Album art by Matt Harvey

Style: Post-rock, post-metal (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, This Will Destroy You, Explosions in the Sky
Country: Australia
Release date: 4 July 2025

Post-rock is a genre whose appeal has always seemed to me to be obvious on paper, but elusive in practice. In theory, a genre built upon methodical, building soundscapes that layer textures upon textures until they crest in a wave of emotional catharsis would be an easy sell for someone with my generally high tolerance for long-form musical endeavors and weakness for big, climactic crescendos. Yet in practice, so many bands in the genre end up feeling like they’re lost in an aimless, hookless limbo, slowly and dutifully turning the volume knob up and down enough to serve as decent-enough background music but never managing to feel like their glacial compositions are truly saying anything. The instrumental nature of much of the genre also can prove challenging – without the facile aid of lyrics to tell audiences what a song is getting at, artists are left to paint a far more abstract picture, a hazy melange of soundscapes that needs a great deal of compositional finesse and intentionality to truly convey anything meaningful. 

Of course, there are other ways to shortcut this issue – a band could, say, utilize spoken word audio samples as a means of grounding their compositions as the soundtrack to true stories of harrowing loss and sacrifice. And indeed, after the tragic passing of frontman Chris Torpy, Sydney post-rock ensemble We Lost the Sea took this very approach for their pivot into instrumental music on 2015’s Departure Songs, a bleak yet fiercely hopeful record that would be swiftly enshrined as one of the most essential albums in the genre. Yet such a potent hook only works once, and after follow-up concept album Triumph & Disaster was met with rather less rapturous reception, it became clear that returning to that level of gut-punching catharsis would be easier said than done. And now, after nearly six years, We Lost the Sea have finally returned with A Single Flower, another massive opus that largely sheds its predecessors’ explicit narratives in favor of a more abstract theme of beauty amidst tragedy. Has this lengthy development period produced another classic of the genre, or is this flower destined to wilt away like so many others?

To be honest, it took a few spins of this album for me to be sure of the answer. Don’t get me wrong, the level of sheer skill and craftsmanship on display here is obvious from the very first listen. From the way opener “If They Had Hearts” gradually develops its simple motif from a sparse, floaty guitar into a roaring post-metal tempest to the insistent, heartbeat-to-cacophony build of “Everything Here Is Black and Blinding”, it’s clear that We Lost the Sea know their way around the sacred art of the post-rock crescendo. The soundscapes here have also been crafted with incredible care and precision – every dynamic peak is led by a titanic trio of guitars (plus keyboard) loaded to high heaven with an arsenal of effects pedals, every valley built from minimalistic, echoey clean picking and layers of soft, sun-dappled synths. New drummer Alasdair Belling is particularly integral in driving the music forward, his precise, heart-thumping rhythmic pulse evolving expertly into intricate, kit-smashing beatdowns that spice up every climax without losing their impeccable pocket. But plenty of albums can be skillfully constructed, can pull off big dynamics and intricate arrangements with competence and professionalism, and still fail to fully land. What is that extra factor, that ineffable je ne sais quoi, that made my reaction to A Single Flower evolve from “Huh, this is some pretty well executed post-rock” to “Holy shit, why is this music making my hands quiver and my breath catch in my chest?”

Well, if I could easily put it in words, that je wouldn’t be very ne sais quoi, now would it? The old saying about music criticism being like “dancing about architecture” holds particularly true with music this abstract. But if I were to put a finger on it, I would have to say that it’s the expertly considered pacing and composition that put it over the edge. These pieces develop and evolve their central motifs with a sense of intentionality and motion that few other post-rock acts can match. Sometimes it’s just one big crescendo (“If They Had Hearts”), but more often these tracks, particularly epics like “Bloom (Murmurations at First Light)” and “Blood Will Have Blood”, justify their sprawling lengths via expert dynamic push and pull, recontextualizing soft, vulnerable melodies into cinematic, overwhelmingly emotional counterpoint. Every new musical layer and bit of tension stacks onto the track like a stone until what was once soft and feather-light becomes a nigh-unbearable pressure upon the listener’s spirit, yet like a modern-day Giles Corey, I simply keep asking for more weight. Then, when the pressure abruptly releases, there’s a sense of deep relief, of finally being able to breathe again, that invites the listener to look at the moments of simplicity and calm between life’s many moments of tension in a new light. 

This is ordinarily where I’d list my gripes with the album, but honestly there aren’t enough to fill a full paragraph. I suppose the production could be polarizing to some; while its fuzzy, bass-forward sound is excellent at conveying the compositions’ darker and more oppressive moments, fans of the twinklier side of things will find themselves wishing for a less muddy mix with more clarity in its highs. And I’ve seen some mixed opinions on the brief “jig” section on “Blood Will Have Blood”, but I honestly think it’s great – its major key and shuffle rhythm radiate a sense of defiant positivity, of looking one’s demons in the eye and dancing them away. 

My biggest issue with A Single Flower, then, has nothing to do with its quality, but how long it took me to appreciate it. Simply put, this is not the most immediately accessible album in the world. It’s an album that requires a certain headspace and level of immersion to truly get lost in as opposed to simply floating by in the background, and with its hefty 70-minute runtime, recommending that you not only listen through something this sizable but give it multiple spins if it doesn’t land is one hell of an order. Is “The Gloaming” a heartwrenchingly gorgeous, cinematic interlude whose string arrangements call forth grief and determination in equal measure, or is it a mere throwaway, a decent-but-cliched soft passage taken straight from the “Make People Sad” course in Film Score 101? Is “Blood Will Have Blood” a fantastic, sweeping epic whose sense of dynamic push and pull makes its 28 minutes fly by, or is it simply too damn long and in need of a major trim? Obviously I agree with the former proposition in both these hypothetical questions now, but the more lukewarm side was in charge during my first listen, and it might be for anyone I point towards this album as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I consider A Single Flower to be an excellent work, a harrowing yet resolutely optimistic album laden with melodies that feel as though they’re blooming and decaying all at once. Yet, if just one flower blooms in a sea of desolation, its stark beauty will go unnoticed by anyone simply scanning the horizon. But if one focuses in on the barren wastelands, if one looks closely enough at the banal darkness surrounding our existences, there’s often quietly resolute spots of beauty, solitary flowers of light pushing through the darkness. All you need to do is keep searching for it.

