Style: progressive metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Ayreon, Dream Theater, Circus Maximus, The Dear Hunter (conceptually if not musically)
Country: Spain
Release date: 23 May 2025

It’s a great tragedy for artists everywhere and in every medium that passion is not sufficient for success. Passion can carry a creator through the travails of completing their work and releasing it to the public, but it can never guarantee that the end product will be of high quality, nor that it will receive the attention it deserves from the target audience. SerapiS Project have invested their passions mainly in the Patreon model for funding and distributing their creative efforts, offering a persistent fantasy universe with a continuous narrative. Their previous full-length album Palingenesis laid the foundation for this storytelling effort, establishing primary characters and motivations, mainly drawing on historical and mythological figures relating to the underworld, from the titular Serapis to Hades and even the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. Side Stories continues in the same world, instead diving deeper into the characters’ backgrounds through a set of (you guessed it) side stories. I have a lot of respect for the ambition of a project like this; large-scale storytelling through music remains an underexplored space, with few artists other than Ayreon or The Dear Hunter willing to commit to such an effort, and the few who do rarely do a good job of it. As you might have inferred, SerapiS Project don’t seem to be any exception to the latter.

There can be little doubt that the members of SerapiS Project have placed a tremendous amount of emotional investment in their shared creative project, but little of that passion shows through in the qualities of the music itself. The compositions are formulaic and dull, the performances primarily stilted and unemotional—ostensibly progressive metal, but only of the most generic kind, with no particular depth in their songwriting and the smallest possible amount of lip service paid to the hallmarks of the genre. Songs change tempos and time signatures not so much because of any artistic purpose for doing so, but because that’s what happens in progressive metal songs. Often these changes feel sudden and jarring, such as around the 3:25 mark of the closing track “Order and Justice.” Even the more gradual transitions, such as in “The Gravest Mistake,” don’t add meaningful intrigue or complexity, they just serve as transitions between parts that sound slightly different for the sake of being different.

The Bandcamp page for SerapiS Project describes the band’s sound thus: “Swinging between minimalist, acoustic, clean vocal passages and powerful heavy riffs with harsh vocals.” It’s difficult to agree though; acoustic elements mostly make their appearance in minor openings and interludes rather than featuring as a main component of the band’s sound, and “minimalist” is one of the last words I would choose to describe Side Stories given how many of its arrangements consist of arbitrarily layering different parts on top of each other with little artistic intent. Admittedly, the soft acoustic guitar sections might be the strongest, as they accept the limitations of the format and don’t overreach the capabilities of the instrument or musician, instead embracing simple, gentle compositions which highlight the natural beauty of the instrument. However, being such a small, non-integral part of the album as a whole, these brief asides can’t do much to salvage a positive impression.

In numerous ways, this release seems to be an afterthought for SerapiS Project.¹ For better or for worse, that doesn’t seem to have significantly improved or hindered the quality of the music itself; Side Stories is just as unfocused in its structure as its predecessor. When SerapiS Project are able to keep attention on a mere one or two musical elements, such as during the atmospheric, acoustic segments or when the guitars are given free rein to play a flashy riff or two backed by simple drum licks, it’s easier to see the vision for what this album should sound like given capable performances. The main flaw which undercuts that vision is in the cohesion of all the pieces put together, which tend to blur and melt into an indistinct blob the more elements are piled on top. While the opening of “The Fury of the Storm” sounds fairly impressive with fast guitar arpeggios, the title track has those same musicians struggling to maintain a tight tempo when they try to offer a quick fill between repetitions of the melody in the closing verse, folding into a muddy mess instead.

Digging into the peripheral content they’ve released, such as YouTube Q&A sessions with fans and patrons, it’s clear that SerapiS Project carry a deep passion for the music they create and the story they’re telling through it. The band members obviously relate emotionally to the characters they’re depicting and the narrative themes of ascension and revenge, and most of all they want to share those treasures with a wider fan base. However, passion itself is not enough to write and produce a good album. If Side Stories were being performed live at the far end of a crowded bar on a random week night, I would enjoy the evening’s entertainment and generally be pretty impressed at the effort required to produce an entire original album. Given that it’s been released in full for an online audience, with accompanying bonus content to entice prospective patrons to support the band financially, I have more concerns. It’s 2025, and the internet is already filled with more music than anyone could ever hope to listen to. If you want to make music with your friends and band-mates for the fun of it or as an outlet for creative expression, great; if you want people to give you money for it, you should probably make sure it actually sounds good.

Recommended tracks: Emptiness, The Fury of the Storm if you stop listening after the first minute
You may also like: DGM, Hemina, Master Sword, Daydream XI, Azure (for the storytelling)
Final verdict: 3/10

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

Label: Independent

SerapiS Project is:
– Joaco Luis (guitars, backing vocals)
– Kristina Vega (vocals)
– Agus Milton (drums)
– Lucas Luis (bass)
– Sergi Martínez (guitars)

1. The album wasn’t available on major streaming platforms until roughly a week after its official release date, and at time of writing, it still isn’t available on Bandcamp except as a pre-order. Despite the band uploading numerous videos to their YouTube channel so far this year, I can find only a handful that pertain directly to Side Stories, including the announcement for its release. The band members seem more interested in the creative act of telling a story through music, and their YouTube channel offers a wealth of background detail and behind-the-scenes content for the project’s core narrative. This approach doesn’t cultivate the audience’s musical entertainment as well compared to releasing their albums through more traditional means and putting more effort into improving as musicians and songwriters. Even since the release of Side Stories, their demo and live-recording content continues to feature mainly tracks from Palingenesis. ︎

The post Review: SerapiS Project – Side Stories appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Djent, metalcore (Instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Vildhjarta, Monuments, Northlane, Periphery
Country: France
Release date: 10 April 2025

In chromatically sparse but rhythmically dense genres like djent, repetition and evolution is the simplest key to success—artists like Meshuggah and VOLA thrive on taking a single idea and letting their imaginations mash and contort its crooked rhythms to their heart’s desire. While it’s undoubtedly possible to tastefully execute a more stream-of-consciousness approach, the end result often comes closer to Aaru than Between the Buried and Me in the wrong hands. So where does that leave French multi-instrumentalist Ares on his seventh full-length record, Human Algorithm…? Will he stay on the tried-and-true path of constant marginal change or eschew the Djent Algorithm for more adventurous pieces?

Well, one track in and the listener can glean all there is to know about Human Algorithm…: moaning lead guitars underlie chunky 01110—10-10 grooves, repeated ad nauseam until Ares has decided the dueling guitars have suffered for long enough. Variations so subtle that they push the definition of ‘variation’ do occur, but the overall soundscape never changes—every track boasts a singular idea, a singular mood, and a singular groove that haphazardly dances around nebulous lead guitar work. To claim that either of these elements take the spotlight would be a misrepresentation: the experience is closer to having your attention drift between the two as you get bored of whatever you happen to be focusing on. Occasionally, the monotony is broken up by spoken-word sections that are either clichéd into oblivion and distastefully used (“Going Mad”) or performed by the dorkiest men you can imagine (“Edicius”).

