Style: Neo-prog, bitpop, cybergrind (Mixed vocals, mostly clean)
Recommended for fans of: Sophie, iwrestledabearonce, Electric Callboy
Country: Illinois, United States
Release date: 20 June 2025

Optimism is often mistaken as a delusional kind of positivity, ignoring the negative and replacing it with a happier reality. In truth, optimism is more a mechanism of perseverance in the face of hardship: to the optimist, the nightmares faced are very real and often never-ending, but the inherent joy and excitement of life is too powerful to be weighed down permanently. Such is the perspective of artist Joey Meland, whose most recent release as Cocojoey, STARS, promises to focus on the good while living through inner and outer turmoil. Does STARS leave the listener in awe at its constellations of maximalist eclectic songwriting?

STARS is introduced with heartfelt neo-prog, immediately tapping into the 80s-tinged synth-cheese of Subway darlings Kyros; Meland pushes the euphoric synth work even further than the Brits, however, as opening track “TIME TO GO!” explodes into brilliant colors, charging forward at a manic clip. Japanese influences abound, whether it be the VGM aesthetic in many of the electronic elements (“MIDNIGHT LICKING HOURS”, “hearth<3”) or ultra-energetic j-pop that dances alongside dazzling jazz fusion snippets (“INFUSION BAbY”, “TIME TO GO!”, “COCOJOEY’S LACK OF REGRETS”). Stuttering drum’n’bass moments bubble to the surface on tracks like “THE I LIKE SONG” and “ANOTHER LIFE”, with beats cleverly slipping out of tandem with the rest of the instrumentation for an accented percussive flair. Underneath, a furious cybergrind underbelly occasionally roars to the forefront like an intrusive thought, sending these saccharine passages into abject chaos.

Meland’s approach to songwriting can most succinctly be described as the sound of tearing the absolute fuck out of a room covered in glitter, shattering glass in unbridled rage and admiring the iridescent refraction caused by the shrapnel. Ultra-melodic and ultra-intense ideas often exist within seconds of each other, inexorably locked together as a fundamental part of composition. Sometimes, the transitions from bitpop to cybergrind are effortless and smooth (“TIME TO GO!”) and sometimes they are a violent bass-heavy cudgel (“ANOTHER LIFE”). The experience is always fun and full of earworms, but can become overwhelming at times, like being fed a series of ultra-technicolor light shows Clockwork Orange-style only interrupted by abrupt visits to a human-sized centrifuge. “TIME TO SPARE”, for example, grafts shiny staccato fusion chords to impenetrable walls of abrasive blast beats, shrieking howls, and shrill synthesizers. To help balance the intensity, tracks like “TRUST IN EVENTS” temper their instrumental vigor, and two palate cleansers, “hearth<3” and “TINY SPRITE IN THE ORCHESTRA OF STARS”, help to imbue a sense of triumph and carefree placidity. Additionally, Meland will often telegraph central melodic ideas throughout a track to give the listener a compositional foothold.

Despite the almost inhuman level of effervescent melodicism, there is an utter sense of relatability to STARS’ compositions, the lyricism standing at their nexus. Meland lays bare their myriad frustrations with life and the challenges of staying optimistic in a world that constantly beats you down. Most immediately striking is “TRUST IN EVENTS”, which showcases the oxymoronic nature of desiring life despite being so absolutely tired of it: ‘Yet I wonder why my time alive is so intense / cause it’s been taking / It’s taking everything and everything and everything and everything and everything and everything and every effort now to / Keep looking ahead but living in a moment’. 

A delicate vulnerability shines through across STARS, making sure to balance the dread with an equal amount of optimism and love. “MIDNIGHT LICKING HOURS” is a contemplation of the inner life of Meland’s cat, Coco, and the value of a relaxed, carefree lifestyle; “THE I LIKE SONG” is a centering mantra that brings into perspective all the things that make life worth living, stating ‘I’ll recite this and I’ll remember all the times I thought it was worth / Sticking out through one more night’; and “TINY SPRITE IN THE ORCHESTRA OF STARS” is a heartfelt dedication to a loved one that gently guides the listener across a 16-bit galaxy.

The coalescence of lyrical duality and songwriting extremes exemplifies a singular focus in STARS’ point of view. “COCOJOEY’S LACK OF REGRETS” is a centerpiece of the record’s perspective: Meland gets personal about their experience with having Crohn’s Disease and how it affects their interactions with the world at large. 90s club-inspired piano beats deconstruct under the weight of glitchy electronics and frenetic cybergrind: ‘I already feel like shit / And I’m made to feel worse for it / Invasive thoughts, invisible illness’. The track cleverly juxtaposes an ineffable queerness with a roiling inner frustration—the digestive issues associated with Crohn’s have a profound impact and limitation on sexual expression, and its status as an ‘invisible illness’ often leads to invalidation at the hands of peers because ‘you don’t look sick’. And this is to mention nothing of the horrific mistreatment by healthcare companies who put disabled people through the wringer just so they have a basic chance at life, the track calling out Centene in particular as a predatory corporation that ‘takes advantage of sick people’. 

What the fuck is even up with that, anyway? Who decided it was okay to keep adding on to an impossibly complicated system that requires people who are already at a disadvantage to jump through inscrutable hoops for even the prospect of a life without debilitating challenges? On top of that, we are constantly put through stressors that our minds are SIMPLY. NOT. DESIGNED. FOR. DO YOU THINK THAT IT’S NORMAL FOR PEOPLE TO BE COGNIZANT EVERY SINGLE DAY TO THREATS THAT ARE COMPLETELY OUTSIDE OF OUR CONTROL AND IMPOSSIBLE TO EVEN UNDERSTAND? OUR WORLD IS A MINEFIELD OF ANXIETY AND THREAT THAT IS SO FAR BEYOND ANYTHING THAT EVOLUTION COULD HAVE PREPARED US FOR. HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO FUNCTION AT FULL CAPACITY ALL DAY EVERY DAY WHEN EVERY WAKING MOMENT IS A REMINDER OF HOW EVERYTHING I CARE ABOUT CAN BE UNCEREMONIOUSLY RIPPED AWAY FROM ME BY FORCES I DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND BECAUSE I DON’T SUBSCRIBE TO NEUROTYPICAL AND HETERONORMATIVE IDEALS? I JUST WANT TO FUCKING EXIST WITHOUT HAVING TO ACTIVELY FIGHT AGAINST MY MIND AND AGAINST EVERYTHING ELSE TO FUNCTION IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY IN A WORLD NOT DESIGNED FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME.

…..

