Style: experimental, noise, dark ambient, industrial, avant-garde black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Merzbow, Ben Frost
Country: Finland
Release date: 13 June 2025

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

Finnish experimental metal artist Oksennus sees a pile of rocks and grinds them to dust in his deconstruction of metal, like a postmodernist would, on his newest release(s): Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä and its sibling EP Naama Ummessa. Metal is broken down to its atoms—distortion, percussion, and vocals—and reassembled in a completely novel way. The shorter of the two EPs, Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä, works within the confines of two tracks, each precisely 13:00 long to construct its cathedral of broken riffs and vomitous¹ vocals. 

Taking up the first half of the release, “Loppu” plays around within a unique, uncompromising atmosphere. Microtonal guitars ramble onward until gurgling vocals à la the Demilich guy on ketamine dominate the foreground—although they often drop into the background as Oksennus use the mix as an ever-shifting playground for which texture dominates. In the background, various “whooshing” noises recall a variety of things: a muted train going “chugga chugga,” shoveling snow, falling down the stairs with an electric guitar. As ominous as the sounds are unusual, Oksennus shatters conceptions of genre by dragging his distinct style of black metal from rawness to beyond—a primally unrefined ambience.

Not until “Tuli” does Oksennus make his most revelatory strides within a strictly metal framework. Beginning with inescapable blast beats in the vein of Plague Organ, he quickly contorts the rhythms into free time atop a buzzsaw guitar. As the track progresses, drum parts collapse at the seams as complex arrangements of percussion are stitched together, seemingly recorded a couple of seconds at a time. Moreover, the demented ambient noise of the first track continues throughout “Tuli” but in increasingly distorted tones—bringing them more firmly into the world of metal along with the blast beats—transitioning between the sound of blowing a raspberry and the droning vibrations of the cicada. Like how the best black metal rebels against religion and/or mankind, Oksennus is a perversion of an inimical power structure, as well.

“There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” – Brené Brown

In Oksennus’ case, they rebel against the human eardrum. Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä is nearly unlistenable without suffering the risk of a migraine, the EP transcending the comprehensive capabilities of the human mind in 2025 CE. The experimental elements mentioned are hardly intentional. The guitars are microtonal because Oksennus doesn’t know how to tune his instrument; the mixing shifts in and out of focus from engineering ineptitude; and the time is free because he can’t even program a drum correctly. Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä is proof that the postmodernists often become satire of themselves (look into Salvatore Garau, for instance). I don’t think that Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä was truly going for something revolutionary nor was his take a postmodernist interpretation of metal intentionally². The world of the experimental, progressive, and avant-garde will always create missteps, and Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä is chief among them, purely as a result of Oksennus’ radical incompetence in composition and performance.

Recommended tracks: Loppu
You may also like: Jute Gyte, Botanist, Simulacra, Plague Orphan
Final verdict: 2/10

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

Label: Sacrifical Dance – Bandcamp

Oksennus is:
– K. Olavi K.virta

1. Oksennus means “vomit” in Finnish! ︎
2.  It’s a testament to how silly postmodernism can be that I bet you believed me for the first chunk of the review. ︎

The post Review: Oksennus – Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive metal, jazz fusion (instrumental, mostly instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Jacob Collier, Liquid Tension Experiment, Animals as Leaders, Car Bomb, Meshuggah
Country: Germany
Release date: 25 April 2025

Why cover a song? Be it artistic appreciation, a business decision to gain exposure, or out of obligation to the tradition, the cover track is a mainstay for many artists, yet one often relegated to being an album’s bonus track. Bringing cover tracks to the forefront of an album, however, is risky; that comes with the pressure of living up to several of your musical and creative idols. Panzerballett try it—do they match the originals? 

German jazz fusion/prog metal group Panzerballett cover plenty of legendary songs from progressive metal and classical music alike on Übercode Œuvre, putting their signature twist (a whole lot of rhythmic and melodic absurdity) on classics like Meshuggah’s “Bleed,” Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” Planet X’s “Alien Hip Hop,” and Vivaldi’s “Summer.” That is to say, the songs—some of which are already extremely difficult pieces—become unfathomably complicated to the non-music theorizer. I’m sure the guys in Panzerballett would talk about their music in the same way Jacob Collier talks about his, but in a German accent instead of Collier’s whimsical British one—twattishly pretentious while blissfully unaware that theoretical mastery doesn’t translate to being good.

As I see it, there is one main way to critically assess a cover: how does this add to the song’s canon? Panzerballett’s takes on the classics are certainly novel (barring the Planet X one), but they screw up what makes the original songs successful and are, accordingly, entirely terrible. No metal artist needs to cover Vivaldi, it’s been done ad nauseam (sorry, Angel, that includes you, too). One cannot possibly pull off two covers of “Ode to Joy” because they will always be a waste of time; why on God’s green earth would I listen to a prog metal version of one of the most celebrated pieces of music of all time that defeats its elegant simplicity by making it polyphonic, polyrhythmic masturbation? Other choices, such as the “Alien Hip Hop” cover, are even more baffling. Panzerballett take what is undeniably one of the most rhythmically and harmonically complicated progressive metal songs ever and try to make it more challenging to play. At what point does art become an exercise in onanism? That moment is long gone in Panzerballett’s rearview mirror. And I’m afraid the Planet X cover is the clear highlight of Übercode Œuvre because the original song was already good and they don’t change it all that much—a pointless recreation but not bad.

The covers of “Bleed” and “Ode to Joy” (both versions) are among the worst progressive metal tracks I’ve ever heard from capable musicians, a pair of blazing guitar solos from Rafael Trujillo (ex-Obscura, Obsidious) in “Bleed” aside. The Meshuggah cover utilizes annoying horns to create a melody that simply wasn’t in the original song, while the rhythm section plays something in a time signature I couldn’t dream of figuring out—the result sounds as if it were recorded drunkenly despite the instrumental wizardry. Moreover, Panzerballett add atmospheric guitar parts in dissonant chords, ringing out like out of tune bells above the din, heralding the end of good music. Again, I’m sure the harmonic polyphony is genius technically, but it’s more masturabatory than even Jordan Ruddess at his worst.

“What could adding in the motif from William Tell’s ‘Overture’ possibly add to ‘Bleed’?” one might ask. And they’d be justified because it’s eclecticism for eclecticism’s sake. “Ode to Joy (Vocal)” starts promisingly with a warped vision for the track, Andromeda Anarchia’s (Folterkammer, La Suspendida) vocals operatic and eerie, but the track almost instantly devolves into Guantanamo Bay-level torture. While assuredly not actually out of tune and out of time, it sure sounds like it. Between the added phone hold-music jazz, drum solos, and “poorly harmonized,” warbling sopranos, I cannot think of a worse way to sodomize one of the most celebrated pieces of music in history—and that’s before Panzerballett start djenting all over the place.