Recommended tracks: A Dance With Death, Bloom (Murmurations at First Light), Blood Will Have Blood
You may also like: Bruit ≤, Deriva, Fall of Leviathan
Final verdict: 8.5/10

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

Label: Bird’s Robe Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

We Lost the Sea is:
– Mark Owen (guitars, piano)
– Matt Harvey (guitars, noise)
– Carl Whitbread (guitars)
– Matthew Kelly (piano, synth, rhodes)
– Kieran Elliott (bass)
– Alasdair Belling (drums)
With guests:
– Sophie Trudeau (strings on “The Gloaming”)

The post Review: We Lost the Sea – A Single Flower appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rush, Voyager, Steven Wilson, Frost*, Crown Lands
Country: Brazil
Release date: 4 July 2025

The year was 2013. Budding Brazilian musician Léo Skinner was on recon in Canada, in a snowy Toronto suburb. An overly chilly companion put on his down jacket, revealing a stitched-on patch reading “RASH” in an unusual font. They all had a good laugh, even if Léo didn’t quite understand it. But their momentary lapse in concentration allowed “The Starman” to get the jump on them. Skinner spent the next three years in a questionably cleaned basement, forced to listen to a thin musical stew made from prominent, showy basslines, keening tenor vocals, icy guitar and synth chords, and forty-four kinds of percussion. He came close to madness trying to find it back in Brazil, but they just couldn’t get the production right!¹

So, I imagine, was the origin story of Skinner Project, whose eponymous leader, singer, and bass virtuoso has made no secret of his aspiration to be the Geddy Lee of São Paulo since its founding eight years ago. But, to be fair, the band’s latest offering, To Earth With Love, shows that it is more than just the ’80s Rush carbon copy that some might paint it as. The overall sound on offer here is more as if a young Geddy time traveled forward and began working with a shiny, hook-driven synth-prog act such as Voyager, with a bit of melodic influence taken from Steven Wilson‘s lighter material. Purporting to offer sci-fi-tinged yet deeply personal themes of longing, belonging, and self-discovery, the stage is set for Skinner Project to aim for the fine-honed balance of technical proficiency and emotional resonance achieved by their idols. Do they manage to shine like the Aurora Borealis, or are they simply burning down the kitchen?

Well, they certainly nail the sound, at the very least. This is a proper slab of old-school sci-fi hard prog, with keyboards that twinkle and shimmer like stars in the night sky, guitars that strike that Alex Lifeson-esque balance between rock-and-roll brawn and delicate atmosphere, and high-pitched vocals that exude just the right level of nasality. Opener “To the Stars” acts as an excellent sampling platter for the album’s overall sound, from the pounding Peart-esque percussion of its intro to its spacey, atmospheric verses and big, punchy choruses. Skinner’s aggressive “lead bass” is especially notable throughout, boasting a killer, shredding presence that particularly shines when met blow for blow with Léo Nascimento’s conga-bolstered battery of drums. There are a couple of slight musical curveballs here, such as the full-on synthwave of “The Devil’s Fault” or the saccharine pop-AOR of “A Dream of Us”, but for the most part the overall approach remains the same—Ranieri Benvenuto’s charmingly retro keyboard atmospheres stitch together hard rock riffs and soft, extraterrestrial balladry alike while Skinner belts his heart out on each anthemic hook.

Speaking of hooks, Skinner Project have them in abundance, and there’s a clear melody-first approach evident throughout every track here, not just in the great choruses but in the instrumental passages as well. There’s a sense that the band know they could make things more challenging and virtuosic, but then the stupider listeners would be complaining, furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to understand the material. And this is definitely music meant to be as accessible and emotional as it is technically accomplished. The title track floats amid a soft, yearning melancholy, while tracks like “No Answer”—and especially the standout “Disconnected”—leverage their stellar hooks into a powerful sense of emotional catharsis, facing one’s inner demons head-on. Still, for all its gestures towards a “darker” tone (the band stated they were inspired by the Last of Us soundtrack of all things), this is an aggressively optimistic album at its core, with its heart-on-sleeve emotionality frequently threatening to tip over into full-on cheese. One could argue it does so in the absolute cheddar-fest that is “A Dream of Us”, though that song’s melodies are so indelibly catchy and heartfelt that I can’t help but be swept along anyway. A recurring theme is “There is still light, there is still hope”, and this band wants you to know that you are loved, dammit, even in the darkest reaches of space, physical or emotional. After listening to some of these soaring, major-key choruses, even the hardest-hearted of listeners might feel something…

…That is, if they don’t look too closely at the lyrics. Yeah, the album’s biggest sticking point by a fair margin is that the words, clearly meant to be powerful and inspirational, look to have been written by someone with a, shall we say, less than fluent grasp of the English language. I get that foreign bands, particularly in the prog-power space, have been pumping out endearingly ESL butcherings of lyricism for a while now, but seriously, lines like “Making home on a busy heart / Is like to take a shot in the darkness of disaffection” feel like they belong in a Kyle Gordon video. I also didn’t particularly care for the doofy robotic spoken word plastered over the otherwise excellent late-Rush styled instrumental “Report 28”; I’m just trying to enjoy the bass shredding and Microsoft Sam over here won’t shut the fuck up about his space voyage or whatever. The music, too, is clunky in spots, with meandering, flabby closer “Eternity” being a particularly noticeable step down from the album’s generally tight melodic songwriting. “Speaking in Silence” is also a bit of a misfire—guitarist Gui Beltrame takes over lead vocals here, and he just can’t sell the hooks nearly as well, straining to hit the high notes in the chorus.