Suddenly, the hyper-melodic j-pop and technicolor excess feels much less cutesy, as if its main purpose is as a last bastion of idealism and escapism in a pervasive fight against forces out of our control. The glistening melodies hold back a volcanic fury that builds in pressure when we’re left to reflect on the injustices imposed on us. One also gets a sense of artistic expression as a means of exhaust, channeling life experience from the artist’s interior world into something with a life of its own—its placement outside of the mind both gives it less power over the artist and serves as a beacon to those who relate. In most cases, the catharsis is felt fully, but “ANOTHER LIFE” and “ODD EYE SLIDE” leave a bit to be desired compositionally, leaning into the record’s excess without giving enough focus to latch onto. The most successful example of artistic exhaust is “COCOJOEY’S LACK OF REGRETS”, where the theme is established early. Meland proclaims that they ‘got pissed and wrote this track’ in its opening moments, and across the piece’s runtime, they come to terms with their circumstances: ‘Didn’t choose this life, but now it’s mine / I’ll never give up, I do my best / Break it down with my kitty ‘til my final rest’. “REGRETS” ends with a powerful proclamation, spitting in the face of those who try to put them down: ‘you can’t make me regret my existence’.

STARS utilizes song structure, texture, melody, and intensity as a meta-commentary on the inner life of a disabled queer person, taking both the good and bad in stride; the end result is a glittering canvas designed to channel and purge the abject exhaust of life by any means necessary. In the closing seconds of “TIME TO SPARE”, all of the anger, glitz, and pretense that coalesces across STARS is flushed down the toilet as ideas are chopped and screwed into oblivion, rendered into an unrecognizable soup of wiggly air before suddenly cutting off. And at the end of the day, flushing out the overwhelm is often the best course of action—the human experience is too rich and full of excitement and love and happiness to forsake the things that bring us joy.

Recommended tracks: COCOJOEY’S LACK OF REGRETS, TIME TO GO!, THE I LIKE SONG, hearth<3
You may also like: Kyros, Bubblegum Octopus, Joey Frevola, PhonoPaths
Final verdict: 8.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Label: Hausu Mountain Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Cocojoey is:
– Joey Meland (everything)
With guests:
– Stop Motion Plant Choir (vocals, track 2)
– Coco (meows, tracks 2, 3, 6)
– Floricane (vocals, track 6)
– Angel Marcloid (guitars, track 2)

The post Review: Cocojoey – STARS appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Neo-Prog, Prog Punk (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: ELP, Ben Folds Five, Rush
Country: Georgia, United States
Release date: 2 May 2025

Philosophically speaking, “progressive rock” and “punk” are two genres of music almost diametrically opposed to each other. The former is characterized by compositional complexity, virtuosic musicianship, and highfalutin, fantastical lyrical themes. The latter by raw energy, with fast, short songs; urgent, often politically-charged lyrics; and performers who typically spend more time crowdsurfing than practicing their instruments. So when I picked up A Shout Into the Void, the latest album by Atlanta, Georgia’s Great Wide Nothing, I was intrigued by their self-applied “prog punk” label.

What does “prog punk” sound like?

It depends who you ask. Many consider Cardiacs to be the quintessential prog punk act—their 1996 album Sing to God seamlessly grafts the frantic energy of punk rock onto the baroque arrangements of classic prog. In the early-to-mid 2000s, The Mars Volta released a slew of extremely dense, instrumentally virtuosic albums, heavily inspired by hardcore and post-hardcore punk. They and their ilk in the progressive post-hardcore scene could also fall under a “prog punk” umbrella. Still others label post-punk bands like Talking Heads as prog punk: inspired by punk, but breaking the boundaries of the genre in myriad ways.

Great Wide Nothing would be more accurately labeled “neo-prog”—the prog-offshoot genre from the 1980s which chopped the song lengths down and opted for harder-hitting, more radio-friendly tunes, instead of the ten-to-twenty minute keyboard epics of a decade prior. Fans of 80s Rush, in particular, might appreciate parts of A Shout Into The Void. The synth-heavy, bass-forward tracks on this album share some DNA in common with albums like Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows.

The opening track, “Utopia”, gives a tantalising introduction to what Great Wide Nothing are capable of, particularly in the outro: gentle keys abruptly stop, making way for sticky synths, with weighty bass and pounding drums pushing through like electric mixer paddles into cake batter. The bass tone here is on point (and Geddy-reminiscent). The rhythm section cleanly breaks into a chorus of airy keys, repeated again and again, like a call to battle, cultivating a serious, driving energy. The same can be said of “One Thousand Eyes”, where locked-in drums, crisp bass, and competent synth work propel the song into a catchy walking riff that wouldn’t be out of place on a classic prog record by any of the greats. These songs have an infectious forward momentum, they’re mixed well, and the production reflects a meticulous attention to detail.

But lyrically, A Shout Into the Void is no Grace Under Pressure. It instead comes across as overly sincere—a bit too on-the-nose. On “Utopia”, the band eschew cynicism and yearn for a brighter future: “what the fuck is the point … If it’s not for the sake of the common defense against death and decay? … It’s only a question of willingness.” “The Parting of Ways” is a letter to a loved one who has, psychologically (politically?), moved so far away from the narrator that they feel there is no other option but to cut ties. “Shout Into the Void”, the album’s final track, cries, “I don’t think I’ll live to change the world, or maybe even make a difference”, singing for the sake of it, even if it’s all for naught. This earnest naïveté, combined with a cliché here or there, makes the whole album feel sophomoric.

That amateurish clumsiness comes across in the vocals, as well as the lyrics. Phrases are sometimes cut short when they could have been held a tick longer. Vowels are not as round as they should be. Overwhelmingly, though, the main issue is a lack of emphasis, of singing from the diaphragm. This makes the vocals feel weak; the vocalist, uncommitted. Entering with a “what the fuck is the point?” on the first track, I knew I would have reservations about this album—I’ve been in bands where the instrumentalists, the arrangement, and the production were all on point, but the vocals were lacking oomph. It can make listening to a record unenjoyable—cringey, even. In many ways, A Shout Into The Void reminds me of my younger self, in a band with a good amount of talent, but uncomfortably amateurish vocals. I know what it’s like to sit in a recording studio and listen to someone with little technique and even less confidence sing-shout into a microphone. And what it’s like to be that person. It’s not fun. The self-applied “prog punk” label feels like a preemptive defense against critics who would otherwise focus on those vocals. Punk does not demand classically-trained vocalists, sure, but Great Wide Nothing sound otherwise punk in very few ways (their songs are a bit fast and they say “fuck” a few times).

A Shout Into the Void is a disappointment. Instrumentally, it is competent if not impressive. Its tracks are packed full of catchy riffs and melodies. The production and mixing are entirely unblemished. It has such potential to be a fast, loud, modern prog rock record, but it’s held back by vocals which are frankly quite difficult to listen to. Great Wide Nothing, I beg you, don’t make the same mistake I did. Find a singer and rebrand, before it’s too late.

Recommended tracks: One Thousand Eyes
You may also like: Cardiacs, Paradigm Blue, Kick the Giant
Final verdict: 5/10

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

Label: Independent

Great Wide Nothing is:
– Daniel Graham – bass, vocals, lyrics
– Dylan Porper – keyboards, vocals
– Jeff Matthews – drums, vocals

The post Review: Great Wide Nothing – A Shout Into the Void appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive rock, neo-prog, soft rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Transatlantic, Genesis, Yes, Neal Morse, Spock’s Beard
Country: Sweden
Release date: 2 May 2025

In the contexts of politics, education, the visual arts, and various other disciplines, the term “progressive” has a similar connotation to terms like “forward-thinking” or “experimental”. In this tradition, and in the context of rock music, the mid-1960s saw the term “progressive” being attached to compositions with more complex structure, new and unusual instrumentation¹, and virtuosic instrumental performances. The term “progressive rock” was coined in 1968 and the label was applied to some of the biggest rock bands of the next decade.

