We Used to Cut the Grass, a jazz-fusion ensemble lead by Cody McCorry (of Thank You Scientist, Glass Garden, Slaughtersun, and many others), recently released their second full-length record, We Used to Cut the Grass #2. I had a chat with Cody where we discussed the new LP, how he manages to balance his many projects, touring with trash instruments, and his favorite fruit.

You’re wrapping up a tour with Thank You Scientist now aren’t you?

Yeah, Thursday, September 4th in Stroudsburg, PA, is our next show. We’re opening for Symphony X, which is going to be cool. It’s the first time we’re doing that. The drummer from Symphony X [Jason Rullo] was actually Kevin Grossman’s drum teacher growing up.

So between now and then, what are you busy with? Working on the new Thank You Scientist album? Or are you focused on your other bands?

Tom and I both have a ton going on right now. We’re doing a lot of jazz gigs together with our friend, Audra Mariel, who’s a vocalist. We’re both just gigging a lot, working around town, doing all kinds of things to keep the lights on. But yeah, Tom is working on the new Thank You Scientist album and we’re getting together intermittently. I’m working on the next We Used to Cut the Grass album which is already pretty much written—we’ve been performing some of it. But other than that, just kind of writing and recording and a lot of gigs: jazz gigs, cover gigs, whatever pays the bills you know?

You’re a busy guy. You’ve been with Thank You Scientist for a decade now and started touring with them again this summer, you joined and toured with The Number Twelve Looks Like You last year, and your bands Glass Garden and We Used to Cut the Grass both just released their second LPs. How do I stop doomscrolling and become a motivated, productive person like you? Is there a secret?

I mean, there’s always time for doomscrolling. I still get lost doing that stuff, too. But I think one of the things that helped me get organized in terms of composing a lot and managing different projects and balancing everything was this book called The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. It’s a twelve week series of exercises that you do to organize your creative life. During the pandemic, I worked through them with some friends. You write a lot and organize your thoughts and see what really matters to you and how to focus on it, while also balancing the things that pay your bills and all that.

It’s something that a lot of writers do, but it’s good for really any creative medium. I would say that before the pandemic, and before I went through that course, I was really disorganized and things were happening in a very oblong way. I would mostly work on Thank You Scientist and then maybe Karmic Juggernaut would put something out and I would devote all my time to that, and so on.

For example, We Used to Cut the Grass has been around for over a decade. We’ve actually been together for like thirteen or fourteen years. So the fact that we’re just putting out our second album now goes to show how unbalanced my life has been for a long time. Because this is the thing that I really love, and I love to write for it; it’s a house for all my compositions. But it really wasn’t until after 2020 that I got organized and was like “right, we’re doing this. We’re putting out records now.”

Do you ever feel burned out with all these different projects you have going on?

Yeah. It’s a constant struggle and a balancing act. And that’s why I had to do a twelve week course to help organize it all. There are definitely months where I feel like I have to devote a lot of time to other things. It’s really only the past few years that I was like “you know what, I’m going to start putting We Used to Cut the Grass toward the forefront”. Because writing music is the thing that I love the most. I love playing bass, I love playing really complicated music, and being in bands, but that is secondary to just creating new music. Especially hearing that new music for the first time with a large ensemble, or any ensemble really, that’s what excites me.

So I’m trying to put that first and put all the bass playing and being a side man in other people’s bands second. Even in roles where I’m co-composing. I’m trying to rebalance so that creating new music comes first and being a bass player for a whole host of different projects comes second. 

You play, you compose, you gig… you do all sorts of stuff related to music. Have you always been “all in”? Or was it a side gig for a little while where you had a day job that paid the bills?

Yeah, I worked in food service for close to ten years, and then I had an office job for two or three years. But around the time I joined Thank You Scientist in 2015, when I went on my first big tour with them, it became untenable to hold down a job and then also leave for three months at a time. So that’s when I took the leap and thought “alright, I’ve got to figure out how to make this music thing work”. So that’s when I started taking any gig I possibly could, whether it was covers or jazz gigs… I played a lot of jazz gigs. And a lot of gigs I really didn’t like. I had to play in a Top 40 country cover band for a little while, and, like, no shade to them, but I hated that. 

Do you do a lot of session work?

Totally. I actually love doing session work even more than just gigging. Because it’s more relaxed and you can try different things and you get a bigger variety of music. And frequently it’s original music. So I vastly prefer working on other people’s original music versus showing up and playing a cover gig. Because I like to help people make new stuff.

Do you have any advice for new musicians who are trying to decide whether to go all in or keep it as a side gig?

The only piece of advice I have is to stay on the bus and you’ll get where you’re going. It gets bleak sometimes, and the balance can be hard to maintain, and it can feel like you’re gonna be trapped in a certain type of musical life forever. But the longer you stick with it, things do get better, and your network expands, and opportunities you would never expect in a million years will appear. And maybe it’s not something you wanted or expected but you’ve got to roll with it. You just have to be open to the possibilities; and don’t give up.

Balance is another big idea from The Artist’s Way. You do have to pay your bills and the thing you love the most may not do that. So you have to strike a balance somehow.

Coming to your creative process, when you’re in a creative headspace, do you start more generally and then think specifically? Do you come up with a melody or a riff and think “that’s a Thank You Scientist riff” or “that’s more Homeless Apians”? Or do you work in reverse and get into the headspace of a particular project first, and then start composing?

I would say it’s probably the notes that come first. When I compose, I don’t frequently sit down and think “I’m going to write a song today”. I’ll sit down at the piano—as often as I can—and just improvise. And once I find something in that improvisation that’s a bit of an earworm or something that’s resonating with me, I’ll loop it a few times and it will gradually start to take shape out of this, like, improvisational mud.

And once there’s an idea that’s a little more clear, then I figure out what box to put it in. And lately that box is We Used to Cut the Grass, for the most part. But before, like for Terraformer and Stranger Heads and the Karmic Juggernaut stuff, if I was working on something proggy and complicated I’d be like “alright, this is Thank You Scientist”. If it was something more ethereal and moody, or something that I just knew would not work with vocals, I’d think “this is probably We Used to Cut the Grass”.

I’m sure it’s stressful, and busy, to have all those different projects going on at the same time. There are lots of artists who have their main gig and spin off side gigs in order to express themselves in different creative ways. But you already have those ready to go, you can just plug them in.

Yeah it’s a lot of different boxes. And they all take a lot of upkeep. It’s not easy to maintain the Thank You Scientist catalog; it’s a lot of material. And Glass Garden, too, that music isn’t super easy, either. But some months are busier for one band, another month will be busy for the other band, so it kind of balances out.

About Homeless Apians: you put out an EP with that group in 2018, Humour as a Defense Mechanism, and a few singles since then. That project seems to have been on the back burner for a while, but you did recently re-record “Shep’s Encounter” for We Used to Cut the Grass #2. I know the first We Used to Cut the Grass EP came out first, but do you see Homeless Apians as a sort of stepping stone to a more fully-realized We Used to Cut the Grass? Do you think you would work with a smaller, more experimental group again?

Homeless Apians was a super fun project, but it’s definitely on hiatus right now. Not for any specific reason other than that we’re all doing different things. I would say that the leader of Homeless Apians was really Matt Brown, and he has a new project called Heavy Mouth. I also play bass on that project; the rhythm section is kind of rotating. That band is really led by Matt Brown and Mike Rainone. And they’re repurposing some stuff that never got put out for Homeless Apians. So I would say that’s probably the next incarnation of that band.

Homeless Apians started out as a whole ethos that Matt Brown had where we, like, built all our instruments out of trash and recorded using only solar power. And we did all of that; it was really fun. We worked really hard on it for like three years. But that was right around the time that I was joining Thank You Scientist. So things really picked up with Thank You Scientist and it became difficult to put adequate energy into Homeless Apians.

So we did those two records, and it was really fun. But I think we got tired of the limitation of the trash instruments. Also, Matt wanted the band to be busier because he’s an amazing composer and writes a lot of cool music. But me and Kevin having scheduling discrepancies with touring and everything else was difficult.

So, yeah, Homeless Apians has sort of hung up the spurs for now. I don’t know, I mean, I still have the trash washtub in my basement. So maybe one day we’ll pick it back up. But Matt’s doing Heavy Mouth now.

And yeah, I’m glad that you noticed that “Shep’s Encounter” existed before this record.

Yeah, I was going through your back catalog and I was like “oh, this one’s familiar”.

That’s one of the oldest We Used to Cut the Grass songs. That was written when we started the band. It was just me and Seamus Leonhardt on drums, and that was We Used to Cut the Grass. We had some songs where it was just bass and drums, and we had some songs where it was just guitar and drums.

And we loved the band Hella. We were like, obsessed with Hella. So we wanted to do stuff that sounded like that. So I would just grab my guitar and put a bunch of distortion on it and we would try to write cool, complicated, guitar-and-drums music. But yeah, “Shep’s Encounter” was one of our first songs. And We Used to Cut the Grass never recorded it because we just never really got our shit together. So when Homeless Apians was recording, I was like, this is a chance to just get one of my compositions down on tape. So I did it with that band.

Kevin already knew the material because he had joined We Used to Cut the Grass at that point, and Matt and I were composing together a lot, so it made sense to do it then. And that recording was cool, with the trash instruments and everything, but years later, I was like, I really want to give this the full glow-up of, like, real instruments, and, you know, not recording in a field with solar panels. As fun as that was, it didn’t produce the highest fidelity recording, necessarily. So we decided to do it again.

Plus, I feel like Faye’s drumming, her whole ethos, really works well with the track because it’s also inspired by electronic music. It’s very rigid and almost feels programmed in a way.