For all its flaws, though, To Earth With Love is a deeply charming, enjoyable album, one refreshingly free of any traces of irony in its heartfelt entreaties to embrace one’s own inner kindness and humanity in the face of insecurity and alienation. Sure, said message is a bit clumsily delivered in places, but it’s hard to get mad at an album with its heart so courageously placed on its sleeve. It’s also a deeply nostalgic album, one whose glimmering synths, soaring solos, and nods to the likes of Rush, Porcupine Tree, and Pink Floyd² are sure to delight both the old and the old-at-heart. For anyone who wonders if they’re really so out of touch, To Earth With Love is there to reassure them that, no, it’s the children who are wrong. 

Recommended tracks: To the Stars, No Answer, Disconnected
You may also like: Mile Marker Zero, Elephant Planet, The Twenty Committee
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Skinner Project is:
– Léo Skinner (vocals, bass, synths, programming)
– Léo Nascimento (drums, percussion)
– Gui Beltrame (guitars, vocals)
– Ranieri Benvenuto (synths, rhodes)

1. For those who didn’t get the reference. ︎
2. They sample the echoing vocal bit from “Dogs” during the intro to “No Answer”, making this the second least expected Pink Floyd quotation in an album I reviewed this year. ︎

The post Review: Skinner Project – To Earth, With Love appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

No cover artist credited

Style: progressive rock, indie rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Coheed and Cambria, Closure in Moscow, The Reign of Kindo, Bear Ghost
Country: Washington, USA
Release date: 6 June 2025

There are few bands out there doing it quite like The Dear Hunter. Ever since that fateful day in the mid-2000s when Casey Crescenzo left his post-hardcore band behind in order to tell the tragic tale of a young man who journeyed too far from the riverside, they’ve been quite possibly the gold standard in crafting intricate, multi-album conceptual prog sagas¹. And yet, for all their sprawling, ambitious tales of pimps-turned-priests and dystopian ringed cities, TDH have also had plenty of opportunities to demonstrate their song-crafting fundamentals outside the confines of conceptuality, from the more straightforward indie rock of Migrant to the partially fan-sourced experimentations of All Is as All Shall Be. While the band’s latest EP continues in this vein, both it and its companion documentary offer a glimpse into another, heretofore underappreciated facet of the band: namely, that these guys are a very silly bunch of dorks.

For those unfamiliar, the “documentary” of the band’s 2023 North American tour only pretends to be a documentary for roughly its first fifteen minutes. From there, it morphs into a bizarre, surrealist horror-comedy about the band hiring an eccentric writer named Gleeb (basically Borat if he were a bearded homeless guy that yelled at seagulls) to chronicle the tour, and all of the strange goings-on that follow. In short, it absolutely does not take itself seriously, and looking at the titles of the five new tunes spawned forth from its soundtrack, including “Shlammin’ Salmon” and “Burritokyo”, one would logically consider that the North American EP would be a similarly absurd bit of goofing off, an inessential throwaway recorded on a whim to tide fans over while waiting for their next proper opus, Sunya. And while that’s not entirely false, such blithe dismissal forgets that The Dear Hunter are still just a damn talented rock band at their core, and they make better music goofing off than most bands do when they’re trying their hardest.

In terms of genre, the North American EP is fairly consistent with the band’s recent projects, mixing the spacey “future funk” synths and snappy rhythms of Antimai with the looser, more psychedelic rock vibes of Casey’s solo work as Honorary Astronaut. It’s still a decidedly singular sound, but nothing too strange given the sizable spectrum of style that TDH have covered over the course of their career. The arrangements are as lush and gorgeously maximalist as ever, with Rob Parr and Max Tousseau joining Casey in adding in layer after layer of guitars, keyboards, and backing vocals that show the continued influence of Queen and Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys². This fullness of sound elevates the otherwise straightforward (albeit kickass) rock and roll of “Four Amigos” with walls of organ and tight vocal harmonies and enables floaty, spacey closer “Burritokyo” to fully envelop the listener like a warm tortilla. A cosmic tortilla, made of, uh… stardust. And dreams.

Beneath all of that signature flash, of course, the fundamentals of the band’s songcraft are as strong as ever, delivering eminently memorable melodic moments one after the other while the rhythm section of the two Nicks (Sollecito and Crescenzo on bass and drums, respectively) pulls the music inexorably forward with a technical tightness that never slips into self-indulgence³. This especially shows on the more ambitious, Antimai-esque tracks, namely “Classic Wrock” and album highlight “Shlammin’ Salmon”. The former dances through intricate rhythms and switchups, including an excellent prechorus that recalls “Ring 6- LoTown” from the last album, on its way to a powerhouse conclusion that shows Casey’s signature tenor rasp in fine form. The latter, meanwhile, is an absolute masterclass in developing melodic and dynamic peaks and valleys over a single, rock-solid groove – that is, until said groove drops out from under the listener in its final minute, shifting into an absolute banger half-time finale laden with massive big-band horns, killer guitar work, and enough raw swagger to make me want to dance around my room despite still not being quite sure what its time signature is in spots.

So far as flaws go, there really isn’t much here I can point to as actively disappointing. I suppose “Magic Beans” gets the EP off to a somewhat shaky start with its weird vocoder-and-synth intro, and though the song proper is a solidly psychedelic tune with great guitar work and some shockingly beefy low notes from Casey, it’s probably the least strong of the five. I’d also say that, while the lyrics (particularly “Four Amigos”) are as lexically dense and packed with alliteration and consonance as ever, I find myself missing that certain clarity of conceptual concreteness that comes from Casey creating something that’s, well, conceptual. Without a storyline or setting, a lot of the words on here come off as fuzzy gestures toward vague vibe and metaphor – not surprising given that most of these songs were designed to also feature as instrumental soundtrack pieces, but it does mean that nothing here hits with the emotional force of, say, “Black Sandy Beaches” or “Light” off the Acts. 