But the very act of defining a new genre of music solidifies it. Today, “progressive rock” and “experimental rock” evoke two quite different styles. Even at the end of the 1970s, when the heyday of progressive rock was nearing its end, the genre had become a caricature of itself. But as any street fair or amusement park will attest to, some people eat that shit up. Self-proclaimed “progressive” rockers The Flower Kings’ latest album, LOVE, seems—superficially, at least—to fall into those well-worn ruts of 1960s-style prog rock. But is there anything under that veneer? Was this caricature painted by Paulie, down on the Atlantic City boardwalk? Or Picasso?

LOVE ticks many of the boxes on the progressive rock checklist…

synths heavily featured on basically every song
multiple seven-plus-minute-long pieces
unusual percussion (wood blocks, marimba, glockenspiel)
instrumental and lyrical reprises across multiple tracks

…and at times is quite reminiscent of classic prog acts; “World Spinning” is like a lower-energy version of ELP’s “Hoedown”; the outro of “Burning Both Edges” could be a reference to the intro of Rush’s “Xanadu”, but without Neil Peart’s varied percussion; around 7:15 in “Kaiser Razor”, there’s a riff that sounds almost identical to the one at 3:55 in Genesis’ “Firth of Fifth”.

While The Flower Kings (consciously or otherwise) pay homage to their forebears on LOVE, they lack the compositional prowess which propelled those acts into the prog rock pantheon in the first place. On “We Claim the Moon”, a four-phrase melody is introduced early on, played in sync by guitar, bass, synth, and percussion. That exact musical idea is repeated as-is three times in the first ninety seconds of this six-and-a-half-minute track, and then abandoned wholesale—it is never repeated again. Just after this, a shorter, eight-note phrase is introduced, and that phrase is repeated twenty times throughout the remainder of the song. Neither of these two extremes is ideal. Despite the proverb which states otherwise, familiarity breeds appreciation: listeners want hooks, callbacks, and reprises. At the same time, we need a bit of variation to maintain interest. This is something that the aforementioned “Firth of Fifth” does so well: a primary melody is repeated multiple times throughout the song, but at different tempos and with different timbres as it’s played on different instruments. This keeps the listener engaged without boring them. Safe to say, The Flower Kings are no Genesis.

The dynamic range of LOVE leaves something to be desired, as well. For comparison, consider a piece like Yes‘s “Close to the Edge”: the first minute is almost entirely birdsong and chimes; then absolutely frenetic synths, driving bass, and frantic guitars; then a vocal break into a mellower, airy section; another break into an almost reggae-inspired verse, and so on. This wide variety of moods is nowhere to be found on LOVE, let alone in quick succession in a single song. Consider the introductions of a few tracks on this album: “The Elder” has a tempo of 112 bpm and begins slowly with vocals, bells, and piano; “The Phoenix” has a tempo of 120 bpm and begins slowly with strings, acoustic guitar, and vocals; “The Promise” has a tempo of 127 bpm and begins slowly with acoustic guitar and vocals. Some people might say they’ve written the same song eleven times for this album, but they’d be lying, it’s actually the same song twelve times.

Now, dear reader, you may think that it is unfair of me to compare The Flower Kings to prog rock legends like Yes, Genesis, and Rush, as I’ve done above. Let me tell you why it’s not: The Flower Kings call themselves “prog-rock legends” in their own Spotify bio. If that’s not an invitation to compare them to the greats, then I do not know what is.

All of that being said, there are a few small highlights on LOVE, but they come with caveats. The two instrumental tracks, “World Spinning” and “Kaiser Razor” are good examples. These are the two fastest tracks on the album (both exceeding 230 bpm), bringing a breath of fresh air to the otherwise steady trudge through seventy-one minutes of low-energy prog rock. “World Spinning” is a vibrant synth solo that pulls you in and then stops far too abruptly—an obvious missed opportunity. “Kaiser Razor” is also infectious: the main riff is a climb up a scale, repeated over and over, building up to… again, nothing. The song just kind of disintegrates after about two minutes. Both of these tracks feel like they are incredible seeds of ideas, which hadn’t yet been fully fleshed out before they were recorded as-is for LOVE.

The Flower Kings’ LOVE is a surface-level tribute to a nearly sixty-year-old genre of music. It lacks both the dynamism and the compositional acuity of the prior art which inspired it. LOVE is like the generic version of your favourite brand-name prog rock acts—it may contain the same ingredients, but it doesn’t have quite the same flavour. After LOVE, you’ll soon find yourself reaching for “real” progressive rock to get that imitation taste out of your mouth.

Recommended Tracks: Kaiser Razor, We Claim the Moon
You may also like: Neal Morse Band, Pattern-Seeking Animals, Jacob Roberge, Cosmic Cathedral
Final verdict: 4.5/10

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

Label: InsideOutMusic – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

The Flower Kings is

• Mirko DeMaio (Drums, Percussion)
• Lalle Larson (Grand Piano, Rhodes Piano, Hammond B3 & Synthesizers)
• Hans Fröberg (Vocals)
• Michael Stolt (Bass, Moogbass, Vocals)
• Roine Stolt (Vocals, Electric & Acoustic 6 & 12-string Guitars, Ukulele)

LOVE also features

• Hasse Bruniusson (Percussion)
• Jannica Lund (Vocals)
• Aliaksandr Yasinski (Accordion)

1. The Moog synthesizer, a staple of 1970s progressive rock, only began to be mass-produced in 1967, and was therefore genuinely cutting-edge at the time. The Doors’ “Strange Days” (1967) is an early example of its usage. ︎

The post Review: The Flower Kings – LOVE appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album photography by Anne-Marie Forker

Style: Progressive rock, neo-prog (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Airbag, Steven Wilson, David Gilmour, Lunatic Soul
Country: Norway
Release date: 11 April 2025

What makes a musician in an established band turn towards the path of solo artistry? For many, it is the prospect of complete creative control that draws them in—the lure of making something that is yours and yours alone, without having to compromise with those other people that ordinarily make music with you. But what of those who are already their band’s leader and primary songwriter—those who could already write what they want and have their glorified session musicians bandmates follow along with little issue? Well, in that case, it’s often out of a desire to branch out stylistically in ways that might not make sense in terms of their existing group’s oeuvre. Take Steven Wilson for instance. While he was already the undisputed main creative mind behind Porcupine Tree, his various adventures into trip-hop, ’70s prog pastiche, and electronica likely wouldn’t have happened without starting a career under his own name. 

