Style: Melodic death metal, metalcore, progressive metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Dark Tranquillity, Orbit Culture, In Flames, Arch Enemy, Lamb of God
Country: Finland
Release date: 25 April 2025

One of the biggest draws to metal as a genre is the fact that, at this point, it’s hardly a genre in any meaningful sense. If you choose carefully, you can pick about a hundred different bands from different corners of the metal universe, and not a single one will sound anything like another—their only commonality being the overarching genre tag they hold haphazardly. No matter your taste or mood, there’s something for you within metal’s vast expanse: fast and riffy, dissonant and crushing, introspective and atmospheric, technical, accessible, melancholic, heady, visceral, you get the point. The more my taste matures, the wilder it gets, and the more time I spend wandering the genre’s outer reaches. But sometimes the monkey part of my brain pulls me back toward the center. Give me some groovy riffs and shiny melodic leads, and I’ll forget all about that eighteen-minute, dissonant, avant-black track in the queue.

Enter Echoes of the Extinct with their debut LP Era of Darkness. I don’t mean to paint the album as overly simple—it has some progressive leanings and blistering chops—but primarily, these Finns center their sound on big, chugging guitars augmented by melodic death metal flairs. Clocking in at an even thirty minutes, Era of Darkness promises a quick, satisfying fix of head-bashing music; something to knock those primal cravings into submission so I can get back to whatever pretentious subgenre of a subgenre I was exploring. So, how does this jaunt toward the center of the metal universe fare? 

Drawing inspiration from their Nordic neighbors, Echoes of the Extinct’s guitars fill Era of Darkness with Gothenburg-style riffing and leads, and the vocal delivery often resembles the likes of Dark Tranquillity and In Flames. The straightforward melodeath influence shines brightest during choruses, those in “Empathy” and “Virus” sounding like they were plucked right from the late ‘90s Gothenburg scene: riffy, melodic, catchy, and energized without being overly technical. Although generic, the band does the style justice. But these melodeath features lie atop and decorate a metalcore-tinged foundation of heavy, rolling chugs reminiscent of Orbit Culture. In theory, these styles should coalesce in an extremely digestible mix of groovin’ low-string riffs balanced by faster melodic ones, shimmering leads, and big hooks—something to get the blood pumping and the head bobbing. In practice, though, that’s not how Era of Darkness plays out. 

For an album reliant on groove, Era of Darkness never lets you settle into a rhythm for long. Right when a nod-inducing pattern begins to take hold, Echoes of the Extinct take you somewhere else—they either speed you up and abruptly send you back to Gothenburg, or move you over to a different set of chugs that don’t quite complement the ones before. The experience is one of whiplash, stylistically and physically. “Last Page,” for example, is composed almost entirely on top of chugs, yet locking onto the underlying rhythm is like playing a game of whack-a-mole. The middle of “Virus” similarly bounces the listener around aimlessly, which is unfortunate because the track is bookended by some of the album’s catchiest melodeath material. The guitar and drum parts in “Virus” were evidently written independently and then put together, and it shows—in fact, the drum-guitar connection feels out of sync throughout the entire album. Still, it’s the penultimate track “Conflict” that’s the hardest to follow, as an all too fraught combination of styles, passages, and rhythms is packed almost randomly into less than a four-minute runtime. The band manufactures complexity when flow is what’s sorely needed.

To be sure, Echoes of the Extinct display potential. Although far from innovative, the interplay between the guitars is mature beyond what you’d expect from a debut, and the most enjoyable aspect of Era of Darkness is how well the lead melodies play off the foundational riffs. The vocalist also turns in a solid performance, with his strong choruses and sense of timing bringing some focus to an uncentered album. Perhaps a forgivable sign of youthful exuberance, Echoes of the Extinct simply stuff too much into a thirty-minute release. As a result, no one part stands out. Providing the numerous ideas room to breathe, and giving deeper thought to how and why one passage leads to the next, would have helped untangle the album into a more coherent experience for the listener. Opening tracks “Remedy” and “Empathy” are the most comprehensible and come closest to that impactful, squarely “metal” sound the album was poised to deliver, but on the whole, Era of Darkness misses the mark.

Alas, my trip back toward the center of the metal universe was an unsuccessful one. The should-be-satisfying groove and Gothenburg elements of Era of Darkness are marred by disjointed songwriting, and without flowing more naturally, the tracks’ component pieces aren’t compelling enough to stand on their own. But, while I’m here near the center, I may as well indulge—Dark Tranquillity’s Character should do. Then it’s back to those outer reaches, to answer important questions like whether an experimental drone and doom metal track justifies its thirty-five-minute runtime.