The original compositions on Übercode Œuvre (yes, it’s not completely a cover album) are ok, fairly run of the mill for this style of fusion prog metal. “Seven Steps to Hell” and “Andromeda” are easily identified strong moments on the album: convoluted and with irritating saxophone and djent parts, but stronger than their surroundings nonetheless. The Ballett are a better ensemble as jazz composers than metal ones (despite the obvious metal pedigree). Their style doesn’t translate to djent and distortion well.
We all like some wank in the prog metal world. I can throw down to freaky microtonality, and I think cover tracks can be fun. But I cannot think of a worse attempt at any of those three things at once than Übercode Œuvre, an offensively terrible listening experience so far up its own ass Jacob Collier might blush.

Recommended tracks: Seven Steps To Hell, Alien Hip Hop, Andromeda
You may also like: La Suspendida, Sarmat, Ckraft, Planet X, Exivious
Final verdict: 2/10

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

Label: independent

Panzerballett is:
Jan Zehrfeld: guitars, vocals
With:
Virgil Donati: drums
Marco Minnemann: drums
Morgan Ågren: drums
Anika Nilles: drums
Florian Fennes: sax
Anton Davidyants: bass
Jen Majura: guitars
Andromeda Anarchia: vocals
Rafael Trujillo: guitars
Sebastian Lanser: drums
Joe Doblhofer: guitar
Chris Clark: vocals
Conny Kreitmeier: vocals
(taken from ProgArchives, I cannot find an official declaration of lineup)

The post Review: Panzerballett – Übercode Œuvre appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: avant-garde metal, symphonic metal, avant-garde jazz, “opera” (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Naked City, John Zorn, Mr. Bungle, Diablo Swing Orchestra
Country: United States-NY
Release date: 15 March 2024 but really never¹

I will begin my review for La Suspendida with a lengthy aside². Built on a subculture of transgression against just about every institution the Western world holds sacred, metal often comes across as reactionary at face value. Largely, the metal musician is just putting on an act against authority, embracing their individuality through a defiance of perceived hegemony. Even musically, metal acts against the norm; no other major genre of music uses harsh vocals nor blast beats. Transgression is as central to metal as electric guitar is, and with it comes offense. To listen to metal is to implicitly embrace the hideousness of society and ourselves through music. And to preface the following, I’m neither prudish nor squeamish when it comes to the music I seek out despite lots of it being deeply offensive on purpose. 

I observe, though, that the balancing act of being artfully offensive and being a twisted hack is often a tightrope walk. The subculture metal musicians have cultivated since nearly the beginning is one of one-upmanship: who can play faster, be heavier, and flaunt the most gruesome or satanic image. In 1992, Cannibal Corpse released Tomb of the Mutilated, and the cover art is undoubtedly offensive, but it’s just a painting—this is not in particularly poor taste. But three years later, Mayhem released The Dawn of the Black Hearts with a cover featuring the rearranged corpse of band member Dead who had just killed himself—while successful at being more transgressive than Tomb of the Mutilated, it’s difficult to justify the desecration of a corpse for an album cover. Sometimes metal simply goes too far, and I believe that happens when the artist fails to divorce their philosophical musings and art from real life. Black metal albums shouting about burning churches are sick, but actually burning churches goes a teensy bit too far.³

Male metal musicians’ lack of self-awareness (or likely caring) about this distinction has long pushed women away from the metal world. I can think of a dozen death metal songs about brutalizing women, and so few are done with any semblance of art in mind⁴. Since women have been oppressed by men for so much of history, it would be more transgressive to not be misogynistic; accordingly, it seems like these male musicians are simply showing their true colors, alienating women in a way that is unacceptable and against the spirit of metal.

Avant-garde metal collective La Suspendida tries to flip this narrative, telling a story of feminist empowerment based on the real life story of Carl Tanzler (trigger warning following for those squeamish). Tanzler was a German doctor who hopelessly fell in love with his patient Elene Milagro de Hoyos (María Elena is her nom de plume for La Suspendida), and when she died, he preserved her body and committed obscene acts of necrophilia for years before being discovered. If you think that concept doesn’t sound very feminist, La Suspendida attempts to rewrite the story by sympathizing with Tanzler, exploring the idea that perhaps Elene wanted this ‘relationship.’ The full concept entails that María is in limbo, and she’ll die without consistently receiving seed from the living. She is using Tanzler in a dominatrix fashion—hence the justification it’s sexually empowering for María—but ultimately the argument boils down to “fucking corpses would be ok if you were keeping them semi-alive” which isn’t a compelling reason to sympathize with a real life rapist necrophiliac.⁵ 

The story here is clearly an attempt at something potentially interestingly perverted. Let me reiterate: La Suspendida think that turning a story of necrophiliac rape into a woman just begging for sex from her doctor in the afterlife is feminist empowerment—I have no clue how they convinced a woman to sing on this album. It’s a ridiculous thought, but I suppose it could work in the proper context with a wordsmith’s pen to provide thoughtful gothic lyrics to the macabre tale: one cannot avoid invoking Nabakov’s Lolita, in which Nabokov writes from the perspective of Humbert Humbert, a charismatic manipulator who is “in love” with twelve year old Dolores. All of Humbert’s poetry and ambiguity obfuscates his central crime; that he is a pedophile and a rapist—the novel’s genius is to tell such horrors in such innocent tones as to almost fool the reader⁶⁷. La Suspendida, on the other hand, doesn’t provide such elegant storytelling, instead featuring some of the worst lyrics I’ve ever read courtesy of libretto William Berger. Many will crop up as I discuss the musical contents of La Suspendida, but a couple of particularly egregious lines include “Everyone fucks the dead / You self-righteous prigs” and you don’t even need to look beyond the title of “My Corpse, Your Dungeon.” It’s all tasteless, so devoid of artistry as to completely undermine the project’s point-of-view and render their statements as offensively transgressive—why did they insist on modeling their awful idea for a concept on an already horrific real life story and then have the gall do not even execute the shitty idea well?

Everything else on La Suspendida is offensively bad, too. In the words of my peer Dave, “It’s like if Diablo Swing Orchestra were the worst band in the world.” More than a dozen musicians—and four dancers in the live performance—contributed to the project, and nobody had the wherewithal to think about all the ways this doesn’t work. Featuring such diverse acts as avant-jazz/metal trio Kilter, metal string quartet Seven)Suns (who did a rad cover album of Dillinger’s One of Us is the Killer in 2023), the Growlers Choir, and Folterkammer’s dominatrix soprano Andromeda Anarchia who plays the lead role of María Elena, La Suspendida oozes with talent. That makes the final manifestation of the opera all the more frustrating. 