The guitar leads on Human Algorithm… are by far the more grating of the two key elements. As expected of the name, you’d think they’d play some role in musical progression, but in an ironic twist of fate, very little is actually led by these guitars. For the vast majority of Human Algorithm…, they are conscribed to repeat featureless melodic fills until the guitar’s B and E strings break. Glimpses of melody and catchiness emerge on some of the repeated ideas on “Surpressure”, but the rest of the time, the timbre of the leads is like a shrill whine, conspiring with the dearth of melody to create an unintentional wall of tinnitus. The rhythm guitars are much more palatable than the album’s leads, but to call them ‘good’ would be an overstatement. While never grating, the underlying chugs tend to aimlessly lumber along, adding little more to the compositions than a respite when the lead guitars become too piercing to pay attention to. The voice-overs do little to help the music, either—the topics covered are quite serious, including societal critique and suicide, but it’s hard to meet clips like the one on “Edicius” at their level when they’re delivered by a guy who sounds like an Orson Welles impersonator that teaches accounting at a community college.

In its final hours, an aural hail-mary is delivered: a semblance of compositional variation comes in to yank the listener out of instrumental waterboarding. I am not exaggerating my jarred surprise at “Schizophrenia’s” singular tempo change near its end or the acoustic guitar breakdown of “Human Algorithm”, as by the time they surface, I had completely given up hope for tracks with multiple sections. What’s more, the title track manages to take advantage of the chunky rhythm work, laying down a fun stop-start groove to lead its center section. In absolutely no way do these pieces make up for the mind-numbing deluge that precedes them, but when you’re desperately clawing for variation after thirty minutes of stagnant djenty metalcore, it’s like a breath of fresh air.

Repetition is the bread and butter of djent, but everything should be taken in moderation, even moderation. Human Algorithm… is much too content in its musical ideas, ruminating on them for far longer than is enjoyable or even tolerable in some cases. When Ares does break the mold and tries for more quote-unquote ‘adventurous’ songwriting styles, the result is decent but hardly enough to save a record fraught with dorky voice-overs, featureless grooves, and equally featureless and endlessly grating lead guitars.

Recommended tracks: Human Algorithm, Schizophrenia
You may also like: Aaru, Uneven Structure, Auras, Ever Forthright
Final verdict: 3/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook

Label: Independent

Ares is:
– Ares (everything)

The post Review: Ares – Human Algorithm… appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive rock, progressive metal, avant-garde rock, avant-garde metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Therion, Devil Doll, Ayreon, David Maxim Micic, Earthside, Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Country: Romania
Review by: Vince
Release date: 4 April 2025

Prose is the gravity by which stories anchor their readers. Cool concepts or complex characters won’t survive if the foundation upon which they rest—this voice—betrays them. After all, how can we engage with possible depths and merits if we can’t keep our feet on the ground long enough to dig? Concept albums are not dissimilar from books: They are built around character, drama, themes and, ultimately, a story complete with beginning, middle, and end. Music and lyrics provide the gravity. Or, possibly, a lack thereof.

Enter, our subject: Telluric Inharmonies, the sophomore full-length from Romanian avant-garde-ians, Hteththemeth. Their Bandcamp promo announces “70+ minutes of … an epic multilingual story … filled with dramatic progressive metal, intense spoken word passages, [and] dynamic musical shifts.” For fans who’ve patiently been champing at the bit (it’s been nine years since debut Best Worst Case Scenario), no doubt these words evoke great excitement. For this first-timer, it’s enough to get my boots on the ground, but will Hteththemeth be able to keep me there?

“A!” sets us amidst the soothing crash of waves and brief narration in Romanian, the intro establishing its narrative intentions swiftly. War horns and epic chanting follow before breaking against a swirly, synth-baked passage, where we get our first taste of the album’s multilingual voice. “Why the guilty one does not pay for his sins?” our narrator beseeches God. I feel my feet leaving the ground. “It’s only the intro,” I remind myself. Rough starts do not always beget rough journeys. However, as I dug deeper into Telluric Inharmonies, I found my lactose intolerance flaring up something fierce.

I’ve switched analogies, I know. We’re talking cheese now.

Normally, I’m rather fond(ue) of the dairy industrial complex—I grew up on a healthy diet of Euro-power and symphonic metal during my formative years and am no stranger to the endearing cheesiness prog occasionally orbits. Goofy lyrics can be forgiven if the music slaps hard enough, and it’s here Hteththemeth fights to anchor the listener: the instrumentation is often engaging, providing swells of dramatic heft and grandiose compositions that bring to mind some of the neoclassical verve and operatic aspirations of 90s-era Savatage (“The Fools and Failed Queens”), while elsewhere tinkling post-rock guitar lines buried beneath crunchy rhythms reward deeper listening (“Honest Lies,” “The Odyssey of Nothing”). And whenever vocalist Lao Kreegan slips into Romanian, it rolls with a naturalism and strength that begins to restore gravity. However…

Most of the album is performed in English, a decision which infects the proceedings with levels of unintended awkwardness that unmoored me constantly. This reaches its unfortunate apotheosis on the beguiling “I Buy Her Presence,” sounding like a violent collision of indie-folk and a direly chipper anime outro. It’s a jarring inclusion which feels alien amidst the baroque splendor of “The Fools and Failed Queens” or the Distant Dream-esque post-prog explorations of “The Odyssey of Nothing.” Elsewhere and everywhere, the spoken word passages bookending every proper song commit frequent violence upon the album’s flow, halting momentum constantly while providing little value to the overall experience. Only the intro (“A!”) and outro (“O!”) feel vital, with the latter’s sonic callbacks to the former propagating the idea of a narrative—even if the multilingual approach and discordant tracklisting offer no real sense of a cohesive journey. Thus, Inharmonies feels, well… lacking harmony as a whole.

That said, Telluric Inharmonies is not a bad record, per se. The music is full of lively movements and a fair share of emotive storytelling buoyed by a light and airy production, empowering much of the charm and whimsy encapsulated within. (Codrut ‘Codrez’ Costea’s drumming is of particular merit throughout). Despite my criticism of the lyrics and their delivery, Kreegan himself is a fine vocalist when anchored in the right places. His voice is colorful and able to conjure earworm melodies with frightening ease, with the storytelling gusto needed to match the theatricality of the music. Though his experiments don’t always pay off, I applaud his fearlessness when it comes to pushing comforts. Were the English lyrics to be tightened up or switched to Romanian entirely, I would endorse a future release without hesitation; such is Kreegan’s ability to impart feeling through the texture of his voice that I feel little would be lost in the (non-)translation.

Hteththemeth is a talented crew with the potential to whip up a tasty musical morsel. Sadly, Telluric Inharmonies’ voice presents a foundation too uneven for this reviewer to stand on, despite the album’s undeniable charisma and creative outreach. Those with a higher tolerance for the ol’ lyrical cheddar may find themselves more than sated by this second serving, but for my money I’ll have to send it back to the kitchen.

Final verdict: 5/10

Review by: Andy

Let it be known: ambition is never overlooked here at the Subway. Romanian act Hteththemeth’s new album Telluric Inharmonies was independently bookmarked by not one, not two, but three of our authors (because we’re incapable of using the search function on our spreadsheet), and the project is a behemoth. A seventy-minute, twenty-one track, multi-language concept album, Telluric Inharmonies is intimidating to approach; exacerbating the matter, Hteththemeth call their style “unhuman music,” and I’m human, so I don’t even know if I’m legally allowed to listen. Alas, for such an over-the-top project, one of us had to review it out of principle, and I drew the short end of the straw. 

So what does unhuman music sound like, anyway? Well, it’s surprisingly human, replete with one-note vocals, your average djent-y guitar parts, and keys to provide “atmosphere” that really do not much at all. The track title of “The Odyssey of Nothing” is a self-fulfilling prophecy for the whole project. Telluric Inharmonies is vapid, poorly paced, boring, and unimaginative. I knew I was in for the long haul when the first track “A!” did precisely nada for over four minutes—bland ambience and spoken word, aside. We have those in spades across Telluric Inharmonies with around twenty minutes of pointless interludes. Sandwiched between pretty much every “real” song on the album, the interludes absolutely kill any momentum Hteththemeth manage to build up. For instance, “Li(f)e” hints at a climax of sorts through its djenty outro, but then “A Șasea Zi” decides a full minute and a half of spoken word is the right call; spoiler alert, it has never been the right call on any album ever in the history of albums.