In a possibly similar vein, we now have Bjørn Riis, guitarist and bandleader of Norwegian neo-prog stalwarts Airbag. Less than a year after his main band’s release of The Century of the Self, Riis is putting out a brand new solo release by the name of Fimbulvinter. I’ve been a fan of Airbag and their melancholy, guitar-driven brand of David Gilmour-core ever since I found a YouTube album upload of All Rights Removed over a decade ago, but Riis’ solo career is new to me, despite the fact that he’s apparently been at this since 2014. He’s evidently quite experienced as a solo artist, which seems a positive sign; after four albums, Riis has had plenty of time to solidify a musical identity all his own, purporting to blend the atmospheric, introspective prog that put him on the map with the energetic, hard rock swagger of the bands he grew up with in the early ’80s. Will Fimbulvinter, in its themes of cold, empty isolation, expose new facets of this soulful shredder, or is it just a bag of frozen musical leftovers?

After a quiet, atmospheric intro to ease listeners in, “Gone” ratchets the intensity up significantly, with an insistent, propulsive beat driven by some nicely audible bass. It’s refreshing to hear an artist known for slow-burning, gradual buildups just put his foot on the gas and unleash some good old fashioned rock and roll for a change. As a cherry on top, Riis throws in a killer guitar solo, trading his usual Gilmour-esque weeping tone for a commanding, wah-pedalled wail designed to play out the open windows of a car speeding down the highway. Of course, there’s still a strong dose of that signature melancholic unease, largely present in the lyrics’ vague but deeply insistent themes of wanting to get out, to run away from… something. Riis also is a surprisingly adept vocalist, sounding almost exactly like Airbag frontman Asle Torstrup in places. In fact, almost eerily like him. Hey, wait a minute…

Apologies, readers. I seem to have put on “Machines and Men”, the opener from Airbag‘s A Day at the Beach album, by mistake. And yet, when I put on the actual “Gone”, I find that pretty much all of the prior paragraph still applies. Same driving bass-led beat, similar lyrical themes, very similar wailing guitar solo. To be fair, it’s not complete self-plagiarism: for one thing, the atmospheric intros are different, with “Gone” being preceded by a separate, acoustic intro track (“Illhug”) as opposed to “Machines and Men”, which folds its synthier intro into the track itself. Riis is also a slightly rougher, less polished vocalist than Tostrup, and the lyrics aim for a vibe of disconnection as opposed to paranoia. But the fact remains that the track is, by and large, a retread of territory Riis has already been over. Sure, it’s a good song when taken on its own merits—the energy is infectious, the guitar work gripping, and the melodies nicely emotional. But, the thing is, those aren’t its own merits; they’re the merits of a song released five years ago, and it makes this song’s existence hard to justify.

Alright, let’s not bang on about one track’s self-plagiarism too much. Surely the next song, “Panic Attack”, represents a brand new musical direction for Riis, something we’ve never seen. I hit play, and it’s an eleven-minute slow burn of a track, alternating between soft, echoing passages of understated sadness and big, emotional walls of heavy guitar, which… goddammit, I could be describing a dozen different Airbag songs right now, couldn’t I? Indeed, both it and closer “Fear of Abandonment” feel like B-sides from The Century of the Self, with the latter taking on the “soft ballad that builds into climactic guitar solo” side of the formula as opposed to its more progressively structured counterpart. Again, they’re not bad executions of said formula, with “Fear of Abandonment” in particular serving as a fine example of the sort of soulful Gilmour-isms that Riis can no doubt pull off in his sleep at this point. But they’re not nearly on the level of Airbag classics like “Homesickness” or “Disconnected” either, lacking the oomph of those tracks’ sheer catharsis and suffering somewhat from the absence of Tostrup’s emotive tenor.

When Riis isn’t cribbing from his own work, he’s taking inspiration from the aforementioned Steven Wilson, with mid-album ballad “She” offering a very familiar-feeling mixture of gently strummed guitar and echoing synth pads while the title track is a lengthy instrumental workout reminiscent in places of Wilson’s “Regret #9”. Here, however, there’s a bit more creativity and verve in how Riis incorporates said influence. “She”, though a bit minimalistic and simple in its lyricism, grows into a genuinely lovely, gentle tug on the heartstrings, thanks largely to some brilliantly warm layers of synths in its second half that wrap around its anxious electric guitars like the comforting hug of a loved one and form a welcome respite amidst the album’s otherwise dreary mood. And yes, “Fimbulvinter” is a bit overlong and inexplicably bitcrushes its rhythm guitar track to the point where it sounds ripped from the original Doom soundfont, but it also manages to throw in an entertaining variety of styles in an admirable attempt to fill its nine minutes. From wintry atmospherics to stately synth leads to even some Black Sabbath-style tritones, it manages to be the most unique track here, if nothing else.

And yet, despite all this, I can’t shake how generally inessential Fimbulvinter feels as an album. Not bad, not pointless, not really even boring, just… not something that I’d ever recommend anyone actively seek out unless they’ve already heard Airbag‘s entire discography and simply must have more. It’s got its fair share of musical highlights, and overall serves as a somber yet decidedly pleasant listen with few noticeable flaws. Yet it doesn’t offer much that hasn’t already been offered by Riis’ influences, as well as his own band, in a dozen other albums. For those who love music that trends toward the cold yet wistful, you could certainly do much worse than Fimbulvinter. But unlike a snowflake, this is an album whose shapes have been made many times before.

Recommended tracks: Gone, She, Fear of Abandonment
You may also like: Dim Gray, Jonathan Hultén, Alex Carpani
Final verdict: 6/10

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

Label: Karisma Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Bjørn Riis is:
– Bjørn Riis (vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards)

With:
– Henrik Bergan Fossum (drums)
– Arild Brøter (drums)
– Kai Christoffersen (drums)

The post Review: Bjørn Riis – Fimbulvinter appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Neo-prog, symphonic prog (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Yes, Steven Wilson, Marillion, Genesis, Frost*
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 28 March 2025

There’s a certain kind of excited anticipation in revisiting an artist you used to love long ago. For me, it often jogs memories of doing excessively deep musical dives while playing video games in high school in the early 2010s. One such band was IQ and their 2004 record, Dark Matter, my first foray into neo-prog and a beloved album of mine throughout high school. Unfortunately, Dark Matter got lost to the sands of time when I went to college and became tainted by the Gospel of Djent, so imagine my surprise when I saw IQ in our review queue after fifteen years with a new record called Dominion. What better time than now to catch up?

Dominion betrays an evolution in IQ’s visage only noticeable in a fifteen-year absence. There is an air of familiarity in the wispy, keyboard-led neo-prog passages that weave through compositions short and long, some generously reprising a central idea (“No Dominion”) and others throwing repetition to the wayside as they yearn to ebb and flow around a core feeling (“The Unknown Door”). “One Of Us” is a wholly acoustic piece that acts as a palate cleanser to the monstrous opening epic “The Unknown Door”, whose intro showcases a gentle acoustic section redolent of Jack Johnson. Heavier moments seldom surface, but their presence always centralizes a piece, such as the extended jam in the center of “The Unknown Door” and the pounding, kinetic drums of “Far From Here” dueling with groovy guitar work.

