Style: Progressive Metal, Metalcore, Technical Groove Metal (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Meshuggah, Textures, Gojira, Car Bomb
Review by: Christopher
Country: Missouri, USA
Release date: 28 July, 2023

So there’s this band in the metal scene, they’re called Meshuggah—you might’ve heard of them. I cannot stand them. Don’t get me wrong, Meshuggah are incredibly technically impressive; Swiss watch levels of intricacy, a level of ability and meticulousness that borders on awe-inspiring. But nothing bores me more than the monotonous polyrhythmic thunder of a Meshuggah album, the relentless assault of riffs in 69/420 continuing unabated for around sixty whole minutes. I am immovable in the face of Immutable. I feel nothing for Nothing. Koloss? More like colossal piece of [Editor’s note: this bit went on for two more paragraphs so we just cut it out].

Anyway, having already alienated half of our readers, I’m going to take on another technically-minded, Meshuggah influenced band. The fourth album from The Gorge sees the Missourian quartet refreshed after a seven year break, taking their complex brand of progressive metalcore to new extremes. Balancing the instrumental intricacy of Meshuggah with the catchier metalcore of bands like Textures, lead singer and guitarist Phil Ring—who’s based as hell on the grounds that he’s wearing a Steely Dan t-shirt in their Bandcamp photo—lends a hardcore sensibility with his punishing growls, and there’s a soupçon of jazz influence in the mix, too. At a well-paced forty-five minutes, Mechanical Fiction does everything you want from this sort of complexity focused record without overstaying its welcome.

An overfocus on polyrhythms and time signatures can push a band’s sound into the realms of solipsism. Fortunately, The Gorge always centre songwriting, finessing the compositions with some mind-bending rhythms throughout. Some of these are simpler in nature, as on “Beneath the Crust” where an abrupt bar of 3/4 wrongfoots the punky 4/4 riff, others more overtly mathematical, as on “Remnants of Grief” which cycles through a bunch of uncountable (for me) riffs, eventually hitting upon some more melodic veins. Naturally, the MVP on this album is Jerry Mazzuca, whose kit mastery is vital to the intricacy of all these changes in metre and feel, and his contribution has a real sense of personality meaning that Mechanical Fiction has plenty to satisfy both the clockwork brained tech heads and the cavemen who just wanna headbang to phat grooves. 

Like their aforementioned forebears, The Gorge will occasionally overwork a great riff, and the reliance on the low-end does mean that some of the tremolo riffs (“Presence”, “Beneath the Crust”) feel a little too similar to one another, but I’m the heathen that thinks Meshuggah are a soup of sameyness so this is clearly pretty varied for this stripe of prog. Similarly, Ring’s growls, though powerful, are a little monotonous—standard for the genre, but sometimes I want a little injection of variety, of melody. Moments like the chant and lead guitar that close “Beneath the Crust” offer some euphonic relief amid the more oppressive heaviness. 

None of that is to suggest that The Gorge punish the listener with colourless riffage; in fact, they know when to let the compositions breathe. “Earthly Decay” plays with a set of calmer chords, throwing in psychedelic lead lines, and ramping up the intensity to a powerful crescendo to create a compelling experiment in varying an ostensibly simple four-chord phrase; the finale “Wraith” conducts similarly post-metal influenced climactic inquiries. Meanwhile, the sojourning 7/4 tapping rhythm that orients “A Decision Was Made” and the short instrumental title track, which sees the band get their Tosin on with an Animals as Leaders style groove, both have a pleasing sense of melody underlying their complexity. 

I made my biases clear early on and while The Gorge are a little out of my usual reviewing scope, they’ve produced something so interestingly composed and genuinely fresh that I knew I had to help shine a light on it. If I, a simple Devin Townsend-loving melody-seeker, can find a lot to love here, then this should blow the fans of this sound out of the water. Meshuggah fans, I’m sorry for the things I said, but we have more in common than that which divides us, and so I present to you Mechanical Fiction as a peace offering; we can all agree it’s cool as hell.