Yeah, I saw the music video for Shep’s Encounter, her drumming is intense. Almost drum and bass style.

Yeah, she’s out of control. I feel like her drumming really brought it to life in a different way. It was super fun to revisit that.

Did you ever gig with the trash instruments? Were you worried, leaving them outside the stage door, that some garbage men would come and pick them up?

We gigged with that band a lot. We toured with Homeless Apians a few times, actually. They weren’t big tours; it would be us going to play in someone’s basement in North Carolina, or whatever, but yeah, we gigged with the trash instruments all the time and they would break all the time, and it was super annoying. That band was so much work, and we loved it, we really did. We believed in it. But it had a time and a place and we’re all working on different things now.

Coming back to Karmic Juggernaut, with Daimon taking over Sal’s role in Thank You Scientist, do you think that Karmic Juggernaut is also going to take a backseat for a while?

Karmic Juggernaut has always had this kind of on-and-off nature to it. In the list of bands we’ve been talking about – Thank You Scientist, Grass, Karmic, Homeless Apians… I’m pretty sure Karmic is the oldest. Karmic started when Kevin Grossman and James McCaffrey were in high school, and it was just the two of them and Randy Preston and they had a string of bass players until I joined. But that goes back to—I want to say, like—2010 or something.

They were gigging as Karmic Juggernaut and they would work really hard on it, put out an album, play a bunch of gigs, and then take a few years off. They also do other projects and have a lot of life stuff going on and so that project has always had this ebb and flow. But it’s been really constant since, like, 2010. So I’m sure Karmic Juggernaut’s going to do something because we’re all friends and we like hanging out together. And that’s more the vibe of that band. It’s run less like a business, in any kind of organized sense. Thank You Scientist is a well-oiled machine. Karmic Juggernaut is the opposite of whatever that is.

A poorly-oiled machine?

It’s just a bunch of friends getting together in a garage, having a good time, and then very slowly making a prog album. It’s very much like we’ll work on one song for three months and then just pivot and forget about that song. It happens very slowly because we just have fun together and it’s not super organized.

I have a few questions about specific songs on the new We Used to Cut the Grass record. Can we start with “who are Shep and Scully”? Because they’re mentioned in like half of the song titles, but not in any lyrics.

On We Used to Cut the Grass #1, we had a song called “Lay Down, Scully”. That song was originally about Agent Dana Scully on The X-Files, but then I adopted my dog and named her Scully, and so then it was obviously about Scully the dog. But before that, it was really about The X-Files. But now, obviously, all the future Scully songs that we do are going to be ballads about my dog and how much I love her.

Shep goes back to the beginning of the band, where we had these weird drum-and-bass, guitar-and-bass songs, with no idea what to call them because they’re just ethereal, instrumental music. It always feels kind of silly to slap a name on an instrumental song. So we decided to do it as a series of, like, “Shep’s this”, “Shep’s that”, just as a bit, to say “we don’t know what to call these”. So they’re all Shep’s. They’re just, like, Shep’s songs.

Rather than calling it “Composition in B minor” or something like that.

Yeah, or, you know, putting some long title on it. Which we now do, anyway.

But similar to how “Lay Down Scully” was about Agent Dana Scully and then later became about my dog, we had these Shep songs. My girlfriend at the time worked at a coffee shop in Convention Hall in Asbury Park and we found an injured mouse on the ground and got it into a shoebox and took it home for a couple weeks. We named that mouse Shep. It was present at a lot of the rehearsals when we were putting together some of these early Shep tunes, and that’s how those songs got their names.

All the Shep songs are old, too, I guess I should clarify that. Anything that’s a “Shep’s something” was probably written around 2013, 2014.

But they’ve just been recorded now for the first time?

Yeah, we’ve been a band for (getting close to) fifteen years, but we’re only just starting to put out records. So we have this back catalog of stuff that we’ve been playing live for a few years, shelved, worked on, replaced…

I think almost all of the Grass albums, even going forward, are going to have some stuff that was written like ten years ago that’s only just seeing the light of day now.

So you have enough material to release another album? Are you planning on releasing them in a quick cadence or are you going to drip feed it to people?

The idea is to do it quickly. The first album took five years and that was way too long, but we weren’t super organized about it. This latest album took three years, which is better, but we’re definitely going to do the next one faster than that. Especially since it’s all written, too. And there’s going to be a lot of new compositions on it, as well.

But I think I’ve gotten a lot more organized. Like, once we’re in the mixing process of one record, I can get started on writing the next one. For the first album, I was just working on the album and when the album came out, I really had nothing new for the second one. Whereas we continued to perform while we were mixing and mastering this one.

So we got together and it gave me the chance to workshop the new ideas, so that by the time this one actually came out, the new one’s already written. So I’m trying to have them kind of roll over each other like that going forward.

Another question about another track on the new album, “The Play Shep Wrote in ’92”, I heard that was partially recorded over Zoom? Can you tell us more about how that was coordinated?

Yeah it was almost 100% recorded over Zoom. When I was doing The Artist’s Way during Covid, one of the things that I discovered while I was going through these exercises was that I really wanted to write orchestral music. And that was something that I’d never gotten to do. I had mixed it into We Used to Cut the Grass a little bit by having brass and strings and orchestral elements, but I really wanted to take the plunge and just write a full orchestra piece.

So I applied to take a course at Juilliard’s night school and I studied orchestration there, and the culmination of that studying was writing the score for “The Play Shep Wrote in ’92”. I had two professors there who helped me review it and prepare the score. And another composer friend of mine helped me find this organization in Bulgaria that does remote orchestra recordings. Mostly for films and stuff like that. Projects where you gotta get it done really fast, and you have a limited budget.

So he gave me this organization’s info and I hit them up and they were super cool, super professional, and the whole thing was, like, how clean can we make this score so that we can get this recorded in an hour. Because they don’t look at it, they don’t practice. The way that that orchestra’s day works is that they get in the studio and nine to five, every hour they’re looking at someone else’s composition and just reading it and recording it. They haven’t seen the music before. So whether or not your thing is going to sound good after that hour is really dependent on how clean your chart is. You know, how clean the score is and how well the conductor can communicate it to them and… it was a lot, man. It was very stressful.

It was just like a one-hour-long Zoom call with the orchestra, and you’re just communicating with them through the chat box.

I was going to ask how you ended up working specifically with the Sofia Session Orchestra and not an orchestra in New Jersey or something like that.

I definitely had considered maybe trying a local orchestra or something like that. But my friend, Brian Lawlor—he’s a composer who lives out in Vienna now—he was like “I’ve done stuff with this orchestra, they’re super fast, they’re super professional, the recording quality is amazing”. They’re just set up to make tracks really fast and really efficiently. And honestly, the price… it was expensive, but it wasn’t insane, you know?

So you’d recommend them for anyone else looking for an orchestral recording?

Oh definitely, yeah. I think, more than likely, unless I get some kind of commission to do something with another orchestra, I’ll probably work with them again on whatever next orchestra thing I have to work on. I’d probably use them again, because they were great.

My next question is about “Hot Vegan Summer”. This track is co-credited to Trust Fund Ozu. I know that you’ve collaborated with lots of other artists—one that comes to mind is Ben Levin—in an unofficial capacity, but this is the first track of yours which was co-credited to a different artist. So is this a trend? Are you going to move towards more official collaborations with other bands?

Yeah, I think so. Faye and I co-wrote that song and we had a lot of fun. Obviously it’s a total, like, silly goof song, but we just wrote it together and had a lot of fun. But yeah, we’ll definitely do more collaborations in the future.

And actually, there’s a track on the new Glass Garden record that is a collaboration between We Used to Cut the Grass and Glass Garden. And we performed that song at a release show with Idris, the vocalist from Glass Garden, and it was super fun. That one’s called “Mapping the Cage”, and that one was a good time to put together. But yeah, we are trying to do more collaborations going forward.

I know you toured alongside Bent Knee, and I don’t know how much you have your finger on the pulse of r/progmetal, but there’s a jazz fusion contingent there that are huge Bent Knee and Thank You Scientist fans. I feel like they would have a meltdown if there were ever an official collaboration between Thank You Scientist and Bent Knee, even if it was just a one-off track.

Touring with them, to me, was probably the most fun Thank You Scientist ever had on the road. Because Ben Levin and Courtney and Jess and all those guys are just so much fun to be around. When Thank You Scientist was touring with Bent Knee it literally felt like summer camp for adults. We were just having a great time.

And both bands were in their prime at that point. We had just put out Terraformer and Bent Knee was putting out amazing stuff at that time. And they still are. I’m not sure what’s going on with Bent Knee. I know they’re still touring and they put out a record since Ben and Jess left the band, and that record was really cool that they did just as a quartet.

I think because Bent Knee is going through changes and Thank You Scientist is going through changes… I feel like if there was going to be a collab between those bands, it would have happened back then. I feel like the window for that has probably passed. But there will absolutely be more collaborative stuff, you know, with Ben Levin and Justice Cow and other people from Bent Knee, for sure, because we’re still tight with them. We still hang out with them and do gigs together.

Like, Justice Cow was at our release show [for #2], so Jess was there and performing. And Jess is coming down with her friend Kate’s band, Kit Orion, and they’re playing on Tuesday, with Faye [Trust Fund Ozu]. So we’re still doing gigs together all the time. It’s just that Bent Knee is going through some transformations and Ben and Jess aren’t in it anymore, and you know, Thank You Scientist has a new vocalist and is slowly putting together this new record, so I think both of those bands are figuring out what’s happening with themselves individually.

Are there any other artists in the Cody McCorry universe that we haven’t mentioned yet that you think our readers should check out?

