Style: Progressive metal, post-hardcore (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Contortionist, Circa Survive, Voyager, Ions
Country: Georgia, United States
Release date: 18 July 2025

[An up-front disclaimer: Effuse’s vocalist, Chris Deese, is a fellow writer here at the Subway and also manages some of our social media. Though avoiding bias is impossible in this situation, this review reflects my honest take on On Others free of external forces or pressures.¹]

An inexorable bond exists between a piece of art and the world that surrounds it. Artistic expression is virtually impossible in a void, as the lived experience and ideals of the artist inevitably bleed into the design of a work. How, then, does an artist relate and react to the influence of the outside world? Atlanta, Georgia’s Effuse investigates this topic on latest EP, On Others. Do they successfully navigate the waters of artistic expression, or does the “Augury” foresee bad tidings for the quintet?

Adorned with touches of post-metal and post-hardcore, On Others explores an airy and cinematic take on progressive metal by way of Clairvoyant (The Contortionist). Tension-and-release comprises the central songwriting approach, encouraging ideas and moods to smoothly flow across its runtime. The use of a bright-yet-gloomy tonality in the guitarwork imbues a sense of drama and a wistful vocal style helps anchor songs melodically and inject the occasional earworm. Each track features punctuated grooves that dance around swirling polyrhythms and weightless tremolos; many of the EP’s grander moments evoke the feeling of being swept into the air or being submerged under giant crashing waves.

On Others’ greatest compositional strength lies in its monolithic structure. Every piece establishes its own identity through an internal ebb and flow while contributing to the EP’s greater ideas. Effortless transitions further heighten this sense of interconnectedness: every track either matches or builds on the momentum of the previous, whether it be the exhilarating switchup between chunky grooves on “Observer” and “Augury” or the grand synthesizers and fading guitars of “Orbweaver” descending into the gently picked melodies of “Two Cathedrals”. The bridge of each track provides additional contrast as Effuse explore more intense and abrasive textures through harsh vocals and frenetic drumming. Closer “Two Cathedrals” proves to be the most experimental in its stuttering and antsy climax, but never quite settles into its grooves, interrupting the track’s momentum and diminishing its grandiosity in the process.

Atop the hefty grooves, vocalist Chris Deese adds a vivid melancholic flair by tapping into the melodic sensibilities of post-hardcore, particularly that of Circa Survive’s Anthony Green. The performance on opener “Observer”, for example, is in-your-face and dramatic as Deese leans into a forceful delivery, throwing his voice around with momentum and even a bit of grit. On the other hand, much of “Augury” is plaintive and delicate, showcasing restraint and waiting until the bridge to let loose and explore staccato rhythms. Deese’s clean vocals are undeniably expressive and powerful, and his harshes are crystal clear in their enunciation, but they don’t quite match the expressiveness and bite of the cleans. As a consequence, the harsh vocal sections tend to come across as more functional in purpose, save for “Augury”, which manages to capture attention through compelling rhythms and effective interplay between the vocals and drums. Ironically, the harsh vocals shine the most when they are used as an accent to the cleans or when the two are harmonized. This is done to great effect during the closing moments of “Orbweaver”, where the cleans and harshes engage in a lockstep dance before the harshes drop out for an expansive conclusion.

The sense of melancholy embodied by the vocal performance extends to the EP’s lyrical themes. Focusing on the relationship between artist and audience, On Others is a reflection on the interpretation of art and the artist’s reaction to external forces. “Observer” discusses a breach of boundaries at the hands of an audience who may read into a piece too deeply or project their own worldview onto it, taking their read as gospel and engaging in the ‘death of the author’ as the piece’s original intent is masked. This theme is explored further on “Augury”, where the narrator betrays his frustration at this side of the audience: Deese opines that ‘The way we read the air’ is ‘Almost comical’ and refers to the audience’s interpretations as an ‘unbearable weight that holds me down’. The track later suggests that it may not even matter if a personal touch is missing from the art as people will fill in the blanks with their misunderstandings regardless, considering that ‘They won’t see / They won’t know / If I remove myself’.² 

Though the lyrics are a bit esoteric at times—I struggle with the metaphors on “Orbweaver” and “Two Cathedrals” and their place in the overall theme—there is a strong sense of cohesion through the reintroduction and repurposing of ideas. Repeated references are made to ‘painted skies’, representing the myriad approaches to artistic interpretation both intended and unintended by the artist. Additionally, the EP features many nods to the suggestion of ‘removing one’s self’ from the artistic creation process in an attempt to distance the artist’s works from their own ego and transcend potential outside influences.

Through cinematic and airy pieces, On Others weaves together groovy progressive metal and somber melodies into a panoramic and free-flowing musical experience. In both its imperfections and its lyricism, On Others effectively showcases the limitations of art as a means to convey ideas due to external influences and the internal world of the artist. This is of course not expressed as a motivation to stray from artistic pursuits, but as a way to cherish and celebrate the weird and wonderful evolution of ideas from the mind of the artist to the mind of the audience. Regardless of intention or interpretation, there is no better joy than to sing your melancholia out loud or to immerse yourself in grand, sweeping atmospheres.

Recommended tracks: Observer, Augury, Orbweaver
You may also like: Lattermath, Valis Ablaze, Hologram Earth, Inhalo
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

Effuse is:
– Chris Deese (vocals, keyboards)
– Taylor Kuter (guitars)
– Kane Lewis (guitars)
– Christopher Kingsbury (bass)
– Bob Stocking (drums)

1. That’s a cheeky bit of foreshadowing for you. Also, hi Chris! ︎
2. I’d be remiss to not mention the sheer irony in presenting my interpretation of Effuse’s work here and the funny feeling of critiquing and interpreting a piece of art that is in many ways about the interpretation and critique of art. ︎

The post Review: Effuse – On Others appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: post-metal, sludge metal, shoegaze, noise rock, stoner rock, post-hardcore (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of:  Parannoul, Asian Glow, Neurosis, Boris
Country: South Korea
Release date: 15 May 2025

Modern medicine is amazing. People have lived well over a year with an artificial heart, and doctors can perform entire heart transplants. Alas, the human being still needs a heart, be it a machine or originally somebody else’s, and a person would wither and die almost instantly without the blood-pumping organ. South Korea’s Baan have a mission: rip out the still-beating heart from four genres and try to keep the result alive for sixty minutes. According to their Bandcamp, Baan aim to be “Doom but not boring / Screamo but not crying / Hardcore but not macho / Shoegaze but not sucks.” Dodging all four of those pitfalls while playing those genres is gonna require a musical miracle to occur on Neumann. Do Baan achieve what doctors cannot?