When the tracks aren’t extended drones as in “Limbo – A Place with No Weather” and “Afterglow”—superfluously long in both cases if inarguably the least offensive parts, and prime contributors to an already bloated 80+ minute release—Kilter usually take the lead. Made up of my all time favorite drummer Kenny Grohowski (Imperial Triumphant), bassist Laurent David, and sax player Ed RosenBerg III, the jazzmen set the tone for much of the album, and what a tone it is! As a disclaimer, these three hold B.F.A.’s, a PhD in composition, decades of experience between them, and have studied at some elite music schools internationally, and I haven’t; I have no doubt in their abilities or skills. However, on La Suspendida they use them… for evil. Janky rhythms follow polyrhythms nonsensically, adding complexity where none is needed and actively sabotaging the melodies I’d prefer unmangled in an album purporting to be an opera. My biggest take away from La Suspendida’s instrumental performances, however, is that there’s a reason why I’ve never heard the bass saxophone take the lead on a metal project before. The flatulent honks in jagged rhythms prove grating by the end of overture. The haphazard runs it takes mirror the songwriting, seemingly improvised but painfully so, screeching back and forth with no rhyme or reason as the songs haplessly follow along. 

For a pseudo-opera, I’d expect a wicked vocal performance like Andromeda Anarchia had on Folterkammer’s Weibermacht earlier in 2024, flexing inhuman switches between operatic soprano and shriek, but most of her harsh vocals on La Suspendida sound halfhearted with a dearth of her energetic clean vocals. As Elena, Anarchia creaks in “Limbo,” whispers in “Laudes Mortuorum & Roll Call of the Newly Dead,” and obnoxiously enunciates “my corpse, your dungeon, riiiiiiight” in “My Corpse Your Dungeon.” Sometimes, she sounds like a crazy person trying to call a cat (“The Ballad of María Elena”), and at others she conjures up the imagery of a mother performing syncopated ASMR breathing in one’s ear to lull one to sleep (“Lullaby”). Andromeda Anarchia clearly loves the role of dominatrix, though, performing the duty on two different 2024 albums, and her demands of Tanzler on La Suspsendida like “water my dust bowl with your devoted seed” are performed with conviction, at least. The Growlers Choir, on the other hand, do little other than whisper like a gaggle of lovestruck teens by the boys locker room, the five of them contributing very little except a sibilant quality to an already deflated album. 

The highlight, bar none, of La Suspendida is quartet Seven)Suns whose experience on projects like their Dilinger cover album and So Hideous’s latest post-black metal masterpiece shines through brightly with intricate counterpoint. Seeing as the boys in Kilter composed the whole thing, one wonders why their counterpoint is so much weaker compared to the sleek chamber approach of the strings. If the bass saxophone were more artfully restrained and employed like the string quartet, it would be less obnoxious—but even then it would sound like one of Seven Impale’s worst cuts. Seven)Suns shreds on “Overture – Death & Transfiguration,” breaks the endless drone with Xenakis-esque pizzicato on “Limbo,” and desperately tries to save the raucous “fuck me louder” track “Double Call – Laudes Mortuorum Reprise and Finale” by supplanting the jazz trio around nine minutes into the track. 

Occasionally, you find a pretentious work so terrible as to make you question whether it even qualifies as music. La Suspendida takes the talents of thirteen metal and jazz musicians and ruins them—even my all-time favorite drummer isn’t a saving grace in this mess. The first time I heard the long drone of “Limbo,” I prayed it would end, but eventually I was begging for more to save me from bass sax jazz. A subversive feminist metal opera could be ridiculously awesome, but both text and performance are so abysmal that this hardly qualifies as art. It’s a strange fever dream of misguided sympathy and of obnoxious brass, of soprano snarling and of stitched together rhythms. The sole saving grace is an underutilized string quartet with the rest of the project suffering from horridly misplaced ambition. As a whole, La Suspendida is wildly offensive, disgustingly tasteless, and excessively wasteful in its roster of talent. Were its goal to offend the listener, you could consider La Suspendida a success, because I, for one, am offended by this abomination. Fuck me dead.

Recommended tracks: Overture – Death & Transfiguration; Interlude – Climax
You may also like: Folterkammer, Seven)Suns, Sarmat, Neptunian Maximalism, A.M.E.N., Don Bolo, Don Salsa, Aenaon, Seven Impale
Final verdict: 2/10

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

Label: Silent Pendulum Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

La Suspendida is:
KILTER: Laurent David (bass, composition, production); Ed RosenBerg III (bass saxophone, composition, arranging); Kenny Grohowski (drums, composition)

Maria Elena: Andromeda Anarchia (vocals)

The Choir Of The Dead: GROWLERS CHOIR Pierre-Luc Senécal (creator and leader); Chorists: Marie Claude Fleury, Maude Theberge, Jeff Mott, Samuel Arseneau-Roy, Laurent Bellemare

SEVEN)SUNS: Earl Maneein (violin); Blanca González (violin); Fung Chern Hwei (viola); Jenny DeVore (cello)

LIBRETTO: William Berger

DANCERS: Fanny Coulm, Yutaka Nakata, Antoine Delecroix (sound design), Elodie Letaeron (video)

1. Note that this was NOT missed in the traditional sense. I was awaiting its release but Silent Pendulum Records screwed the pooch AGAIN (as they have done regarding release dates before), and this thing seems to have never officially came out, probably per the band’s request (?). It was only released physically it seems, so I bring this review to you from international waters—if you catch my drift. ︎
2. It will be three-ish paragraphs (Ian, eat your heart out). ︎
3. Flog me as a poser if you want, I don’t care. ︎
4. If that topic can be done artistically at all, it would likely be in the form of some Gothic perversion of a relationship archetype. There’s also the approach of being so ridiculously over-the-top it must be tongue-in-cheek, like Infant Annihilator. The edgy humor may not be to one’s taste, but they’re obviously leaning into a bit. ︎
5. One of the main problems with the concept is its reliance on a non-consensual relationship of a real life event. Had this been completely fictional, while gross, it could have been spun better. Instead, it comes off as a sophomoric attempt at edginess. ︎
6. And it often does. Many an idiot takes Lolita at face value. “But his love was so pure!” She was twelve and he’s a liar. ︎
7. My sincerest thank you to my peer Chris for his literary insights here. ︎

The post Missed Album: La Suspendida – La Suspendida appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: experimental death metal, djent, avant-garde black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Frank Zappa’s Jazz from Hell but death metal
Country: Canada
Release date: 6 December 2024

Sometimes the jokes write themselves: solo project of James Aniston Through Mists was inspired by the following quote throughout the creation of Hellscape: “if you’re going through Hell, keep going.” In only seven words, Aniston encapsulates my experience with forcing myself to listen to his seventh full length album in the past two years.  

Hellscape is a strange mix of “experimental” death metal, black’n’roll, djent, and sizable unintelligible sections I’ll just call “crap” for categorizing reasons. Through Mists never really settles into a groove (by this I mean a coherent style, but also literally because he can hardly keep time despite the drums being programmed), and the constant switching almost immediately becomes a nuisance. And yet despite trying so many things, so little works. Like many a prolific one-man-band, I think the first big problem is a lack of somebody else to hold the artist accountable. Four months to churn out a complete experimental work worth listening to is a tall task, and the ideas across this collection of songs are spread thin, and most of the ideas do not work together at all. Only one moment really sticks out as a riff that would survive the cutting board if I were an honest friend—the main riff in “Footsteps in the Dark”—but its coolness is a byproduct of nailing the thin line between maniacally unhinged and nonsense; I think he was as lucky to stumble into it as a flipping a coin and having it land on its side.