The ambitious song structures featured on Dominion are standard fare for IQ, but a nagging lack of direction—and occasionally, profound disinterest—pervades many of its bulkier tracks. The strongest thread holding together “The Unknown Door”, for example, is vibes, as little is working towards the track’s cohesion outside of a few vague lyrical ideas. Its middle section is quite fun, indulging in dramatic synth-prog cinematics that juxtapose against smooth and cool organ-led moments, but none of it feels particularly interconnected: you could swap around ideas or even take a couple out to the exact same effect. Additionally, the bookending eight or so minutes feel more like an exercise in excess than anything, lumbering from gentle heartfelt moment to gentle heartfelt moment. “No Dominion”, on the other hand, is much more capable of maintaining structure around its crystalline keyboards and beautifully melodic solo. Unfortunately, the track almost immediately loses the plot regardless by surrounding its keyboards with pleasant-but-toothless verses, amorphous instrumentation, and grating flickers of autotune in Peter Nicholls’ vocals. “Far From Here” succeeds the most at balancing cohesion and interest, slowly building up its relatively gritty instrumentation into a colorful crescendo across its runtime and bringing the listener down as gently as they were lifted up.

IQ try to find a happy middle ground between more concrete sentiments in their lyricism and the oblique word-painting of Jon Anderson-era Yes on Dominion. However, much of its writing sits in an uncomfortable middle ground between these two extremes, struggling to shine in either respect. Dominion’s more tasteful lyrics emerge on closer “Never Land”, nostalgically lamenting the loss of a loved one, and “Far From Here” has some admittedly fun moments in the word play ‘Right or the left brain, who’ll decide? / What if the right had nothing left / Would the left get nothing right?’ On the flip side, the verse ‘Was it always going to be how it appeared / Beneath the moonlight? / What if I had told you anything you want to hear / Would that make it all right?’ from “One of Us” is not only prosaic but also rhythmically clunky, awkwardly jammed into the track’s meter. “The Unknown Door” features lines like ‘Beyond the veil of night / Unaware anywhere, is there still time? / Won’t be long from this moment on / With two of one kind and all we leave behind’, which are encased in hopelessly elliptical symbolism.

The last synth pads of “Never Land” fade out, and for a few seconds, I look at Dominion’s cover in silence. Its heavier moments perk my ears up without much fuss, but the record leaves little impression on me due to a lack of songwriting focus in its more extended pieces and lyricism that just doesn’t work most of the time. Like a pleasant at first but ultimately uncomfortable exchange with an old friend, the connection I had with IQ as a teenager just doesn’t really hold up under current circumstances. Is there anything left to say, or should I just take my leave and move on? It is getting late, after all, and I still have some errands I need to run. Maybe in another fifteen years, IQ and I will be different again in a way that’s more similar.

Recommended tracks: Far From Here, One of Us
You may also like: Dry River, Moon Safari, Ice Age, Kyros
Final verdict: 5/10

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

Label: Giant Electric Pea – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

IQ is:
– Peter Nicholls (vocals)
– Mike Holmes (guitars)
– Tim Esau (bass)
– Neil Durant (keyboards)
– Paul Cook (drums)

The post Review: IQ – Dominion appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive rock, synth-pop (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Frost*, poppy Devin Townsend, early Haken, ‘80s Rush and Yes
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 22 November 2024

If you missed Kyros’ fourth album Mannequin when it was released earlier this year, the first thing you should do is read my review of it, stick it on, and then continue reading. Go on, it’s okay, you won’t miss anything, I’ll just be reading this old copy of Playboy I found in a bush. 

… [Subvocalising]: What’s with all these naked women? Where’s Norman Mailer’s column?… 

Oh, you’re back, I didn’t realise! [throws the magazine out of a window] Where were we? The British group have cultivated a niche of their own, an unexpectedly brilliant blend of 80s synth pop and new wave with the neo-progressive rock of bands like Frost*. Their latest ‘mini-EP’, Fear & Love, an addendum to Mannequin, is a svelte package of two new songs, poppy banger “Fear & Love” and the more sprawling ten minute epic “Duchess Desire”, with an instrumental version of each in tow. 

“Fear & Love”¹ somehow manages to contain the glitz and groove of Duran Duran with noodly bass riffs and charming 80s synth chimes, and yet playing with some insanely thicc riffs, guitarist Joey Frevola and bassist Charlie Cawood positively djenting VOLA-style at times. The composition is an exercise in controlled chaos, random little guitar and synth licks interspersing themselves judiciously, a lively kaleidoscope of sounds, but without becoming busy. Some of its more chaotic moments recall “The End in Mind” from Mannequin, and both tracks, in the annals of Kyrosian history, throwback to the complexity of the Four of Fear EP. Are Kyros EPs destined to be the place where they explore their more metal inclinations, or is this a new paradigm for the band going forward?

“Duchess Desire” reprises a variety of motifs from Mannequin and perhaps beyond: both the lyrics of “Esoterica” and the vocal melodies, finds themselves transformed, remixed and renewed culminating in an epic lead guitar lick, and I’m sure there’s a subtle nod to “Liminal Space” in there. The sweeping scope of the track, continually building and evolving, recalls the lengthier tracks found on Celexa Dreams, and it sojourns through calmer moments, quiet lead guitar licks, and bombastic hooks; eventually the track explodes into frenetic shred and an enormous brassy-synth propulsed crescendo. 

Every aspect of Kyros is sounding refreshed and renewed; Mannequin remains one of the year’s best releases, but Fear & Love take things a step further, the production in particular possessing a little more lustre as Shelby’s already skilled mixing continues to improve; this particular benefits the vocals which sit a touch more organically in the composition here, and the low end which has a little more weight than it did on tracks like “The End in Mind” and “Have Hope”. Kyros’ continued evolution has been fascinating to watch. Go back to “Cloudburst” and you’re hardly listening to amateur hour, but the band keep going from strength to strength; Celexa Dreams smuggled a New Order sensibility into prog rock, while Mannequin felt like the energy of Frost* and Haken applied to the groove of 80s new wave.

The instrumental versions of the two tracks speak for themselves, but I confess to having become a little more enamoured of such bonuses recently. Disillusion released an instrumental version of their monstrous 2022 album Ayam this month and it was fascinating to be able to hear the little flourishes that become buried beneath the vocals. The same applies to Fear & Love; Kyros like to layer their mix with a lot of elements in a Townsendian fashion, and all the bells and whistles you notice here and there are more obvious sans vocals, testament to the intricacy of the compositions. And if that wasn’t enough, you can also do your own abysmal karaoke version over the instrumentals and who doesn’t want that²?

As a coda to Mannequin, Fear & Love showcases the band at their very best, and as a transitional step between albums it’s an exciting snippet of things to come. The star of Kyros, this unique entry into the annals of prog, just keeps rising thanks to a persistence of vision, to always keeping in motion, and to having hope. 

Recommended tracks: There’s two of them, pick one, then listen to the other
You may also like: Joey Frevola, Cheeto’s Magazine, Azure, Moron Police
Final verdict: same as Mannequin as I basically consider this an addendum to it. Yeah, now you wish you’d read the review I hyperlinked at the beginning, don’t you?!

