the prog thrash world, which, at the time, was being pushed to new levels of instrumental competence—undreamt of five years earlier—by groups like Voivod, Toxik, Coroner, and Death Row. Meanwhile, just eight months earlier, a little band from New York released their debut album When Dream and Day Unite. 

Beyond the drastically changed landscape, Watchtower were a new band with guitarist Billy White and vocalist Jason McMaster leaving to pursue other ventures. Alan Tecchio replaced McMaster, and his vocals, if anything, are more polished than McMaster’s while retaining that unhinged energy. The timbre of McMaster is missed, but Tecchio sings his heart out on Control and Resistance with a technical ability and wide range seamlessly fitting the infamous skill of the Watchtower family. More importantly, the man, the myth, the GOD of guitar in progressive metal Ron Jarzombeck joined the fray, a man I consider to be one of metal’s preeminent musical geniuses with his work in acts like Blotted Science and Spastic Ink, his mix of jazzy sounds and serialism techniques unlike anything else in all of metal. And this album right here is where he honed his progressive style. He has a distinct style and tone—nobody else sounds like Ron Jarzombeck with his bright jazzy spring—and it’s clearly at play here, upping the ante for Watchtower from mere technicality to a stunning display of the pinnacle of metal guitar-playing—all several years pre-Images and Words.

The songwriting and production dramatically improved between Energetic Disassembly and Control and Resistance, Watchtower reigning in their talents into a more controlled album. The group winds through seemingly dozens of tempos per song with perfect, stylish instrumental pyrotechnics. The clean bass tone provides the foundation, and then Jarzombek builds towering songs out of power chords, riffs, and crazy, indescribable solos. He does things on a guitar that nobody else that I’m aware of does even thirty-five years later: the break near the middle of “Mayday in Kiev,” for instance, utilizes some classic Jarzombek shenanigans, playing unpredictable notes that allude to his future forays into Serialism. The track’s lyrics meditate on Chernobyl, fitting since these guys were clearly hit by some radioactive amp feedback (à la Peter Parker and his spider) to achieve their superhuman abilities. The precise songwriting works in their favor, too, as Watchtower dazzle on tracks like “The Eldritch” which uses a drum fill to bridge the shreddy intro to the shreddier verse. Longer tracks like the titular “Control and Resistance” have clearer sections than songs on Energetic Disassembly had, switching from intro chords to thrash metal insanity with finesse that the unwieldy debut songs lacked. Across the album, the interplay between Keyser’s bass and Jarzombeck’s guitar is spot-on, the two soloing and riffing start-and-stop time-signature freakouts as if they’re an extension of each other’s brain and fingers from the first moments of “Instruments of Random Murder” to the last of “Dangerous Toy.” The biggest difference between the two albums is Jarzombeck’s increased propensity for soloing compared to White, and Watchtower benefited from it. 

Control and Resistance is a display of talent that, while not as important as Disassembly, is much more refined, cementing Watchtower’s legacy in progressive metal (and kickstarting the career of Jarzombek who has brought a range of new techniques to metal thanks to his nearly unmatched creativity). I’m still blown away by these Texans’ talent and vision in the present day; I don’t know many riffs that can rival the likes of 3:10 in “Hidden Instincts” or 3:10 in “Dangerous Toy” for their sheer swagger. Watchtower were frantically riffing circles around everyone else, in weird time signatures, too, and they knew it.

For those of you still doubting their importance, the following bands have cited direct influence from the classic band: Testament, Dream Theater, Death, Annihilator, Coroner, Atheist, Pestilence, Cynic, Symphony X, Devin Townsend, Toxik, Sieges Even, and Spiral Architect. With only two albums to their name, they managed to birth a genre and influence all your favorite bands. Of course, groups like Fates Warning were right in line and metal was on the brink of its technical and progressive breakthrough, but Watchtower did it first and, importantly, as well. Respect your ancestors and check out these legendary albums.