If poor attempts at djent in your death metal weren’t enough of a deterrent, the most offensive aspect of Through Mists is Aniston’s vocal performance. I’ve heard more charming vocals in pornogrind albums. His rasps, growls, and shrieks are all woefully out of time and produced annoyingly loudly—just as loud as the poorly programmed drums which mostly play in a tremendously bland 4/4 Lars tempo. But really the vocals drag a merely completely incompetent instrumental performance down to the bottom of the death metal barrel with acts like Spacefog and Enigmatist. Seeking out good experimental metal and then enduring this Hellscape is like contracting an STD from splinters in said barrel and then having the infected pus squirt up into my eye. It’s an assault to my ears. 

On top of all of this, it’s produced terribly with a MIDI-core base that sounds cheap and amateur. The instrument which suffers most from this particular aspect of the sound is the piano, which I unfortunately hoped could be a saving grace; instead, the horrific keys push Through Mists into tartarus, deeper than hell. They are so goddamn annoying, quirky like Frore 5 Four’s tedious circus music prog metal, disgustingly obnoxious like Frank Zappa’s Jazz from Hell, and awkwardly failing to be experimental like a worse version of the free jazz death metal outfit Effluence, the end product insufferably cacophonous and grating. Aniston should throw away his keyboard to focus on the guitar which he at least has a couple passable riffs using. Then he should find a friend to help balance out his varied ideas into something more palatable. 

Hellscape is hell to listen to, and I would only wish it upon my worst enemies. As always, I respect the hustle and misguided love for music that a fertile solo artist produces, but if you truly love the medium, take some more pride in what you produce. This is a bad bedroom demo, not something that should have seen the light of day. I’d rather have suffered the classic fire and brimstone.

Recommended tracks: Footsteps in the Dark
You may also like: Effluence, Enigmatist, Spacefog, Pagan Rites, Enopolis, Void of Nothingness
Final verdict: 2/10

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

Label: independent

Through Mists is:
– James Aniston (everything)

The post Review: Through Mists – Hellscape appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Thrash Metal, Rap Metal, Progressive Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Limp Bizkit, Between the Buried and Me, Pantera, Havok
Review by: Dave
Country: Slovakia
Release date: 20 May 2024

Our world is in shambles. A society that is built on lies and tyrannical anguish will only serve to destroy itself, and we truly live in that society. Because our ability to say what we want has been eroded, you’re not really reading this: I’m actually transmitting this review directly into your brain through secret glyph-based technology to avoid my review being silenced by Our Tyrannical Subway Overlords and other secret government entities. In our most dire moment on the brink of societal collapse, we need a Joker to rise from the ashes of a suffering civilization and bring us into an era free of snowflake Netflixes and spoiled entitled Snapchattings where the only medicine you need is a red pill.

Thankfully, Sarcas are here to assume their role as true jokers on Rise of the snowflakes, spearheading the fall of evil regimes with their anthemic takedown of… daddy’s evil porridge plot? For those not savvy with the revolution, Sarcas are a Slovak thrash metal outfit who occasionally dip their toes into progressive (musically, not politically) ideas: think The Showdown mixed with thrashier moments, occasionally indulging in BTBAM-impersonating-Limp Bizkit rap delivered with nasally droning clean vocals. Sometimes, as a treat, they’ll even deliver clean vocals blown out of oblivion, as if someone took just a single channel of the vocal mix and shoved up the gain so hard that the slider broke, as seen on “Life is Beautiful” and heartwarming-life-advice-as-song-title “Click Ads & Shut Up.”

Occasionally, Sarcas’ instrumental mish-mash comes together well, though these more inspired ideas are almost without fail followed by bizarre non-sequiturs. On the first verse of “Men In Black,” thrashy riffs playfully dance around fast and lopsided drum grooves until the moment is almost immediately ruined by a weird swing rhythm poorly delivered with half-speaking, half-singing vocals. This same compositional pattern is present on “Walk Alone,” where, among five minutes of fast-paced thrash, Sarcas takes two separate opportunities to slam on the brakes and deliver a quick snazzy jazz lick. This could work if executed well, but in this case the execution falls remarkably flat, with these jazzy ideas introduced without any context near the end of the album. Another moment of “inspiration” comes through the huge orchestra-guitar interplay on opener “White Pony Show,” which has its momentum immediately destroyed by a twenty-second voiceover of someone making incomprehensible mouth noises over a piano instrumental break. You really have to hear for yourself to understand.

Lyrically, Rise of the snowflakes can only be described by its aptly-titled single “Porridge Seppuku”: there’s something intense, violent, and pointed going on here, but its point is often lost in mushy, unfocused, and sometimes utterly incomprehensible lyricism. It’s clear that Sarcas are angry about something, but what that something is is hopelessly unclear over Rise of the snowflakes’ runtime: the clearest message I can get is “Click Ads & Shut Up”’s denigration of individuals who waste away interacting with brands. This is a message I don’t necessarily disagree with, but it’s delivered as a condemnation of the people itself and places virtually no blame on the ads, which is the worst possible way to express this take. Remember, everyone: advertisement good, people bad! Outside of “Click Ads & Shut Up,” there is virtually nothing to be gleaned here, except that Sarcas is angry at “sheeple,” and his angry, unfocused cause is not helped at all by the spectacularly broken English. I don’t fault anyone for struggling with a second language, as writing in another language is a difficult and admirable endeavor, but Sarcas, I gently suggest you to run these lines by other people in your next output, because there are instances where I truly can’t parse what is being said.

Undoubtedly, Rise of the snowflakes is edgy cringe, but I feed off this kind of cringe: every Max Enix, Black Hole, and Corey Feldman that I consume only serves to augment my power, and Sarcas has provided me with ample nutrition to tide me over until Tommy Wiseau’s next cinematic opus. Instrumentally, Rise of the snowflakes is a rollercoaster ride of occasionally enjoyable moments falling face-first into bafflingly weird non-sequiturs, and any good musical ideas presented here are then wasted on incomprehensible edgelord ramblings about our brains being melted by 5G under the guise of anarchist anthems. It’s such a shame that occasionally decent instrumental output is tarnished by weird and poorly-executed edgy gobbledygook. For everyone’s sake, get a ghost writer next time.