So let’s ignore the twenty minutes of pointless filler and focus on the meatier parts, shall we? The heavier hitting tracks are just plain weird, but not in an “unhuman” way, more in a “why would you mix djent with a dance music flavor with repetitive vocal lines” way. Despite the djent-y aspect of the guitars, the music never really gets heavy at all, instead opting for a sort of liminal state in between generic prog rock and metal, just aimless chugging riffs with no bite—we’ve all heard the type of amorphous style Hteththemeth plays. However, the guest cellist and pianist are quite lovely when they’re utilized, providing a more mature sound to the project than the synthesized djent; in fact, the compositions can be rather beautiful (“I Wanted You All,” “The Poetry of Failure,” “Adoriel Is Watching”). When Hteththemeth write honest-to-god songs and not dumb interludes, particularly with professional instrumentalists, they achieve far more than they do when they try to stretch themselves to be weird and unhuman—that always manifests as them trying too hard to be different. 

Regrettably, I don’t have access to the lyrics, so I cannot possibly keep track of a multi-language concept, but even if they taled the most heart-wrenching story I’d ever heard on a prog album, they couldn’t save Telluric Inharmonies from its glut. Hteththemeth flew too close to the sun here and crashed and burned like Therion on every release post-2012—that’s the tale of a band whose overly long, bombastic concept albums have been laughably bad for ages, for those who don’t keep up with the symphonic metal pioneers. Telluric Harmonies is the sad story of a band full of ambition and quirk but not quite able to avoid tumbling into cliché on their Icarian descent.

Hteththemeth are right to call themselves enigmatic, but there’s simply nothing to gain from deciphering this incoherent sonic puzzle. Try as I might to find redeeming aspects on my listens, there are no catchy melodies nor standout choruses, no dazzling solos nor grand climaxes, so everything washes over you, leaving only the bad taste of interludes. Hteththemeth ambitiously try to soar into ‘unhuman’ territory, but instead end up floating aimlessly in a string of interludes and bland progressive rock.

Recommended tracks: Honest Lies, The Fools and Failed Queens, The Odyssey of Nothing, I Wanted You All, The Poetry of Failure
You may also like: Pagan’s Mind, The Chronomaster Project, Destiny Potato, Seventh Station, Rise of the Architect, Vitam Aeternam, Max Enix, Dreamwalkers Inc
Final verdict: 3/10

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

Label: Layered Reality Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook | Website

Hteththemeth is:
LÄO KREEGAN – vocals and lyrics
VLAD-ANDREI ONESCU – piano, keyboards & FX, backing vocals
LUCIAN POPA – guitars, backing vocals
RADU CÎNDEA “CJ” – guitars, backing vocals
MIHAI RĂDULESCU “KOLDR”– bass guitar, backing vocals
CODRUȚ COSTEA “CODREZ” – drums and percussion

Featuring the guest musicians:
Alexandra Enache – Cello
Eric-Andrei Costea – Piano
Crina Marinescu – Vocals
Flavia Dobre – Vocals

The post Double Review: Hteththemeth – Telluric Inharmonies appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Heavy metal, prog rock, theatre soundtrack (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Saimaa, Area, Mike Oldfield, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Unitopia
Country: Italy
Review by: Christopher
Release date: 10 January 2025

A hundred restless figures in a cramped auditorium, a gentle hum of conversation and the occasional cough; nervously excited parents rifling through the program. This year, the ambitious new drama teacher has gone all out, and the kids are performing a musical version of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Bake sales have funded the production design: some parents have been working on papier-mâché stalagmites and stalactites for Caliban’s cave, and buckets of brown paint have been slapped onto the ship backdrop for the opening scene. The crowd hushes as the drama teacher steps onstage to give an introductory speech, and the Shakespeare fans in the audience itch for their first sight of the Boatswain and the Shipmaster. The two characters do indeed step out at the play’s opening, but what isn’t expected is the four grown men in a makeshift orchestra pit hammering out an Iron Maiden-esque overture that wobbles the set enough that it really does seem like the ship’s in a storm. As The Bard himself would say: if music be the food of love, then open up this fucking pit. 

Yes, here to steal the thunder from the it girl playing Miranda, and your own kid who got lumped with the curtain puller job is Italian prog metal outfit Opera Nera. Shakespeare’s original play contained songs for the players to perform, and the band lift their lyrics from these to reimagine them as if The Bard had been into rock operas, which he obviously would’ve been. Some tracks take their lyrics from other parts of the text (“This Island is Mine”, for example, borrows from a Caliban soliloquy), and others act as instrumental soundtrack or incidental music. In essence, Opera Nera’sThe Tempest is conceptualised not as a complete piece in and of itself, but as an accompaniment to a stage performance, an extra dimension of the play, to expand Prospero’s island.

“Hell is Empty” opens with lines from Caliban, the enslaved savage—‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not’—before the band bring out their twangling instruments and deliver a heavy metal aria. Power chords and duelling leads with a somewhat warbling quality, plus a solo section which, at one juncture, appears to homage Avenged Sevenfold’s “Afterlife” make for a rather generic start, and the production is instantly apparent as a weak point. Around half the tracks are rooted in a simple eighties style of heavy metal, shades of Iron Maiden, Dio, that sort of thing, but lacking somewhat in execution. “This Island is Mine” employs Dino Jelusick-esque gravelly belting while “Beseech, you sir, be merry” consists of little more than some chugs and a solo; there’s ultimately not much to say about these tracks because they don’t develop any ideas. Most are five lines of Shakespeare and a riff with an average song length of just over two minutes—such is the lot of music made for a play that isn’t actually a musical. However, there’s another side to Opera Nera, some unexpected flourishes which actually elevate their sound. 

If half of The Tempest is metal, the other half is some rather bold genre experimentation. “Flaut‘em and Scout‘em” [sic] goes for a clean guitar funk groove and wild sax solo, “You are Three Men of Sins” evolves from psychedelic chilled-out electronica in the vein of Air into a sort of Primus-esque chaos—given the lyrics are drawn from a pretty tense and climactic scene, this level of whimsy seems somewhat at odds with the play’s content but I’m no theatre critic. Meanwhile, “Lu capitano in testa” is an impromptu sojourn into full-blown Neapolitan folk (to reflect the character of Stefano who is described as a Neapolitan in the play and drawing upon a Neapolitan translation of the text for the lyrics), and “Come Unto These Yellow Sands” boldly attempts vocal harmonisation and clean guitar in the vein of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (ending with comical abruptness; the noise gates Opera Nera use are undeniably a problem). The jewel of the genre-hopping, however, is “Reaper’s Dance”, seven minutes of out-and-out trance that reprise the addictive ‘Ban, ‘Ban, Ca-Caliban’ chant from the track of that name of which it’s essentially a remix handled by guest musician, Pier Paolo Polcari. I don’t know about you, but I think all Shakespeare adaptations should have at least seven uninterrupted minutes of rave music. 