Recommended tracks: Remnants of Grief, Beneath the Crust, Earthly Decay
You may also like: Hippotraktor, Ahasver, Hypnagone, Polars Collide
Final verdict: 7.5/10

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

Label: Pelagic Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

The Gorge is:
– Phil Ring (guitars, vocals)
– Joe Bowers (guitars)
– Chris Turnbaugh (bass)
– Jerry Mazzuca (drums)

The post Missed Album: The Gorge – Mechanical Fiction appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Sludge Metal, Melodic Black Metal, Progressive Metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Mastodon, Kvelertak, The Ocean, Tribulation, Type O Negative
Review by: Sabrina
Country: Missouri, United States
Release date: 13 October, 2023

The Lion’s Daughter have been pushing the game lately on innovation – truly surpassing their competition on how maximally hideous their album cover is. This already sets up a barrier for entry; I mean, try showing this album to your friends and family, convince them that there truly is good music underneath the yucky taste of weird horror porn.

I’ve been following The Lion’s Daughter for a few years now as their 2018 album, Future Cult, is what introduced me to the band. Their skillful fusion of sludge and black metal combined with novel synth work is what made this band unique amongst the swath of underground extreme metal bands.

I’d call myself somewhat of a connoisseur for fun synthesizer work – especially in the progressive metal sphere – so, The Lion’s Daughter became one of those bands that I had a soft spot for. In a sense, I considered them a guilty pleasure; I knew that they were not the most technical, intricate, or talented band out there as many of their non-synth instrumental performances and often simplistic songwriting left room to be desired. Despite this, I spent a great amount of time listening to The Lion’s Daughter as almost no other bands meet the gothic, colorfully spooky aesthetic that I loved about them. In the past, their music generally did a good job at representing themes in their album artwork, using alluringly wicked synth tones (in the style of gothic rock and horror cinema) to conjure images that vaguely resemble varieties of goth raves and latex BDSM clubs. Do not ask how I know. You can think of the instrumental compositions from their past three albums to be not far off from Danny Baranowsky or Ridiculon’s soundtrack to The Binding of Isaac.

In a way, I had some uncompromising expectations going into Bath House that would be quite tough for the band to meet (primarily because they have no fucking idea who the hell I am and have no prima facie reason to appeal to the standards of some nerd on the internet). However, it’s by sheer luck that they’ve managed to improve on most of the weaknesses of previous releases without confounding their established artistic identity. And despite the gross anthropomorphic fish monster on the cover, this is actually an album I can brag on behalf of.

I’m not sure how it’s possible, but they’ve gotten more sludgy, more blackened, more progressive, and—somehow—more catchy. Vibrant, sinister tremolo riffs scrape through the forefront as a world of thick, grumbly vibrations layer the backdrop with sludgy guitar reverb. The rhythm section in this album is so tight and has a uniquely intimidating sonic personality, providing a menacing heartbeat the album needs to be as scary to listen to as it is. The band’s trademark keyboards alternate between a litany of melodramatic synth chords and unnerving buggy sound effects while their vocalist delivers hook after hook of gritty melodic cleans and gargling animalistic growls. Not too many guitar solos show up but are a treat when they do. 

This devilishly gorgeous package of sounds is conceived of and executed wonderfully throughout all of the tracks on this album with variations in keyboard tones, melodies, and experimental ideas. However, it seems that the internet at large agrees with my initial impression that the best rendition of this formula is track four, “Your Pets Died on TV”. Being one of the more progressive tracks on the album, the tempo shifts and interludes allow each of the band members to have moments where their skills shine. The third quarter of the track hits abnormally hard, sending you through a sequence of intense, escalating prog metal riffs, unwinding electronics backed by hurried screams, a chillingly isolated rhythm section, then backed by funereal keyboards to illustrate the visceral decay of your beloved pets.

The track “Liminal Blue” sticks out with its surreal, funky synth melody to highlight the uncanny nature of the blue you will see as your consciousness scrambles to find its final images before reaching the void. “Maximize Terror” demonstrates how The Lion’s Daughter can be progressive with their innovative vocal composition as two members dual with growls at an unfamiliar tempo (I also can’t say how underrated it is to begin a song with a guitar solo). “12-31-89” begins with 80s synth-pop keys reminiscent of A-ha’s “Take on Me” and HotLine Miami, this heavily contrasts with sludgy guitar textures and an interlude that reminds me of something either out of an IER album or the horror movie Barbarian. It should be said too that the clean vocals on here are quite good, both in their technical execution and in their compositional writing; “Bath House” and “Crawler Night” are two tracks that have choruses that rival that of Mastodon themselves. The “End Credits” leave us off with the salty taste of The Ocean with their smooth vocals and bass riff fitting of “Palaeoscene”.