Recommended tracks: White Pony Show for the mouth noises, Porridge Seppuku for the bad rapping, and Click Ads & Shut Up because it’s a funny song title
You may also like: Announce the Apocalypse, Death Mex, Max Enix, Ben Baruk
Final verdict: 2/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal Archives

Label: Independent Release

Sunnata is:
– Jaroslav Plichta (bass, guitars, vocals)
– Michal Plichta (drums)
– Juraj Kutes (guitars, vocals)

The post Review: Sarcas – Rise of the snowflakes appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: djent, ambient, choral music (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Vildhjarta
Review by: Andy
Country: Texas, United States
Release date: 29 February, 2024

Dear Mr. Christian Culak, my pal Zach’s arch nemesis,

You have some serious balls and an admirable sense of self-awareness to send us a promo after Zach’s last couple reviews of your work. I loved how you made him suffer, but over the sound of my guffaws when you sent us a triple album for him to be subjected to forcefully, I heard a small whisper from Sam to Zach that Zach had earned a break and it was my turn to be tortured: I get the honor to review somebody as noble art thou this time. You might be hopeful that I’m nicer than Zach, but handing me a triple album of djent is certainly a foreboding first impression. 

Godspeed Chris,

Andy

P. S. I hope you don’t mind if I review all three once in one fell swoop.

Underneath the Veil opens promisingly enough with a nondescript piano solo, but painfully quickly Mr. Culak punishes you with unbearable djent. While the over-quantized, hyper-clean sound of modern stalwarts of the genre sounds pitifully inhuman and played-out, I wish that Underneath the Veil had squeaky clean production. I don’t know whether to start with the detachedness or the overall quality of damp swamp-ass, so I’ll discuss the Extermination Dismemberment-esque bass slams (see 2:46 in “Ayn” for the first example of many). Everything in the sound is shoved aside for a huge swell of bass, but he implements and produces it with all the finesse of boogie-boarding a tsunami. Prog metal never jumped onto the bass boosted trends as far as I’m aware, and I’m relieved after hearing the lowest quality attempt. Back to the detachedness: Underneath the Veil sounds like the instruments were tracked in separate rooms while the recorder was also in the building next door, turning the entire project into a hollow mess. If minutiae in the riffing were there (trust me, it’s not), this would be a shameful production job, but it’s par for the course for Culak. Everything that you can hear is drowned out in enough reverb to sound and smell like Zach’s ass after a long summer’s day peddling meth and wrangling gators in Florida—thank god we can’t do scratch-and-sniff fonts yet.

So what exactly is going on beneath the tortured production and reverb-pedal? Well, a whole lot of not much. Like The Dark Atom, Underneath the Veil flows a bit like ambient, but the riffs Culak wrote are worse than Dennis Martensson’s… and those are *procedurally djenerated*. Culak writes worse riffs than a primitive algorithm could cook up for ten hours straight. Underneath the Veil is unadorned with anything except the most mindless of chugging and several ambient tracks which are mind-numbingly dull filler, although still better than the djent. On its own, Underneath the Veil would rank among the worst djent albums I’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing (if I had to say something positive, I think his piano arrangements every couple tracks are rather lovely), but it’s paired with eighty more minutes of the stuff. Shall we keep going?

Oh Veil of God, a single word away from the title of my favorite album of all time. If Culak knew me personally, I’d be sure it was a cruel joke, but it’s only the universe laughing at me. Veil of God is immediately much better than its predecessor, though, simple choral music that is totally ok at its best! It’s not the most beautiful arrangement you’ve ever heard nor does Culak bother fixing the reverb problems—particularly noticeable when it’s human voices—but ok choral music is infinitely better than senseless djent. However, in classic Culak fashion, he pushes me far beyond my limitless capacity for patience, and this, too, grows incredibly tiring quickly, especially since tracks like “Evanesce” make it crystal clear that these are cheaply synthesized human voices and not actual choirs. I’m not mad or even surprised, I’m just disappointed. I’d love to continue bashing Culak for his stupid ass choices, but this disk really doesn’t leave a lot to write about; it’s slow, uneventful, poorly produced, dubiously paced with those stupid ambient interludes in an already ambient-adjacent choral album, bland, insipid, still-better-than-Underneath the Veil, not good…

If your brain works at the frightening pace of a mile per minute, you probably didn’t put together that Underneath the Veil of God is the two previous albums superimposed, and the choral djent works surprisingly passably at times—certainly more synergistically than either part on their own. But it leaves one with the age-old question: why on god’s green earth would you listen to this instead of Vildhjarta (never mind why would one listen to Vildhjarta)? While the choirs fill a bit of that space between the recording device and the instruments that Underneath the Veil left, the release still feels pitifully weak with neither the heaviest chugs hitting hard nor the ambient parts landing as particularly valuable resting periods. 

I respect Culak’s ambition and his obvious ability to take criticism on the nose, but releasing three albums where two are just constituents of the (already lackluster and strangely empty) third all at once, and calling it a triple album feels particularly silly. While the two albums stitched together makes Underneath the Veil of God tolerable, listening to either of the other disks separate—or all in one sitting twice as I did—is torture and simply stupid. There is no reason for Culak to believe his process or music is special enough to release two extra half albums and demand all three to be listened to. Perhaps he doesn’t intend for all three to be listened to, but since we received all three as a promo and they’re all up on his Bandcamp without explanation, I figure they are, and to that I must bash Culak for his overinflated ego. If you read this and even considered clicking the embed, you’re loooooong gone, craving djent enough to be scraping underneath the barrel for your fix. 

Wait, what’s that? Is somebody screaming??

Final verdict: Under the Veil – 2/10; Veil of God – 2/10; Underneath the Veil of God – 3/10; {(Underneath the [Veil) of God]} – 1/10

Review by: Zach

Well, well, well. We meet again Mr. Culak. You really thought you could shake me off that easily, did you? You seem to misunderstand, your fate and mine are intertwined. With every album you send me, my average score grows lower, and once I start properly rating albums it’s over for all of you. Mr. Culak, with this heaping helping of a triple album, you have given me the greatest gift of them all: experience. Now all the limiters are off. I’ve given you two chances, and you just won’t listen. My apologies, my musical rival, but this is the end for you.

Underneath the Veil of God, and that’s what I’ll be referring to this shitshow as, is all of that Culak ambition coupled with the Culak style of songwriting. For those of you not insane enough to follow the last two installments of this trilogy, Culak has been “working” “hard” on releasing at least one album every year since 2013, and has now upped the ante to multiple a year. I stumbled face-first into this rabbit hole with Holy Tempest, Culak’s take on some prog/power/death/folk CLUSTERFUUUCK. While it was terrible, the least I can say was it’s a hell of a lot more creative than whatever the last two have been.

Somewhere along the line, Christian Culak discovered this band called Vildhjarta, henceforth abandoning all other elements in his music to make what we like to call “thall”. Bog-standard thall, mind you: the most creative we get on this whole musical massacre is the piano that starts ‘Ayn’. The first part of this horrible “triple album” contains not an ounce of notable riffs, moments, or anything to speak of. It’s the musical equivalent of taking an Ambien. Just as it bores me to tears, it also makes me ponder what Culak thought when he was releasing this mess.