Let’s proceed one by one. Neumann certainly avoids the crying part of screamo by not being screamo beyond some halfheartedly shouted harsh vocals; the record also contains some amateur cleanly sung, crowd-chant adjacent cleans. Both vocal styles are completely obliterated by the mix to the point of being nearly inaudible—they may have recorded them from across the street—rendering them a strident nuisance. Similar to the self-described “screamo” aspect of Baan’s sound, the macho part of hardcore, by virtue of mostly avoiding true punkiness, is eschewed by Baan. Those two soul-of-the-genre omissions are cheating, though, and Neumann is really post-y, noisy, atmospheric sludge metal, with the atmospheric part coming from shoegaze and stoner rock influence.

Thankfully, the doom metal (read: sludge and post- metal) parts are not boring, and the shoegaze aspect don’t sucks [sic]! Fuzzed out guitars and Baan’s love of noisy amplifiers drive Neumann, and the South Korean band have a keen ear for melody and rhythm, with wistful yet hard-hitting guitar parts and dynamic, Mastodon-esque drumming. “Birdperson 새사람” has the first shoegaze part around 3:40 with airy guitars above pummeling double bass, but it’s not until the second track “Early Bird Dies Fast” where Baan hit their stride, the spacey trem picking of the simultaneously woolly yet shimmery guitars playing a beautiful tune—almost nostalgic in tone, as if Astronoid wrote stoner doom. The strongest asset in the band’s arsenal, however, is their weaponization of noise, with exemplary moments like the middle breakdown of “Sing a Brave Song 2 씩씩한 노래를 불러라 2” and the sludgy violence of “Reversal of a Man.” The bass playing is also killer, but unfortunately it almost never makes an appearance with the exception of “Sing a Brave Song 1 씩씩한 노래를 불러라 1” where it gets significant time leading. 

Despite the strength of the riffs and drumming, the album wears itself thin within forty minutes, the schtick played out. By the end of the three-part “Sing a Brave Song 씩씩한 노래를 불러라,” I’m snoozing at the prospect of more Baan, and the boring track “Not Yet” contributes nothing that previous songs like “Histrionic” hadn’t done better. Moreover, the closer, “Oldman 헌사람,” plays into a tedious atmospheric intro that lasts for several minutes before recapping with uninspired shoegaze vocals from Asian Glow; so, I’m forced to admit that while the shoegaze instrumental sections don’t sucks, the shoegaze vocals sucks. Baan clearly had fun tinkering with their amplifiers and jamming out—at the expense of a more concise, better album. 

South Korea is truly a hotbed for noisy, homemade shoegaze recently (Parannoul, Asian Glow, Huremic), and Baan have certainly made a name for themselves with the release of Neumann. Their mix of energetic, growly, and fuzzy guitar tones with passionate and delicate melodies contributes something new to their scene. The band just needs an editor and a better singer. But fans of everything from post-metal to punk will find something to enjoy in Neumann—I certainly did.

Recommended tracks: Early Bird Dies Fast, Histrionic, Sing a Brave Song 1-3 씩씩한 노래를 불러라 1-3
You may also like: Meth., The Angelic Process, Glassing, Huremic, Sadness
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Label: independent

Baan is:
반재현 [Baan Jae-hyun]
김진규 [Kim Jin-gyu aka April 28th]
이성재 [Lee Seong-jae]
장진웅 [Jang Jin-ung]

The post Review: Baan – Neumann appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Post-hardcore, post-metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rolo Tomassi, Converge, Terminal Sleep
Country: France
Release date: 25 April 2025

Our inner emotional worlds are an unwieldy, convoluted place: feelings never come standalone and can’t be neatly filed away, as they end up bleeding into facets of our lives both conscious and unconscious. So why should we expect that managing these emotions is a clean and regimented process? Sometimes, the best course of action when dealing with messy and intense feelings is an equally messy and intense approach. For French band Point Mort, this manifests through testaments to fury and exhaustion on latest record, Le Point de Non-Retour (The Point of No Return). Will we reach cathartic relief by its end, or will indulging in these grievances take us past the point of no return?

Intro “ॐ Ajar” transmutes Le Point de Non-Retour’s opening moments from bubbling inner tension into righteous fury by juxtaposing buzzing electronic percussion against sass-tinged cleans and distorted harsh screams. Vocalist Sam Pillay proclaims, ‘I LOST MY MIND’ on following track “An Ungrateful Wreck of Our Ghost Bodies,” and blast beats annihilate any semblance of restraint; out of Point Mort’s primordial sludge of rage emerges a stream-of-consciousness rarefaction of frustration and anger. Le Point de Non-Retour is a blender of post-hardcore intensity, post-metal contemplations, and straightforward hardcore punk assaults. Chunks of its constituent forms can be found in the suspension, but the product as a whole is one of its own, uniquely integrating elements of sludgy neocrust, black metal blast beats and tremolos, and slippery, undulating electronics that urge the listener to sway in tandem. On very rare occasions, tracks will reprise an idea or utilize a chorus, but song structures generally follow the inner train of thought that manifests when processing complex and extreme emotions.

Each track brings an ineffable sense of excitement and intrigue while retaining vulnerability in rage-room songwriting. “An Ungrateful Wreck of Our Ghost Bodies” is an act in three parts, beginning in excessive neocrust chaos with head-smashing percussion and rumbling rhythms. After a smooth and ethereal quieter section, the intensity returns in full—but in a more refined and straightforward form, creating a sense of drama and progression through a willingness to sharpen focus in the track’s final hours. The bite-sized “Skinned Teeth” brings a sense of vigor through the use of double-kick drums and fast-paced stuttering drum patterns, adhering to an unstoppable kinetic force across its short runtime. In contrast, the cinematics of “The Bent Neck Lady” emerge through a comparatively slower burn, beginning with heavily reverbed vocals and a slowly building drum pattern under smooth, swirling percussion. By the halfway mark, the listener is pulled in by a riptide of sludgy grooves from guitarists Aurélien Sauzereau and Olivier Millot, and near its end, a volcanic intensity is broached in repeated throat-tearing screams.