Is the North American EP a must-listen entry into The Dear Hunter‘s discography capable of standing alongside the masterpieces of their existing catalog? Of course not, and it’s not trying to be. What it’s trying to be is a fun little collection of five enjoyable songs for fans of the band to rock out to, and in that regard, it succeeds admirably. I wouldn’t recommend it as anyone’s jumping-in point to start with the band’s music in earnest, but being inessential is a far cry from being low in quality. Casey has called this EP “a group of songs that exist in a pretty narrow context that we decided to share”, a straightforward snapshot of where the band was at rather than any statement about where they’re headed, and based on that I eagerly anticipate Sunya absolutely blindsiding us all. Let’s just hope they don’t give ten euro to any more suspicious-looking bearded fellows in the meantime.

Recommended tracks: Shlammin’ Salmon, Burritokyo
You may also like: Meer, Dim Gray, The Circle of Wonders, Good NightOwl
Final verdict: 8/10

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

Label: Cave and Canary Goods – Bandcamp | Official Website

The Dear Hunter is:
– Casey Crescenzo (lead vocals, guitars, keyboards)
– Rob Parr (guitars, keyboards, backing vocals)
– Max Tousseau (guitars, keyboards, backing vocals)
– Nick Sollecito (bass)
– Nick Crescenzo (drums, percussion)

1. One could argue that Ayreon and eventual tour partners Coheed and Cambria did the multi-album opus thing beforehand, but neither has come close to the density of leitmotif nor the narrative clarity that The Acts display. Nobody’s ever needed to wait for a graphic novel to release in order to make heads or tails of a TDH album’s plot, just saying. ︎
2. RIP Brian Wilson ︎
3. Big Nick does not get a drum solo on this EP. Tragic, I know. ︎

The post Review: The Dear Hunter – North American EP appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

No album artist credited

Style: Blackened doom metal, progressive metal, sludge metal (mixed vocals, mostly harsh)
Recommended for fans of: Acid Bath, Crowbar, Mastodon
Country: Georgia, United States
Release date: 22 May 2025

Ah, the epic. Perhaps one of the most iconic facets of progressive music, alongside odd time signatures, genre experimentation, and being huge fucking nerds. Yet prog is not the only genre known for such indulgences – far off in the swampy, bong-clouded realms of doom metal, its own acolytes have long been toiling away on leaden, album-length opuses that make the likes of “Supper’s Ready” or “Octavarium” seem downright breezy by comparison. Despite both genres sharing a predilection for track lengths well past the double-digit minute count, though, their approaches are often diametrically opposed. While prog epics are often crafted in an effort to transport listeners on a journey through the wildly varying ups and downs of a suite’s many movements, doom epics are glacial and ponderous, aiming to smother listeners in a consistent atmosphere of musical and, often, emotional heaviness. 

But what if an artist made an effort to unite these two seemingly incompatible approaches? Could it be possible to craft an epic that incorporates both the gargantuan, lumbering tread of doom and the kaleidoscopic variety of prog in one complete whole? Bravely leaping into this challenge is Nambil Mas, a project helmed by a single Nambil Mastermind known as Sam Libman, with a ninety-minute, four-track slab of interestingly titled progressive sludge metal over a decade in the making. While some of the genre tags and Libman’s Atlanta roots may lead one to expect some simple Nambil Mastodon worship, the sound here leans slower, heavier, and more experimental, blending viscous, dense doom with the odd meter riffs and synthy atmospheric passages of prog, plus a shot of blackened, shrieking extremity for good measure. It’s an impressive feat of ambition for one largely unknown fellow; we shall see if he has crafted a Nambil Masterpiece, or if Nambil Más is more like Nambil Menos.

Alright, let’s rip the bandage off: while Welcome to the Nambil Masquerade certainly wins points for effort, much of the music on offer across this gargantuan sonic tetraptych is a painfully unpleasant slog to wade through. One problem, immediately obvious on the opening title track, is that the production and guitar tones frequently cross the line from “endearingly lo-fi” to “agonizingly amateurish”. The abrasive walls of distortion overpower the undermixed drums and often bizarrely distant-sounding vocals to create an effect that is nothing short of migraine-inducing, which wouldn’t be that huge of an issue except, let me remind you, every song is over twenty minutes long. Sure, there are softer, less grating sections on occasion to give hapless listeners a break, but it doesn’t change the fact that minute after minute of those goddamn guitars jackhammering my eardrums is enough to have me reaching for the ibuprofen and giving a Nambil Massage to my poor, aching temples.

This leads us, naturally, to the other main issue with this album: namely that Libman never met an idea he didn’t want to extend well past its sell-by date. To put it bluntly, each track (well, most of them at least) consists of roughly eight minutes’ worth of musical ideas stretched across twenty in much the same way a medieval prisoner is stretched upon the rack, riffs beaten so hard into the ground that nothing but a smoldering crater remains. Now, some might say, “Hey, that’s not fair – this is (partially) a doom metal record, after all. Isn’t repetition and slow pacing part of building an immersive atmosphere?” And to that I reply: doom’s slow burns only work if the atmosphere they’re building is worth a damn. From the fuzzed-out, Sabbath-esque jams of Dopesmoker to the weeping, funereal melodies of Mirror Reaper, doom’s most well-regarded epics all paint an immersive sonic landscape that listeners can genuinely get lost in: a far cry from the insufferably basic “throw a bunch of distortion on a guitar and play slow” approach that Nambil Mas so often resorts to. Thus this attempted Nambil Mashup of subgenres leaves us with a set of tracks that are too clunky and repetitive to work as proper prog epics, but too texturally dull and obnoxious-sounding to muster the impact of good doom metal – the worst of both worlds.