1.  Am I crazy or can you sort of hear “Driving in My Car” by Madness in the intro riff? Replace it all with car horns and door slams and I swear to god they’d be similar. ︎
2. Me. I’m the one who doesn’t want that. Please send your abysmal karaoke versions to Kyros and not me. ︎

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

Label: Independent

Kyros is:
– Shelby Logan Warne (keys and vocals)
– Joey Frevola (guitars)
– Charlie Cawood (bass)
– Robin Johnson (drums/percussion)

With:
– Peter Episcopo (backing vocals)
– Canyo Hearmichael (saxophone)

The post Review: Kyros – Fear & Love appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Neo-prog, Symphonic Prog (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Big Big Train, Moon Safari, Alan Parsons Project
Country: Italy
Release date: 3 June 2024

After a five year wait marred by the instability of COVID and its damage to the industry, Barock Project have renewed themselves with their most cohesive and polished effort yet: Time Voyager. Barock Project was founded by multi-instrumentalist and composer Luca Zabbini in 2003 with the goal to make modernized prog rock that incorporates his classical influences, resulting in their unique brand of symphonic neo-prog. On Time Voyager, Barock Project delivers an epic time-travel themed experience that takes you far into the past and future in search of the present. 

In an interview with Euro-Rock Press, Zabbini detailed the challenges and misfortunes surrounding the previous Barock Project record, Seven Seas: their label struggled to support and promote them, and the pandemic ultimately brought their efforts to a standstill. While Time Voyager sees the return of their 2019 lineup, their drive to expand their reach internationally has given them a newfound spark of confidence and quality. Compared to my previous favorite of theirs—2015’s Skyline—Time Voyager incorporates more hook-oriented songwriting, cinematic and electronic arrangements, and varied instrumentation. Drummer Eric Ombelli also plays a greater role as a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and co-producer.

But before diving into the songs, I need to address the album art. Midjourney, or some similar AI art tool, was clearly used to generate it; the smeared roman numerals on the clock faces and generic fantasy style are dead giveaways. The fact that a single prompt could make countless variations of the cover cheapens the experience and ultimately renders it a hollow facade. Additionally, Barock Project sidestepping the role of an artist or designer for AI is ethically troubling, especially since they’ve previously worked with many great artists (including the legendary Paul Whitehead). Maybe in ten years we’ll get a remaster with proper art. That said, there’s a silver lining: the art is the weakest aspect of Time Voyager by far.

Time Voyager is a concept album where each track represents a particular time and place throughout history, connecting to the narrative through unique meditations on the passage of time. The opener, “Carry On,” packs much variety in its six-and-a-half-minute duration and establishes the rationale for the ensuing journey with the narrator’s anxieties about the past and future. “Carry On” shows how much they’ve matured in composing and arranging with its many creative transitions and its rhythmic drive that fluidly propels the song forward. 

Another aspect of Barock Project’s maturity is their tasteful use of heavier and/or metallic sections—I can’t tell you how many run-of-the-mill neo-prog bands try to write heavy riffs that end up limp and awkward in practice. The earlier Barock Project albums certainly had moments like that (such as the most brutal metal scream of 2012), whereas on Time Voyager the heavy sections support their songs’ structures with purpose. “An Ordinary Day’s Odyssey” exemplifies this with the balance between the heavier verses with pounding bass and Alex Mari’s soaring vocals to the later parts with piano and acoustic guitar. I wasn’t too fond of “Morning Train” at first because of its repetitive and meandering first verses, and yet the later half of the track takes a hard u-turn and reframes the first verse into a hard rock section with excellent high vocal harmonies, ultimately gluing the song together.

Luca Zabbini’s arranging is the highlight of Time Voyager. He practiced and improved his production work greatly during the pandemic. “Voyager” is a marvelous track with masterful transitions. Beginning with cinematic retro sci-fi synths and continuing into heavy, technical prog sections, the track then develops into a folk acoustic section with wonderful bouzouki played by Eric Ombelli. The varied instrumentation, eight-minute duration, and unique song structure of “Voyager” makes it a bold and unconventional lead single as well as one of their greatest songs since the Skyline era. It is among the best songs I’ve heard from Barock Project. 

Aside from the unconventional lead single “Voyager,” there are two other singles: “The Lost Ship Tavern” and “Propaganda”. The former takes the listener back many hundreds of years to a seaport full of nautical lowlife characters. An anthemic song featuring Celtic-style folk sections, a bombastic classical interlude, excellent organ riffage, virtuosic vocals from Mari, and guest violinist Alessandro Bonetti (Deus Ex Machina, PFM), “The Lost Ship Tavern” is one of the most well executed songs on Time Voyager. “Propaganda,” on the other hand, was a song I didn’t feel compelled by on my first listen. Its introduction features some silky jazz saxophone from the featured guest Manuel Caliumi, yet the song itself quickly veers away from that and becomes fairly middle-of-the-road with its social commentaries on propaganda and misinformation. Its lyrics ultimately suffer from a lack of focus and a touch-and-go approach to its themes. 

The outro track, “Voyager’s Homecoming”, brings a strong conclusion to the album’s journey. Aside from featuring phenomenal prog shredding in each instrumentalist’s part, it elegantly restates and concludes the musical and poetic themes of the album. It culminates with a reprise of “Carry On” using modified lyrics to state the ultimate message of Time Voyager: even if you’re lost in time, you can always carry on in the present.

Time Voyager has frustrating elements, but the cohesion of its narrative from start to finish is one of their greatest achievements. The crisp production delivers a level of confidence and polish that I’ve been hoping for them to reach since I first heard them. For myself, this all puts it on the same level as Skyline. The return of Barock Project was worth the wait as they’ve demonstrated their newfound energy and maturity in spite of their recent misfortunes.

Recommended tracks: Carry On, Voyager, The Lost Ship Tavern
You may also like: Southern Empire, Mystery, Karfagen
Final verdict: 6.5/10 (it loses a point for the AI art)

Related links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

The post Review: Barock Project – Time Voyager appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive rock, hard rock, AOR (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rush, Yes, Steven Wilson, Riverside, Transatlantic, Frost*
Country: Connecticut, USA
Release date: 12 July 2024

While there are a few Christmas prog albums out there, you’re nevertheless more likely to hear bands like Disillusion sing about “Wintertide” than yuletide. So it’s notable that Connecticut prog rock group Mile Marker Zero first came to my attention through their Christmas covers. The group have delivered a handful of reimaginings of classic Christmas songs in the style of various prog legends: “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” in the style of Opeth, “Winter Wonderland” in the style Genesis, “Sleigh Ride” in the style of Rush. And they deliver: the Opethisms on “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” are stylistically on-point from that first satirical diminishment; Mile Marker Zero are adept prog impressionists. But can that add up to originality and acumen when it comes to original compositions? 