Le Point de Non-Retour’s sense of pathos is centralized in the vocal performance. Pillay showcases several styles, injecting melodrama through clean vocals, acerbic and acidic harshes, and occasionally veering into sass territory with a pouty and irreverent half-sung, half-spoken affect. Pillay’s harshes in particular are stunningly powerful, her eviscerating shrieks projected into an endless chasm of grief and consternation. Most striking is the performance that concludes “The Bent Neck Lady”; overtop wailing tremolos and blast beats, Pillay lets out the most pained and haunting howls of the record over and over, the anguish and frustration too much for words. The sass vocals work well in their subtle incorporation on the verses of the title track, adding a playful spin that almost evokes SOPHIE’s “Faceshopping”. A majority of the time, though, the squealy and sneering delivery ranges from listenable to tolerable, adding little more than texture to the music. I’d frankly prefer if they were either incorporated more regularly into the compositions or taken out to create a more cohesive mood instead of only being used intermittently.

Through chaos comes clarity—sometimes, the easiest way to organize ourselves is to malleate and rearrange the internals, letting things explode and seeing where they land before bringing the pieces back together. Point Mort’s Le Point de Non-Retour goes through a similar process of deconstruction, destruction, and creation, breaking down the fundamentals of hardcore punk, post-rock, and post-black metal, and congealing them into an unstoppable wall of visceral intensity. While the end product may not be rid of its inherent rage, the record most certainly alchemizes it effectively, embodying a much-needed catharsis by its conclusion.

Recommended tracks: An Ungrateful Wreck of Our Ghost Bodies, The Bent Neck Lady, Le Point de Non-Retour
You may also like: Gospel, Habak, Volatile Ways, American Nightmare, Tocka, Hoplites
Final verdict: 8/10

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

Label: Almost Famous – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Point Mort is:
– Olivier Millot (guitars)
– Sam Pillay (vocals)
– Damien Hubert (bass)
– Simon Belot (drums)
– Aurélien Sauzereau (guitars)

The post Review: Point Mort – Le Point de Non-Retour appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive metal, post-metal, post-hardcore (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Karnivool, early Thrice, The Ocean, Vulkan
Country: Switzerland
Release date: 28 March 2025

Azure waves lap lazily against the sun-baked Peloponnesian shore and the olive trees are waxy in the Mediterranean heat. A wanderer ventures inland towards the ancient city of Elis. Word has travelled ahead of him, and onlookers stand on stoops and peer through windows to get a glimpse of the son of Zeus: slayer of the Nemean lion and the Lernaean hydra, a man atoning for past crimes¹, plaything of a cowardly king, beholden to dreams of divinely ordained immortality. A scraping noise follows as he strides uphill and, spotting the shovel chipping at the stones behind him, the villagers look up towards the city gates and back to the tool and begin to murmur. ‘Surely not,’ they say, ‘King Augeas’ thousand oxen haven’t been cleaned out for thirty years!’ The camera cuts back to our hero, the village diminishing behind him as he continues forth. He mugs for the camera and quips, ‘There’ll be no love lost over this labour!’ 

Meanwhile, two more years of labouring in Switzerland have yielded the second part in NevBorn’s Alkaios trilogy, based around the twelve labours of Heracles. The first instalment of the Swiss post-metal quartet’s opus was an undersung gem of 2023, a tapestry in four lengthy parts, unfurling each of Heracles’ challenges in cinematic style, and marrying the angst and punch of post-hardcore with the more meditative build-and-release structure of post-metal. The Peacock continues in the same vein to deliver the central third of the tale.

At this point, the Gods get a little silly with Heracles. Having slain a lion and a hydra, and caught a Hind and a boar, the middle four labours see the Greek demigod working as a farm labourer, clearing out stables, killing pesky birds, rounding up a rogue bull, and lassoing in some horses. I don’t know about you, but I think Perseus and Theseus got the cooler quests. The material is a little rougher this time, but NevBorn approach it from intriguing angles: on “Elis” they focus on the refusal of the greedy King Augeas to honour the successful completion of the labour with Heracles’ reward. Meanwhile, “Stymfalia” seems to allude to the discounting of the labour due to Athena’s intervention². The compositions themselves always prioritise storytelling. For example, on “Stymfalia”, Heracles’ successful killing of the birds of Ares is heralded by intense screams in a triumphant crescendo with digitally lowered backing cleans providing a unique texture, while the chaotic tapping solos on “Tirida” convey the savagery of Diomedes’ man-eating mares. 

To the same end, NevBorn’s penchant for long³ runtimes hasn’t gone anywhere, and I’ve come to really enjoy this facet of their compositional style. The steadfast refusal to inject a song with a billion riffs, and instead let each section breathe, again benefits the storytelling as well as the sense of cinema, making them the Béla Tarr of progressive post-metal. Both “Elis” and “Stymfalia”, for instance, open with post-rock builds running to over three minutes, grounding the songs in a sense of mythic scale equal to the subject matter. 

And this willingness to let each section sit and breathe yields album highlights, the best of which is undoubtedly Elori Baume’s sublime sax solo on “Knossos”, a beautiful evocation of the majestic Cretan bull facing down the son of a God. Much like “Keryneia” from the previous instalment, in which Heracles frees the Cerynian hind, there’s a sense once more of affinity; Heracles as untameable beast, itinerant loner, finding companionship in these mythic mammals. As the sax mellifluously cavorts over a serene atmosphere, one can imagine the demigod admiring the bull as it roams the fields in the burnished orange of the Mediterranean sunset; a sense of guilt washing over him knowing he must bind this free spirit, waiting for the cover of night to aid him in his challenge. 

My one reservation is that The Peacock doesn’t differentiate itself from The Eagle all that much. NevBorn have a distinctive style which works for them, but many moments are reliant on the push and pull of calmer atmospheres and clean singing versus screams over chord-driven crescendos, and over the course of what will be a three-hour suite when the final part drops, that’s a lot of the same formula. The moments that stand out—that gorgeous sax solo, the tapping motifs, the uncharacteristic guitar solo, the little pulsations of synth underwriting “Tirida”—do so because they contrast the formula, and they’re woven into the compositions perfectly. NevBorn don’t need to start djenting or doing Dream Theater discursions into technical wankery, but just a little more variety in the rhythm section would make those final four labours really pop.