Herein lies the most bizarre problem afflicting Opera Nera: their stopovers in other genres are far more successful than their progressive metal which is, at best, bland, poorly produced rock opera clichés. On the other hand, “Reaper’s Dance” is unironically sick but it’s broadly the work of composer Pier Paolo Polcari (who’s worked with Massive Attack, which really explains the insane quality jump), just as “Lu capitano in testa” is mostly the work of guest musician Lino Vairetti. While the attempt at folk on “Come Unto These Yellow Sands” is admirable, with no expert to guide them, Opera Nera falter. The band’s strongest ideas are either carried by skilled guest musicians or fall prey to the band’s triumvirate of problems: poor production, undercooked compositions, and an unfortunate lack of skill. As a work that could theoretically accompany a production of The Tempest, this is an intriguing, ambitious and serviceable project as well as a unique undertaking for the progressive scene, but on most other metrics Opera Nera fall well short of muster.

Prospero intones his final lines, and the curtain falls as an ominous string quartet plays (“All the Devils Are Here”). The parents give a standing ovation, and the little actors take a bow. The families file out, their little Thespians in tow and head out towards the car park. Loading their instruments into a van are Opera Nera who were never invited up onstage and so, unlike Prospero, never received the audience’s applause to set them free. “You were great tonight, sweetie,” beams a proud mother walking past with her son, and a little sense of yearning jolts through the watching musicians. Behind his wife and daughter comes the proud father, singing a little ditty to himself: “Flout ‘em and scout ‘em, and scout ‘em and flout ‘em”, he croons tunelessly. And perhaps that’s enough for these sirs to be cheerful, even though our revels now are ended.

Final verdict: 5/10

Review by: Francesco

Since practically the dawn of civilization, grandiose epic concepts have been a staple of storytelling. And with the advent of the written word, the most popular form has been the literary form—between technological innovations and the evolution of the pop culture sphere, these epic tales and poems have been passed on in various media, very recently growing to include progressive rock and heavy metal. In 1977, Rush wrote “Xanadu”, a direct adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”—likely the earliest song explicitly based on an epic poem—setting it to grand, atmospheric prog music. Certainly a huge influence on epic metal storytelling, it was later followed by arguably the most popular and definitive metal music piece based on an epic literary work; another work of Coleridge’s, in fact – “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, by Iron Maiden off their 1984 album Powerslave. Later oeuvres would include Blind Guardian’s interpretation of The Iliad and The Aeneid with “And Then There Was Silence”, and its counterpart “The Odyssey” by Symphony X. And if you fancy a bit of Shakespeare, perhaps? Well, to my knowledge, there are only a few: Rebellion’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Tragedy in Steel (2002) and King Lear (2018), Anarchÿ’s The Spectrum of Human Emotion (2022) which was based on Hamlet, and the focus of this review: Italians Opera Nera and The Tempest—based off the play of the same name. To make an analogy; if Rebellion’s works were expressionist paintings, and Anarchÿ’s Spectrum was baroque, then Opera Nera’s The Tempest would be a child splattering the wall with finger paints. 

Ostensibly The Tempest was written as musical accompaniment to the play, and many of the tracks contain lyrics that are directly pulled from Shakespeare’s work. Introducing The Tempest with a line from Act III, Scene II, ‘Be not afeard…’ and transitioning into an ‘80s metal harmonized guitar track, Opera Nera immediately invites comparisons to Iron Maiden—and while there are certainly elements of heavy metal on this album, to suggest that the entire album is like this would not only be untrue, it would also be setting you up, dear reader, for disappointment. From the ‘60s psychedelic ballad in “Come unto these yellow sands”, to soft piano with vocal accompaniment in “My Master through his art”, and back to a heavy metal sound with “This island is mine”, Opera Nera often ventures off into genre territories so vastly different from one another you’ll need a map and compass to find your place. And that’s barely the half of it. It’s certainly very artsy, and yes, progressive music can be about pushing boundaries—but I think it’s wise to have direction, and that’s something I felt The Tempest was sorely lacking. 

The way The Tempest (the album, not the play) bounces around different ideas is jarring and gives the impression of an incomplete, or rather, unfinished work. The idea to make this a heavy metal album would have been one of the better creative decisions on this release, if it had not been left unexplored fully; instead, we get seven minutes of abysmal vocal trance music (“Reaper’s Dance”), a minute-and-a-half of funk-soul-jazz (“Flout ‘em and scout ‘em”), and whatever the fuck you call the two-and-a-half minutes of “Ban Ban Ca Caliban”. The best part of this album was the Neapolitan-language folk music of “Lu Capitanu in testa”. Why couldn’t they make a Neapolitan folk metal album instead? There’s just as much a lack of those as there are conceptual Neapolitan Shakespearean prog albums, and evidently they have more a knack for it than much of whatever else is on this album. 

Opera Nera’s Spotify biography reads “trying to experiment with formats in a metal key” and of the fourteen tracks on The Tempest, beside “Hell is empty”, “Beseech you, sir, be merry”, “This island is mine”, and “Yo, elves of hills” (which was intended to be “you elves”, making it accidentally the funniest title on the album), there was no other metal or metal-adjacent sonority to be found. Frankly, I would struggle to consider this a prog metal or prog rock album. It’s some type of abstract expressionist avant-garde musical concept album with everything from jazz to psychedelia to trance thrown at the wall just to see what sticks. It was probably one of the most absurd things I’ve heard in a while. Ragazzi, ma per cortesia. You are four men of sins.

Recommended tracks: Reaper’s Dance, Lu capitano in testa, Hell is Empty
You may also like: Osanna, Whom Gods Destroy
Final verdict: 3/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Instagram

Label: Independent

Opera Nera is:
– Marco Napolitano (guitars)
– Alessandro Pacella (bass)
– Eduardo Spada (drums)
– Tiziano Spigno (vocals)

The post Double Review: Opera Nera – The Tempest appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: experimental black metal, dissonant black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Infant Annihilator, Frontierer
Country: ?
Release date: 25 January 2025

This is it, everybody: my last review. It was fun while it lasted, but as soon as Sam reads this I will be fired¹. He started this blog to review, like, power/prog and crap, and here I am covering stuff from a goregrind label. Not only that, but I need to get into the nitty gritty of some unsavory theology. With that said, I’m sorry, Sam, for taking over the rudder of this ship and steering us aground into an area of extreme metal I know you’d rather believe does not exist.

My peers made enough fun of me for my “car alarm metal” Scarcity last year, so I dread to think what they’ll have to say about Christian Necromancy’s microtonal, off-time ten-stringed lyre fed through enough distortion and amplification to be able to pick scrape (“The Leistae”). What you can hear of the lyre over the obnoxiously loud drums switches channels at slanted times in shrieking disagreement. Not once do the channels sync up, nor do the drums relent their hailstorm: this is thirty-four minutes in the meat-grinder—you’d better be comfy with noisy dissonance. On Bandcamp, Christian Necromancy also asserts that there is a fretless bass on The Pederast, but it’s wholly lost in the mix. But despite being completely obnoxious, out of time, and out of tune, The Pederast is occasionally compelling musically to me for reasons I don’t quite understand myself. Perhaps I am a masochist or maybe I like seeing how far metal can be pushed—I mean, the idea of a distorted ten-stringed lyre is cool. Sam would tell me I’ve simply lost the plot, that my mind is too far gone. I think The Pederast is musical pornography, obscene but strangely addictive².

Christian Necromancy are (wanna-be) theologists, however, and the music is merely an oracle for them to spread their gospel. With in-depth analysis of Greek source texts including medical journals, the Septuagint, and other documents, The Pederast’s lyrics tell a classic tale in metal… sex abuse of minors in the Church… wait, what? Christian Necromancy and their scripture are alleging that Jesus Christ himself was a pederast with what they say is pure historical fact. The lyrics are upsetting, but even with claims that they use direct sources, they read as pure conspiracy theory—I say that as someone who dislikes religion. For instance, Christian Necromancy are certain that Mark 14:51-52³ are the only two verses you need to destroy the faith, but they’re just not very damning, even less so in the original Greek context from my research (I am no theological slouch, believe it or not).