Recommended tracks: Instruments of Random Murder, The Eldritch, Mayday in Kiev, Control and Resistance
You may also like: Toxik, Blotted Science, Deathrow, Spiral Architect, Howling Sycamore, Dissimulator

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

Label: Noise Records

Watchtower was:
– Alan Tecchio (vocals)
– Ron Jarzombek (guitars)
– Doug Keyser (bass)
– Rick Colaluca (drums)

The post Lost in Time: Watchtower – Control and Resistance appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive thrash metal, technical thrash metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Voivod, Crimson Glory, Coroner
Country: United States-TX
Release date: 2 February 1985

Ask the prog metal obsessed and you’ll get a few different answers for the earliest band in our beloved genre. Queensrÿche debuted in 1984, but The Warning isn’t really progressive; King Crimson and Rush certainly had the progressive but only truly explored the metal beyond riffs here and there; The Spectre Within by Fates Warning is the obvious next choice, particularly as the band remains notably influential and active; Iron Maiden, Rainbow, and even Metallica had released proggy tracks by the mid 80s, though they clearly weren’t the progressive metal we know as its own thing; but depending on a not-well-documented release date discrepancy to beat out The Spectre Within by mere months, my champion is Watchtower, taking the mold of thrash metal light years beyond their peers to something that’s recognizably progressive metal. In February of 1985, these wizards changed the metal paradigm with their skill alone and birthed the genre that brings us all together (and tears us all apart, too).

Rampant time signature changes, driving bass, uniquely (at the time) technical riffs, and, of course, the blueprint-for-prog wailing mezzo-soprano; together with a thrash grit, we have the core of Energetic Disassembly, heaviness with an intricacy of playing lost since the heyday of progressive rock, even. This was a completely new dimension of metal: riffs like this were so far beyond any other band. Billy White and Doug Keyser on guitars and bass, respectively, pranced and shredded and bounced around their instruments like men possessed by the dancing plague of 1518, tirelessly racing through feverish, spidery riffs in several time signatures with seemingly endless range across the fretboard. Heck, even from a speed perspective hardly any other thrash up to then could  match the tempo of tracks like “Social Fears,” the almighty, riff-tacular title track, and “Meltdown”; grind was in its demo-phase infancy, and speed metal was pretty much just a name compared to the efforts of Watchtower. The riffs and acrobatics on every track, but particularly ones like on sections like near the start of “Asylum” and the hyper version of the classic heavy metal gallop on “Argonne Forest,” are as memorable as they are influential. Even when comparing their music to artists a decade and a half later like Spiral Architect who helped take the helm for purely technical prog metal, Watchtower hold their own—these boys from Austin, Texas were visionaries.

One must mention Jason McMaster’s iconic voice with his dramatic wails. While his style has only improved in the following decades (see: Howling Sycamore), his frenzied singing takes Watchtower’s energy from simply next-level to outright fanatical: just listen to that scream at the end of “Cimmerian Shadows.” Finally, Rick Colaluca’s work behind the kit is admirable, also pretty much unique for the time—you sure as hell didn’t hear Lars jumping around the kit like this. It simply had to be the fastest and most precise drum performance ever at that point in time. The level of intricacy while maintaining thrash grooves… Colaluca is underrated for his importance to developing progressive metal. All together, Watchtower were a well-oiled machine even on their debut with zero contemporaries. The next couple years would see the blooming of prog metal, but these guys broke the barrier.

I can only imagine what it would be like to walk into an Austin record store in early 1985, pick Energetic Disassembly up on cassette, and hear “Violent Change” come out of the speakers, distinctly thrash metal but so new: faster, more technical, and with a level of intelligent density not seen yet in metal’s fifteen-year history. It would be life-changing and truly mind-blowing—I’d probably have had to pick up pieces of my brain from across the street. Nearly forty years of prog metal releases later, and Energetic Disassembly does more than stand up or remain notable just for its early release: this is still great progressive thrash (although the production is rough even for this point of time), and the prog community should be shamed for allowing this one to be lost in time: rectify it.

Recommended tracks: Tyrants in Distress, Energetic Disassembly, Social Fears, Meltdown
You may also like: Toxik, Blotted Science, Deathrow, Spiral Architect, Howling Sycamore, Dissimulator

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

Label: Zombo Records

Watchtower was:
– Jason McMaster (vocals)
– Billy White (guitars)
– Doug Keyser (bass)
– Rick Colaluca (drums)

The post Lost in Time: Watchtower – Energetic Disassembly appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: avant-garde black metal, brutal prog, zeuhl, third stream, blackgaze (I swear it’s instrumental despite having published lyrics)
Recommended for fans of: Liturgy, Magma, Sadness
Country: United States-TX
Release date: 21 June 2024

To name one’s band after a Xenakis ballet places critical pressure and expectation on oneself. Xenakis’s Kraanerg (meaning accomplished action in Greek) marries his stochastic, electroacoustic music with his orchestral works, interspersed with twenty-two periods of silence—all set to dance in the original performances. Like all his compositions, it’s dense, mathematical, and intellectually challenging, at the vanguard of 20th century art music. As far as “popular” musics go, black metal is undoubtedly among the most progressive, yet for Kraanerg to draw explicit comparisons to Xenakis on a debut album should set an expectation for compositional, performative, and conceptual brilliance that few metal acts have ever achieved. 