[Ed. Note: Cody also sent us a list of recommended bands, which we’ve put at the end of this interview.]

Oh man, there’s a lot. Justice Cow is Jess’s band, Ben Levin’s putting out cool stuff all the time. The Ben Levin expanded universe is insane. I love the arc of how Ben Levin went from a music YouTuber to making these videos about the existential void with like, adorable 3D creatures. It’s really cool. He’s just one of a kind, man.

Yeah, his work with Adam Neely, too. I love those albums they put out together, where they wrote and recorded them in twenty-four hours.

Yeah, and Adam was just on his last record, which was really cool. Courtney Swain‘s doing amazing stuff, too. She did a collaboration with the Bluecoats, the marching band that Thank You Scientist collaborated with a while ago, which was incredible. They did some of her original stuff; they also did “Creep” by Radiohead, in a beautiful arrangement.

Your bands We Used to Cut the Grass and Thank You Scientist share many of the same members. In fact, I think We Used to Cut the Grass is a superset of Thank You Scientist. But are the group dynamics quite different between the two? Thank You Scientist feels like Tom’s band and the Grass like your band?

Yeah, I would say that’s accurate. Tom is in charge of Thank You Scientist, and that’s always gonna be a set, seven-piece band: trumpet, tenor sax, violin, guitar, drums, bass, vocals. Whereas We Used to Cut the Grass is a shape-shifting-type ensemble. It’s basically just, whoever is available to come do the gigs and whoever is available to come record. People have a lot of life stuff going on and people have different projects happening…

We used to record with Sam Greenfield, who was the former tenor player from Thank You Scientist, but he is super busy touring Europe and the world with his own solo project now. So he hasn’t played with We Used to Cut the Grass in quite a while. But he’s an example of how people come in and out of We Used to Cut the Grass very casually. We rarely have the same lineup from one gig to another. Even the shows we’re playing later this month are going to have a different set of people than the release show we just did.

I feel like a lot of people don’t realize how much Thank You Scientist’s lineup has shifted since it started.

Yeah, there’s been a lot of turnover. It’s a bigger deal for Thank You Scientist because that’s more of a “band”. There are seven people who are touring and making the record. Whereas with We Used to Cut the Grass, it’s an informal roster of musicians who come together to make music. And even on the record, Faye plays drums on some tracks, Kevin’s on other tracks, they’re both on a few tracks together. I play guitar on a few songs, Tom plays guitar on a few songs. It’s much more casual.

I actually didn’t realize until the music video was released that you were playing guitar on “Shep’s Encounter”. The guitar there sounds very Jonny Greenwood [of Radiohead].

In terms of inspirations, I’d probably put Jonny Greenwood at the top. Maybe Frank Zappa. But they’re real close, maybe neck and neck. They’re probably my two biggest musical inspirations.

Well you did a great job of channeling his spirit into that song, because that’s the first thing I thought of.

When we started We Used to Cut the Grass, there was a while where I was just ripping off Radiohead as much as I possibly could. I got so much of my tonal vocabulary from that band. I love Jonny’s compositions and everything, he’s just such a cool composer.

“Shep’s Encounter” is probably the most Radiohead-like We Used to Cut the Grass song. It makes sense because it’s from the beginning of the band, which was me getting out of high school and into college when I was listening to nothing but Radiohead.

Coming back to your creative process, do you feel like you have more creative freedom in the Grass than in Thank You Scientist?

We Used to Cut the Grass is a house for my compositions and Thank You Scientist has always been a collaborative compositional band. Which is not to downplay Tom’s role in it, because I would say he’s the primary composer. He brings in most of the ideas. But it’s a case-by-case thing, too. There would be whole songs that Sam Greenfield would bring in or I would bring in… so it’s very much a collaboration.

Another question about Thank You Scientist: I saw footage of you guys at Cruise to the Edge. It looks like you were having a blast. How’s Daimon settling in? Do you feel like he’s fully gelled with the band now?

Yeah, Daimon’s doing a great job. I have a lot of experience working with Daimon from Karmic Juggernaut and also from his previous projects, like Bone and Marrow. That’s his project with his wife, Jen. They toured with Homeless Apians and we used to travel together a lot. So I’ve been working with Daimon in some capacity or another for over a decade. And yeah, he’s doing a great job. He’s a great vocalist.

I mean, there’s no replacing Sal, you know? Like, that’s just not happening. So I think that idea, that we wouldn’t even want to “replace” Sal, means that the band has to go in a new direction now. Daimon’s going to do Daimon, and he’s not going to try to replace Sal.

A new direction vocally? Or a new direction instrumentally, as well?

That’s hard to say. So far, the new material for Thank You Scientist has largely been composed by Tom with Daimon and Tom writing the vocal parts together. And I think that’s probably going to be the pattern for most of the record. I mean, every Thank You Scientist record is different, so I imagine this one will be different, too.

Obviously, without Sal, it’s going to be super different. You can’t really downplay what a huge role Sal played in the band. He has such an iconic presence and voice that I really think is irreplaceable. So the band has no choice but to develop in a different direction.

Yeah, one of the two guys who had been there from the very beginning is gone.

Straight up the only two original members. And now Tom is the last remaining one. It was always his project. If there was no Tom, there would be no Thank You Scientist.

A previous coworker of mine said “teams are immutable”. You can add or lose team members, but then it’s a different team, with different dynamics. Do you feel like that’s the case for Thank You Scientist?

Oh, yeah. I’ve been through a lot of different changes with that band. I performed with one of the original lineups with Odin, Andrew, and Ellis on Stranger Heads. That was a set band with its own dynamics. And then the turnover for the Terraformer lineup, that band had its own dynamics. And then after Faye left, this version has its own. It’s a huge change when someone comes or goes from the band, but as long as Tom wants to keep doing it, it will keep going.

He’s the core thread throughout all the different iterations.

Yeah, similar to the way that We Used to Cut the Grass started. Tom could probably verify this, but I believe Thank You Scientist was originally an instrumental project. And I think Tom sang in a very early incarnation of the band. Similar to my band, it was just a place for him to work on his compositions. I don’t think it was really until they started touring and they put out Maps of Non-Existent Places that it was, like, “we are a seven-piece prog band”.

But yeah, I would say the future of Thank You Scientist is still somewhat nebulous, but we’re working on the album for sure.

Plague Accommodations feels like it was released yesterday, but it somehow came out four years ago already.

Yeah, time flies.

I know that you have one more tour date in September, but then you’re back to working on the new LP, right? Or you’re working on it right now?

We were working on it even before Sal left the band. Since Plague Accommodations, we’ve been working on new material. Some stuff is sticking, some isn’t. We’ve been performing one of the songs live a lot. So for sure that song will be on the record, no doubt.

The rest of it remains to be seen. We’ve been working on it, but Tom has a lot more stuff that he’s been working on with Daimon. And I think Tom has a bunch of compositions that he’s about to roll out, so it’s been less collaborative than it was on Terraformer.

Do you know when we can expect a new single or a new EP?

Oh man, I wish I did. Thank You Scientist is a very slow-moving machine. But I’m trying to focus on my work with We Used to Cut the Grass. Tom has also started a new fusion project with a rhythm section from the west coast: Zach Westfall and Ray Belli, a trio fusion band called Now This. And he’s been flying out there to work on that with them. So Tom’s got a lot of irons in the fire, too, but I think he’s super motivated to be doing the new Thank You Scientist record.

Daimon’s really excited about it, too. I think it’s gonna come together. But yeah, Thank You Scientist has always been a slow-moving machine.

So no Progressive Subway exclusive single announcement date?

I wish, but no. It’s hard to give any kind of estimate. I would say safely that there’s still a lot of work to do on that record. But Tom has written a lot of stuff for it already.

It felt like we were so close to a new LP when Plague Accommodations came out in 2021 and then, of course, Sal left and things went off the rails a bit.

Yeah, I think Plague Accommodations would have been an LP if it wasn’t for Covid and the world going to shit… and also so much life stuff happened, and people joining and leaving the band… I think Plague Accommodations would have been a full record.

This isn’t really a question, but please, please, please tour in Canada again. Have you ever been to Halifax? It’s a nice place.

Haven’t been to Halifax, but we have toured Canada quite a bit. We’ve done Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, and some other places.

I saw you guys perform in Montreal, opening for Between the Buried and Me on their Parallax II Tour.

Yeah, that was a fun tour. Dan Briggs is the man. Dan and I still talk every once in a while.

It would be awesome if we could get a Tommy guest vocalist feature on the next record.

Yeah, Tommy’s awesome. And Dan has been doing some really cool stuff. He just did that record, Obverse, with Emily Hopkins, the harp player, and Chris Allison, the drummer for Plini. Dan always has some cool stuff cooking with somebody. He does a lot of collaborative stuff.

Anything that came out recently that you’re jamming to? Anything you think our readers should check out?

I really like the new Cocojoey record. Cocojoey’s an electronic, hyperpop producer and artist. They rip on the keyboard. They’re a classically trained keyboardist. And they make really cool hyperpop / electronic music and their live shows are insane. And Faye has been playing drums for them recently, on their most recent tours. Faye also opened the show as Trust Fund Ozu, and they have some shows this weekend. But yeah the new Cocojoey record is sick.

Obviously, I have to plug my partner Faye’s (Trust Fund Ozu’s) new record, Ozumaki. She always has like three albums ready to go at any given moment. She makes music so fast.

You guys are all so prolific, I don’t know how you do it.

Yeah, Faye especially, though. She’s constantly on her laptop making a new record. I think she has one that’s being mixed right now. Yeah, so Cocojoey, Trust Fund Ozu, for sure.