With Part II safely delivered, NevBorn prove themselves brilliant sonic storytellers, infusing the somewhat stoic labours with emotion and introspection just as the labours infuse NevBorn’s compositions with a greater sense of narrative purpose. I, for one, can’t wait to hear their take on the final four labours in a couple of years time. In the grounds of King Eurystheus’ castle, the now-tame mares of Diomedes frolic. Heracles kneels before the king who informs of his final labours. There’ll be some cattle-rustling, some apple scrumping, and he’ll have to capture a dog that’s three times as vicious as most, but one labour in particular grabs Heracles’ attention: ‘Before all that,’ says the king, ‘you must journey to the land of the Amazons and retrieve for me the girdle of Queen Hippolyta.’ Heracles turns to the camera, smirks and shrugs his shoulders. ‘It’s a living!’ he quips. 

Recommended tracks: Knossos, Stymfalia
You may also like: Ions, Hippotraktor, Playgrounded
Final verdict: 7.5/10

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

Label: Luminol Records – Facebook | Official Website

NevBorn is:
– Matthieu Hinderer (vocals, guitars, piano, synth, drum programming)
– Brice Geiser (bass)
– Alan Gualandris (guitars)
– Nicolas Huguenin (drums)

With:
– Elori Baume (saxophone)

1.  The Disney film understandably leaves out the fact that, in a fit of madness induced by the goddess Hera who hated him (her inveterate shagger of a husband, Zeus, had fathered Heracles by a human woman), Heracles had murdered his wife and children. His commitment to the labours was, in part, seeking absolution from his crime. ︎
2. In some tellings of the myth, the cleaning of the Augean stables was discounted on the grounds that Heracles was paid for his work.  ︎
3. A lesser writer would’ve said “Herculean”, but I’m better than that. But I’m also not good enough to not write a footnote about it. ︎

The post Review: NevBorn – Alkaios · Part II · The Peacock appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album art by Dan Schaub

Style: Mixed Vocals (mostly clean)
Recommended for fans of: Dance Gavin Dance, Royal Coda, Maroon 5, Coheed and Cambria
Country: Utah, United States
Release date: 17 January 2025

Your friend is a prodigy at Harvard University: He has a perfect GPA, is the leader of the school debate team, and is one of the most productive research assistants at the institution. With a lightning quick mind that quickly answers every question the professor asks, your friend has a destiny to accomplish something great in the world.

He’s not without his weaknesses though: You take him to a frat party on a dare, and things don’t go smoothly. At some point, humorous discussions about football are met with stilted silence from him. At another point, he got the idea that pickup lines were cool, and completely made an ass of himself to some poor woman. A deeply one-sided conversation about the theoretical limits of quantum physics happened, which was met with people distracting themselves with memes on their phones. Eventually, he just leaves the party, and you kind of regret bringing him in the first place. This unfortunate analogy describes Mend, and Eidola’s journey to it.

A worthy contemporary to the likes of Dance Gavin Dance, Royal Coda, and Hail the Sun, Andrew Wells and his crew are a serious force in the Swancore scene, which is a particular strain of progressive post-hardcore. Their progressive qualities are exemplified by songs like “Contra: Second Temple” off of Degeneraterra, or “Caustic Prayer” off of The Architect, which are brimming with lush colors, busy and dense riffing, Andrew Well’s anthemic and lyrical voice, and songwriting that defies convention by strongly deviating from chorus driven structures. With an incredibly strong series of albums starting at their sophomore release, Eidola have proven themselves as a talented and consistent band with a definitive sound, and are now setting out to try something new.

Mend is a part of a duology which seeks to explore territory beyond the band’s definitive progressive trademarks. The first album in the duo, Eviscerate, incorporated aggressive metalcore influences in order to better describe the darker side of human nature. Mend, on the other hand, is an exploration of the light side of human nature, drawing from both rock sensibilities and straight-up pop music. Given that their sound is already quite bright, this is the only way they could push their sound forward towards something even more luminous.

All the components of a good album are here: vocal harmonies, sensual melodic lines, a stronger push towards a verse-chorus-verse structure, a variegated sonic palette, and a sprinkling of harsh vocals. Mend’s potential is exemplified in both “The Faustian Spirit” and “Godhead: Final Temple”. The former starts with a few sensual guitar lines, before moving into a build that is brimming with ideas: beginning low key and slightly stationary, and gaining intensity with Andrew’s cries and an almost total sense of evolution. Then the chorus hits, and it could rock a stadium with the resolution of the tension built before. “The Faustian Spirit” then demonstrates its sophistication by not merely reiterating the verses, but approaching each repetition of the chorus with totally different ideas while still remaining coherent.

Unfortunately, these two songs are flukes; the songwriting for the vast majority of the tracks struggles with middling attempts at choruses, incompleteness, questionable endings, and the occasional embarrassment. “Empire of Light” is seriously marred by Andrew’s Adam Levin aping: Singing ‘I don’t give a fuck’ repeatedly doesn’t come off as sexy as he thinks it does. “Blood in the Water” labors through an awkwardness; the initial transition to the chorus feels like a complete after-thought, and while the chorus itself has a marvelous quality, each subsequent verse and reintroduction feels poorly thought out and confused. “Prodigy”’s entire problem is that its chorus has the intensity of something that should have been a verse leading to somewhere greater.

This was an experiment for Eidola: A delving into something more conventional while not selling out completely. The result ranges from listenable to totally confused, with a tiny sprinkling of greatness. If the band were to return to this kind of sound in the future, there would need to be a serious effort to know the line where pop goes from cool to cringe, a bigger emphasis on build ups and coherency, and a commitment to choruses that stand out in intensity.

Recommended tracks: The Faustian Spirit, Godhead: Final Temple
You may also like: Makari, Meliorist, Senna, Galleons
Final verdict: 5.5/10

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

Label: Blue Swan – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

band in question is:
– Andrew Michael Wells (vocals, guitar)
– Sergio Medina (bass, guitar)
– Matthew Hansen (drums)
– Stephan Hawkes (producer)

The post Review: Eidola – Mend appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive rock, post-hardcore, math rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Eidola, Hail The Sun, Protest The Hero, Thrice
Country: Oregon, United States
Release date: 17 January 2025

Sometimes an album’s cover artwork alone is enough to fascinate you before you’ve even heard a note. In this case, what more is there to say than: frog. With cape. The fashionable amphibian dazzled the Progressive Subway writers from the moment he first appeared in our bookmarked albums, and the album which he fronts turns out to be almost as enigmatic as the figure himself. The lyrics throughout Object Unto Earth’s The Grim Village lean towards the abstract in a Rishloo-esque way, steeped in metaphor and built from tantalizing phrases made up of perfectly ordinary words whose slippery deeper meaning slithers away before you can get a grasp. Meanwhile, repeated mentions of frogs, crows, rats, and other beasts maintain a more grounded view of a forest community of intelligent animals.