Strikingly, before hearing a note Kraanerg makes their ambitious name seem reasonable by enlisting D.L. (of Kostnatěni, my 2023 Prog Subway album of the year) on guitar duties and the legendary Markov Soroka (Tchornobog, Aureole, Drown) handling production, bringing together two of the most creative minds in the metalsphere. Yet despite the inclusion of this black metal guitar deity, it is Nat Bergrin’s piano and synths along with Danny Kamins’s saxophone which dominate the sound, a cacophonous duo who Soroka fills the entire acoustic space with. Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun is built with Bergrin’s piano as a foundation, similar to acts like Bríi, Wreche, or Liturgy, leaving only the blast beats to make the album a “metal” one; however, the piano’s timbre naturally takes Kraanerg just as much through the worlds of third stream and brutal prog as through metal, brimming with a simultaneous intensity and laid-back haziness. The sounds emanating from their keys are mysterious and magical—a nostalgic, gorgeous emotional intensity with the tone and chord progressions.

The successes of Kraanerg lie in the overwhelming sections where layers of distortion, eerily beautiful keyboards, drums, and sax raucously meet. The title of track two, “The Deluge (Pipes Burst from Joy Alone),” succinctly describes its emotional and musical weight, the recording nearly unable to contain all the noise the band create in a euphoric transcendence. The blast beats provide a feeling of ascension as described in the manifesto of Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix (Liturgy), and the piece colorfully explodes. The saxophone leads also provide a creative edge to Kraanerg with a glowing tone that feels natural as the melodic figurehead of Kraanerg’s subtly volatile style, adding the jazzy zeuhlishness which makes the project so strange. 

All the piano and sax prevents me from hearing much of D.L.’s guitar playing which seems only to add a distorted texture throughout the entirety of Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun. And disappointingly, I can’t pinpoint any notable violin parts despite Daniel Cho being credited with a performance, and, confusingly, all three tracks have lyrics yet I can’t figure out where the vocals are except for in an unnecessary spoken whisper section in “Here the Ground Is a Spandrel.” I don’t doubt Soroka as a producer—he has far too much pedigree in this style and others—and the production perfectly encapsulates the album and its odd glamor, yet it also stifles the album into a maddening wall of pretty noise, drowning out as many layers of instrumentation as I can parse. Moreover, while always pleasant and slightly strange, the melodies still manage to be a tad trite, full of blackgaze cliches—I definitely hear influence from Sadness or Trhä. Even with Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun’s successful capacity for occasional transcendence, the journey it meanders through detaches me, and I can’t quite figure out how to stick with the music. I am no stranger to weird music and Kraanerg’s aesthetic choices are for-the-most-part convincing, but something is slightly off with the album in addition to the intentional weirdness: my best bet is a lack of focused songwriting. While that occasionally works, I think it hinders Kraanerg from making an impression in its oppressive noise. 

Kraanerg certainly push forward what I’ve heard in the strangeness of acts like Trhä with the jazziness and production quality, but they haven’t hit a masterpiece yet. Bergrin’s vision is impressive, and as always I respect their ambition, but Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun frustrated me more than I’d like to admit for a genre I’m quite comfortable in, but less in the fun abstruse way and more in the this is almost the next-best-thing-since-sliced-bread way. Perhaps in a follow up, a tad more Xenakis influence could be the key.

Recommended tracks: The Deluge (Pipes Burst from Joy Alone)
You may also like: Kostnatěni, Tchornobog, Cicada the Burrower, Wreche, Papangu, Botanist, El Mantis, Bríi, Trhä
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Not Music – Bandcamp | Facebook

Kraanerg is:
– Nat Bergrin (composition, piano, synths, electronics, additional guitars)
– Angel Garcia (drums, vocals)
– D.L. (guitars)
– Danny Kamins (saxophone)
– Daniel Cho (violin)

The post Review: Kraanerg – Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: djent, ambient, choral music (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Vildhjarta
Review by: Andy
Country: Texas, United States
Release date: 29 February, 2024

Dear Mr. Christian Culak, my pal Zach’s arch nemesis,

You have some serious balls and an admirable sense of self-awareness to send us a promo after Zach’s last couple reviews of your work. I loved how you made him suffer, but over the sound of my guffaws when you sent us a triple album for him to be subjected to forcefully, I heard a small whisper from Sam to Zach that Zach had earned a break and it was my turn to be tortured: I get the honor to review somebody as noble art thou this time. You might be hopeful that I’m nicer than Zach, but handing me a triple album of djent is certainly a foreboding first impression. 