It’s a shame, too, because when Libman exercises his more progressive instincts, there are plenty of moments that, while a bit undercooked, show genuine promise. The aforementioned title track’s back half offers an off-kilter vintage Sabbath/Zeppelin style passage that could be a fun little diversion if its clean vocals weren’t so strangely quiet, and the following psychedelic synth section is one of the few long, repetitive parts of the album that actually manages a somewhat pleasant atmosphere. Closer “The Nambil Masochist” offers some genuinely energetic, mosh-worthy riffs in spots, and the high, wailing vocals at the end are almost impressive enough in their range to distract from the painful, cringy edge of its lyrics¹. “Nambil Masturbation” is somehow the strongest of the four, softening the unpleasant guitar tone with layers of orchestral synths while crafting a surprisingly stirring sympho-black climax that made me wonder if, just maybe, I’ve treated this album a bit too harshly.

Then “Nambil Mastication” comes on, and I realize that, if anything, I haven’t been harsh enough. Remember how I said only most of the tracks had about eight minutes’ worth of musical ideas? That was because this pathetic excuse for an epic has far, far less. Picture, if you will, the bummiest dude at the local Guitar Center, high on weed and low on talent, trying out a distortion pedal. He strums a few basic chords before letting the sound hang for an uncomfortable length of time, possibly mustering a “Duuuude” or two as he stares into space, before playing a couple more and repeating the process. Now imagine this going on for nine fucking minutes straight, and you have the intro to this abysmal, godforsaken waste of runtime². No percussion, no structure, no texture beyond the shittiest bargain-bin distortion imaginable for nine of the precious, finite minutes I have left upon this Earth. And somehow the next four minutes are even worse! At least the stoned Guitar Center guy played fucking notes – this is just vaguely gurgly, deeply unpleasant noise with the occasional bit of guitar feedback whining above it. The mediocre death-doom of the track’s final third almost comes as a relief by comparison, though it’s still not up to the already-shaky standards of the other three.

“I’ll drag myself through miles of shit and mud”, screams Libman on the aforementioned track, perhaps unwittingly creating a perfect metaphor for the experience of sitting through much of Welcome to the Nambil Masquerade. Though there certainly are tiny flashes of gold, or maybe pyrite, to be found amidst this fecal torrent – some solid odd meter riffs here, an inventive bit of atmosphere there – I sure as hell don’t feel in the mood to stick my pan back into that malodorous slurry and start sifting through it all again anytime soon. What a Nambil Mess.

Recommended tracks: Nambil Masturbation, really none of them but that one’s the least bad
You may also like: Sumac, Simulacra, fuck it I don’t care anymore get me out of here get me out
Final verdict: 2.5/10

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

Nambil Mas is:
– Sam Libman (everything)

1.  From that song: “So for this night, I take, this knife  / stick it in, ‘til I break skin / I’ll, starve myself. I’ll… fuck myself!” Truly a poet. ︎
2. Perhaps the most unpleasant experience I’ve ever had from a highly-rated album on this site was Sumac‘s The Healer, an album opening with ten-plus minutes of utterly pointless, structureless instrumental dicking around while some dude gives halfhearted growls from the next room over. This shit makes Sumac sound good. ︎

The post Review: Nambil Mas – Welcome to the Nambil Masquerade appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album art by Jonathan Snead and Ben Hjertmann

Style: Dream pop, math rock, indie folk, experimental (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Gentle Giant, toe, Sungazer
Country: USA (North Carolina)
Release date: 7 April 2025

As the saying goes, there is a fine line between genius and insanity. To become a visionary in a given field, one needs a combination of obsessive focus and a disconnect from conventional lines of thinking that can easily come across as a bit unhinged, especially to the lay observer. Without years upon years of study, there’s little to distinguish such concepts as, say, statistical Riemannian manifolds or the Lagrangian formulation of physics’ Standard Model from the laborious ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic’s notebook. Music theory is no exception; sure, the basics of key signatures and chord progressions are simple enough to grasp, but in the deepest depths of the theory iceberg, one can run across bizarre ideas like xenharmonics, Partch lattices, and Klumpenhoewer networks that might as well be the Necronomicon to the uninitiated who attempt to comprehend them.

Enter North Carolina-based composer, luthier, and possible madman Ben Hjertmann, with his newly assembled math/folk/dream-pop project Spiral Garden. A longtime acolyte of Just Intonation and all things microtonal, Hjertmann has hand-built and retooled over a dozen instruments into bespoke, painstakingly intricate tuning ratios for the band’s debut album, weaving together obscure, esoteric aspects of meter and tonality into an awe-inspiringly overengineered musical Kabbalah. The end result? One of the most unique-sounding albums I have ever heard, to the point where putting a pin in its sound is nigh impossible. Roughly speaking, though, I would say that Spiral Garden does to Appalachian folk music what peak-era Gentle Giant did to European baroque and medieval traditions: adding in contemporary rock elements while maintaining a consistent dedication to rhythmic intricacy, compositional left turns, and playing as many different instruments as possible. More modern comparisons could be drawn to toe‘s gentle, spacey take on math rock and the similarly overthought, multilayered visions of Appalachia spun forth by Adjy, but for the most part this album is decidedly its own beast. 

For all its seemingly intimidating complexity, the album makes a clear effort to ease the listener into things, with “Septangle” starting with a soft, clean guitar line in 7/8 time beneath Hjertmann’s gentle tenor. Not exactly bubblegum pop, but certainly accessible enough. Yet, as the tune winds on, with Jonathan Snead’s viol and Emalee Hunnicutt’s bass adding additional layers that form a complex, interweaving mesh of an arrangement, a sense begins to grow that this music isn’t quite of this earth. It isn’t “extraterrestrial”, really—the instrumentation has an organic, lived-in feel and the lyrics are pointedly terrestrial, speaking of the temporal cycles that drive the seasons around us and push humans through stagnation and fleeting pleasures alike. Rather, it feels like watching a late spring sunset from a back porch in an alternate reality, where children read Berenstein Bears novels, Nelson Mandela died in prison, and Western music tonality is based on exact whole-number frequency ratios tuned using the 60Hz hum of old electrical wiring¹. 