Recommended tracks: Remedy, Empathy
You may also like: Aversed, Allegaeon, Burial in the Sky
Final verdict: 4.5/10

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

Label: Inverse Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Echoes of the Extinct is:
– Kalle Hautalampi (bass)
– Jarmo Jääskeläinen (drums)
– Juuso Lehtonen (guitars)
– Tero Ollilainen (vocals)

The post Review: Echoes of the Extinct – Era of Darkness appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album Art by Mikko Parkkonen / Aarni Visuals

Style: Djent, Alternative Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Spiritbox (earlier), VOLA, Voyager
Country: Finland
Release date: 14 February 2025

Probably one of the most frustrating things in general for musical critique is when there is overt obsession with comparing bands singularly to whatever band does their genre best or is the current flavor of the day/week/year. While helpful for establishing a baseline, it often can be a bit reductive in totality, as a summation of a separate piece of work to be “of another” in some aspect. With this in mind, most of us here try to do exactly that: establish baselines of what something will initially feel like without leaning too much on comparisons to known quantities to give a judgment on a body of work. So with that all out of the way, let’s get this out of the way: Rioghan is a female-led djenty alternative metal project, and as such the Spiritbox comparisons are immediate from the outset (It was even on our internal submission spreadsheet. It is inescapable!). 

On latest album Kept, the Finnish outfit compose their sound much in the way many of these newer wave of melody-oriented low tuned alt metal bands do: baseline riffs or djent motifs that pop their head in and out of a song to establish a groove, lush wall-of-sound choruses to evoke a pop or mainstream rock feel (while keeping the low tuned aspect), and intermittent diversions from these in different ways to remind you “yes, we are dynamic and nuanced”. It’s a formula because it does work at a baseline; if you are good enough composers and riff writers, with a sufficiently good vocalist, you are guaranteed to make something catchy and agreeable. So then the question becomes: is this an album to be Kept around for future listens?

“Dreams” opens Kept in a form exactly as mentioned before: orchestration sets the mood before everything drops in on a djent groove riff to get the head nodding. This drops off to a lower dynamic tom-groove verse, introducing vocalist Rioghan Darcy in a slightly breathy intimate tone, before moving to a more fully arranged vocal stack sound in the chorus. “Dreams” continues in a modern verse/chorus/verse song structure before ending with Kept’s first taste of harsh vocals over top of the original groove riff. “Hands” focuses a bit more on this harsh vocal sound, though it does make room, as most of these songs do, for at least a couple lush choruses. From here, the songs continue these patterns, with small diversions into more synth sound focus, particularly on “Edge” and “Distance”, and various degrees of clean/harsh vocal balance. 

“Hopes” becomes the first true side street taken on Kept, highlighting its alternative instrumentation with verses led along by drifting accordion and acoustic guitar strumming, before giving way to a violin solo. This song still contains the alternative/pop-esque chorus visits, but the focus on layering orchestration as opposed to a synth+low guitar wall of sound gives a pleasant contrast to the album, and honestly may be its highest point.  “Red” is a final taste of the band experimenting with alterations to their formula: earlier releases and bios allude to the fact they act one time collaborated with Leprous vocalist Einar Solberg, and “Red” feels like a potential remnant of that time, its rhythmic guitar motif being reminiscent of tacks from Pitfalls or Aphelion (the best Leprous albums, fight me nerds), with the drumming and bass stabs over this motif teasing that feel as well. Darcy floats over these parts gracefully, and the final payoff from the motif building constantly is satisfying. 

The instrumental sounds are all solid and well done, perhaps a bit in the way of being a bit too on-the-nose for the sound and genre to really pique interest—these are all the expected tones and feelings of these instruments for this current subset of alternative metal, so it’s a bit hard to grab at one and say anything about it necessarily except “yes, this sounds good”. The drums pound through the mix in that large boxy way, the guitars are sufficiently huge in the ears and menacing in that clean-cut pop-djent way, and the bass holds down what it needs to, ever so often popping in to say “I’m here too, I promise”. The vocals when clean are well performed, produced, and layered. The harsh vocals leave a bit to be desired, as Darcy’s harsh tone tends to come in a bit thin, high, and pushed, and succeed most when pushed a bit back or layered with singing, or built on themselves with much more scream layers. 

Overall, Kept is a decent showing for this well-trodden sound, though it doesn’t do much to separate itself from its peers. This album succeeds most with its choruses, which are genuinely well arranged, catchy, and get stuck in your head immediately. Everything around that serves mostly as connective tissue to those choruses, outside of the diversions mentioned on “Hopes” and “Red”, likely Kept’s most successful moments. If you like the current vibe of alternative low-tuned metal with a leaning for melody and big sound, this will definitely hit your ears well, though it may not change your world.

Recommended tracks: Dreams, Hopes, Red
You may also like: Glass Ocean, Maraton, Valis Ablaze, External
Final verdict: 6/10

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

Label: Inverse Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Rioghan is:
– Rioghan Darcy (vocals)
– Teemu Liekkala (guitar & keys)
– Tero Luukkonen (guitar)
– Antti Varjanne (bass)
– Valtteri Revonkorpi (drums)

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