Most of the songs on Bath House have fairly creative structures with peaks and valleys that climax effectively. Furthermore, the band also adds quite a bit of interesting and unexpected components that make this a fun listen through the end. There is a considerable variety here that helps the album get better with each successive listen and I think this will become one of my personal favorites. If I were to place bets, I’d say The Lion’s Daughter have peaked here. However, I would be happy to lose a hundred-dollar bet to be proven wrong.

Recommended tracks: Your Pets Died on TV, 12-31-89, Liminal Blue, Bath House, Maximize Terror
You may also like: IER, Inter Arma, Mantar, Lord Mantis, Wake, Cobalt, Astrakhan
Final verdict: 8/10

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

Label: Independent

The Lion’s Daughter is:
– Erik Ramsier (drums)
– Scott Fogelbach (guitar, bass)
– Rick Giordano (guitar, vocals)

The post Review: The Lion’s Daughter – Bath House appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Thrash metal, Progressive metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Voivod, Coroner, Havok
Review by: Francesco
Country: Missouri, United States
Release date: 23 May, 2023

Konnichiwa and welcome back to all my Japanese readers! Anarchÿ returns to the scene after last year’s debut full-length Sentience with an EP called Retching Necropolis. The St. Louis based duo (and their super cool robot drummer) bring back some of the classic Anarchÿ sounds, only in bite-size format this time around. Although lacking in 30+ minute opuses, there’s still a couple of bangers here to tide you over; Retching Necropolis delivers more of what you’ve come to love from Anarchy and their musical inclinations: technical wizardry, interesting compositional arrangements, and abrupt, absurdly titled short tracks.

I particularly enjoy the way that Anarchÿ transition within their songs to create different movements. In the opener “Blizzard and Brimstone” they start with slow acoustic guitars before the dissonant, fast-paced distorted parts kick in. “Chopin’s Nightmare” seamlessly breaks into an excerpt from Chopin‘s “Funeral March”. In the middle of “The Helix Withers” they bring out the reverberant acoustics again: first solo, and then with backing percussion, until the electric comes back playing something approximate to the acoustic bit. In this way they tend to eschew the traditional verse-chorus-bridge structure of most popular songwriting, and keep their compositions diverting and engaging.

Although Anarchÿ are often styled as neoclassical, I don’t really hear much of that influence in Necropolis beyond the last track, “Ÿ”, an 8-second grindcore rendition of Tchaikovsky‘s “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker. The other short track on this is “Pantera’s Pizza: Ballad of the Hunk”: what could best be described as a musical stinger stuck at the end of a commercial. The last thing to mention about this EP is the inclusion of a cover of Acid Bath‘s “Bleed Me an Ocean”. It’s a pretty faithful rendition, but I’m not really one for sludge metal, and I often found myself skipping over it on subsequent listens. Probably better fitting for inclusion here rather than the upcoming full length.

Three original compositions and one cover song make for a short listen but I feel that punctuating with the aforementioned bumper music, as we heard in the last album, helps to keep a listener engaged as they go through the track listing. Retching Necropolis is a quick technical thrash metal degustation that serves to whet your appetite but leaves you hungry for another course.

Recommended tracks: The Helix Withers, Blizzard and Brimstone
You may also like: VENUS, Reverber, Quasarborn
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Instagram | Metal Archives page

Label: Independent

Anarchÿ is:
– Fionn McAuliffe (vocals)
– Reese Tiller (guitars, bass, keyboards)

The post Review: Anarchÿ – Retching Necropolis appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Thrash metal, Progressive metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Voivod, Coroner, Vektor
Review by: Francesco
Country: USA
Release date: 20 October, 2022

Anarchÿ comes out swinging with their full-length debut Sentïence. There is little and less to find fault with in this release and Anarchÿ outdo themselves at every turn. With a blurring of genre boundaries and blending of musical influences, this album steps outside of the oft-rigid structures of thrash and metal, and coupled with lyrical themes touching upon the human experience and other enigmatic subjects, the whole package becomes an engrossing and mystical listen. 

One thing this album does really well is playing with its song lengths. The majority of Sentïence is contained in songs that vary in duration from the Napalm Death inspired, seconds-long “Ë”, to the more conventional 7-minute length of “The Greatest Curse” – and on the album, you’ll find various elements that include a quasi-baroque synthesized string piece, hand percussion, and a couple of short, instrumental shred tracks. But it is the 32-minute odyssey “The Spectrum of Human Emotion” that becomes the album’s highlight, comprising enough movements to make your head spin. The half-hour composition, a rock opera interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is chock-full of twisting thrash metal riffs that accompany the song’s unconventional structure as it detours effortlessly into off-genre adventures, evolving into soft, finger-picked acoustic guitar passages; dissonant jazz chord resolutions; a cappella harsh vocal phrases; and even a cleanly sung denouement perhaps evocative of Bowie.