The rest of the album winds further into the weeds of unorthodox music theory, calling forth more visions from a series of existences slightly orthogonal to our own with largely successful results. At its best, Spiral Garden communicates a sentimentality that is somewhat askew yet deeply heartfelt, a dreamlike filter over nostalgic summertime memories that tints them with a color you don’t quite have a name for. A clear example is “Heirophony”, which takes its fancy 15/8 meter and exotic 5-limit tuning and turns it into a deliriously beautiful indie folk almost-waltz, striking the very core of my soul in a place I didn’t know existed. A similar beauty thrums through the whisper-soft lullaby of closer “A View from the Trees”, where Hjertmann’s tender vocals and the gentle layering of acoustic and slide guitars are so enrapturing that its 60/16 time and multiple massive modulations go almost unnoticed. And it’s not just the pretty stuff that lands, either. “Shovel” is the song where the band’s Appalachian roots are most apparent, with Hjertmann adding three strings to an actual shovel to form a lead instrument that ends up sounding something like a cross between a banjo and a sitar. Its lyrics of tradition and nature colliding with capitalism feel authentic and lived-in, and it’s just fun to hear this bunch of theory nerds unwind a little with a comparatively direct, rootsy bop.

Unfortunately, it is extremely hard to craft an album this innovative without some experiments going awry, and Spiral Garden are no exception. Sometimes they just go a bit too far, as in “Aurora”, the weirdest track out of an already eccentric bunch. While the intricate hocketing and syllabic interplay between Hjertmann and Hunnicutt’s voices is undeniably impressive, and the distorted rhythm guitar is a nice change of pace, on the whole its overindulgence in polyrhythm makes it come across as a bit of a mess, and its spacey tone and overly abstract lyrics play counter to the band’s strengths. On the opposite side of the coin we have “Beal-Four Island Industrial Park Museum”, a dreamlike instrumental soundscape whose atmospherics are lovely for a while, but end up dragging a tad over its nine-minute runtime. Most unfortunate, though, is “Shadow Key”, whose fascinating concept of two microtonal modes colliding to form a perception of C major is sabotaged by Will Beasley’s snare hits landing with bafflingly off-beat timing, alongside various jarringly dissonant notes sprinkled haphazardly throughout like 100% cacao chocolate chips in a cookie. I’m sure there’s some deep polymetric/microtonal rationale behind all this that I don’t have enough music doctorates to understand, but the fact remains that these sounds, on an instinctive, lizard-brain level, are fundamentally unpleasant in a way that, as other songs on the album prove, they don’t have to be.

And yet, despite all these complaints, I find myself with a deep, abiding affection for Spiral Garden that goes well beyond my awe and respect at the sheer effort and attention to detail that has so clearly been put into its every nook and cranny. It is a captivating, uncompromisingly unique piece of art that, at its best, stuns me in a way no album ever has. Even its stumbles are simply evidence of just how many creative risks have been taken here, how hard Hjertmann and co. have swung for the fences, and I’d take that over Dull Yet Competent Neo-Prog Album #734 any day. This is an album by and for massive nerds, but one with an instinctively accessible, deeply human emotional core, and I eagerly await whatever twisted tesseracts of theory these guys will send listeners spiraling down next time.

Recommended tracks: Septangle, Heirophony, Shovel, A View from the Trees
You may also like: Adjy, Anathallo, Mingjia, foot foot, The Mercury Tree
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook

Spiral Garden is:
– Ben Hjertmann (lead vocals, various handcrafted guitars and keyboards, percussion, sampling)
– Emmalee Hunnicutt (fretless bass, cello, backing and co-lead vocals)
– Graham Thomason (synth, piano, organ, backing vocals)
– Jonathan Snead (viola da gamba, hammered dulcitar, autoharp, slide guitar, backing vocals)
With guests:
– Will Beasley (drums, except where noted)
– Zack Kampf (drums on “Septangle”)
– Daniel Richardson (soprano sax on “Shadow Key”)
– RJ Wuagneux (guitar solo on “Septangle”, additional guitars on “Beal-Four Island Industrial Park Museum”)
– Dave Bullard (drums on “Aurora”)
– Hinton Egerton (theremin on “Aurora” and “Beal-Four Island Industrial Park Museum”)
– Jonathon Sale (tabla on “Paramonde”)
– Lane Claffe (additional guitars on “Beal-Four Island Industrial Park Museum”)

1. Not only does the band “tune to your fridge”, but they have put forward a genuine offer to sell a pitch-shifted copy of the album to any listeners in countries that use 50Hz current instead. These people are committed. ︎

The post Review: Spiral Garden – Spiral Garden appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album photography by Anne-Marie Forker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Label: Karisma Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

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

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

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

Album art by Adam Burke

Style: Power metal, progressive metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Falconer, Blind Guardian, Seven Spires, Fellowship
Country: Canada
Release date: 28 March 2025

Few things are more taxing on a band’s fanbase than having their new album consigned to development hell. Whether from perfectionism, conflicting artistic visions, or life simply getting in the way, new material can be left in limbo for a decade or longer with precious little to satiate listeners in the meantime. Tool used to be the poster child for such procrastination in the prog community, then Wintersun, but in a post-Time II world, artists such as Symphony X and Agent Fresco continue the proud tradition of their latest albums approaching their ten-year anniversary with no concrete news of a follow-up in sight. In a similar vein, Canadian underground prog-power act Viathyn spent the years after their well-regarded 2014 work Cynosure in an uneasy state of semi-hiatus, assuring fans that they weren’t done yet and that a third album would eventually come, but otherwise largely silent. Eventually, however, after putting out a couple albums with the now-disbanded Ravenous, guitarist Jake Wright began to feel that the material he had written for said third album was too personal for the band and, with drummer Dave Crnkovic in tow, released it under the name of a new, ocean-themed project: Panthalassan. Now fully at the helm of this voyage, can Wright successfully sail into the sunset, or is his ship doomed to run ashore in the shallows?