The Pederast does have some undeniably banger lyrics, at least. For instance, “BEHOLD THE PENIS CHRIST” goes unreasonably hard. But actual thesis claims are harder to believe, especially since I cannot find a single primary source OR secondary source about them. I cannot find information that mystery cults venerated Christ precisely because he was proficient at trafficking child slaves (“The Leistae”). Similarly, the entire premise of “Ejaculated Antichrist” revolves around sexual drug rituals that I just cannot find any proof of existing. Similarly, who else besides Christian Necromancy has forwarded the claim that JC holds up two fingers in Christian iconography as a way to symbolize that he was ready to insert drugs into the anuses of children? Please feel free to send over your sources, Christian Necromancy, but The Pederast reads as conspiracy, grasping at straws. 

By reviewing The Pederast as I am, I’m putting myself in serious danger since Christian Necromancy claim on Bandcamp: “LET ANYONE INTERFERING WITH THE TRANSMISSION OF THIS INFORMATION BE PUNISHABLE BY A VIOLENT DEATH.” Wait, I’m undeniably aiding in transmission if anything. But it has to be said… if Christian Necromancy’s message is so urgent, why release it in such an abstruse style of black metal. Shouldn’t they perform something a bit more, y’know, marketable to spread their philosophy? I understand this is a more authentic artistic vision, but they are the ones interfering with the transmission of their information by making it impossible to listen to. 

I attempted to engage with both the music and philosophy of Christian Necromancy, and both are equally over-the-top absurd. The Pederast is a comical album despite the horrifying nature of its lyrics. Something drew me to it initially, though, and I’m intrigued by how the project will develop. With my score for this, maybe I’m safe from being fired since at least the blog will keep its prog credibility. Phew.

Recommended tracks: Let the Children Come
You may also like: Effluence, Theophonos, Jute Gyte, Scarcity, Botanist, Ὁπλίτης
Final verdict: 3/10

Related links: Bandcamp

Label: Putrefactive Recordings – Bandcamp | Official Website

Christian Necromancy is:
– ?

1.  Or worse, my mom will read it on the blog and I’ll be excommunicated from my own family. ︎
2. Ummm please ignore that diction once you get into the next couple paragraphs… ︎
3.  “A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.” ︎

The post Review: Christian Necromancy – The Pederast appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Probably done by Syrkander.

Style: Progressive metal, symphonic metal, death metal, gothic metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Persefone, MIDI instruments, Peter Steele-esque vocals
Country: Chile
Release date: 10 January, 2025

Unreal Engine 5 did to game development what Bandcamp did to the indie music scene. No longer did you as a budding young artist need to secure funding and a space to develop your craft. You could just do it from your bedroom. Like a game created in UE5, you too can now create a polished sounding record with programmed drums and MIDI instruments. I mean, just look at most bedroom djent bands that release a few songs every few months. Insane amounts of polish and sound quality, but you look a little too long, and you get the same problem with games developed in UE5: they’ve all got a similar feel, a similar graphical art style, or in the case of music in the prog sphere, uniform identity. 

Syrkander, surprisingly enough, is a bedroom project that’s not a djent or terrible atmoblack band. Instead, the one-man Chilean act opts for a heavily symphonic style à la Dessiderium, with all the chugs of a Gojira-clone and an attempt at the grandeur of Aquilus. All of these prior bands are successful at finding identity and a unique sound, there’s none of that to be found here.  I hear a lot of prog-death staples on this album (i.e. mixed vocals, trem-picked riffs), but all of it lacks any serious substance whatsoever. The very glue that holds this behemoth of an album together is the fact that it just refuses to stop its over EIGHTY-MINUTE pulverization of my eardrums.

In the very wise words of me, you create something original when all your influences become so compounded on top of eachother that simultaneously all and nothing of them remain of them in your work. I hear some classic power metal DNA in Syrkander’s inbred formula here, as exemplified by ‘Salvame’, in which our band leader does his best Dan “The Man” Swanö impression over a one-note chuggy-chuggy riff. I also hear a bit of Persefone’s rhythmic fuckery and (attempts at) flourishes, but this remains the chief complaint I take with Via Internam: a complete lack of cohesion whatsoever. Syrkander doesn’t do much in the riff department, with much of it becoming layered mush underneath the deluge of leads and symphonic cushioning. Whenever Syrkander can, he will make sections go on for far longer than need be for padding’s sake, with opener ‘Become Darkness’ flaunting one riff for all three-and-a-quarter minutes of its overlong runtime.

Syrkander’s ambition mix with his identity crisis is also apparent in his vocal styles. While I commend the effort of having both cleans and harshes on a one-man album, Edge of Sanity this is not. ‘Feverish’ sees him trying a low-register, Type-O Negative-esque croon that just sounds like he’s drunk and slurring his words. However, this doesn’t really make a return anywhere on the album, instead opting for his Dan Swanö impression for most of the album. In fact, I’m not even sure he sounds like the Witherscape frontman so much as he sounds like a mid-2000s alt metal vocalist trying to sing a ballad. An alt metal influence might explain the simple riffing, but again, I can’t tell what sparked this man’s neurons together in the first place even after I’ve listened. While some symphonic parts are cool, such as the choir on ‘Furia Divinia’, none of it feels earned. There are no big builds and even bigger releases on Via Internam, just eighty-minutes of songs floating in a pool of their own gelatinous mass.

I have barely mentioned the symphonic aspect of Syrkander, because it may as well not be there. Nearly every song begins and ends with some kind of string or synth, and none of it is used interestingly. The Chilean can’t decide if he wants it to be used in the background for atmosphere, like Emperor’s classic In the Nightside Eclipse or to have it be front and center like most modern symphonic bands. On ‘Dhet Khom Uhsal’, its absence is sorely missed with the one time Syrkander wants to create a semi-interesting riff, which would go perfectly with a few string flutters. This is, of course, before he repeats said section too many times.

Like my UE5 game analogy, Syrkander is something that was made with likely good intentions and no way of reaching them. This is ambitious for a one-man band to accomplish, but not everyone can be Alex Haddad (Dessiderium). Instead, Via Internam is a shoddily put together mess of symphonic flourishes and riffs that are so bare bones he may as well have opted to make an album without guitar entirely. I can only give Syrkander credit for trying, but he has a long way to go before attempting another epic of this standing. If it were up to me, I think he should start from ground zero. Figure out what went wrong here so as not to pull a Culak. Also, lose the spoken word and evil laughs: they’re not helping your cause here.

Recommended tracks: Furia Divinia, Dhet Khom Uhsal, Nemsis
You may also like: Culak, Ben Baruk, Aeternam, Aquilus
Final verdict: 3/10

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

Label: Independent

Syrkander is:
– Syrkander (probably everything?)

The post Review: Syrkander – Via Internam appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Nu-metal, Djent (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Slipknot, very early Karnivool, Limp Bizkit, Amaranthe
Country: New Zealand
Release date: 6 December 2024

While it is often hard to believe in serendipity, it’s quite easy to believe in the Infinite Monkey Theorem and all of its graces: enough apes in a room bashing on typewriters will eventually write a profound work. In a similar vein, get enough people on Earth and humanity will produce a Tommy Wiseau to exact a fully committed and profoundly cringe vision, creating works like The Room, Best F(r)iends, and The Neighbors in the process. Get even more people on Earth and a community will develop around niche media like this, which is where I come in: I have been graced to be part of a group that opens discourse on underground progressive works good and bad. My dear co-writer Chris was kind¹ enough to introduce me to We Are the Future, the latest release from Kiwi nu-metal outfit Kaosis and a work of camp, absurdity, and cringe only possible thanks to the Infinite Monkey Theorem. I urge you to take some time and explore with me this brain rot-inducing labor of love.