The new Cocojoey has gone over really well at The Progressive Subway. A lot of us are really digging it. We reviewed it when it came out. It’s probably one of my favorite releases of the past year or so.

It’s intense. It’s wild. Cocojoey, they went to college for composition, and it really shows because the themes of that record are very much intertwined and it’s a very symphonic-type album, even though it’s presented on all electronic instruments. Like, a theme from the first song comes back in the last song and it’s organized in a very classical kind of way. And yeah, I love it.

Anything else we should keep an eye out for?

Be on the lookout for more We Used to Cut the Grass stuff. We have two more live videos we’re going to be putting out. We’re doing shows in various configurations over the next few months. It’s a difficult thing to tour with this band and we’re figuring that out. Because, like, we’re not going to tour as a nine-piece band. That’s not happening. Even at the Thank You Scientist level, it’s hard to tour as a seven-piece band. So we’re going to be doing some tour dates as a trio.

It’s funny, because we’re taking this band that started as a duo, eventually grew to be a nine-piece monstrosity, and now, in order to travel, we have to shrink it back to what we started with, basically, and rearrange the music. Also, we’ll be playing a ton of new music. But we’re gonna be touring as a trio. We will be doing some tour dates as a large band, but only where that logistically makes sense, like in cities we’ve been to a bunch of times, and at clubs that know us, and stuff like that.

Sound guys are typically not very happy when you show up with two drum sets. So we’re going to stop doing that so much. I mean, we’re not going to stop doing that, but we’re going to stop doing it all the time.

Better than showing up with trash instruments, I guess?

Honestly, I think it’s worse. I think a sound guy would rather mic up a wash tub bass than to have to do changeover for two drum kits. Especially if you’re not even the headlining band, you know? But yeah, it’s logistically tough, so We Used to Cut the Grass will be touring as a trio. And just doing weekends and regional stuff.

Are the tour dates on the website now, or will they be posted shortly?

Well, not all of it’s been announced yet. Most of our promotion is through Instagram. But I would encourage people to join the mailing list. That’s the best place to keep up with the band. Because these days, you know, every post gets suppressed no matter what it is. The mailing list is the only way to avoid the algorithm completely.

[Ed. Note: you can sign up to the We Used to Cut the Grass mailing list at codymccorry.com]

Which is what we all want to do, really, isn’t it?

Yeah, ideally.

Very last question: what’s your favorite fruit?

I think it changes from year to year. Right now, I think it’s bananas.

That’s a good one. A classic.

In my house, it’s like a bit that we buy too many bananas. Like, we always have a mountain of bananas in the kitchen. And then it’s kind of a race to eat them before they all go rotten. Which is good, because it puts pressure on you to eat bananas. It’s a healthy cycle.

A similar theme to your musical endeavors, where you have so many things going on that you have to do all of them at all times.

Sort of, yeah. You find ways to put pressure on yourself to stay organized and get shit done.

And eat bananas.

And eat bananas.

—

Cody also sent The Progressive Subway his list of recommendations, repeated verbatim below

• Trust Fund Ozu (Hyperpop by Faye Fadem; I’m on bass)
• Slaughtersun (Progressive death composed by Ben Karas; I’m on bass)
• Civilians (FFO Joe Gullace)
• Flowmingos (FFO Alex Silver)
• Now This (Tom’s new fusion trio, they have an instagram but no recordings out yet)
• Justice Cow (Super raw heartwrenching alt rock by Jess formerly of Bent Knee! Ben Levin on the record as well)
• Fire-Toolz (Angel Marcloid, our mastering engineer, is an all-time musical genius)

New records I’ve been diggin’:

• STARS by Cocojoey
• Ozumaki by Trust Fund Ozu
• my dad died by Justice Cow
• Havdalah to the Blank Without by Ben Levin
• Bottle Grin by Kit Orion (Ben Levin and Jess Kion are on this record)
• The Common Task by Horse Lords
• About Ghosts by Mary Halvorson
• MOHINI DEY by Mohini Dey

Thank you again to Cody McCorry for the interview and make sure to check out the new LP We Used to Cut the Grass #2 on Bandcamp and wherever else good music is streamable!

Links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Album review

The post Interview: Cody McCorry (We Used to Cut the Grass) appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Jazz Fusion, Jazz, Orchestral, Comedy (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Thank You Scientist, Clown Core, the Fallout series of games, Frank Zappa, Radiohead
Country: New Jersey, United States
Release date: 18 July 2025

I like a fruit salad as much as the next guy. You’ve got your apples, your limequats, your pawpaws – all the good ones. But inevitably, someone will say “well, a tomato is technically a fruit, you should add that to your fruit salad”. Because we are weak-willed we acquiesce, but that is the primary and unforgivable misstep. Because from that point forward, the floodgates are open, and all varieties of avocado, olives, and peas come tumbling out. You like jalapeños in your fruit salad, huh? Do you, punk?

We Used to Cut the Grass is a band from New Jersey, led by Cody McCorry (of Thank You Scientist and others), who just released their sophomore effort, We Used to Cut the Grass #2, an album which would definitely argue that some pumpkin¹ belongs in that salad.² #2 spans a huge range of genres and moods, opening with a stately orchestral piece, ending on some smooth lounge jazz, with an uptempo post-apocalyptic radio bulletin about (an obviously fictitious) Buffalo Wild Wings’ chicken milk delivery service in between.

#2 continues multiple thematic elements from the Grass‘s debut album, #1, including the characters Shep and Scully,³ the radio station WKRM the Kream, and the traditional jazz group Captain Cream & the Forest Fires. #1 was a fairly straightforward jazz album which—by its conclusion—descended into a kind of silly chaos; #2 continues and expands on that silliness. The most obvious manifestation of this is in the lyrics, which discuss the ethical implications of adding oat crumbs to a vegan croissant, podcast charlatans radicalizing your family, and the aforementioned chicken milk delivery service.

Instrumentally, #2 shares much of its DNA with #1 and with Thank You Scientist, with the Grass being effectively a superset of TYS, sans a dedicated vocalist. If you’re looking for something to scratch that TYS itch while they recoup from the loss of their original vocalist, Salvatore Marrano,⁴ #2 might do the job. #2 features McCorry‘s impressive bass (particularly notable on the irreverent “Hot Vegan Summer”) and guitar playing (he does his best Jonny Greenwood impression on “Shep’s Encounter”), Joe Gullace‘s trumpet and Alex Blade Silver‘s saxophone (most prominently on “Lights, Camera, Ham!”), and Ben Karas‘ excellent string work, among others. As we’ve come to expect from the Greater Science Community,⁵ there is truly nothing negative that can be said about the instrumental performances on #2. These guys are the real deal.

The album opens on “The Play Shep Wrote in ’92”, a moving orchestral piece performed by the Sofia Session Orchestra in Sofia, Bulgaria, which showcases McCorry‘s talent as a composer. The layering of gentle bells,⁶ followed by strings and horns which unfurl into a rolling landscape of brass and percussion builds to a dramatic tension and then settles into a quiet reprise and fades. This track is followed by McCorry‘s bass ushering in “The Comet Is Not Coming”,⁷ a heavy, energetic, sax-and-theremin-heavy jazz-rock fusion track which—like a later track, “The Hatman Cometh”—sounds like it could be an instrumental off of any TYS album. But the musical smorgasbord doesn’t end there…

“Lights, Camera, Ham!” is the meaty next course: a rolling jazztronica track, which alternates between busy horns-and-drums sections and airier electronic sections. The music video for the single is almost entirely footage of landscapes passing by, taken out the windows of trains and cars, the slowly-moving mountains in the background echoing the long notes held by the horns and quickly-moving foreground mirroring the repeated arpeggios of the other wind instruments and electric violin. This is definitely a lofi hip hop radio beat to relax/study to (that is: it’s a chill vibe), but does it belong on the same album as the traditional jazz of the closing tracks?

If “The Comet Is Not Coming” and “The Hatman Cometh” are the cantaloupe and watermelon, “The Play Shep Wrote in ’92” is the grapes, and “Lights, Camera, Ham!” is the tomato, then “Hot Vegan Summer” is the eggplant which really starts to shake up this fruit salad of an album. Trust Fund Ozu is co-credited on this track, delivering a rap verse about veganism. “Uh oh, everybody’s having fun at Buffalo Wild Wings” is sung over absolutely frenetic slap bass. I mean, I dig it, but I wonder if the Sofia Session Orchestra were ever expecting to appear on the same album as something like this.

When I joined The Progressive Subway not too long ago, I was ribbed for being someone who listens to all my tracks on shuffle; I don’t always listen to albums all the way through. With We Used to Cut the Grass #2, I get to have my salad and eat it too—no more bullying at The Subway, but also I get to listen to the most haphazard sequence of genres I think I’ve ever heard on a single album. We Used to Cut the Grass #2 is the jalapeño-pineapple-chickpea fruit salad of music, and I am here for it (in moderation), but I think it is probably an acquired taste. If the trend continues for #3, I’m looking forward to a pop country track next to gamelan next to dissonant death metal. Your move, Cody.