See, Underneath the Veil of God isn’t a triple album in the traditional sense. Disc 1, Underneath the Veil, is all djentstrumental, Veil of God is just a midi choir, and Underneath the Veil of God has the novel idea of putting those two together. These are not musically connected in any way shape or form, and may as well be the same album thrice. To be quite honest with you, I think this is somehow worse than last year’s Dreamforge because of the lack of anything to latch onto. Throughout these three albums, there’s not a single song that even sounded remotely put together. Culak’s signature style of “no songwriting’ is put on full display here. Each section moves glacially through chugs, dissonant clean guitars, and weird pitch-shifter sounds. Not to mention three-minute tracks that are just ambient whooshing. 

So, let’s have a chat here, Christian. I get that you think my reviews are hilarious, and you flatter me. But this may be the single most derivative piece of music I’ve ever listened to for this blog. I love Vildhjarta too, and I’ve seen their influence displayed in non-Buster Odenholm projects (see The Ritual Aura and the new Firelink single). This “triple album” isn’t influenced, it’s blatant stealing. For a guy who releases so many albums every year, you really want your mark to be “the guy who copied Vildhjarta without any of the songwriting prowess of Vildhjarta”. You have given up on writing riffs, and instead, you replace them with computerized chugs. Your riffs weren’t good, but you never gave yourself the chance to edit. You push out slop like some kind of musical sausage factory, and knowing damn well you read these, you have neglected my advice of “slow the fuck down and learn to write”.

You had folk and power metal influence on Holy Tempest, and you abandoned all of that for something that was even worse. Where did those other influences go? Were they washed aside for this newfound thall obsession? Sure, the choir is a nice choice, but you don’t do anything with it. It’s just these computerized voices atop the same sluggish “riffs” that haunt disc one. There’s no spice, and the album feels lifeless as a result.

Christian, I’d love to say it would be nice to catch up next year, but I really hope we don’t. I admire your ambition, and the swiftness with which you release albums, but how many times do I need to say it: learn your fucking craft. Stop pumping out musical slop every year. There is truly nothing about this album that I can say that Andy already hasn’t, so I’ll leave you with this: Go on your anime training arc, come back stronger than ever, and fix this mess of a final score.

Final Verdict: 1/10

Recommended tracks: Vildhjarta
You may also like: No One Knows What the Dead Think, Discordance Axis

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Metal-Archives page

Label: independent

Culak is:
– Christian Culak (everything)

The post Review: Culak – Underneath the Veil, Veil of God, and Underneath the Veil of God (or alternatively {(Underneath the [Veil) of God]}): A triple album review appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Genres: progressive metal, “avant-garde” metal (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Tardigrade Inferno, Diablo Swing Orchestra, Art Ensemble of Chicago
Country: Canada
Release date: 1 January 2024

Ah 2023, we collectively bemoaned about the state of progressive metal enough that it’d be beating a dead horse to comment any more on it in my first review of the new year. Needless to say, I’m beyond excited to start reviewing 2024 releases—surely they’ll be better than last year. First, don’t call me Shirley, and second, Molmolti Volti is not the promising start to the year I would have liked; in fact, Frore 5 Four are helping me keep my year’s average score well below sea-level (actually F-level because, spoiler-alert, this isn’t near a 6/10). 

Frore 5 Four have released three albums now, all on New Year’s Day of different years: perhaps they should’ve opted for the first of April to justify unleashing this cruel joke on the world. Playing in the glorious genre of “avant-garde metal,” Frore 5 Four are not close to the avant-garde, instead playing a headache-inducing distorted circus music. The real avant-garde takes skill and vision: Frore 5 Four have offensive production, annoying timbres, overlong songs, and a distinct lack of compositional skill.

Shall we start with Molmolti Volti’s composition? Each track—save for the ambient outro—hovers between six to eight minutes long with exactly two minutes worth of ideas in all of them, nonstop pummeling you with an endless, repetitive stream of circus-y riffs in strange dotted note patterns which grow quickly predictable. Nearly unilaterally, the riff transitions are stitched together like a haphazard tent by blinded boy scouts who tore their eyes and ears out after hearing this abomination. And yet, these horrid riffs are by far the album’s greatest strength, especially as very occasionally they have a semblance of a good idea with a guitar trill or a novel chugging section. That aggravating guitar playing is Molmolti Volti’s highlight doesn’t bode well for the rest. The most aggravating aspect of Frore 5 Four’s awful album may be the false endings—several songs finish before you look at the time stamp and realize that it was an evil prank and you’re subjected to three more minutes of the torture. There is a single moment of traditionally “good” songwriting across all of Molmolti Volti, the symphonic buildup near the end of “Ga-Noir Woltzin” where the track really appears as if it’s gonna go somewhere… it doesn’t. Frore 5 Four takes their single half-decent buildup and ENDS IT ON A FADEOUT. WHAT ON EARTH. I’d rather jump through a flaming hoop with a lion chasing me than listen to this album again.

Equally as annoying are the horrible timbre choices across the album, including but not limited to (intentionally?) out-of-tune instruments (“Dunvo Fahtus”), synthesized trumpets and accordions (“Rickypat Scumjoul” and “Ga-Noir Woltzin”), the beachiness of the fake flutes (“Dimpledew Humathumb”), and just generally awful, in-your-face guitar and synth choices exacerbated by a loud production with a super low dynamic range (everywhere). While normally an album like this would have eclectic vocals I would complain extra about, Frore 5 Four is instrumental, and that’s worse in this case. There is nothing to distract me from the fact I’m listening to an hour of poorly-produced instrumental circus music, no proof there’s an entity on the other side of the project sharing my humanity—for all I know, this is what actual hell sounds like, and I do know that Molmolti Volti is what my personal hell sounds like. But I digress, Molmolti Volti is crying out for Ross Jennings’s (Haken) unique timbre. He’d thrive in this hellscape and possibly fit in better here than in Haken (boom roasted!). 

I’d love to lay into the absolute clown(s?) behind this project a little bit more, but I’m speechless and sitting here with a headache CRAVING to get back to Disillusion, some real prog; moreover, Molmolti Volti doesn’t even contain all that much worth critiquing. Except for a couple different synthesized instruments on some tracks, the entire album unfolds in exactly the same way, each track making me want to move further and further away from civilization. If you can tolerate this circus-sounding car crash—imagine an ice cream truck colliding with a brick wall at a hundred miles per hour—good for you: I’ll be ogling at you as the prominent performer at the freakshow.

Recommended tracks: Disgraces!
You may also like: Pensées Nocturnes, Le Grand Guignol, New Obsessions, Void of Nothingness
Final verdict: 2/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Metal-Archives page

Label: independent

Frore 5 Four is:
?

The post Review: Frore 5 Four – Molmolti Volti appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Whack progressive metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Native Construct, Between the Buried and Me, Opeth
Review by: Zach
Country: New Zealand
Release date: 31 July, 2023

Let’s rip a band-aid off, I have autism spectrum disorder (ASD). My love (and by extension, special interest) of progressive metal stems from the fact that there is so much to focus on in the average prog song that it usually steers my brain away from any anxiety and overstimulation I may experience in my day-to-day life. I’ve had a whole blog post in my back pocket about my experience with ASD and prog metal, but I’m not here to promote that. I’m here to talk about Frontieera’s debut album.