The Grim Village features a unique guitar tone that defies any single descriptor, straddling the line between crunchy and fuzzy, combining the best parts of hard-edged post-hardcore, hazy psychedelia, and smooth, technical math rock. Individual tracks lean more in one direction or another, such as “On A Pale Horse I Thrive” which sets an aggressive post-hardcore tone early on, “Dreadful Lord of Toads” which maximizes the psychedelic elements, or the heavy post-metal overcast of “Onward With Blinding Speed” that opens the second half. These varied guitar features pair with a sharp vocal delivery reminiscent in part of Eidola, with also an echo of The Dear Hunter’s theatricality, and together these disparate components plot a map of the composer’s eclectic whims and whimsies as he leads the audience on a merry adventure through the woods.

The downside of all these different genre elements is that The Grim Village lacks a clear focal point or emotional center. At times edgy and hostile (“I Said I Wouldn’t but I Did”), at others dreamy and melancholy (“Alas, I Hop Along”), all these moods seem at odds with the overall aesthetic of Redwall-esque anthropomorphic forest creatures. As a further side effect, when certain tracks (like “Dreadful Lord of Toads” or the first half of “Sludge Crumpet”) let up on the forceful forward momentum and bring down the tempo, they tend to get lost in the milieu, not bound to the rest of the album by any obvious concept or even really by musical style. These drifting castaway moments divide the listener’s attention, robbing the more put-together climactic moments of some of their impact as the audience tries to piece together how we got from there to here. On the other hand, the nonconformity leaves room for unique little interludes like “For a Frogful of Dollars,” whose lively Western-film-inspired theme leaves me disappointed on every listen that it wasn’t developed into a complete song; a little more zest before the closing track might have helped carry through the momentum being built in the second half of The Grim Village.

Object Unto Earth founder Jonathan Zajdman offered some background behind the album’s development on their Instagram profile, saying “it became a love letter to being alive and being yourself, and how anything else is untenable and a waste of time.” He elaborated in a later post that the energy and creativity that drove The Grim Village’s creation arose from a nearly fatal car accident which he escaped with minimal injuries, saying that the creative process offered him a valuable form of catharsis after such emotional trauma. If I may read between the lines a little, that seems to also include the kind of existential emotional turmoil that follows a near-death experience. Although the surface-level concept expressed in the music itself has little to do with that fateful crash, the sense of catharsis comes through with full clarity; the final few tracks pull these themes out into full view in their lyrics. “Death is the Test of It” ends with the existential line ‘I died and I might and that’s okay,’ and “Bombina, Bombina!!” continues with its pseudo-chorus ‘Oblivion / You came a little bit too close / Now you’re here I′ve been struck by a fear / That I can′t outrun, outgrow, or face alone.’ These songs show the kind of radical acceptance needed in order to move on from such harrowing events, keeping their serious subject camouflaged by an upbeat and uptempo tone and emphasizing life’s little joys as a means of fending off mortality’s sudden proximity.

The Grim Village presents a peculiar collection of songs, some remarkable and some not so much, laying out their author’s inner thoughts with varying clarity and specificity and reflecting on the value of life’s experiences, even the most mundane ones. Like a woodland peddler, Object Unto Earth offer up an array of trinkets and baubles to catch the eyes of passing market-goers; some are little more than pretty polished river stones, but exotic treasures hide within, hinting at legends of their own. The eclectic styles and fantastical lyrics bring surprises at every turn, most of them exciting, but a few also a bit disappointing as the momentum spins out down a side trail. So come, join this caped croaker on an amble through the arbor, and maybe you can discover some existential dread along the way!

Recommended tracks: On A Pale Horse I Thrive; Onward With Blinding Speed; Death is the Test of It; Bombina, Bombina!!
You may also like: Vower, East of the Wall, Children of Nova, Anemera, Rosetta
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Instagram

Label: Seven Sided Sounds – Instagram

Object Unto Earth is:
– Jonathan Zajdman (vocals)
– Eric Bloombaum (drums)
– Lucille (guitars)
– Emily Kinsey (bass)

The post Review: Object Unto Earth – The Grim Village appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Sludge Metal, Post-Hardcore, Alt Metal (mostly clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Ocean, AFI, Mastodon
Country: Washington D.C., United States / Croatia
Release date: 16 August 2024

“Hello and welcome to The Progressive Subway!” a voice bellows from the sky.

 – “Ah! What? Who are you? What’s going on?”

“You’ll be listening to Wings Denied for your test review.”

 – “Test review? What?”

“Croatian band. You’ll need these.” A pair of waders materializes in mid-air in front of me, then falls, the rubber slapping onto the ground. “For the sludge.”

Fearing for my own safety, I do what is asked of me, don my new outfit, and drop a needle onto digital vinyl (I open Spotify) to listen to Wings Denied‘s sophomore release, Just the Basics.

…

Solidly sludge metal, this new album showcases a modest range of moods and styles. On Just the Basics, Wings Denied lean heavily on their pop sensibilities, only occasionally experimenting with meter, instrumentation, and song structure. The band wear their influences on their sleeves, but seem to have difficulty merging those ideas into a coherent theme. This album is more of a chain composed of links of different kinds of metal than an alloy formed by successfully melding those ideas together.

Opener “Plastic Tears” introduces most of the sonic themes heard throughout Just the Basics: clean, soaring vocals; sludgy, churning bass; twisty, shifting rhythms; and intricate, walking riffs. As with most of the following songs, this one unfortunately also seems to suffer an over-reliance on the chorus (repeated perhaps one too many times) and a missing middle, balancing – sometimes precariously – between sludgy lows and piercing solos, without much solid ground in the middle of that harmonic range.