Recommended tracks: Lights, Camera, Ham!, Shep’s Encounter, Hot Vegan Summer
You may also like: Adam Neely & Ben Levin’s How I Loved My Cat, Trust Fund Ozu, mouse on the keys
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

We Used to Cut the Grass is a flexible ensemble which at times has included (alphabetically)

• AJ Merlino: vibraphone
• Alex Silver: tenor saxophone
• Ben Karas: violin, viola
• Cody McCorry: bass, guitar, keyboards, synthesizers, theremin, hand saw, guitar
• Daimon Alexandrius Santa Maria: disc jockey
• Faye Fadem: drums, percussion
• Ian Gray: trombone
• James McCaffrey III: guitar
• Jennifer DeVore: cello
• Joe Gullace: trumpet, “electronic valve instrument”
• Kevin Grossman: drums, percussion
• Matthew Trice: alto saxophone
• Sam Greenfield: tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, clarinet
• Seamus Leonhardt: drums
• Sean Marks: baritone saxophone
• Timothy Adedigba Ogunbiyi: fender rhodes
• Tom Monda: guitar

1. Which is not only a fruit, but also a berry. ︎
2. Either before or after asking you to join Keatonics, the cult of Michael Keaton. ︎
3. Check out my accompanying interview with Cody, where he explains where these characters come from and what they mean (or don’t) in the context of the album. ︎
4. Daimon Alexandrius, of Karmic Juggernaut, has been named as Sal’s replacement. ︎
5. At The Subway, we’ve started referring to a group of bands which feature one or more of Cody McCorry, Ben Karas, Tom Monda, and co. as the Greater Science Community. This group includes Thank You Scientist, Slaughtersun, Glass Garden, We Used to Cut the Grass, Karmic Juggernaut, Civilians, and many more. ︎
6. What sounds like bells here is actually a celeste, as can be seen in the music video for this track. ︎
7. The Comet Is Coming ︎

The post Review: We Used to Cut the Grass – We Used to Cut the Grass #2 appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Artwork by: Dmitry Rogatnev

Style: Avant-garde Metal, Brutal Death Metal, Deathgrind, Jazz Fusion (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Cattle Decapitation, The Number Twelve Looks Like You, The Red Chord, Pathology
Country: Russia
Release date: 13 June 2025

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you took insanely technical deathgrind, the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, and a smoky jazz joint on the harbor, then shot them through the musical equivalent of whatever hellish industrial-grade contraption processes chum? Me neither, but apparently ByoNoiseGenerator did. These unhinged Russians have crawled out from the briny depths of Perm Krai after seven years away, dripping seaweed and sheathed in the viscera of multitudinous aquatic horrors, bludgeoned into pulp and ready to serve via the stern and merciless hand of avant-garde deathgrind. Break out your bibs and fetch the butter—time to chow down on the band’s third LP, Subnormal Dives.

To anyone expecting the sultry and sophisticated sax-stylings of say, a Rivers of Nihil or Sleep Token, you may want to get back in your dinghy and row for the nearest opposite coastline. ByoNoiseGenerator, true to their name, are out here dropping sonic depth charges loaded to the gills with pure aural madness. Grooving slam breakdowns (“NULL.state = PERMANENT; return VOID;“), Primus-esque guitar funkery (“NoSuccessToday!”),  and skull-pulping grindcore all shoot through violent streaks of freeform jazz both manic and moody—often within the confines of the same track. For the first nine minutes,¹ ByoNoiseGenerator keep the pressure building as they cram multiple songs’ worth of ideas into tracks that nary crack the three minute mark. The band pull the listener deeper and deeper into this Subnormal Dive, gleefully assaulting our ears with a smorgasbord of hyper-processed violence perhaps only meant for the deepest of undersea dwellers.

It’s not until “LoveChargedDiveBombs” that we receive any surcease from ByoNoiseGenerator’s bio-organic brutality, with gentle radar pings, feathering drum and bass, and flickering saxophone doots creating an almost pleasant atmosphere. Denigrating chaos returns soon after via trampling blast beats and vocalist Tim’s inhuman growls, but the preceding forty-five seconds go a surprisingly long way towards letting me catch my breath before the band force me back underwater. The choice to slow things down in the song’s back half, showcases how—when it fancies them—ByoNoiseGenerator are capable of creating some rather captivating stretches of music. This characteristic defines more than a few songs across the platter (“Eb(D#),” “I’mNot20Anymore (21Ne),” “4-HO-DMTNzambiKult,”), and the band often nail the transitions in spite of the general atmosphere of mad-cap insanity and sonic whiplash that underscores their efforts.

Elsewhere and everywhere across Subnormal Dives, however, chaos reigns supreme. For twenty-three minutes, ByoNoiseGenerator toss and tumble the listener across heinous tempo and stylistic changes that would give even the most seasoned diver the bends. Songs are less-definable by any idea of coherent structure, and more by what fleeting strips of music that may qualify as identifiable (and palatable) to you. For my money, I love when the band cut away the deathgrind to revel in the smoky notes of playful saxophone and fluttering cymbal work that give Subnormal Dives its Bebop aesthetic. Whether that’s the funky drum-and-bass sections (“4-HO-DMTNzambiKult,” “deBroglieNeverExisted”) or back alley neo-noir vibes (“LoveChargedDiveBombs,” “5mgInspiredVibes”), these parts stand out as highlights of ByoNoiseGenerator’s glittering talent. For others, that satisfaction may come from the relentless grindcore butchery staining every cut.

Wherever you land, Subnormal Dives is a journey taken with the highest of caution. Even well-adjusted metalheads may struggle to decipher the band’s non-euclidean configurations, driven mad instead by ByoNoiseGenerator’s insistence on an almost blink-and-you’ll-miss-it approach to songcraft. There’s something to be said for not beating a motif, riff, etc. to death, but the opposite holds true, too. Take the scraping death metal ebb and flow at 1:38 in “IQ69Exaltations,” which serves well in hooking the listener—but just as you’re really starting to nibble, the moment is gone, a fish fry-flash in the pan, and we’re on to new flavors. Fortunately, with grindcore you’re never in for that long of a haul. Subnormal Dives’ twenty-three minutes fly by like a marlin on a mission. And when shit is this gleefully unhinged, it’s hard not to have a good time. Just… maybe don’t ask how they make the fish stix.

Recommended tracks: Eb(D#), LoveChargedDiveBombs, deBroglieNeverExisted, 5mgInspiredVibes
You may also like: Blastanus, Malignancy, DeathFuckingCunt, Diskord, Veilburner, Bloody Cumshot
Final verdict: 6/10

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

Label: Transcending Obscurity Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

ByoNoiseGenerator is:
– M1t (bass)
– NOx (drums)
– Tim (vocals)
– HaL° (guitars)
– Sh3la (saxophone)

1.  That’s five whole tracks here. Grindcore is wild, I tell yah what. ︎

The post Review: ByoNoiseGenerator – Subnormal Dives appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive metal, jazz fusion (Instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Atheist, Cynic, The Omnific
Country: International
Release date: 30 May 2025

The fretless bass is an indispensable tool for tech deathers and fusioners alike. With its otherworldly and smooth timbre, the instrument adds a distinctly heady flavor to any piece. I personally can’t get enough of it, and neither can bassists Steve DiGiorgio (Death, Autopsy, Control Denied, among many others) and Jeroen Paul Thesseling (Obscura, Pestilence) of Quadvium, an instrumental progressive metal group based on the conceit of, “What if fretless bass but more?” On their debut, Tetradōm, DiGiorgio and Thesseling duel and weave around technical fusion passages, but are two Quads better than one?

Tetradōm finds a firm base in 90s technical death metal (Cynic, Atheist) and modern fusion prog (Exivious, Gordian Knot, The Omnific), grafting together twisted branches of instrumental aggression with smooth and jazzy chord choices in a signature double-bass (not that kind) sound. Many tracks are labyrinthine in nature, wildly transitioning from idea to idea at the drop of a hat. To glue this collage together, Quadvium bookend songs by reprising an introductory idea or reincorporating passages from earlier in a track. The fretless basses often sit at the compositional center, sometimes swirling around each other in a jousting frenzy (“Náströnd”), at other times coalescing in ethereal harmonies (“Eidolon”). The texture and sound of the bass is explored all throughout Tetradōm, often evoking in the quieter moments imagery of still, placid water gently rippling against a cosmic sea backdrop.

And like water off an astral duck’s back, Tetradōm’s ideas roll off my consciousness the moment they pass through my tetra-dome. Most tracks begin cohesively enough, then descend into chaos: pieces like “Moksha”, “Ghardus”, and “Nästrónd” introduce a melody that builds in intensity only to follow them up with a bevy of sudden, jarring transitions into unrelated ideas. As a consequence, any momentum that may have been established is halted and the revisited passages feel like separate tracks that were spliced and rearranged into a single piece. I enjoy many of the ideas that Quadvium try, particularly the jagged tech deathy fusion that opens “Apophis” and its subsequent piano break, or the tranquil floating bass of opener “Moksha”. But for the ideas to have impact, they need to offer context for a grander moment or lead to a central theme; a collage of cool moments that are bookended by a motif does not a successful song make. The production doesn’t do these pieces any favors either. The louder parts of “Moksha”, for example, are difficult to listen to as every instrument feels crunched into oblivion, none given space to breathe or any sense of prominence in the mix.

Tetradōm’s most successful songwriting appears on “Ghardus” and “Eidolon”. The former begins with a lopsided fusion drum solo that rolls into a foreboding atmosphere complete with creeping guitars and ominous, thrumming bass. This establishing idea gradually evolves across the track’s runtime, coming to a semi-climax with a pleasant guitar solo and a surprising piano break. “Ghardus” still gives the slightest nagging feeling of meandering but at least lays down a solid compositional foundation for Quadvium to explore their double-bass (still not that kind) frenzy. “Eidolon” features a breathtaking and otherworldly bass tone, swirling tides of purple ebbing and flowing in intensity to staccato rhythms and intermittent soloing. The songwriting is not quite as strong as “Ghardus”, but manages to explore its established ideas well and even includes a subtle nod to opener “Moksha” to bookend the record.