Thankfully, From the Shallows of the Mantle proves itself to be a potent slab of prog-power from front to back, due in large part to Wright’s considerable finesse with the six-string. Even if I didn’t know beforehand that this was a guitarist’s solo venture, the heart-racingly fleet riffs, tuneful leads, and intricate solos that fill every nook and cranny of the album would give me a good hint. And yet, despite the abundant virtuosity on display, it never feels as though Wright is indulging in excessive wankery or playing notes for notes’ sake. True, the songs are uniformly lengthy, averaging around seven minutes apiece, but those minutes are filled with enough musical variety and strikingly memorable melodies to justify their runtime and then some. Song structures in particular often deviate from standard verse-chorus fare in an effort to take the listener on a sweeping journey, with tracks like “Foundation to Firmament” and epic closer “Embers on Our Shore” proving particularly breathtaking in their scope and diversity, easily justifying the “progressive” part of their genre label.

That said, the style of prog-power that Panthalassan provides leans primarily towards the “power” side of things, eschewing the thrashy influences and folkish tinges of Viathyn in favor of soaring, tuneful choruses and more prominent symphonic orchestration, courtesy of Daniel Carpenter (Imperial Age). The end result is a stirring, heroic, yet undeniably melancholic soundtrack to an oceanic voyage where our protagonist must confront the raging squalls both without and within; think Emerald Seas-era Seven Spires minus the harsh vocals, or perhaps a significantly less saccharine version of Fellowship. It is, in a word, kickass, and there were numerous moments where all my fancy words failed me and I was left with nothing to say but “Dude… this fucking rules.” Take, for instance, the coda to “Driftwood Reverie”, where Wright abruptly kicks the tempo up a few notches with a rapid-fire riff backed only by Crnkovic’s minimalistic yet urgent quarter note kick drums that builds into a full minute and a half of deliriously speedy instrumental fireworks. Or the stately guitar leads in the bridge of “Lowstand Leviathans”, or the delightfully unexpected muted trumpet in “Foundation to Firmament”, or the clean guitar and bass interplay in the midsection of “Embers on Our Shore”, or… you get the picture. Wright can craft an instrumental interlude with the absolute best of them, and his compositional chops go well beyond his admittedly incredible ability to Play Guitar Fast.

Everything I’ve said so far would indicate that From the Shallows of the Mantle would be a clear contender for the best power metal album of 2025, and while it does a lot of things extremely well, there is an elephant in the room that keen-eyed readers might have already noticed me skirting around up to this point: the vocals. Perhaps out of the same sense of personal attachment that led to him separating this material from Viathyn in the first place, Wright handles all vocals himself, and all I can say is… he sure gave it his best shot. Now, to be fair, he’s not terrible; he can carry a tune well enough, and his tone, particularly in his lower register, is decent. But he’s just… not that good, either. You know how even the most masterfully written lines can sound goofy if delivered by a wooden actor? Well, Jake Wright is a wooden singer, and his vocal deficiencies kneecap the emotional resonance of an album that’s clearly meant to be deeply personal. His baritone range is a nice change of pace for the genre, and seems to be aiming for a similar feel to Mathias Blad of the late Falconer, but fails to remotely live up to Blad’s smooth tone and expressive theatricality. Sometimes the hook writing is killer enough that the chorus shines despite some merely functional singing (“By Shank’s Mare”), but other times Wright’s amateurish delivery weakens otherwise excellent melodies (“Worth My Salt”), and it’s frustrating.

I want to say that with the right singer, this album could be a solid 8.5 or even 9/10 with enough spins, but given how deeply the material here is tied to its creator as a human being, it’s hard to say who “the right singer” even would be, beyond “an alternate universe version of Jake Wright except he’s a better vocalist”. These lyrics, for all their nautical imagery, aren’t really about a sea voyage, but are rather a powerfully emotional, semi-metaphorical ode to the inner struggles of one man. Barring the occasional clunky rhyme, the words here are striking, touching on fear of standing up for one’s self (“Worth My Salt”), imposter syndrome (“Clandestine Traveler”), and feelings of aimlessness (“Driftwood Reverie”). There’s even an oceanic love song of sorts in the form of “Abalone”, the closest thing here to a ballad, whose tale of falling under a siren’s spell feels equal parts unsettling and romantic. Would this soul-baring effect be lost by using the voice of another, no matter how technically superior of a singer they may be? I can see arguments either way.

Though this one issue may hold back Panthalassan from true greatness, make no mistake: From the Shallows of the Mantle is a very strong debut, and a downright masterclass in composition and instrumental performance. Wright has expressed interest in incorporating more instruments and a wider variety of genre palettes on future work, and after what he’s accomplished here, I’m excited to see what’s next. For now, though, this album still comes recommended for anyone interested in a gripping, heartfelt power metal journey through seas, storms, and self-doubt, all told in an authentic, if somewhat flawed, voice. Or if you just want to hear a guy play guitar really well for an hour, that works too.