The second track, “Black Legend”, is such a contrast from the first that it almost sounds like a different band. While “Plastic Tears” shows strong sludge / classic doom metal influence, the uptempo “Black Legend” is much more punk, with its snare-and-cymbal drumming, verse-chorus pop structure, and bass which has been mixed all the way back so that it’s hardly audible under the guitars. The first guitar solo of the album appears here, as well, at 2:25, and while nothing jaw-dropping, it serves the song well and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Abrupt stops in a handful of tracks on the album occasionally kill the momentum, often without leading into a satisfying drop or breakdown, which might make those short, sharp shocks worthwhile. “Lost in It All”, for example, features some of my favourite musical ideas on Just the Basics. It’s such a departure from the first three tracks: jazzy, airy, sultry. Like Christmas chocolates that have melted a bit from sitting too close to the fireplace, it oozes and flows in a supremely satisfying way. But a break at 0:42, followed by a pop-rock metal chorus, drops the listener in a bucket of ice water. The second verse brings back that oozing chocolate sound, but it’s hard to enjoy it the second time around. (“Fool me once…”) This track, like “Plastic Tears”, could do with a bit more development (maybe an extended verse, or a second bridge), rather than relying on the chorus to pad the runtime.

The next track, “Lifebroker”, is the only non-single off of this album with more than 1000 listens on Spotify, and for good reason: it’s a banger. “Lifebroker” enters on a churning, steam engine of a riff. An abrupt break starts the verse, which causes the song to lose a bit of the momentum it had at the outset, but it manages to recover and maintain that energy moving forward. The climbing bridge around 2:45 is one of the best riffs on this album by far, and wouldn’t be out of place on something by Mastodon. This song has a good energy, and I think is pretty representative of this band’s general sound.

The rhythms on “Saudade” make this Just the Basics’ stand-out track: the section beginning at 2:05 sounds to be in 12/8, but the guitars bob and weave around the rhythm section here, making it difficult to count on first listen. There is another abrupt break at 2:24 into a much quieter section, where twinkly guitars and vocals are soon joined by sparse drums, followed by strings and bass. 3:27 brings in a somber refrain (“we’re very sorry for your loss, he was a brave man”), which builds in intensity and sincerity until the mood is abruptly shattered not once, but twice. “Saudade” is “an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent someone or something”. Perhaps the abrupt changes of mood—from raging and chaotic; to disbelief, repeating the words delivered to the bereaved over and over; and back to anger—are meant to represent the tug-of-war between anger, denial, and depression, which those who have grieved for a loved one know well. “Saudade” is one of the strongest efforts on this album, by far.

Just the Basics is a solid effort: a mostly-sludge, mostly-metal album that leans heavily on pop song structure, punctuated by moments of impressive songwriting, both in terms of mood and melody. Wings Denied clearly have a wealth of great ideas, but these are diamonds in the rough; they need a talented producer to refine and polish them. I’m looking forward to moving past the basics.

…

P.S. Does anyone need a pair of waders?

Recommended tracks: Saudade, Mr. Nice Guy, Black Legend
You may also like: Exist Immortal, Aliases, Mycelia
Final verdict: 6/10

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

Label: Independent

Wings Denied is:
– Luka Kerecin (vocals)
– Zach Dresher (guitars, synths)
– Wes Good (bass)
– Alec Kossoff (drums, glockenspiel, backing vocals)

The post Missed Album Review: Wings Denied – Just the Basics appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album art by Michelle Carter

Style: progressive rock, post-hardcore, power pop (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Thank You Scientist, Coheed and Cambria, Closure in Moscow, Rush
Country: United States (Rhode Island/Massachusetts)
Release date: 01 March 2024

The year, 2011. The place, Montclair, New Jersey. Thank You Scientist have just released The Perils of Time Travel, a fascinating debut EP that blended equal parts jazzy, sax-forward virtuosity and emotive, infectious power-pop melodies. We know that, in our timeline, the band would lean towards their jazz fusion influences more and more over the course of their career, with increasingly intricate instrumentals and songwriting that, while still melodic, grew more complex and less poppy with each album. But what if the timeline split? What if an alternate version of TYS instead kept their keyboardist, fired their horns, moved up the coast, and focused in on their natural knack for seamlessly folding tight, virtuosic musicianship into catchy, vaguely emo-tinged choruses? Well, “what if” no longer, because this alternate reality has crashed back into our own, in the form of the new self-titled from New England-based prog/pop/math/emo ensemble Professor Caffeine & the Insecurities.

At some point, I recall reading in a certain other blog about the “Rush quotient”, which is the degree to which a band balances memorable hooks and songcraft with interesting, progressive musical ideas, and Professor Caffeine scores so damn high on that metric they nearly break the curve. From the very start, opener “Brockton Panda” makes its intentions clear. A wall of feedback and power chords crashes into frontman Dan Smith’s keening tenor in an incredibly memorable cold open, with the band pulling out a few trickier, more syncopated riffs midway through to keep things interesting. But the real meat of the album is yet to come; while Smith’s voice continues to soar its way through one impossibly catchy, borderline saccharine chorus after another, to the point where I still hum bits of “Wolf Fang Fist!” or “Astronaut” to myself at random moments, there’s an ever-present undercurrent of wonderfully intricate musicianship that adds a delightful layer of spice. Nearly every song is chock-full of tricky little arpeggiated sonic delights shoved into every gap in its structure, like chocolate chips into a cookie. Sometimes it’s subtle, like Derek Tanch’s crazed piano runs embedded somewhat low in the mix on “The Spinz” or the surprisingly complex jazz harmonies that form the backbone of the sunny-sounding “Dope Shades”. Other times, it’s significantly more obvious, such as the explosive bursts of crunchy riffs and flurries of synth in “That’s a Chunky” or the absurdly noodly, yet somehow fitting, guitar leads from Anthony Puliafico that suffuse the choruses of “Make Like a Tree (And Leave)”.¹ Every time listeners may, for even a second, be led astray by the band’s considerable power-pop prowess into forgetting that this is indeed a prog act, they’re struck with another intricate unison run, abrupt tempo shift, or even a full-on five minute instrumental workout in the form of the complex yet tight “Oat Roper”. 