The premise of Tetradōm had me giddy with excitement, but its execution swiftly yanked me out of my suspension of disbelief. The briefest lapses in my attention left me wondering how the hell we got here, and even when listening with a laser focus, the songwriting approach is a largely inscrutable as tracks fly from idea to idea. However, it may be more helpful to see Tetradōm as a sketchbook that prototypes the possibilities of this playing style. With a bit of songwriting finesse and a continued lean into the strengths of the fretless bass, one can only hope that future Quadvium releases are a two-for-one deal worth investing in.

Recommended tracks: Eidolon, Ghardus, Apophis
You may also like: Coevality, Gordian Knot, Vipassi, Panzerballett, Barend Tromp, Exivious, Planet X
Final verdict: 4/10

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

Label: Agonia Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Quadvium is:
– Steve DiGiorgio (bass)
– Jeroen Paul Thesseling (bass)
– Yuma van Eekelen (drums)
– Eve (guitars)

The post Review: Quadvium – Tetradōm appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: jazz fusion (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Dave Brubeck, Tony Levin, later era Cynic, The Omnific
Country: Netherlands
Release date: 6 June 2025

Just like any prog metal fan worth their salt knows Dream Theater’s Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory, Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out is an essential jazz recording—heck, it’s the first jazz album to sell a million copies. Yet despite the fame, Time Out was still theoretically revolutionary, its experimentation with varied time signatures permanently altering the face of jazz. The odd segmentation of the 9/8 time signature of “Blue Rondo a la Turk” and the now classic 5/4 swing of “Take Five” may sound commonplace today, but in the 50s? Wild stuff. Dutch guitarist, bassist, and sitarist Barend Tromp¹ takes a page out of Brubeck’s 60+ year old book, his new album Odd Time Concepts revolving around, well, odd meters, strange time signatures, and wonky rhythms. 

Time Out’s greatest strength is that you would never know it’s in “unusual” (for the era) time signatures; at the record’s core is whimsical jazz explorations that still sound undated, full of masterful songwriting. On the other hand, Odd Time Concepts goes awry at that central tenet of writing good songs, with Tromp and his guests opting for fashion over form, resulting in a record more gimmicky than musically worthwhile.

As the record is so focused on time signatures, the rhythm section is the main draw, with the bass taking on the majority of the leads (fretless and fretted) and emphasis is placed on the drumming parts, including a feature from King Crimson alum Pat Mastelotto. The resulting sound on Odd Time Concepts mixes the blubbery bass of The Omnific, the mind-warping instrumental interplay of Planet X, and the aimless songwriting of Panzerballett and Quadvium. Tromp is a killer bassist technically, that much is clear. After a dreamy, breathy (read: flatulent) fretless intro to “Sitharsis,” a driving riff by the fretted takes over, nice and thumpy. His slapping on “Heavy Slap” isn’t nearly as funky as I’d have expected, disappointingly lethargic; the expansive, subaudible tone isn’t a favorite either, sounding too rounded without enough grit on the lower end. Moreover, while the bass riffs themselves are varied—as are the ways they interact with the keyboards, synths, and guitars—by tracks like “Thirteen” (in 13/8) in the back half of the album, the up-and-down, punchy playing of Tromp is predictable. 

Although focusing more on messing around with time signature than on interesting melodies, the guitar playing shows flashes of songwriting competence that the rest of the album lacks. The playing on “Chromatron (Parts 1-3)” has the melody decay throughout the short track, and “Thirteen” has a killer fusion solo reminiscent of Planet X or Exivious. The rhythm in “Pandrah Ka Yantra” is annoyingly distracting, but Tromp’s guitar playing matches his sitar in an intriguing pattern.

Speaking of the sitar, non-Western instrumentation is a recurrent theme across Odd Time Concepts, which works surprisingly well for the record—but is frustratingly underutilized, leading it to come across as yet another gimmick. “Sitharsis” and “Pandrah Ka Yantra” both have banging sitar parts, interwoven well within the jazz. Sticking within South Asia, “Heavy Slap” has a random tabla, although that isn’t employed as naturally as the sitar. Finally, moving a bit to the East, and “Gamelan Sepuluh” features a strong Gamelan melodic theme, a decidedly successful exploration into the sound. However, their inclusion makes Odd Time Concepts all the more frustrating as the record abandons its good ideas and sticks with the worse ones. For instance, the synths which populate many tracks either sound like they’re from a Halloween soundtrack (“Madhuvanti”) or are full of reverb. For some reason, though, Barend Tromp has his mind absolutely set on implementing dub² throughout the album, more than the sitar even. That experiment, unlike his South (-east) Asian explorations, doesn’t work well, the electronic effects at odds with the more traditional, human-centric jazz fusion. 

Odd Time Concepts sticks with lame gimmicks while leaving its best ideas out in the sun to be forgotten; the record is ostensibly rhythmically focused, yet its highlights are in the guitar and sitar leads. Barend Tromp and his troupe are talented jazz musicians, but they need to step back and look at the masters like Dave Brubeck to escape the shadow of the gimmick. Odd Time Concepts alone do not make an album.

Recommended tracks: Sitharsis, Chromatron (Parts 1-3), Pandrah Ka Yantra
You may also like: Panzerballett, Coevality, Soften the Glare, Planet X, Quadvium
Final verdict: 4/10

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

Label: independent

Barend Tromp is:
– Barend Tromp – fretted and fretless basses, fretted and fretless guitars, sitar and synths
With guests:
– Trey Gunn – Warr guitar solo on 5
– Pat Mastelotto – drums on 8
– Ron van Stratum – drums on 2 & 10
– Nathan van de Wouw – drums on 1 & 6
– Eugene Vugts – drums on 4

1. Yes, we all read it as Barron Trump first at the blog and were surprised he played jazz. This is NOT Barron Trump, though, rest assured. ︎
2. For context, dub is typically an instrumental form of reggae focused on studio effects like reverb and delay. ︎

The post Review: Barend Tromp – Odd Time Concepts appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: big band jazz, progressive metal, jazz fusion, djent (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Snarky Puppy, Meshuggah, Thank You Scientist, Animals as Leaders
Country: New Zealand
Release date: 24 March 2025

Prog is a kleptomaniac genre. It borrows from a range of influences from across the sonic firmament and prog fans will have heard a variety of weird and wonderful infusions into their rock and metal, from rap to klezmer to samba. But the two big genres that are most indelibly influential to progressive music are classical and jazz. Think Renaissance, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Wilderun; Imperial Triumphant, Thank You Scientist, Cynic. We usually know what to expect from bands that infuse classical and jazz influences into their style, but our expectations here at The Subway were rather blown away in 2023 by Haralabos Stafylakis’ Calibrating Friction. Stayflakis, a guitarist and classical composer, produced an album with a small orchestra plus drummer and guitars to create compositions grounded in the compositional trappings of classical music but utilising progressive metal tropes and textures; rather than making prog metal with a bit of orchestral influence, it was an orchestra with a bit of prog metal influence. Countless bands have tackled jazz fusion prog, but can anyone turn our jazz metal expectations on their head? 

Enter Chris Beernink, a bassist, guitarist, composer and audio engineer who has made the distinctly unprofitable decision to release a big band jazz metal album¹. In practice, this means guitars, bass and drums working on the rhythmic metal textures, with twelve sax and horn players providing the big band. The resulting concoction is less Ornette Coleman, more djent Snarky Puppy. Fans of the late Sound Struggle, as well as djent mainstays like Meshuggah or Animals as Leaders will find familiar metal flavours to enjoy, while fans of jazz instruments in prog will suffocate on an abundance of riches. 

Apocalyptic horns and gnarled metal rhythms make up the lion’s share of The Chimera Suite, so the moments playing against this tendency stand out. “II. Aergia” feels like something out of an Imperial Triumphant record, opening with eerie piano chords, restrained drumming, judicious guitar notes and some spooky horn work while slowly building inexorably towards a thundering, doomy heaviness. “I. Regenesis” takes a break for a noodling jazz guitar solo with quieter instrumentation behind. Though Beernink gives the requisite time for light and heavy to play out against one another, what’s lacking is respite from a generalised blunt force. “II. Aergia” is a softer track but it’s still somewhat dirging in its rhythms. The smoothness of that noodly guitar solo on “I. Regenesis” is the rarity, conveying a sense of delicacy much needed to balance out the heaviness. For most of its runtime, The Chimera Suite sounds like an angry swarm of bees in the best possible way, but it does threaten to wear the listener down.

The heavier metal ventures such as the doomy outro on “II. Aergia” are often the least interesting sonic elements, struggling to carve out their own identity when jettisoning the jazz. Beernink does like to throw in a thudding dirge riff every now and then—sometimes to better effect (e.g. as a rhythm for the horns and piano to work around as on “III. Event Horizon”) and sometimes just as heaviness for heaviness’s sake (“II. Aergia”). His bass and guitar playing is rooted firmly in the djent scene; anyone expecting the virtuosity of jazz fusion artists like Jaco Pastorius or Thundercat will be disappointed.

Opening track “I. Regenesis” feels almost like a jazz horn composition sitting on a metal rhythm section which was worked out after the fact, the two elements working complementarily whilst also threatening to tear one another apart. This contrapuntal polyrhythmic wonkery stays throughout, like a horny, over-saxed Meshuggah. “III. Event Horizon” opens with the madcap energy of the soundtrack from a chase scene in a 50s noir but, y’know, metal and chaotic, and it keeps that energy up for most of its nine-minute runtime, the horns reeling in their death throes at the song’s close.

In the middle of “V. Kleos”, the song goes quieter, allowing the horns to cavort and caper while Beernink’s bass chunters in the background. This builds to perhaps the most Snarky Puppy-esque section on The Chimera Suite as the horns rhapsodise in the space left by the main band exacting restraint. As the track reaches its finale, the saxes engage in a call and response refrain which becomes a rhythmic motif for the big band to bellow over before everything turns dissonant and Beernink starts hitting some low notes so heavy that one has to assume everyone in the studio had to change their underwear after recording.