Let me start off by saying this is easily one of the coolest origin stories of a band I’ve ever read. The two members of Fronteeria met on a social media group for adults with ASD, and bonded over their love of Opeth. Furthermore, Charlie is a fingerstyle guitarist and Sara is a classically trained pianist, and both specialize in improvisation. There is truly nothing harder than an improvisational piece, let me tell you. Unless you want to make it sound like free jazz, you need to know every note on your instrument inside and out. So, to say I was excited for this is an understatement.

I…I’m frankly at a loss for words. Among my contemporaries, I have a tendency to overscore, because I’m a music lover first and a critic second. I know how difficult it is to write, produce, record. I know of all the frustrations that come with having something in your head only for it to come out wrong, but to be honest, I can’t be soft on this. ‘The Droughts of War’ set a musically bleak scene for the rest of the album. Charlie’s vocals try their very best to sound blues-y, but it all sounds sloppy.

Yeah, sloppy is the word I’d use to describe this album. Creative, sure, but completely and utterly sloppy. The opening riff of ‘In the Shadow of Appalachia’ is played incredibly poorly, and no use of odd scales or intervals can justify this…it’s just bad. The inclusion of a honky-tonk piano near the end of the intro would be cool if the mix was the least bit coherent. Everything is drowned out by everything else in this album. The guitar tone is horrendous, the bass is nonexistent, and the drums may as well be static. Whenever Charlie starts his croons, he takes over everything else in the mix, crushing everything beneath him.

‘The Lagermouth Plague’ has a somewhat cool atmospheric solo near the end, but maybe it’s just because it’s a reprieve from the sheer chaos my brain witnessed during the first two songs. The chorus right at the end should hit so fucking hard, and it all falls flat because of the vocal delivery. ‘Nebraska’ sounds like a drunken folk song, which I guess is the intention? “It’s supposed to sound bad bro, that’s jazz” really doesn’t cut it here. The dissonance towards the end is only relieved when the song ends, and it just feels grating without the slightest bit of release.

On the flipside, Sara’s piano absolutely shines during the interlude ‘A Tulip in a Twister’, and really makes me wish for this kind of stuff during the actual songs. Only followed up by ‘The Ballad of Jedadiah Smith’, which showcases Charlie’s skill on an acoustic, and lack thereof on vocals. But these two tracks made me pause the album for a second and look these two up to see if they’d done anything else.

Turns out, these two are fucking TALENTED musicians. When they’re doing improv or softer tracks playing off each other, they create some beautiful stuff. In fact, I’m going to ask you to listen to the linked song I’m putting here before the album itself, just to understand how angry this makes me. The fact that as I’m writing this the stupid jam section in ‘Sequioa Lumberjack’ is playing makes it even worse.

This album pisses me off. Two clearly talented people creating shit is the most unforgivable crime in creativity. It’s like if Scorsese just decided to one day forget how to make a movie and make The Room 2. This is, without a doubt, the most insulting album I’ve ever reviewed at the Subway, because unlike Simulacra, these two are capable of creating masterworks. So, the two of you, shape up. Dust yourselves off. Try harder.

Recommended tracks: None
You may also dislike: Culak, Simulacra, The Dark Atom
Final verdict: 2/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify

Label: Independent

Fronteeria is:
– Charlie (vocals, guitars, bass, drums)
– Sara (piano)

The post Review: Fronteeria – How Eden Rose from Untilled Earth appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Djent (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Vildhjarta, Meshuggah
Review by: Zach
Country: US-TX
Release date: 26 August, 2023

Vildhjarta understood what made djent as a genre effective, and threw all of that out the window. They broke down djent to its bare essentials and alchemized it back to life worse than the Elric’s did to their mother. It came out darkly twisted, just on the verge of breaking down completely. Songs were held together by riffs that barely made sense and the short respites of clean guitar you’d get would do nothing but increase the atmosphere of insurmountable dread. The Masstaden duology has more in line with Stravinsky and Shostakovich than Periphery. This is precisely why they’re in a league of their own in the genre, and why even after ten years of silence between albums, they have a loyal fanbase. 

Christian Culak has clearly been listening to a lot of Vildhjarta. 

Let me back up here. Culak has been releasing music since 2013. In that time, he has released a grand total of SIXTEEN albums. Say what you want about the man, and I’ve got plenty to say, but he sure is dedicated to his craft. If you’re familiar with the name, you probably remember my review of his 2022 album. Which was, to put it bluntly, bad. Christian himself even linked it in the press release he sent us for this album. He stated that production flaws are heavily examined in between albums and are taken to heart. So, congrats Christian. This album sounds better, much better, than Holy Tempest. 

However, there was never anything addressing the main issue I had with Holy Tempest. Quite frankly, the exact same issues I have with this album. You can clean up production all you want, you can invest in the best software to do so, but nothing along those lines fixes songwriting flaws–glaring ones at that. Instead of honing any kind of songwriting skill he has, Culak thinks of himself some kind of King Gizzard, in both release quantity and genre switch ups. Last time I covered Culak, he took on progressive black metal, this time he takes on THALL. 

What do you know? It’s an amalgam of forgettable riffs that sure sound like Vildhjarta but without any of the chaos or creativity. The production value has increased, and songs are still imaginatively bankrupt. Everything either sounds painfully simple or it’s nearly knocking off something from Masstaden. Open string chugs are not a riff. Weirdly timed one-note staccato is not a riff. There is not a single new or exciting idea here. Even the second riff of ‘The Veiled Architect’ sounds like ‘den helige anden’ but Vildy at least know when it’s time to transition into chaos. 

‘The Veiled Architect’ also highlights yet another flaw. Christian, I commend you for trying to do mixed vocals. Your growls are actually pretty good on the album. But for the love of THALL, find a vocal coach for your cleans. Spend a bit of time honing your craft, learn from someone who’s better than you. It’s the only way we improve as artists. The cleans are, frankly, horrendous and would be better off dropped from the whole album.

Culak, you are clearly a talented guy with five billion influences. But nothing you’ve written that I’ve listened to so far sounds like your own. I give you credit for putting so much out, but why don’t we pump the brakes for a year or two? Better yet, condense some of those ideas down into a style you can call your own.  Learn a bit of songwriting craft from your favorites. Learn what makes them great, but stop lifting riffs from others. And if you do, veil them in your own style. 