Still, that isn’t the only balancing act that Professor Caffeine pulls off with aplomb here; in addition to hooks versus complexity, this album also walks a tonal razor’s edge between light and darkness. Skeptical readers may have read some of the admittedly rather silly song titles above, alongside the somewhat quirky band name, and written them off as just a goofy comedy band. Rest assured, that is decidedly not the case here. Lyrically, many of the songs deal with rather depressing subject matter, such as life-threatening health issues (“The Spinz”) and a loved one’s opioid addiction (“Make Like a Tree (and Leave)”). A fair few definitely feel like they’re touching upon either a very rough breakup or the otherwise sudden absence of someone who was once close (“Brockton Panda”, “Dope Shades”, “Astronaut”, “That’s a Chunky”), and the resulting emotional devastation that leads to an inability to move on or open up. Thus, the frivolous, jokey titles and poppy, sing-along melodies feel more like a way to keep some distance, a bit of levity in an attempt to laugh off the ghosts that haunt the deepest corners of one’s psyche. The only exception is “Wolf Fang Fist!”, a light-hearted (if overdramatic) ode to a game of fetch with a dog, but here, too, there is contrast, with towering, gnarly odd-time riffs, abrupt blasts of dissonance, and out-of-nowhere Latin rhythms making that game of fetch sound like a battle for the fate of the universe. This constant game of tonal push and pull means that, when the music and lyrics fully align in purpose, it feels special. Take the soaringly melancholy ode to isolation “Astronaut”, whose immense final chorus fades into a lighters-in-the-air a cappella singalong with a pair of intertwining melodies. Or the way “Make Like A Tree” crashes out from its frenetic instrumental crescendo into a gorgeously soft piano-led bridge, growing to a set of increasingly anguished choruses as the speaker’s drug-addicted loved one is cut loose to meet their final fate.

Still, given the album’s unapologetic lean into both the bitter and the sweet, there are inevitably a couple sour notes as well. For example, ending “Brockton Panda” with a bunch of children screaming “WAKE UP EVERYBODY! IT’S TIME TO START THE RECORD!”, while an effective way to let us know that it is, indeed, time to start the record, comes off a bit obnoxious nonetheless. And though I, as an enjoyer of classic Rush and Coheed, am fine with frontmen who sound like they walked into the studio huffing a can or two of helium, some of Smith’s absolute highest notes do end up feeling a bit abrasive tonally. My biggest issue, though, comes with “Unreal Big Fish”, a relatively simple acoustic ditty at the album’s midpoint. While its “la-di-di-da” chorus is certainly catchy enough, and one could argue the album needed a “pure pop” song to balance out the outright prog of “Oat Roper”, it all feels a tad dull and hollow without the wild instrumental twists and proggy noodling that added so much flavor to the rest of the album. Lyrically, too, it feels out of place; it’s a takedown of a superficial, narcissistic individual whose namechecking of their “Instagram-perfect” image kinda feels like Steven Wilson singing about being “tired of Facebook”. Amidst all the other songs that expertly balance lighthearted fun with deep-seated melancholy, this manages neither, merely coming off as petty and a bit smug.

Take that one song out, though, and this is a near-perfect gem of a debut, one that blindsided me when I first stumbled across it in my Spotify recs midway through the year and hasn’t left rotation since. It’s fitting for an album this overstuffed with goodness that I still feel like there are bits I haven’t managed to praise yet- like Smith’s killer bass parts, many of which are intricate enough it’s a wonder he can sing and play them live, or the darkly beautiful closing ballad “Mr. Sleep”, or the production, or, or… But suffice it to say, Professor Caffeine have thoroughly impressed me here, and any fan of music that is unashamedly poppy yet still complex and powerfully emotional owes it to themselves to check it out as well. Whatever the Professor’s next creation may be, I anticipate it bringing many sleepless nights.

Recommended tracks: Wolf Fang Fist!, Astronaut, That’s a Chunky, Make Like a Tree (and Leave)
You may also like: Moron Police, Kyros, Elephant Planet, We broke the weather
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Professor Caffeine & the Insecurities is:
– Dan Smith (vocals, bass)
– Anthony Puliafico (guitars)
– Jay Driscoll (guitars)
– Derek Tanch (keyboards)
– Ken Dellot (drums)

1. Real original title, guys. ︎

The post Missed Album Review: Professor Caffeine & the Insecurities – Professor Caffeine & the Insecurities appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Alternative Metal, Nu-Grunge (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Loathe, Soundgarden, Black Peaks, Paramore
Country: UK
Release date: 20 September 2024

Newcastle upon Tyne, England, has given us a lot of important innovations: the Greggs sausage roll, the steam locomotive, the Greggs vegan steak bake, the windscreen wiper… Greggs¹. Home to my alma mater², it’s also a beautiful city from the leaf-shaded tranquillity of the Ouseburn Valley to the iconic bridges that span the Tyne to the mouthwatering aromas that pervade Grainger Market and its endless parade of exotic cuisines. Newcastle is also extraordinarily important to the history of heavy music: Venom, a band credited with birthing extreme metal, formed in Newcastle, and Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Sting (The Police), and Bryan Ferry (Roxy Music) all know the fog on the Tyne³. Hell, the “God particle” itself, the Higgs Boson, is named for Nobel Prize winning Geordie, Peter Higgs. Where does Silhouettes, the sophomore from expat Geordie foursome Giant Walker, stand in the history of the Toon’s achievements?

Well, it’s not quite as important to the fabric of the universe as the Higgs boson, but that’s hardly an insult. Silhouettes builds impressively on the potential demonstrated on their promising yet slightly undercooked debut, All in Good Time, delivering a combination of alternative metal, catchy rock hooks, and grungier flavours that satisfies immensely. Vocalist Steff Fish has a timbre and power redolent of Paramore’s Hayley Williams at times but without sounding derivative. That sense of melody and emotive force is applied to a much heavier guitar sound, equal parts modern British alt metal in the vein of Black Peaks and older grunge acts like Soundgarden. 

Fish is the obvious initial stand-out here, able to turn her voice to anthemic hooks, moments of vulnerability, and with a great sense for those little affectations that sell a line. However, guitarist Jamie Southern creeps up on you: with a deft ear for tone and groove, his weighty riffs have a sense of attack (“Halcion”) and alter between simple-but-effective (“Use On You”) and greater complexity (“Make Me”), but he knows when to mix it up too as with the switch to a clean-tone in the outro of “Silhouettes” which is overlaid with a gorgeously bluesy lead lament. “Round and Round We Go” delivers another bluesy solo but in a far more raucous register, while on “Use On You” Southern opts for straightforward heavy metal licks. Meanwhile, “So You Say” provides the album’s alt rock jeremiad, more like an early Paramore track but, y’know, heavier. 

There are some nice little time signature experiments such as the switch between a 3/4 groove on the verse of “Make Me” into a half time 4/4 chorus or the polyrhythm on the verses of closing number “For What It’s Worth”; the rhythm section, Jordan Gregory on bass and Alex Black on drums, go about this timekeeping in an unflashy and reliable manner, bestowing a more hard rock/grunge sensibility in their more restrained style. Gregory’s bass reverberates thunderously, while Black provides the headbanger material. 