If there’s a downside to a release that incorporates this many moving parts, it’s only that it may not leave much room for expansion and elaboration. Clocking in at the nearly 1-hour mark, more than half the album plays out in their one epic, the aforementioned “The Spectrum”. What experimentation is present in that track is largely absent from the rest of the album outside of a snippet here and there, as in the classical piano outro of “The Greatest Curse”, or the brief rasgueado intro to “Waylaid”, but the rest of the track listing manages well to retain its progressive metal fashion with less genre-bending whimsy, opting instead for complex riffing and composition.

Anarchÿ shift frequently on this release from the more irregular and avant-garde to the straight-forward fast-tempo shred with as much influence from Megadeth as Vektor. Intense, exciting, and eccentric, Sentïence packs about as much into a thrash album as humanly possible. This is a must for any fan of technical, progressive thrash metal.

Recommended tracks: The Spectrum of Human Emotion, D.E.S.T.R.O.Y., The Greatest Curse
You may also like: Toxik, VENUS, Vorbid
Final verdict: 10/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Independent

Anarchÿ is:
– Fionn McAuliffe (vocals)
– Reese Tiller (guitars. bass, keyboards)

The post Review: Anarchÿ – Sentïence appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Technical Death Metal / Progressive Death(Mixed vocals)
Review by: Chris
Country: US (MO)
Release date: 23 July, 2021

At risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s so very rare these days that something in the technical death vein really surprises me. The last thing I reviewed which did so was probably Sutrah‘s latest EP, but other than that everything is typically varying degrees of competent within the same spectrum. One thing I always wanted was someone to bring a brand of technical death mixed with prog which has melodic sensibilities and arrangements. Boy oh boy has Prognostication provided that on Collapse, a debut album clocking in 51 minutes in length that has grabbed me like few things have lately this year.

Collapse opens on “Collapse” in a fashion true to the root genre and veiling its later nature; a light synth piece plinks into existence before a chugging techy riff joins another guitar tapping out the same line as the synth. The growls are immediate and dark before giving way to the first hint of clean vocals peek out right after. Soon afterwards the song thrusts itself into true tech territory where angular riffs and constantly moving drums are king. It is true chaotic techy mess for a long stretch, with small hints at later melody and harmony to come. A mashed breakdown of synth melodies and death breakdowns comes before the song really gives way to what makes this album different.

The next ensuing clean tapping section coupled with clean vocals doing multiple part harmonies is where my attention was grabbed. The next two minutes is a slightly jazzy affair that would fit right at home on Native Construct‘s Quiet World. This complete departure from the recent norm of darker and heavier tech is incredibly relieving and really lets the track breathe. Throughout the album this continued usage of actual thought out and expanded upon clean sections (rather than maybe the post-metal or ambient-esque breaks many bands employ) really provide the space needed to let the riff sections never feel overpowering or draining for the listener.

The jazzy diversion aside, the rest of “Collapse” (the track) fills its runtime with sections of ever changing technical filth, running guitar lines, and core-esque breakdowns. Later songs evolve on these ideas: “Incinerate” with its very BTBAM-esque lines and devolutions of riff into breakdown, “Voyage” with its almost mathcore style dissonant stabs. “Eclipse” has some wonderful chord based riffs with short 16th note bursts bookended by large chord hits and drawn out arpeggios. I’ll be honest, we could talk about riffs all day for this album (of course there are a lot, this is a technical death album) but it’s not really what brings me back. All technical death albums have riffs, some albums go harder in that department than others. Collapse has great riffing and heavy. sections, but it really isn’t what makes the album shine in my mind.

It’s the melodic choices and stylings which bring me back to this album much more than many things I’ve reviewed here lately. “Collapse”, as mentioned earlier, has the first glimpses of that with its first two clean vocal + guitar diversions. “Eclipse” has glimpses of it at 1:30, being marked by extended harmonized guitar lines. “Contort” stands though as the most distinguished by its evolution and resolution as a song. A long brood on a clean building section with the return of the multi-harmonized vocals before culminating in a large ocean of tremolo, chord stabs, clean vocals, and layered harshes as well. This was the moment that really sold me on this album. Absolute chaos coupled with true sense for clean stylings is something more bands seem to attempt these days, but that few ever achieve in any meaningful or impressive way.