Godspeed Chris,

Andy

P. S. I hope you don’t mind if I review all three once in one fell swoop.

Underneath the Veil opens promisingly enough with a nondescript piano solo, but painfully quickly Mr. Culak punishes you with unbearable djent. While the over-quantized, hyper-clean sound of modern stalwarts of the genre sounds pitifully inhuman and played-out, I wish that Underneath the Veil had squeaky clean production. I don’t know whether to start with the detachedness or the overall quality of damp swamp-ass, so I’ll discuss the Extermination Dismemberment-esque bass slams (see 2:46 in “Ayn” for the first example of many). Everything in the sound is shoved aside for a huge swell of bass, but he implements and produces it with all the finesse of boogie-boarding a tsunami. Prog metal never jumped onto the bass boosted trends as far as I’m aware, and I’m relieved after hearing the lowest quality attempt. Back to the detachedness: Underneath the Veil sounds like the instruments were tracked in separate rooms while the recorder was also in the building next door, turning the entire project into a hollow mess. If minutiae in the riffing were there (trust me, it’s not), this would be a shameful production job, but it’s par for the course for Culak. Everything that you can hear is drowned out in enough reverb to sound and smell like Zach’s ass after a long summer’s day peddling meth and wrangling gators in Florida—thank god we can’t do scratch-and-sniff fonts yet.

So what exactly is going on beneath the tortured production and reverb-pedal? Well, a whole lot of not much. Like The Dark Atom, Underneath the Veil flows a bit like ambient, but the riffs Culak wrote are worse than Dennis Martensson’s… and those are *procedurally djenerated*. Culak writes worse riffs than a primitive algorithm could cook up for ten hours straight. Underneath the Veil is unadorned with anything except the most mindless of chugging and several ambient tracks which are mind-numbingly dull filler, although still better than the djent. On its own, Underneath the Veil would rank among the worst djent albums I’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing (if I had to say something positive, I think his piano arrangements every couple tracks are rather lovely), but it’s paired with eighty more minutes of the stuff. Shall we keep going?

Oh Veil of God, a single word away from the title of my favorite album of all time. If Culak knew me personally, I’d be sure it was a cruel joke, but it’s only the universe laughing at me. Veil of God is immediately much better than its predecessor, though, simple choral music that is totally ok at its best! It’s not the most beautiful arrangement you’ve ever heard nor does Culak bother fixing the reverb problems—particularly noticeable when it’s human voices—but ok choral music is infinitely better than senseless djent. However, in classic Culak fashion, he pushes me far beyond my limitless capacity for patience, and this, too, grows incredibly tiring quickly, especially since tracks like “Evanesce” make it crystal clear that these are cheaply synthesized human voices and not actual choirs. I’m not mad or even surprised, I’m just disappointed. I’d love to continue bashing Culak for his stupid ass choices, but this disk really doesn’t leave a lot to write about; it’s slow, uneventful, poorly produced, dubiously paced with those stupid ambient interludes in an already ambient-adjacent choral album, bland, insipid, still-better-than-Underneath the Veil, not good…

If your brain works at the frightening pace of a mile per minute, you probably didn’t put together that Underneath the Veil of God is the two previous albums superimposed, and the choral djent works surprisingly passably at times—certainly more synergistically than either part on their own. But it leaves one with the age-old question: why on god’s green earth would you listen to this instead of Vildhjarta (never mind why would one listen to Vildhjarta)? While the choirs fill a bit of that space between the recording device and the instruments that Underneath the Veil left, the release still feels pitifully weak with neither the heaviest chugs hitting hard nor the ambient parts landing as particularly valuable resting periods. 

I respect Culak’s ambition and his obvious ability to take criticism on the nose, but releasing three albums where two are just constituents of the (already lackluster and strangely empty) third all at once, and calling it a triple album feels particularly silly. While the two albums stitched together makes Underneath the Veil of God tolerable, listening to either of the other disks separate—or all in one sitting twice as I did—is torture and simply stupid. There is no reason for Culak to believe his process or music is special enough to release two extra half albums and demand all three to be listened to. Perhaps he doesn’t intend for all three to be listened to, but since we received all three as a promo and they’re all up on his Bandcamp without explanation, I figure they are, and to that I must bash Culak for his overinflated ego. If you read this and even considered clicking the embed, you’re loooooong gone, craving djent enough to be scraping underneath the barrel for your fix. 