Indeed, while Giant Walker are an incredibly tight quartet, they nevertheless play it a little safe. The riffs riff, the vocals go hard, you’ll headbang your way through, but it’s the moments when the band define themselves against type that truly shine, such as the end of “Silhouettes” or the more rhythmically complex subtleties of “For What It’s Worth”. I’ve become the defacto British proggy alt metal reviewer now and my critique remains the same: El Moono, Vower, and now Giant Walker—all are impressive bands in the process of cementing their sound, but none quite hit the giddy heights of Black Peaks’ All That Divides or the ambitious genre-blending of late Arcane Roots. Maybe asking for more from the scene seems greedy, but all these bands label themselves as “progressive”, and yet all three seem a little fearful to step outside the established Brit metal scene’s confines. 

Be that as it may, with a stellar vocalist and some intrepid guitar choices, Giant Walker may well be the most successful of the emerging groups in the Brit metal scene, and Silhouettes packs a punch during its meagre thirty-eight minute runtime; the leap forward in confidence from All in Good Time bodes well for yet another leap forward in future. In ten years time, when we talk about the leading lights of the Geordie metal scene, Giant Walker may well be the first name on everyone’s lips. 

Recommended tracks: Make Me, Silhouettes, So You Say, For What It’s Worth
You may also like: El Moono, Vower, Palm Reader
Final verdict: 7.5/10

1. Attentive Geordies will note the absence of Newcastle Brown Ale, Newcastle United Football Club, and Geordie Shore. I can assure you, none were an oversight. ︎
2.  I wasn’t a poly I was, er, the other one. ︎
3. You might think the fog on the Tyne is yours, but it’s actually Lindisfarne’s. ︎

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

Label: Church Road Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Giant Walker is:
– Steff Fish (vocals)
– Jamie Southern (guitars)
– Jordan Gregory (bass)
– Alex Black (drums)

The post Review: Giant Walker – Silhouettes appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Alternative metal, progressive metal, post-hardcore (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Deftones, Loathe, Arcane Roots, Black Peaks, Moon Tooth, Greg Puciato
Country: UK
Release date: 8 July 2024

As I outlined in my review of El Moono, the British proggy post-hardcore scene was one with which I was once abundantly familiar. But after the wonderful yet short-lived group Black Peaks broke up (shortly after the equally brilliant Arcane Roots) something in me gave up on that regional niche—surely we weren’t ever going to see quality like that again. Plus I was listening to a lot of Haken and The Ocean around then, getting deeper into truly progressive metal. El Moono took me back down those well-trodden halls of nostalgia, and I found a handful of groups to keep an eye on, not least among them: Vower. 

Comprised of two members of the late great Black Peaks, guitarist Joe Gosney and drummer Liam Kearley, two members of metal cover band FrogLeap—guitarist Rabea Massaad, also of Toska and a prominent YouTube guitarist and mixing engineer, and bassist Rory McLean—and vocalist Josh McKeown of the now-defunct Palm Reader, it’s safe to say that that a lot of the modern British alternative metal scene is to be found among Vower. Debut EP Apricity is a short but sweet primer for what we hope will be the next great band in this genre. 

Naturally, the ghost of Black Peaks looms over Vower’s sound in the interplay between riffs and drumming, as well as on the solo on “Eyes of a Nihilist”, which weaponises Gosney’s Mastodon inspired licking. It’s easy to imagine Will Gardner taking up some of those vocals, but hardly necessary—McKeown’s tone, slightly nasal, is similar to … of El Moono, both in turn redolent slightly of Greg Puciato, but with more of the somewhat emotional and overwrought delivery of John Carbone (Moon Tooth) and a similar tendency to modulate a lot. Meanwhile, the Deftones-esque dichotomy between thick riffs and shoegazey languor, and deft balance between the anthemic and the contemplative feels more redolent of Gosney and Kearley’s departed Black Peaks, but ever sure of its own spin on proceedings. 

“Shroud” opens with punch and invective, with tense split chords and gluts of thicker riffing, plus some calmer post-rock style sections that ladle on more of that tension. Everything’s a touch dissonant, the riff runs hitting uncomfortable notes, before the explosive chorus comes in which McKeown implores “take it all away, make it all okay”. “In the Wake of Failure” is more sombre, as the title suggests, more mid-tempo, the riffs more contemplative, McKeown letting more emotion into his delivery, and sounding spent in the track’s melancholic mid-section, until the song sojourns into a far heavier outro, with unhinged growls. “False Rituals” has a slightly more anthemic quality, the stomp of Kearley’s drumming underpinning McKeown’s soaring cleans. Moving into an bouncy mid-section groove straight out of the Arcane Roots playbook. “Eyes of a Nihilist” ends the record with a lamentory tone, and a trippy main riff that, when coupled with the solo, veers into Mastodon-esque territory. 

Reviewing EPs is always difficult, like reviewing a director’s showreel, or an actor’s headshots: “here’s what we’re capable of”—Hell yeah, now go make an album. Something about the shortness of the medium makes it difficult to make an artistic statement, and EPs invariably feel like a collection of songs rather than a sonically coherent work. Vower showcase exactly the level of talent and compositional acumen you would expect, and Apricity is a short, sharp statement of intent. It skirts at the edges of genericness at times, playing things a little safe, but mostly, I just want more from Vower; I want them to push their own boundaries and I want to see how they develop their sound on a full album. 

You’re going to hear a lot about Vower. They’re already supporting Karnivool for a couple of UK tour dates, as well as appearing at England’s two biggest prog festivals, Radar Festival and ArcTanGent. And when you listen to Apricity, it’s hardly surprising. The pedigree here is strong, bringing a lot of the best of the British post-hardcore scene together and concentrating their powers, and I’m very excited to hear a full release from them.

Recommended tracks: In the Wake of Failure, Eyes of a Nihilist
You may also like: El Moono, Palm Reader, Giant Walker
Final verdict: 7.5/10

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

Label: Independent

Vower is:
– Josh McKeown (vocals)
– Rabea Massaad (guitars)
– Joe Gosney (guitars)
– Rory McLean (bass)
– Liam Kearley (drums)

The post Review: Vower – Apricity appeared first on The Progressive Subway.