You’ve heard Kaosis before: maybe not directly, but their style of nu-metal was done to death in the early 2000s, and now that the requisite two decades have passed for it to be considered nostalgic, Kaosis are mercilessly yanking it back into existence and forcing it to dance like a dreadlocked homunculus in JNCOs. All the ingredients to conjure such an unearthly creature are there: a philosopher’s stone forged from Slipknot’s cutting room floor riffs (“Breaking the Fallen”), a vessel overflowing with djent grooves that can be most warmly described as ‘characteristic of the genre’ (“Blood of Angels”), and the blood of Fred Durst to top it all off (“God Inside”). Most tracks feature verses with harsh vocals over featureless riffs that lead into a clean-sung chorus and a bridge containing a guitar solo with varying degrees of interest. Soloing seems to be the central focus of We Are the Future’s sound, as very little else save for the occasional bongo interjection (“Human Tumour,” “Arrival of the Fittest”) and an interesting drum pattern or two (“See! See! I Told You Baby!”) leave anything to sink your teeth into.

However, the music itself is not the main focus here: frankly, the experience rarely moves beyond exceedingly bland and forgettable nu-metal with the occasional five-second snippet of intrigue. The real attraction is the series of music videos accompanying each track, like Daft Punk’s Interstella 5555 but worse in every way, featuring a wildly diverse and utterly unhinged cast of characters such as: 

• A trailer pagan ready to sing Peyton Parrish to you on your way to Y’allhalla; 
• Scorpion from Mortal Kombat on bass; 
• Your mom’s friend Leroy on drums; 
• A giant dog responsible for keyboard duties and hype poses; 
• Dril on guitars, eternally encased in a flaming blue aura; 
• and 75 of their closest friends², including special guests Björn Strid of Soilwork, Anders Colsefni of Slipknot³, and several notable appearances from mysterious second drummer Bongo Jimmy. 

Special attention must be brought to the two women featured in each video who do nothing but dance; I can only assume they are sorceresses coercing the other band members out of whatever hell dimensions they came from onto this plane of existence. Typically, the visual media of a band is mostly irrelevant to the musical content itself, but in the case of We Are the Future’s strong sense of, um, imagery along with the inclusion of two members who do literally nothing but dance, Kaosis make it clear that the aesthetics of their art are mandatory for the full experience.

Each video follows a similar format—we are thrown into some kind of apocalyptic cyberpunk landscape, the camera zooms in to the band, and we are subjected to four minutes of random cuts between each band member along with hologram projections of the guest musicians. The first video is the most frantic with several cuts and excessive camera shake effects, featuring snapshots of a CG cybernetic woman who… just kind of sits there wired up to a bunch of machines? Maybe the music videos are being downloaded into her brain to develop consciousness? It reminds me of when Microsoft released that Twitter bot that was instantly corrupted by the internet, but instead of being fed racism, the cyborg is being fed someone’s fever dream of an ICP opening act. She is never seen again after the first video, meaning we’ve either fully sunken into her consciousness or the band blew their budget on the opener’s edge-of-your-seat CG cinematography.

Other notable moments include the non-sequitur t-rex cameo at the end of “Human Tumour”; the entirety of “God Inside” being inexplicably filmed in a 1:1 aspect ratio topped off with ten seconds of the guest vocalist shifting back and forth like an NPC idle animation at its end; or the multiple instances of members playing their instruments with absolutely no sound, such as the drummer powerfully nailing a tom fill that doesn’t exist on “Memory Never Dies” or the flame-aura guitarist silently shredding while one of the women stands and stares awkwardly at the camera at the end of “See! See! I Told You Baby!” The bridge of opening track “Breaking the Fallen” is particularly apt, as a deluge of camera switches and random zoom-ins of band members’ hands and faces is met by chants of “I can’t take this” over and over. Yeah, you and me both, sister.⁴

Such baffling descriptors will naturally lead one to thinking of silliness poster children Gloryhammer, who revel in camp and absurdity. However, their approach involves everyone being in on a larger joke, taking the piss out of its own low-effort storytelling, and any narrative depth Gloryhammer tries to attain is rendered hollow in the process due to its reliance on irony. The Kaosis approach, on the other hand, fully eschews irony, coming from a place of true earnestness: messages about the state of the world delivered through Steven Hawking voice samples, a desire for a cool image, and a point of view that tells people that you’ve thought once or twice about, like, society and stuff permeate We Are the Future. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that they aren’t completely convinced of themselves: the fact that there is a dog person behind a giant holographic man urgently yelling “If you ask me, it affects everything! IT AFFECTS EVERYTHING!” at the end of “Over This” makes a strong case for Kaosis’ unwavering conviction to what they’re saying, whether it be worth hearing or not.

We Are the Future is an all-encompassing experience for the worst, from the green-screened Mortal Kombat backdrops to the wildly divergent designs of each band member to the absolutely punishing deluge of guest musicians, all coalescing in a fever dream cyberpunk dumpster fire backdropped by tepid nu-metal that offers little of interest in any respect. And yet, through the dumpster fire, I come out the other side with a profound hope, as We Are the Future is a representation of the unwavering commitment of an artist to their vision: the end product is horrifically unpleasant to listen to and tasteless trash, but it is trash that’s only possible from a group that pours their entire heart and soul into a project, a beautiful microcosm of the human condition that mirrors the grandeur found in us all. For that reason, I wouldn’t change a single thing about We Are the Future: it’s perfect the way it is. That, or the sorceresses have cursed me with enzymes that are accelerating my brain rot—It’s hard to tell.⁵

Recommended tracks: Just go watch the video, it’s the only way to properly consume this
You may also like: Four Stroke Baron, Max Enix, Doodseskader, Sarcas
Final verdict: Flaming blue aura/10

Related links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

Kaosis is:
– Xen (vocals, production, nightmare mastermind)
– A bunch of other unlisted people
– Bongo Jimmy

1. Read: sadistic ︎
2. Seriously, We Are the Future has so many pointless guest musicians that it puts Folkearth and Max Enix to shame. ︎
3. Colsefni’s inclusion here is particularly interesting, given the drama between him and Kaosis: apparently, Colsefni re-recorded Slipknot’s Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. with the band, but later denounced the release as many post-recording decisions, including release details and mastering, were made without him, suggesting that his contributions to We Are the Future were made before the release of this EP. ︎
4. Kaosis’ crimes against music don’t stop here—just weeks before the release of We Are the Future, Kaosis dropped an AI-generated music video that self-inserts them into a set from Woodstock ‘99, featuring an all-new song with such faff lyrics that I thought those were also AI-generated. ︎
5. My peer Andy says it’s almost certainly the latter. ︎

The post Review: Kaosis – We Are the Future appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Experimental Rock, Post-rock (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Battles, Tool, Bull of Heaven
Country: New York, United States
Release date: 25 October 2024

Aesthetics is one of the most fundamental and easy to understand features of art: even with no training, I can tell whether I think something is pretty or ugly, and despite a surface-level simplicity, aesthetics can be a powerful tool to articulate complex emotions. Take Sumac’s The Healer, which spends most of its runtime indulging in fairly ugly ideas in the name of hope and optimism, turning aesthetics on its head in a way that is compelling and enjoyable. However, ugly aesthetics in the wrong hands can easily lead to disaster, as evidenced by today’s subject of review, Body Meπa’s Prayer in Dub, a release that eagerly foregoes consonance and other “traditionally pleasant” ideas in the name of chromaticism and experimentation with little payoff. Let’s discuss.