However, as the track most connected to traditional jazz fusion, “IV. Fury Spawn” feels like the clear stand out of the record. The horns and woodwinds are less inclined to blast as hard as possible, the metal is less in-your-face—at least until the monstrous djent outro which suddenly explodes Car Bomb style. With the trumpet solo, the light piano work in the middle, and the far more deft drumwork, it could sit quite comfortably on a Snarky Puppy record up until that closing minute, and the lighter touch throughout the rest of the track works in favour of the crushingly heavy outro. Maybe I just prefer my jazz fusion lighter.  

Beernink can join Stafylakis as a composer pushing metal into brave new realms, his fusion of jazz and metal being rather unique for a blend that’s already been attempted a thousand times before. The Chimera Suite’s big band dreams are mostly fulfilling, and though it can fall a little into djenting chasms, these tend to be exceptions on a record that proves thrilling throughout. So come on down to the modern metal jazz club: smoking’s banned, there are no tables, and they serve pints in a plastic cup. It’s better than it sounds, I promise.

Recommended tracks: I. Regenesis, IV. Fury Spawn, V. Kleos
You may also like: Haralabos Stafylakis, Sound Struggle, Seven Impale, The Resonance Project, Sarmat
Final verdict: 7.5/10

1.  The Chimera Suite was created with funding from Creative New Zealand. A world in which douche-weasels like Elon Musk can gut government funding initiatives is one where we get fewer creative swings like this. ︎

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Label: Independent

Chris Beernink is:
– Shaun Anderson (drums)
– Chris Beernink (bass, guitars)
– Dan Hayles (piano, organ, synth)

– Jake Baxendale, Tyaan Singh (alto saxophones)
– Louisa Williamson, Blair Latham (tenor saxophones)
– Frank Talbot (baritone saxophone, contrabass saxophone)
– Jack Harré, Ben Hunt, James Guildford-Smith (trumpets)
– Kaito Walley, Matt Allison, Julian Kirgan-Baez, Patrick Di Somma (trombones)

The post Review: Chris Beernink – The Chimera Suite appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive rock, jazz fusion, psychedelic rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Vulkan, Thank You Scientist, The Mars Volta
Country: Chile
Release date: 4 March 2025

Ah, the ever-contentious question of what determines a genre. I return often to this video essay by Mike Rugnetta at the (sadly now defunct) PBS Idea Channel, which posits in part that new artistic genres are not always defined by an artist doing anything strictly groundbreaking. Some trend-setters, such as Franz Kafka or the Dark Souls series of video games, instead “create their own precursors,” establishing new genres by recontextualizing artistic elements that had already been used by their peers and predecessors. These subtle revolutionaries bring new perspectives as they pick out existing commonalities that in retrospect could have already described a genre of their own, had anyone cared to see the link. Music, of course, is no exception to this kind of effect; sometimes the most exciting artists aren’t those breaking new ground entirely, but rather those who can combine things you already loved in a way few others have (yet).

Chercán step onto the stage with their self-titled debut album, and while it would be premature to herald the formation of a new genre, their most noteworthy features are found in the recombination of diverse styles—familiar, but not exactly like any individual band. I was first drawn to Chercán by their similarity to Vulkan, a moderately-known but rarely-imitated band fusing aspects of psychedelic and heavy progressive rock (reminiscent of The Mars Volta but far less wacky). Chercán draw their core sound from this same well, leaning slightly away from the heavy prog influences in favor of jazz, and the Chileans’ instrumentation strays into the unconventional with the inclusion of saxophone as a primary contributor. Matías Bahamondes covers the whole range of the woodwind’s capabilities, from calm jazz rock akin to Thank You Scientist in “7 Colores” to experimental wailing at the tail end of “Caen Las Hojas Blancas,” but for the most part the saxophone integrates into the mix as smoothly as a second lead guitar. Guest musicians on string instruments also add extra color to the palette, sometimes subtly blending with the more traditional jazz/rock orchestration, but also stepping into the spotlight from time to time, such as during the interlude “Desolación (En)” and the opening of the balladic followup “Tiempos Paralelos.”

Chercán excel as much at expressing an aggressive, hard-edged mood bordering on metal as they do at producing a softer, instrumental focused, almost symphonic rock sound. Even moreso, it’s impressive how the same musicians and instruments can contribute equally to each facet. Martín Peña’s vocals impart a sense of tension and urgency during more abrasive times like “Caen Las Hojas Blancas” just as much as they add to the expressive beauty of the string-focused “Tiempos Paralelos.” Meanwhile, the duelling saxophone and guitar melodies that adorn each song shift effortlessly into whichever tone is required from moment to moment, alternately pouring out harsh intensity to the full extent of each instrument’s capabilities in the second half of opener “La Culpa” and producing sweet, calming melodic layers in “Kalimba.” I would be remiss to not also mention drummer Rodrigo González Mera, whose fantastic rhythm parts almost rival the melody instruments in their intricacy (most notably in “Relato De Una Obsesión. Parte II: El Orate”). Additional percussion instruments not found on a standard drum kit add a further sense of the otherworldly and sublime throughout both parts of “Relato De Una Obsesión” as well as during the marimba-filled opening of “Kalimba.”

I complain all too often about bands whose unwieldy and repetitive riffs carve virtual ruts into the sound of their music, wearing down the listener’s patience the way anxious pacing wears out the carpet. I have good news, though: Chercán are not one of those bands. Repetitive phrases like the chugging guitar and saxophone rhythms which recur a couple times throughout “Las Mentiras Del Muro” establish a steady groove while mixing up the details, like the shift from low, almost growled vocals to high shrieks after a couple cycles. Most importantly, Chercán have the sense to get out of the way and move on to something else before it becomes too stale, as they do with the energetic instrumental break that closes out “Las Mentiras.” Only two slightly dimmer spots blemish the sheen of this otherwise excellent album. While Chercán’s musical talent and quality never come into question, the tracks “Caen Las Hojas Blancas” and “Las Mentiras Del Muro” partially undercut the musical experience that Chercán otherwise provides. Both focus more heavily on the in-your-face and intense side of the band’s repertoire, and the relative uniformity leads to a less exciting and dynamic experience than the subtlety that Chercán are capable of at their peak, as demonstrated by the opener “La Culpa” which successfully balances both extremes.

Unbound by standards of genre or instrumentation, Chercán revel in the endless recombination of music. Drawing on the eclectic psychedelic and progressive influences of their musical ancestors Vulkan and The Mars Volta, Chercán execute a coup de grâce with the addition of saxophone and strings, elevating their debut to a unique plane of music. Chercán is dynamic, it shows a range of talents, and it’s also just gorgeous. Talented songwriting allows the musicians the space they need to shine, building momentum and avoiding dull repetition with a wealth of musical ideas available to cycle through, but also maintaining a steady pace that never feels like it’s in a rush to continue from one section to the next. Although their individual features inevitably trace back to some other source of inspiration, their creative combination offers a welcome shot of novelty in a year that’s been a little slow to get off the ground.

Recommended tracks: La Culpa, Kalimba, Tiempos Paralelos, Relato De Una Obsesión (both parts), 7 Colores
You may also like: Bend the Future, Seven Impale, Papangu
Final verdict: 8/10

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

Label: Independent

Chercán is:
– Martín Peña (vocals, guitars – “7 Colores”)
– Simón Catalán (bass)
– Roberto Faúndez (guitars)
– Matías Bahamondes (saxophone)
– Rodrigo González Mera (percussion)
With guests:
– Benjamín Ruz (violin)
– Javiera González (viola)
– Ariadna Kordovero (cello)

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

Style: modern classical, jazz fusion, progressive rock, folk, new age, minimalism (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of:  Ludovico Einaudi, Tigran Hamasyan, Phillip Glass, the chill space-y songs of the Mario Galaxy soundtrack
Country: Russia/United Kingdom
Release date: 28 February 2025

At the blog, we all have our niches. Claire has started her journey here as the foreign language expert; Zach is the prog death king; say the word “neofolk” and Dave is chomping at the bit. I am the weird avant-garde metal guy, so that I’m also the de facto Iamthemorning coverer is probably a surprise. Despite their dark Victorian lyricism, the chamber prog duo are light and fluttery with Gleb Kolyadin’s piano skills the defining instrumental aspect of the band: he’s easily ranked among the best piano players in prog since Iamthemorning’s 2012 debut. After covering their debut in a Lost in Time piece, as well as Marjana Semkina’s¹ solo work, Chris handed me the reins to cover Kolyadin’s third solo album².

With his distinct levity and minimalist classical-with-jazz fusion style, Mobula isn’t a surprising album from Kolyadin, but he changes things up enough from The Outland to make this record stand apart. Rather than playing with a small handful of lengthier, cohesive tracks as he did in 2023, Kolyadin presents Mobula as a series of musical vignettes—fourteen tracks with only one cresting five minutes. Each one unfurls like a short sci-fi poem, but I struggle to find a throughline: some tracks are proggy and orchestrated (“Parallax,” “Fractured,” “Tempest”) while others are Kolyadin alone playing a hundred year old grand piano (“Crystalline,” “Nebular”). Both styles are successful, but the tracklist bears an underlying tension, detracting from the experience of what on the surface is a peacefully atmospheric record.