On Coming of Age, Mile Marker Zero have really developed into a commercial prog sound, moving away from the more conceptually intrepid The Fifth Row and applying a lustre of spit and polish. The change of direction is akin to that of their beloved Rush whose hard rocking prog tendencies in the ‘70s were tempered by the pressures to conform to the ‘80’s commercialised milieu allowing them to relax into a poppier gear¹. In Mile Marker Zero’s case, that move is into a more album-oriented rock mode with an emphasis on personal lyrics without compromising on the instrumental complexity and ambition. “Best is Yet to Come” opens the album (after the brief intro track “A Time in Place”) with a ‘Steven Wilson at his most Rush’ style bang, the tense strumming of the verse building tension toward a cathartic and optimistic chorus which, on its final iteration, comes back fuller, layered with added subtleties. This really underscores the Mile Marker Zero approach to composition: typical verse-chorus structure but piling on little affectations and distinctions within that more rigid structure, plus a nice long bridge for the band to stretch their legs with solos, noodling about on keys, more complex riffs, and other fun little sections. It’s a tried and tested formula, but one which takes talent to pull off. 

Fortunately, over time Mile Marker Zero have honed their talents: Dave Alley’s dry tenor is stronger and more disciplined, and the composition is focused. The band are sparing with the guitar solos, but when John Tuohy takes the limelight he lays out melodic shred in the vein of Howe or Lifeson, as on “Best is Yet to Come”. “Heavy Days” opens with the most fast-paced riffing, some classic Geddy-esque basswork from Jaco Lindito and a chaotic keyboard solo that recall The Fifth Row’s relative heaviness. Lindito shines throughout, a truly interesting bassist whose contribution sits proudly in the mix—I only wish his solo that closes “Far From Home” went on longer. 

“Towns to Grow Up In” is a nostalgic paean to the homes that form us, its dewy-eyed wistfulness feels more suited to the likes of Tom Petty or Bruce Springsteen, an all American anthem full of the spirit of the late seventies.² Meanwhile, “Bizarre” is more of a swing, its sound recalling that of Steven Wilson’s last four albums with its stripped back trip-hop vibe, simple piano chords, and post-rock style of layering synth and guitar elements into a climax. The title track also takes an interesting punt on a marimba effect backing the track throughout. At first I found its constant presence a little irritating, but I’ve come around to it on repeat listens, plinking away in the background like the reassuring patter of raindrops as the track moves into an absolutely gorgeous Gilmour-esque acoustic solo, topped off by an emotive climax that prove some of the record’s most arresting moments.

If Coming of Age suffers anywhere, it’s in the more saccharine AOR moments, “Towns We Grew Up In” and “End of August” being the biggest offenders—although, to the band’s credit, both tracks evolve into more interesting sections. I suppose it comes down to a question of cliches: I think Mile Marker Zero manage to weaponise the Rushisms and Yesisms to their advantage, but whenever things go a bit Foreigner or Boston, Coming of Age feels less ‘inspired by’ and more straightforwardly cliched. And yet, when “End of August” builds to its lovely reprise of “The Best is Yet to Come”, cutting out on the final chant of the title just before the last word, you won’t find me without my lighter in the air. Sometimes the cliches just work. 

We don’t cover modern prog rock so often here at the Subway, and while that’s something we’re trying to address, part of the reason is there’s little to say about all those “What if Pink Floyd had been dull post rock?” releases or the Genesis worshippers selling themselves by the ton who sound so sanitised and have found nothing new to say in fifty years. Mile Marker Zero’s dynamic mix of a modern Steven Wilson/Riverside gloss built upon classic Rush and Yes influences has the necessary bite to engage, and enough creative decisions to earn your attention. It seems like Mile Marker Zero have finally [dramatically removes sunglasses] matured.

1.  One wonders what would happen if any prog band had ever had an interest in cocaine. Although I guess King Crimson’s ‘80s output was manic enough and the hardest thing Robert Fripp was on was pescetarianism. ︎
2.  Fitting given that, what with all the ultra-conservative posturing to take power with witch hunts and assassination attempts in tow, America really feels like it’s about to enter 1980 again. ︎

Recommended tracks: Best is Yet to Come, Heavy Days, Coming of Age
You may also like: Advent Horizon, Southern Empire
Final verdict: 7.5/10

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

Label: Independent

Mile Marker Zero is:
– Dave Alley (vocals)
– John Tuohy (guitars)
– Mark Focarile (keyboards)
– Jaco Lindito (bass)
– Doug Alley (drums)

The post Review: Mile Marker Zero – Coming of Age appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive Rock, Neo-prog (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Steven Wilson, Riverside, Eno
Review by: Dave
Country: Italy
Release date: 14 February 2024

It’s a dreary, rainy, unseasonably warm day in late January. I’m sitting on my porch, watching the wind shake drops from a barren persimmon tree into an overflowing bird bath underneath, rippling the smooth surface. Cars are passing by, their sound amplified by the wet road, and in response, I reach to turn up my speakers to better hear Fjieri’s Words Are All We Have (Reloaded). Rainy weather is perfect for mood pieces, and Words Reloaded unabashedly presents itself as a mood piece designed for days like these.

Inspired by the quieter and moodier moments of progressive rock legends Porcupine Tree and Riverside, Fjieri’s remaster of their 2015 output Words Are All We Have presents an evolution in their sound design and a slightly reworked track order. This rework is a welcome change as the ennui that Fjieri’s music inspires is in full force, brought out by a thicker bass sound, a fuller vocal presence, and an overall roomier production. Moreover, Words Reloaded introduces a brand-new opener, “A Sense of Lost,” which does a remarkable job of setting the mood, allowing me to enjoy the feeling of listlessness like few other albums before it.

It could be argued, though, that Words Reloaded does too good a job at this. Being a mood piece, there is less emphasis on ideas and more emphasis on atmosphere and texture, and the blissful lethargy of the first few tracks dissipates fairly quickly: by the end of “Flame,” I’ve processed my feelings fully and I’m ready to move on to the next thing. Words Reloaded, however, is absolutely not ready, keeping me strapped in for seven more tracks. The slump caused by the monotony in the middle tracks does serious damage to Words Reloaded’s ability to evoke mood, and I end up feeling more bored than entrenched in atmosphere.

Fortunately, the album manages to pick itself up by the end by including a few tracks that break from the mood to explore different intensities and speeds. “Oriental Dream” introduces a much-needed increase in pace and rhythmic complexity; “Zombie Love” opens with a mysterious guitar motif and breathy vocal melodies, finishing with a bit of heft through chunky guitars over a squealing synthesizer; and “Those Words (Words Are All We Have)” returns to the dejection of the beginning, but includes a passionate vocal delivery that ultimately ends the album on a positive note. The variation in these final tracks saves this showcase in mood from completely falling flat on its face.

Words Reloaded has great promise, improving on the original considerably and developing an intoxicatingly depressing mood in its first moments, but ultimately ends up running a little too long and losing its magic. Were this a more concise length, I would wholeheartedly recommend it, but the moody atmosphere overstays its welcome and leaves me longing for something with a bit more energy. If you’re looking to get wowed by pyrotechnics or bask in warm inviting sunlight, this is not the album for you. If you’re looking for something to accompany your tea while you look out the window on a rainy day, Words Reloaded is an excellent choice.