Body Meπa’s musical style is oxymoronic in nature, simultaneously indulging in jazzy improvisation and extensive repetition within a post-rock framework: a core background idea will lay the foundation of a track and repeat it indefinitely while other instruments explore around it, a role usually taken up by electronic soundscapes in the form of dire synthesizers, electronic pulsation, or metallic industrial grinding (“Etel,” “Adnan,” “Stones”). In theory, this songwriting approach is intriguing, especially as someone who thrives on repetitive soundscapes, but its execution here proves to be challenging at best and profoundly frustrating at worst, as despite the lack of radical changes within a track, it is nearly impossible to glean narrative structure within Prayer in Dub’s weaponized aesthetics.

Even from Prayer in Dub’s introductory moments, the listener is assaulted with ideas that do not agree with each other at all: the only mental imagery that I can muster from its pieces is the interaction of instrumentals that all hate each other. Sounds clash together in horrifically ugly ways, whether it be the chromatic guitar notes that standoffishly bounce off the underlying soundscape (“Etel”), drums aggressively building up into nothing as their climax is totally ignored by the rest of the instrumentation (“Scout”), or the grating interplay of harsh industrial noises and what can only be described as an overblown jazz flute sound (“Stones”).

The worst offender of all, though, is second track “Adnan,” which pushes Prayer in Dub’s negative facets to their limits: “Adnan” is introduced with a pulsating electronic noise which is at first somewhat pleasant and relaxing, but as the track progresses, the pulsating gets more and more intense, creating a sonic strobe light effect in the process. What began as something relaxing very quickly turned into absolute sensory overload, pummeling any instrumentation that may be underneath and overwhelming any remaining musical ideas to the point of unlistenability. For most of its runtime, it’s nearly impossible to hear anything outside of its oppressive electronic warbling, and when the pulsating finally capitulates in its latter moments, it’s replaced with equally annoying industrial sounds before once again punishing the listener with its original soundscape. Worst of all, the ideas underneath aren’t necessarily bad and would make a good showcase for some of the more listenable improvisation, but its execution leaves it all washed away under a sea of relentless electronic waves.

However, it would be unfair to say that it’s all unenjoyable and frustrating: the opening moments of “Scout” nicely balance repetition and improvisation by using a fully formed musical idea as its backdrop and building on it with some fun drum work. In its later moments, it begins to lose a bit of focus and fall back into amorphous rambling à la “Etel,” and I wish that it ended less suddenly, but at the very least there is a glimmer of interest present. I would struggle to call “Scout” compelling, but it is well and beyond the most convincing of Prayer in Dub’s pieces and comes the closest to a fully constructed song. Moreover, “Welcome” is a relatively chilled out piece with some pretty chords, and there are moments of “Deborah” that are enjoyable as the laid-back bluesy improvisation creates an air of relaxation, both of which are so desperately needed after the cortisol shot that is “Adnan.” However, these moments are not enough to save Prayer in Dub’s glaring songwriting flaws.

And that, I think, pins down Prayer in Dub’s underlying problem: no amount of repetition can save improvisation that has no backbone, and no amount of experimentation can stop a song without a core idea from falling into formless amalgamation. No matter how closely I listen, there’s almost nothing to hold on to, a feeling augmented by Prayer in Dub’s positively challenging chromaticism, grating textural choices, and inscrutable, amorphous song structures. I will admit that it’s not wholly irredeemable and there’s a good chance that I simply just don’t get Body Meπa’s point of view, but as it is, Prayer in Dub takes the “two extremes” approach to its limit: it’s simultaneously repetitive yet improvisational, simple yet unfocused, and frustrating yet utterly forgettable.

Recommended Tracks: Deborah, Scout
You may also like: Simulacra, Samlrc, NORD, The Mercury Tree
Final verdict: 3/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify

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

Body Meπa is:
– Greg Fox (drums)
– Sasha Frere-Jones (guitar)
– Melvin Gibbs (bass)
– Grey McMurray (guitar)

The post Review: Body Meπa – Prayer in Dub appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album art by Daphne Ang and Andrea Papi

Style: progressive metal, alternative metal, djent (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: System of a Down, Sleep Token, Jinjer, Oceans of Slumber
Country: UK
Release date: 01 November 2024

Being a blog focused on underground music, the quality of the promo materials we get can vary widely. Sometimes a band goes to the effort of constructing a full-on, lavishly written press release that explains the musical and lyrical drives behind their work in detail, and sometimes we just get a half-assed email saying “review this plz” with a link to some guy’s Google Drive folder. To their credit, UK-based duo The Chronicles of Manimal and Samara are decidedly in the former camp, with their professionally laid out press kit waxing rhapsodical about the themes of deeply felt loss and addiction that went into the lyrics, how they’ve made a barrier-breaking, fully DIY album full of unexpected yet melodic twists and turns. Combined with the eye-catching, impressionistically spacey cover art, I went into Origins hoping that it would be something truly special.

And then I hit play.

I didn’t know catfishing was a thing for albums, but here we are. Oh, it doesn’t start off too badly– while I’m not the biggest fan of spoken word narration, Daphne Ang’s voiceover in the first minute of “Feed the Beast” is crisp and well-delivered enough that I don’t mind it too much, even as it becomes taken over by electronic processing. But then a hideously clumsy barrage of leaden djent chugging barges in to slap the listener in the face, heralded by Andrea Papi’s inexcusably amateurish singing. His reedy tone isn’t even the worst part; he genuinely sounds out-of-key at points, erratically careening around each note without quite hitting any of them like the world’s luckiest drunk driver. To be fair, the band manages to mostly recover from that egregious misstep over the course of the song, with some halfway-decent melodies and atmospherics. Ang sings the chorus hook, and while she may be a bit anonymous-sounding, compared to the verse beforehand she might as well be Floor Jansen with her sheer level of vocal… competence. There are a few more bland bits of djent and some more rough vocals, but on the whole, it’s not irredeemable. It’s a bad sign when the spoken word parts of all things are the high points, but maybe this will be alright after all. Let’s see if the next track-

“Bite the Bullet” takes a hard turn towards trap music and hip-hop and is quite possibly the most heinously ill-advised song I’ve ever reviewed. To be clear, that’s not because of its swerve in genre; I try to keep an open mind towards the inclusion of more mainstream styles in my prog, even if they’re a bit out of left field, and I’m certainly not above bopping my head to a good rattling snare. Hell, I’m one of the biggest Sleep Token apologists on this site, for crying out loud! All that is to say that when I say this song blows chunks, it’s not because TCoMaS had the audacity to step outside the traditional boundaries of prog, but because they’re bad at it. Guest rapper Mr Meuri slurs his way through vague, unintelligible lyrics with an obnoxious, nasal tone of voice that somehow becomes worse in his adlibs, with his decently on-beat rhythm the only thing convincing me that they didn’t just pull some poor man off a street somewhere in Italy and force him to rap in English at gunpoint. The djent guitars come swinging back in for the… I guess it’s supposed to be a chorus, centering Papi’s harsh growls, which, to be fair, are better than his cleans, though the haphazard chugging and weirdly undermixed, out-of-place leads don’t exactly let the listener’s ears rest. To listen to this track is to be continually annoyed, either by the grating rap in the foreground or the weird, buzzing-mosquito guitars in the background.