Wait, what’s that? Is somebody screaming??

Final verdict: Under the Veil – 2/10; Veil of God – 2/10; Underneath the Veil of God – 3/10; {(Underneath the [Veil) of God]} – 1/10

Review by: Zach

Well, well, well. We meet again Mr. Culak. You really thought you could shake me off that easily, did you? You seem to misunderstand, your fate and mine are intertwined. With every album you send me, my average score grows lower, and once I start properly rating albums it’s over for all of you. Mr. Culak, with this heaping helping of a triple album, you have given me the greatest gift of them all: experience. Now all the limiters are off. I’ve given you two chances, and you just won’t listen. My apologies, my musical rival, but this is the end for you.

Underneath the Veil of God, and that’s what I’ll be referring to this shitshow as, is all of that Culak ambition coupled with the Culak style of songwriting. For those of you not insane enough to follow the last two installments of this trilogy, Culak has been “working” “hard” on releasing at least one album every year since 2013, and has now upped the ante to multiple a year. I stumbled face-first into this rabbit hole with Holy Tempest, Culak’s take on some prog/power/death/folk CLUSTERFUUUCK. While it was terrible, the least I can say was it’s a hell of a lot more creative than whatever the last two have been.

Somewhere along the line, Christian Culak discovered this band called Vildhjarta, henceforth abandoning all other elements in his music to make what we like to call “thall”. Bog-standard thall, mind you: the most creative we get on this whole musical massacre is the piano that starts ‘Ayn’. The first part of this horrible “triple album” contains not an ounce of notable riffs, moments, or anything to speak of. It’s the musical equivalent of taking an Ambien. Just as it bores me to tears, it also makes me ponder what Culak thought when he was releasing this mess.

See, Underneath the Veil of God isn’t a triple album in the traditional sense. Disc 1, Underneath the Veil, is all djentstrumental, Veil of God is just a midi choir, and Underneath the Veil of God has the novel idea of putting those two together. These are not musically connected in any way shape or form, and may as well be the same album thrice. To be quite honest with you, I think this is somehow worse than last year’s Dreamforge because of the lack of anything to latch onto. Throughout these three albums, there’s not a single song that even sounded remotely put together. Culak’s signature style of “no songwriting’ is put on full display here. Each section moves glacially through chugs, dissonant clean guitars, and weird pitch-shifter sounds. Not to mention three-minute tracks that are just ambient whooshing. 

So, let’s have a chat here, Christian. I get that you think my reviews are hilarious, and you flatter me. But this may be the single most derivative piece of music I’ve ever listened to for this blog. I love Vildhjarta too, and I’ve seen their influence displayed in non-Buster Odenholm projects (see The Ritual Aura and the new Firelink single). This “triple album” isn’t influenced, it’s blatant stealing. For a guy who releases so many albums every year, you really want your mark to be “the guy who copied Vildhjarta without any of the songwriting prowess of Vildhjarta”. You have given up on writing riffs, and instead, you replace them with computerized chugs. Your riffs weren’t good, but you never gave yourself the chance to edit. You push out slop like some kind of musical sausage factory, and knowing damn well you read these, you have neglected my advice of “slow the fuck down and learn to write”.

You had folk and power metal influence on Holy Tempest, and you abandoned all of that for something that was even worse. Where did those other influences go? Were they washed aside for this newfound thall obsession? Sure, the choir is a nice choice, but you don’t do anything with it. It’s just these computerized voices atop the same sluggish “riffs” that haunt disc one. There’s no spice, and the album feels lifeless as a result.

Christian, I’d love to say it would be nice to catch up next year, but I really hope we don’t. I admire your ambition, and the swiftness with which you release albums, but how many times do I need to say it: learn your fucking craft. Stop pumping out musical slop every year. There is truly nothing about this album that I can say that Andy already hasn’t, so I’ll leave you with this: Go on your anime training arc, come back stronger than ever, and fix this mess of a final score.

Final Verdict: 1/10

Recommended tracks: Vildhjarta
You may also like: No One Knows What the Dead Think, Discordance Axis

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Metal-Archives page

Label: independent

Culak is:
– Christian Culak (everything)

The post Review: Culak – Underneath the Veil, Veil of God, and Underneath the Veil of God (or alternatively {(Underneath the [Veil) of God]}): A triple album review appeared first on The Progressive Subway.