Recommended tracks: A Sense of Lost, Oriental Dream, Zombie Love
You may also like: Disperse, Our Oceans, Rain Tree Crow
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Spotify | Facebook | RYM page

Label: Independent Release

Fjieri is:
– Stefano Panunzi (keyboards)
– Nicola Lori (guitar)
– Elio Lori (bass)
– Angelo Strizzi (drums)

The post Review: Fjieri – Words Are All We Have (Reloaded) appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Genres: Progressive rock, synth pop, neo-progressive rock, new wave (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Frost*, Yes, Haken (particularly Affinity), poppy Devin Townsend (Empath, Addicted, etc), Gunship, Ulver’s synth pop albums, Rush, Voyager
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 2 February 2024

Synths and prog go together like the UK and a completely dysfunctional electoral system that consistently delivers incompetently sociopathic governance¹. Emerson, Lake & Palmer were among the first to hinge their prog rock upon synth; Yes and Rush continued the trend, and Frost* took the torch and ran with it in the 2000s. Synth-pop, on the other hand, is a distinct genre which has never fully consummated with prog, though its trappings have certainly reared their head from time to time. Synth prog and synth-pop are two very different beasts; could they, like the Brits and beige, stodgy cuisine², possibly become bedfellows? 

Which brings us to Kyros, a British group who have been cruising the underground for over a decade now, originally under the name Synaesthesia, starting out as a solo project of founder member, vocalist and keyboardist, Shelby Logan Warne. Clearly influenced by Frost*, Kyros’s evolution over time has been toward blending that established keyboard-driven prog rock style with a maximalist synth-pop tendency. Marrying the layered progressive complexity they demonstrated on their Four of Fear EP with the catchy bops that adorned previous album Celexa Dreams, Kyros have fully blossomed into one of the underground’s most accomplished acts, finally consummating prog rock with synth-pop once and for all on their latest album Mannequin.

Opening with the chiming charm of innocence-drenched track “Taste the Day”, Mannequin explodes into life with “Showtime” which lays out a bass groove that could dance across the Rio Grande with Duran Duran’s John Taylor, while the synth glides around like it’s in a Mario soundtrack (Galaxy, Kart, Sunshine, take your pick and let’s-a go). The soupçons of pop, funk and synthwave that suffuse this instrumental can be heard across Mannequin—from the doos and dahs that open “Ghosts of You” which recall Shanice’s ‘90s pop bop “I Love Your Smile” to the enormous chiming synths that dominate “Liminal Space” (echoing “Cloudburst”³ from Vox Humana) and its utterly addictive chorus. “Esoterica” is perhaps Kyros’s best amalgamation of funk and synthwave with prog rock, with its thudding grooves and a veritable wall of keys evoking the cigarette-haze of a sweaty 1980s club, the audience a writhing mass of big perms, flashing neon and lascivious contorting, Canyo Hearmichael’s saxophone solo bursting through the wall like Sergio⁴ ready to ruin Andy Samberg’s life again. And yet the funk riff that bridges the track dares to send everyone in the club out of rhythm with a wrong-footing bar of 3/4. That’s prog, baby.

And you guys want to hear more about the prog, don’t you? Well, fear not, Mannequin is replete with compositional complexity, from the Devin Townsendian layering of a deluge of different musical elements to Haken-esque interpolations of utterly chaotic instrumental breaks as on “The End in Mind” which starts out whimsical and ends up sojourning through a phat bass groove, a chiptune solo and then an instrumental passage so chaotic that attempting to count the time signatures gave me a nosebleed. Similarly, thanatophobic closer “Have Hope” is dominated by ostensibly simple melodies that keep veering into utter chaos, only for those happier melodies to cheerfully reprise as if the crack in the facade never appeared—we’re all just about holding it together in the face of death, right? 

Mannequin’s genius lies in the fact that melody and synth reign supreme but the proggier passages often tear through like a sonic mental breakdown; appropriate because, lyrically, this is a haunted, yearning album, drenched in nostalgia and pleas for answers, connection, some semblance of sanity. The happiest tune imaginable plays and then you look at the lyrics and see “Yet my brain is bleeding out of my head” and you wonder if Warne is doing okay. The answer: probably not. Mannequin feels attuned to that particularly millennial malaise, born into a stagnating Western world at a time when the old myths are dying and the new myths are inadequate to the task of making sense of what humanity hath wrought upon itself. Warne is “floating in liminal space,” wonders if she’s fated to “symbolise ill-fated tries,” feels “broken in mind, dead inside.” At some point—probably around the advent of social media (have no fear, longtime Kyros fans, “Technology Killed the Kids IV” is in the tracklist)—we all became trapped in our own heads, a flimsy fortress against a crumbling world to which we’re unable to fully acclimate. How does one find identity in such a world when we’re all just victims of our own biochemistry as it intersects with a completely hostile environment? Sure, maybe I am having a depressive episode, but it seems like Warne is too, so at least we have each other. 

Anyway, I was reviewing an album, wasn’t I? Props have to go to guitarist Joey Frevola for his John Mitchell inspired melo-shred style, interweaving classic prog rock melody with bursts of more aggressive metal, his solos always elevating the tracks. Meanwhile, Charlie Cawood slaps and pops his way through the record providing a buffet of bass grooves, and Robin Johnson’s metronomic drumming keeps the songs tightly wound during the more chaotic interludes—the rhythm section’s performance on the instrumental bridge of “The End in Mind” deserves special commendation. Additionally, there are a lot of synthesised elements on Mannequin and hundreds of layers per song; that’s a lot to keep track of, but the production is sublime, every chiming synth, crashing piece of percussion, thrumming bass note, and all the myriad bells and whistles lovingly treated in the mix.⁵

We received the promo for Mannequin in 2023 a few months ago and, had the album been released last year, it would’ve easily taken second place in my top ten of the year. Kyros have turned everything up to eleven, delivering their danciest, proggiest, wildest album yet, fusing progressive rock and synth-pop in a way that sounds completely fresh. They also caused me to go two-hundred-and-fifty words over limit, whine about the decay of society, briefly tremble at my own mortality, and forget to mention a bunch of things I actually wanted to say about the album. If all that doesn’t herald one of the best releases you’ll hear this year then I don’t know what does.

Recommended tracks: The End in Mind, Esoterica, Have Hope, Liminal Space
You may also like: Temic, Maraton, 6:33, Pleasures
Final verdict: 9/10

1.  As a Brit, I’m allowed to say this.
   ︎
2. See footnote 1. ︎
3.  The Korg N-1 Olympian bell patch again, I bet.
   ︎
4.  Yes, I could’ve just said Tim Cappello, but I just wanted to share that sketch because it’s basically the best thing SNL have done (and it’s a pisstake of Cappello’s highly-memed cameo in The Lost Boys). ︎
5.  Warne made a video breakdown of the track “Esoterica” showing the myriad layers involved (and mistakes that made it into the final product and things she just plain forgot to do with the mix—I respect the honesty). 
   ︎

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

Label: White Star Records – Facebook | Official Website

Kyros is:
– Shelby Logan Warne (vocals, keys and production)
– Joey Frevola (guitar)
– Robin Johnson (drums)
– Charlie Cawood (bass)

The post Review: Kyros – Mannequin appeared first on The Progressive Subway.