The album is definitely let down a bit with the mix muddiness (especially in some of the harsh vocal sections) but the underlying musicality and performance underneath is of undeniable impeccability. Wonderful guitar writing and vocal sensibilities shine through despite any slight misfirings on the production end. The drums, while a bit mechanical at times in the less than pleasing way, know how to make themselves a vehicle when necessary and when to take over the feeling for short moments. There may be a bit over reliance on the bell-like synth sound, but honestly it works pretty much every time it comes up so I can’t fault it all that much. Otherwise some of the subtle padding here and there help provide a more. soundscape vibe akin to. say. a The Contortionist or similar.

If you are a lover of the strangeness and. anything-goes nature of your BTBAMs and Native Constructs but want to hear it packaged inside a more technical death genre-scape…well it’s like this album was made by you.

Recommended tracks: Contort, Eclipse, Voyage
Recommended for fans of: Native Construct, Obscura, Between the Buried and Me
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Label: Indepedent

Prognostication is:
– Members not disclosed

The post Review: Prognostication – Collapse appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive sludge metal (mixed vocals)
Review by: Sam
Country: US-MO
Release date: 9 April, 2021

My introductions are often too long. Most of the time I have lots of inspiration for an introduction, so that I often have to cut short what I want to say. This time however, I have absolutely nothing to say about this band, so I’ll just cut to the chase.

This is an interesting little album. It was marketed as progressive sludge metal, but it’s much more than that. Heck, I’d barely call it sludge metal, and it only takes the first track to show why. The album opens with rather industrial sounding synths and a one-two drum beat, with the only sludge-resembling element being the harsh vocals. After that it gets into straight black metal territory with tremolo riffs and mid-tempo blast beats. It’s only after two minutes that the sludge metal comes shining through, but only briefly as the industrial motifs are more important it seems. This sort of balance between sludge, industrial, and black metal remains throughout the album. It took me quite a while to get used to the album, but I think I’ve got a firm grasp on it now.

And there’s more to it, because the production is also very atypical for the genre. Instead of focusing on humongous e x t r a  t h i c c riffs and fuzz, the guitars are pretty medium intensity for metal. Only the bass tone has that typical sludge vibe. If it wasn’t for the sludge style harsh vocals, I would have believed you if you said this was a progressive black metal album. The band themselves described the album on Bandcamp as a soundtrack to Times Square in the 1970s as “the epicenter of sin and salacious misdeeds.” I find it pretty fitting in a way. The album’s chock full of spooky synths. I mentioned them being industrial earlier, but they have a real John Carpenter (infamous horror film director and solo artist) vibe to them. Also not to mention the general weirdness of prominent synths on a sludge album.

If it wasn’t clear already, this band gets a lot of points for uniqueness. I also have to applaud them for keeping it varied throughout. Some tracks feel more industrial, others lean in more on the sludge riffs, sometimes it feels thrashy, and then they fully embrace the black metal aspects again. I even swear that some of the riffing patterns feel like power metal. They keep continuity with the ever-present horror synths, and just sheer good songwriting. All the songs are short and to the point, making them easy to distinguish. They have solid hooks and great performances. The album’s only 42 minutes, so it’s over in a blast. One major point of contention though is that I miss the big emotional climaxes. While each track is fun and well to listen to and their sound is super unique, there isn’t any point in the album that blew my socks off. There’s nothing in here like the solo in “The Czar” or a super moving chorus like “Roots Remain” (both Mastodon tracks) that puts it over the edge.

Ultimately that’s what’s keeping Skin Show from getting a really high grade from me. This is an incredibly unique, well-performed album that’s very easily digestible and catchy. However where it lacks is that bigger emotional gut-punch which makes music truly memorable for me, and gives it longevity beyond the year. Don’t let that keep you from listening to the album though. This is one of the most unique things you’ll hear all year.

Recommended tracks: Become the Night, Werewolf Hospital, All Hell Is Mine
Recommended for fans of: Obsidian Kingdom, John Carpenter, Mastodon
Final verdict: 7/10

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

Label: Season of Mist – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook

The Lion’s Daughter is:
– Scott Fogelbach (vocals)
– Rick Giordano (guitars, bass, vocals, keyboards)
– Erik Ramsier (drums, percussion)

The post Review: The Lion’s Daughter – Skin Show appeared first on The Progressive Subway.