Recommended tracks: none
You may also like: The Dark Atom
Final verdict: 2/10

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

Label: Independent
Culak is:
– Christian Culak (everythnig)

The post Review: Culak – Dreamforge appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: prog rock, prog metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Ayreon, Therion, Pain of Salvation, Mechina
Review by: Andy
Country: France
Release date: 9 June, 2023

I’ve always found Heimskringla’s compositional style to be unique and inscrutable–that’s probably why I’m one of only five monthly listeners. In Heimskringla’s singular approach toward funeral doom, the band don’t really write songs but merely put ideas out into the ether. Guitars, vocal choirs, and impossibly deep growls simply float by on a whim without any clue as to where they’re going, and without the drumming, the album would probably be more ambient than anything. Essentially, their songwriting makes the whole thing incredibly difficult to describe: Max Enix is the second artist I’ve found with this incomprehensibly structured style, but the textures should be more appealing to the prog fans than the mournful, funereal ones. The sonic elements in Far from Home include a star-studded cast of guests, film score inspired orchestrations, and whatever other prog rock stereotypes you’d find in an Ayreon album–all while approaching the length of Therion’s infamous parvum opus, Beloved Antichrist, even including less professional opera singing. I will get back to the songwriting style of Far from Home, don’t fret, but this album is long enough that I’m gonna say… 

Here’s a bunch of things that I could feasibly do in two hours and forty minutes: 

1. I could listen to Relentless Mutation, a top ten all time album, five times with ample time to spare.

2. I could run close to twenty miles.

3. I could watch a certain species of bamboo grow five inches. 

4. I could call any number of family members, loved ones, and friends. 

5. One eighth of the entire lifespan of the mayfly will pass. 

6. I could literally drive to another country. 

7. Or, alternatively, I could listen to Far from Home by Max Enix one time.

For two hours and forty minutes, Max Enix floats through a prog dimension while not once using a proper transition. The album is disorienting. Nothing flows; songs and movements jaggedly start and stop on Max Enix’s whims, and Enix’s whims are about as split as a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, jacked up on caffeine and now set free with $100 (£78.91 for my British readers) in a candy store. If he has an idea, he immediately implements it, sparing no expense; for instance, twice in Far from Home the song will randomly implement mediocre rap, but he’s just as happy to have a guest guitar solo or random opera bit–the last garnering the other part of the Therion comparison. Regarding the “sparing no expense,” Max Enix features everybody in prog on this it feels like, from Derek Sherinian, who will solo on any prog project for a crisp $2 bill, to the entire Budapest Symphony Orchestra, which must have cost Enix north of $25k. In total, thirty-four individual guest musicians make appearances at some point in the slog, yet despite the strong cast of guests, I cannot for the life of me figure out where anything happens even with several listens and note taking. 

I have a couple theories as to why. First, every single vocal part (except the randomly placed rap breaks) follows an uncanny dotted half note pattern with little variation. This unusual cadence coupled with the suppression of the guest vocalists’ unique timbres homogenizes them. Except for Damian Wilson (Headspace, Threshold), whose performance in “Mirrors of Time” stands out as extraordinary, each vocalist loses their originality. The unique voices of Kobi Farhi (Orphaned Land) and Fabio Lione (Rhapsody) who I would recognize anywhere, for instance, are indistinguishable from any of the other several dozen vocalists without reading along to the album notes helpfully provided on Bandcamp. The lilting vocal pattern that Enix continually falls back on for both his own singing parts–which are very rough around the edges but performed with conviction–and his guests sounds like singing ordinary speech in some ways, almost as if it’s sung in sprung rhythm, but the whole schtick comes off as awkward and tiring. Secondly, every track falls into similar “songwriting” traps where Enix will compose a ballad-y section, suddenly veer into a solo or heavier section with more intense orchestration, and then go back to the same ballad-y section just with different lyrics–all sung in the same pattern as before. You’d think that repeating motifs would be useful in finding a place in the album, but instead it almost becomes like a droning annoyance. The song “City of Mortals” is a particularly strong example as the clichéd little intro melody comes back to haunt me time and time again throughout the ten minutes. Once Max Enix has an idea, you will never escape it. This facet of his composition explains why the album is so long: Max Enix will repeat his little melodic riffs ad nauseam… and then after you’ve thrown up he’ll bring the same exact thing back a few minutes later. Eleven out of fourteen of the songs are over 9:30 while zero have the quantity or quality of ideas to merit the excessively bloated length.

Onwards we plunge into the mind of Max Enix, as challenging as it has been to understand. Pimping out a full orchestra for your underground prog rock project is amazing, and I applaud him for the endless enthusiasm for Far from Home; however, if you’re gonna big ball like that, MIX THE GODDAMN THING PROPERLY. The Budapest Symphony Orchestra is so compressed in the over-loud mix that their parts may as well be synthesizers like most small budget prog rock. The orchestra sounds its best during the quieter moments because during loud moments, such as any song’s random “climax”–for lack of a better term since Enix is incapable of building crescendos to climax–the unbridled layering of vocal and instrumental parts makes everything downright hard to decipher, especially the delicate symphonics. 

The few moments that I can recall from the album demonstrate the potential for a more prim, mature project, though. “Prayer of the Gods” has a dope cascading drumline with the film score-esque vocals of Angèle Macabiès (curiously labeled as “ethnic vocals” in the liner notes). As absurd as the rap section turned opera in “Tears of the Earth” is, it admittedly is memorable and executed with enough conviction and precision that I’ll let it slide. Sometimes the random experimentation and formlessly stream-of-consciousness songwriting work in old Max’s favor. But just as often, parts that stick out don’t do so positively.

I’ve got two more hours of music I could dissect, but the remainder largely follows the same exact formula, especially that damn unchanging vocal line that stands as a testament to how not to write singing parts. Instead, I’ve gotta briefly mention the story! Of course, Max Enix is clearly a well-cultured man of prog, and his personal magnum opus follows in the great tradition of PROG as a concept album, and he helpfully provides detailed lyrics including story cues to help guide you. And it’s necessary because it’s simultaneously horrifically basic and needlessly convoluted. The odd lyrics and delivery don’t do the story any favors either. Essentially, the concept is nonsensical and the lyrics are some of the worst I’ve heard in ages. Max Enix constantly trying to force himself into an opera singing role when he clearly doesn’t have the talent only exacerbates the situation. I cannot adequately describe how cringe inducing the lyrics can be, but I highly recommend reading along to see. Prog is practically known for its proclivity for cheesy, often downright bad, lyrics–I can stomach some fluff–but c’mon man, have higher standards… Chat GPT could write a more artistic concept album.   

I really need to wrap this whole thing up because it’s now over twice the length of my average review–as if the album isn’t three times as long as a typical album–but I really think I’ll just kinda let the review naturally fizzle out. The 26:38 long closer almost uses typical songwriting like a buildup, and then it suddenly just ends. Max Enix doesn’t earn a real outro paragraph. Farewell Max, my time with you and Far from Home was far too long: Please learn how to edit. 

Recommended tracks: Prayer of the Gods, Mirrors of Time
You may also like: Reign of the Architect, Circus Maximus, The Flower Kings
Final verdict: 2/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook

Label: independent

Max Enix is:

Max Enix: Music, Vocals, Artistic director, Lyrics/story…

Thomas Kubler: Additional arrangements, Orchestrator
François Rousselot: Conductor

Leo Margarit: Drums
Vikram Shankar: Piano/Keyboards
Jean-Jacques Moréac: Bass
Xavier Boscher: Guitars
Elise Wachbar: Vocals

The post Review: Max Enix – Far From Home appeared first on The Progressive Subway.