Kolyadin flaunts his mastery of space across Mobula. On “Glimmer” he begins with a simple minimalist arpeggio which expands to build the universe out of a chord; the grand piano on “Crystalline” has endless depth, Kolyadin’s thoughtful use of silence and the sustain pedal engrossing; and the tricky buildup of “Tempest” creates an epic, giant sound in a crescendo barely lasting 2:30. Kolyadin’s greatest skill on Mobula is his less-is-more approach. Even when songs become more complicated—whether incorporating fretless bass, new age-y flute, or Evan Carson’s percussion—one can easily trace a lineage of their purpose in the song. Mobula features nothing superfluous, and Kolyadin is a uniquely thoughtful composer in the prog world. 

The production on Mobula is expansive, filling my headphones with its range of sounds. However, in its atmosphere, the production often seems reverberant and detached, particularly when Kolyadin is alone with the keys. Although capturing something beautiful in a deeply nostalgic way³, the sound isolates the piano from the listener instead of creating an intended sense of tranquil loneliness. The production negatively affects both the guitar and the flute, as well, with the former often a bit shrill during its extended notes and the latter often cheapened to sound like a recorder playing new age (particularly noticeable on “Radiant”).

Although Mobula’s format doesn’t work as well as The Outland’s more traditional structuring, another album focused on these shorter tracks from the poloniumcubes (which is a musical diary for Kolyadin containing over five hundred of these short-form pieces) is an intriguing prospect. With a dozen different concepts, Mobula still has fantastic successes across its less traditional album structure. As mentioned before, “Tempest” is a masterclass in short-form crescendo; the mixing of fretless bass and piano on “Parallax” is unusual but delightful; and intricate finger-picked guitar and violin on “Fractured” support that Kolyadin can successfully extrapolate his unique piano style to other instruments. My problem with Mobula boils down to curation more than anything wrong with the individual tracks, although several feel like half-fleshed ideas—which makes sense as this is the releasing of a musical diary. 

Coming from a genre so focused on maximalism, Kolyadin continues his case that a thoughtfully minimalist approach can be as triumphant as the best of the maximalists. Even though I’m not as impressed with Mobula as with his previous works, Gleb Kolyadin is guaranteed to elicit the most beautiful and expansive sounds possible from any piano he lays his deft fingers on.

Recommended tracks: Afterglow, Crystalline, Fractured, Tempest
You may also like: Marjana Semkina, Iamthemorning, Evan Carson, Secludja, John D. Reedy
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: KScope – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Gleb Kolyadin is:
Gleb Kolyadin – grand piano, keyboards
Evan Carson – percussion
Vlad Avy – electric guitar (1, 4, 7, 13)
Ford Collier – low whistles (2, 5, 7, 12), bansuri (5) and bombarde (12)
Liam McLaughlin – electric guitar (10, 12)
Zoltan Renaldi – bass (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12), upright bass (12)
Charlie Cawood – acoustic & classical guitar, glockenspiel, guzheng, zither, electric kalimba, taishogoto, bow guitar (4, 9)
PJ Flynn – bass (3)
Henry Isaac Bristow – violin (9)
Ilya Izmaylov – cello (1)
Mr Konin – electronic rhythms

1. The other half of Iamthemorning ︎
2. As he covered Kolyadin’s previous album The Outland ︎
3. I cannot help but compare the intensity of atmosphere on a track like “Observer” with the feeling of desolation on a lonely planet in Mario Galaxy ︎

The post Review: Gleb Kolyadin – Mobula 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.

Style: jazz fusion, progressive metal (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: The Aristocrats, Snarky Puppy, Thank You Scientist, Mahavishnu Orchestra
Country: US-NY
Release date: 13 September 2024

Crafting a truly unique sound is one of the hardest tasks for any band; with the sheer volume of music already out there, it’s tempting to simply fit into a mold created by one’s influences and toss out slight variations of what has come before. This is especially true in the instrumental prog space: vocal timbre and lyrical style are two of the easiest ways to stand out, after all, and without those avenues of expression, countless artists are left churning out the same vaguely djenty guitar sounds that artists like Plini and Intervals have been doing for over a decade. Consider the Source, however, do not have that problem. The NYC “sci-fi Middle Eastern fusion” trio have been forging their fiercely singular brand of instrumental prog– complete with elements of Indian, Balkan, and Arabic folk music alongside jazz fusion and psychedelic rock– for a solid twenty years now, and show no signs of slowing down any time soon. This is my first time actually reviewing a band I have a prior history with; I discovered their excellent 2019 record You Are Literally a Metaphor during my college radio days and have been following their music off and on since. While 2021’s softer and folkier Hybrid Vol. 1: Such As A Mule left me a bit cold, I had high hopes for their newest project. Made alongside producer David Prater (best known for his work on a little album called Images and Words), The Stare promises a heavier, more metallic direction for their sound. But can they pull this new style off while still keeping true to their core sound, or have they added one ingredient too many?

I needn’t have worried; CTS continue to sound like their music came from outer goddamn space. Sprawling 13-minute opener “Trial by Stone” demonstrates that they’re still in fine form, bouncing from ethereal psychedelia to tight, melodic counterpoint to freewheeling, shreddy jam sessions while keeping the track’s core melodic motifs close at hand. There are passages where the guitars distort and the double bass drums begin pounding, but they’re effortlessly folded into the band’s sound along with their multitude of other influences. In the absence of vocals, Gabriel Marin wields his fretless guitar like a lead singer, spinning forth quavery, ear-catching melodies that often sound more like a theremin or an erhu than any guitar I’ve heard. With Marin so resolutely focused on the treble, it leaves much of the riffing to John Ferrara’s bass, a role he fills ably. His intricate, slap-and-tap rich playing fills an absolutely insane amount of the mix, and his tone is thicker than an overcooked bowl of oatmeal– plus, he contributes synth parts with foot pedals, Geddy Lee-style. Jeff Mann, for his part, scales back from the dozen miscellaneous percussion implements he used on the previous record in favor of just being a damn good prog drummer capable of driving each track’s capricious rhythmic pulse with panache– though he does add a couple extra instruments, including a bit of mallet percussion to punch up some of the melodies. Fantastic as these guys all are individually, there’s even more magic in their interplay; there’s a palpable sense of fun and joy that leaps out of every intricate bit of instrumental interweaving. I feel like there should be people in the room with these guys, shouting “Woo!” and “Hell yeah!” after every particularly tasty solo flourish.

After the absolute unit of a starting track, we’re left with only four more tunes, each showing off its own piece of CTS’s musical identity. “I Can See My Eyes” represents the slower, more psychedelic side of the band– though I’d hesitate to call it a “ballad”, it’s still the most chill track on here, with sparse electronic percussion backing a soft, mysterious melody that eventually develops into a soaring, Steve Vai-esque solo. Lead single “Mouthbreather” is next, and hoo boy, is this one a ride and a half. This is the tune that leans hardest into metal influences, foregoing the wispy fretless melodies in favor of hard-charging guitar and bass unisons over growling synth pedals… and then things start getting really interesting. To put it simply, this one goes absurdly hard, a prog-metal tornado that rampages through strength after strength. My favorite moments include the way Mann’s layered, cowbell-filled drum solo is abruptly shoved out of the way by Ferrara’s gnarly, bitcrushed bass midway through the song, as well as the closing breakdown that just might be the heaviest thing they’ve ever done. “New World Čoček”, a cover of Balkan/klezmer saxophonist Matt Darriau, is the nod to their folk/world music side, though it cranks the volume several notches beyond the comparatively mild-mannered original. This is the hardest the band jams out on the album, pulling out numerous gloriously indulgent solos while shifting the energy around enough to avoid feeling like they’re just repeating the head chord progression again. Finally, we have closer “Preemptive Vengeance”, which feels unexpectedly tight at a mere five minutes. With its menacing synth guitar melody and the way the rhythm section boils beneath it with the restrained fury of approaching thunder, it feels more like a credits sting than a proper end, though it is a damn enticing one.

Still, there are a couple things about The Stare that didn’t quite land for me. For instance, I have some reservations about Gabriel Marin’s solo style. While he’s clearly an absurdly talented musician with a well-defined sound, some of his solos feel like a fuzzy, messy blur of ultra-rapid notes– like if you gave Slayer‘s Kerry King a jazz theory textbook or twelve. In fact, much of the album (particularly “New World Čoček”) relies on a loose, live, jam-band feel, and while this brings an unmatchable energy and vibe, it may come off as sloppy to listeners that are used to more polished, through-composed music. Honestly, though, my main disappointment is that the band didn’t push the envelope further. With “Mouthbreather” as the lead single heralding a much-touted turn towards metal, I expected a bit more heaviness from the other four tracks than a couple double-kick drum passages in the opener and an extra sprinkle of distortion in the guitars. This is, in many ways, just another Consider the Source record, and while that is far from a bad thing, I can’t help but wonder what could have been.

Let me be clear, though– despite those minor gripes, The Stare is a great album, and the instrumental record to beat for 2024. It’s a clear return to form for the band and a reminder that they’re still one of the most unique, exciting, and underappreciated acts in prog today. To anyone new to the band, it’s quite possibly the best album to start with, delivering the full breadth of their sound and capabilities in a tight, punchy, and vibrant 42-minute package. So, if you’re into music of the fusion-adjacent persuasion, or if you just want to hear three virtuosos kick ass on their instruments with a unique, genre-blending twist, I recommend you meet this album’s gaze and lose yourself in its inky depths. You’ll get out eventually. Maybe.

Recommended tracks: Trial By Stone, Mouthbreather, New World Čoček
You may also like: Matt Darriau, Elephant9, Marbin
Final verdict: 8/10

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

Consider the Source is:
– Gabriel Marin (double neck guitar)
– John Ferrara (bass, synth)
– Jeff Mann (drums, percussion)

The post Review: Consider the Source – The Stare appeared first on The Progressive Subway.