Thankfully, the next few tracks avoid plunging down to that particular nadir, though they don’t exactly set the world on fire either. “Waves” rides through a smooth, slow burn of melancholic melody that escalates to loud melodeath riffs, kind of like the off-brand Temu version of Oceans of Slumber. Though its spoken-word section gets a bit edgy for my taste (“It FEELS. LIKE. HELL”), the overall effect lands pretty well, and the roaring outro contains Papi’s most convincing growls by a fair margin. “Per Astra” is a keyboard-led ballad almost entirely helmed by Ang, and, perhaps coincidentally, it’s the best song on the album. Though the vocal layering could have done with some more polish, on the whole the piano and melodies are rather pretty, the spoken word sections are striking, and the electronic parts incorporate trap percussion far more organically than the hip-hop abortion two songs prior. Finally, “Mysterium Tremendum” attempts to wrap all the band’s many facets (minus the rapping, thankfully) into one big ol’ bow, and while the final result is a bit of a disjointed riff-salad mess in terms of songwriting, I do appreciate the level of ambition on display in arranging a full orchestral section; it really adds texture to the atmospheric narration.

But just when the taste of bile had been mostly washed out of my mouth, in comes the closer “It goes”– an apropos title, so long as “it” refers to my goddamn patience. Impressive almost, given the song’s only two and a half minutes long. This is another ballad, but this time it leans solely upon the clean vocal “talents” of one Andrea Papi, with only an acoustic guitar and some cellos to back him up. Even the guitars end up going out of tune midway through somehow, as if his kidney-stone-passing moans cast a dark hex upon any instruments in their presence, cursing their victims to be just as hideously atonal as they are. While “Bite the Bullet” sucked in a fascinating, unique way, this one is just a banal, painfully amateurish form of lame.

Honestly, having listened to Origins in full, it somehow makes the duo’s heartfelt writings on its deep meanings feel less sincere, less coherent. It’s all well and good to say that your record is “for the people who are still here, and for those who are now gone” on your press copy; I can nod along to that while I read. But the more I’m subjected to its wildly inconsistent vocal work, compositional fumbles, and incomprehensible production that makes its programmed drums sound like they’re covered in pillows and radio static, the more it all starts to feel hollow. Oh, sure, you can go on about how “personal” and “written from the heart” your album is, but every listen breeds more and more distaste and skepticism of those words, turning them into baseless, meaningless puffery. The lyrics would be salvageable by a good enough tune, but the tunes on display here make them stand in stark relief as rotely rhymed pablum of roughly the quality I would expect if I told Chat GPT to “write me lyrics to a dark prog song about depression”. Sure, there are a couple bright spots to be found in the softer atmospherics, but when your heartfelt, emotional album makes me less sympathetic to said emotions through listening to it, you have utterly failed. This is one chronicle I won’t be following further.

Recommended tracks: Waves, Per Astra
You may also like: Madder Mortem, Uncomfortable Knowledge, the spoken word parts of I Häxa maybe?
Final verdict: 3/10

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

The Chronicles of Manimal and Samara is:
– Daphne Ang (vocals, keyboards)
– Andrea Papi (vocals, guitars, bass, drum programming)

with:
– Mr Meuri (rap vocals on “Bite the Bullet”)

The post Review: The Chronicles of Manimal and Samara – Origins appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: avant-garde metal, brutal prog, deathgrind (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Oingo Boingo, Mr. Bungle, Pig Destroyer, Cardiacs, We Butter the Bread With Butter
Country: international
Release date: 19 July 2024

Musical chameleonism is often a trait of being a musical genius (see Ulver, Devin Townsend). Neither artist plays more than a couple releases in the same style in a row before growing restless and switching it up completely because their brains must be overflowing with grandiose creative ideas a single genre limits. Musical eclecticism is a far less desirable trait in my opinion. Bands who constantly switch genres within a single track often do so by forcing styles together with a lack of finesse and without the requisite knowledge, skill, or wherewithal of when, how, or why to merge distinct styles convincingly. Usually, it comes off as an immature gimmick. Throughout their four-year career, Circle of Sighs have done a bit of both, starting with progressive doom metal, switching to abstract hip-hop-and-electronica-infused metal, and now cranking out a brutal prog EP Ursus of avant-garde, genre-switching, grindy metal. 

Ursus follows the lineage of the Hollywood blockbuster, the cinematic masterpiece, the certified fresh (ok, maybe not that last one) Cocaine Bear. The story which the album follows concerns a bear who takes ayahuasca and in its state of ego dissolution “melds consciousnesses with a trans-dimensional being.” Admittedly, this is a riotous concept, hilarious in scope and executed quite spectacularly from the evil Care Bear on the album cover to the little Midatalantic man’s spoken word about grizzlies in the track intros to the cassette version of the EP coming literally embedded inside of a behemoth, orange-flavored gummy bear. It’s stupid humor, but it’s so over-the-top it works, and Circle of Sighs came up with the only logical improvement of Cocaine Bear: Ayahuasca Bear.

The music is similarly immoderate, smashing together deathgrind and brutal prog, but it’s nowhere near as fun as the concept. The metal parts are produced horribly with the drums overpowering and obnoxious to the point of being headache-inducing. Ursus also has a distinct lack of riffs—everything just kinda sounds like a chugging blob with blast beats and snarls without melody or even interesting rhythmicity. And as alluded to in the intro, eclecticism does Circle of Sighs no favors on Ursus with the jazzy and cabaret flourishes amateurish, immature-ish on a songwriting front, and completely detached from the metal. The saxes, banjos, theremins, and flutes are a mixing of musical shades that come out like when you mix a bunch of condiments and you’re left with a vomitous shade of brown: the taking-no-prisoners production just has the distinct genres fight for which style of instrument can make the most noise without any thought about what sounds tolerable or pleasant. I get Circle of Sighs are quirky for quirkiness’s sake (their Bandcamp bio states, “Mime metal. Blackened juggling. Definitely not a cult.”), but I wish their music had the strength of execution of their silly concept. 

The worst moments take place in the latter half of the EP with annoying circus music and extended ambience in “Ursus 5,” the awful lyrics and spoken vocal performance in “Ursus 4” (a snippet of lyrics: “The feast rages into the long night our worlds now and forever linked through the chasm of glowing emerald crystals that sprung from the ground where once there were car dealerships, Ikea, Starbucks and Taco Bell.”), and the annoying nothingness of the cover of“Horsehead” from the OG obnoxious prog Cardiacs. Unfortunately, it’s not just painful to listen to from the production, it’s actively annoying and cringey circus prog. Even at only twenty minutes, I feel like I’m being strapped to a chair and forced to listen to this for an eternity as a prisoner of war. 

I don’t think musical chameleonism is a trait of musical geniusness in this case, sadly, but rather an unfocused and sloppy idea of what Circle of Sighs wants to be as a band. Instead of honing their skills to master a style, they switch from one mediocre attempt at genre to another. The poor eclecticism is just the cherry on top. If Circle of Sighs want to ever write something of substance, they need to stick with one genre for a little bit longer both in each song and from album to album.

Recommended tracks: Ursus 2
You may also like: Maladie, Eunuchs, Lou Kelly, The Beast of Nod
Final verdict: 3/10

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

Label: independent

Circle of Sighs is:
Collyn McCoy – Vocals, Upright Bass, Electric Upright Bass, Bass Guitar, Guitar, Samples, Percussion
Chris Soohoo – Vocals, Mime, Projections, Puppetry
Ryan Thomas Johnson – Vocals, Keyboards, Banjo 
Ian Schweer – Drums 
Geoff Yeaton – Saxophones

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