Recommended tracks: Driftwood Reverie, Foundation to Firmament, By Shank’s Mare
You may also like: Viathyn, Sunburst, Haishen
Final verdict: 7/10

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

Panthalassan is:
– Jake Wright (guitars, bass, vocals)

With:
Dave Crnković (drums)
Daniel Carpenter (orchestration, piano)

The post Review: Panthalassan – From the Shallows of the Mantle appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

(No cover artist credited)

Style: progressive rock, art rock, post-rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Black Country New Road, Mother Falcon, Slint, Pixies
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 22 February 2025

Of all the infamously terrible, “so bad it’s good” albums throughout music history, few have a story as fascinatingly tragicomic as The Shaggs‘ Philosophy of the World. The band was composed of three sisters with zero musical training who were abruptly handed guitars and drums and forced into making an album by their overbearing father in an effort to fulfill a palm-reading prophecy (yes, really). The end result was, predictably, an incompetent, untuned mess with an incomprehensible sense of rhythm, yet there was something about its utter naivete about the very basics of music that was uniquely charming, and it would garner such high-profile admirers as Frank Zappa and Kurt Cobain over the years. Even now, songs such as “My Pal Foot Foot” are inspiring new artists, including a certain group of musicians from Bristol who named their band after the song, and not, as some might suppose, a foot fetish or a disdain for the metric system. Can they recreate the same level of charm as their namesake disasterpiece on debut still waters, empty house, minus the “disaster” part?

Ironically, for a band named after a group whose draw largely lay in their complete disconnect from any recognizable musical influences, foot foot draw their sound from a very specific time and place. Namely, they are a clear product of the “Windmill Scene”, the pack of erratic British post-punk bands such as Black Country New Road, black midi, and Squid that changed the lives of an entire generation of terminally online music nerds. Among those, they sit close to the BCNR end of the spectrum, with a predilection for languid yet emotionally driven post-rock buildups broken up by interjections of dissonant chaos, combined with lush orchestrations offering plenty of sax and violin. However, foot foot has a vibe all their own, largely due to Esther Pollock’s vocals. In stark contrast to, say, the anguished emotionality of Isaac Wood or the rapid-fire mania of Geordie Greep, Pollock’s voice is hushed and feather-light throughout, with a flat, distant affectation that feels more and more uncanny as the music behind her grows increasingly unsettled. Her floaty, indie-girl whisper singing comes off as a hollow facade of pleasantness, never once raising its intensity even over the shapeshifting, dissonant riffs of “Rivers Phoenix/Macaulay Culkin” or the frenetic, nervy rhythms of “Crawl Ball”. It makes for a hauntingly effective contrast, especially given the lyrics that touch upon abandonment, depression, and codependency.

Overall, still waters, empty house feels like a dream, for both good and ill. It’s sometimes ethereally beautiful, sometimes ugly and frightful, but beneath it all there’s an undercurrent of unreality, like it’ll all stop making sense if you look at it too closely. Even in its calmer moments, such as the otherwise straightforward indie rock of “Army Wives” and the soft ballad “Everyman”, something about the harmony feels wrong, with just enough dissonance that it feels like looking at your bedside lamp and realizing it’s not casting any shadows. And yet, there are moments where these clouds of harmonic uncertainty part and let a gorgeous ray of musical sunlight through, and it’s an absolute revelation. Take, for instance, the downright euphoric cresting wave of strings and percussion that forms the climax of album highlight “Soft Mints”, or the wall of violins and guitar feedback in the aptly titled “Slow Song” that feels as weepingly, monumentally glacial as a melting Arctic ice sheet. Sam Greenwood’s violin work in particular sets the tone excellently throughout, leading the way through gentle, serene melodies, manic bursts of energy, and everything in between.

Unfortunately, foot foot do have a few awkward stumbling blocks that keep still waters, empty house from becoming a true RYM-core classic. My biggest problem with the album comes with its occasionally excessive and clumsy implementation of its more chaotic passages. For music like this, dissonance is like cumin—a useful spice, but one that can easily overpower the whole dish if not used in moderation, and for the most part the band seems to understand that. However, there are a few places where they go overboard, most egregiously in opener “Haberdashery” where Evo Ethel delivers a truly wretched saxophone solo, a blast of nonsensical squawking that sounds like Ornette Coleman choking to death while giving fellatio to a balloon animal. And while they can certainly play their instruments, there is a bit of The Shaggs in how loose and occasionally sloppy the band are in matching their rhythms with one another. Sometimes this comes off as refreshingly organic, like in “Soft Mints” where Jesse Pollock’s ever-so-slightly out of time bass lends the music a giddy, heartbeat-skipping feel. In “Rivers Phoenix/Macaulay Culkin”, though, when the rhythm section is left alone to play a menacing odd-meter riff between louder, more cacophonous passages, their frustratingly inconsistent pocket ends up sapping the momentum in places where a tighter groove would have added to it greatly.

The hard part about numerical scores like the one below is they only give an album’s mean quality, with no information on its variance. Most of the time, when an album gets this score, it’s a safe, inoffensive listen that manages “pretty good” but fails to strive for anything greater. still waters, empty house is the exact opposite, a pendulum chaotically swinging about three points in either direction between the transcendent and the grating. Like their namesake, foot foot have found a sound that, perhaps unintentionally, blends elements of genius and incompetence. However, they’ve flipped the ratio on its head; while Philosophy of the World was a record mostly composed of garbage elevated by glimmers of accidental brilliance, foot foot have made a generally very strong album whose few yet crucial flaws hold it back from greatness. Perhaps more than most records we review here, though, still waters, empty house shows immense potential; if the band can clean up the messy spots in their musicianship and hone in on the vein of potent emotions they’ve already begun to mine, they’ll make something truly special. I don’t need a palm reading to tell me that much.

Recommended tracks: Soft Mints, Slow Song
You may also like: Cime, Eunuchs, The Sonora Pine, Henry Cow
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

foot foot is:
– Esther Pollock (vocals, guitars)
– Jesse Pollock (bass)
– Llyr Cox (drums, cello)
– Sam Greenwood (violin)
– Evo Ethel (saxophone)

The post Review: foot foot – still waters, empty house appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive rock, neofolk, ambient (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Anathema, Heilung, The Pineapple Thief, Lunatic Soul
Country: Sweden
Release date: 31 January 2025

You’re traveling alone along a dark forest path, wrapping your cloak tight as the first raindrops of an impending storm begin to tap softly upon the boughs above. Night has begun to fall, the clouds occluding any semblance of a sunset as the slate-gray sky slowly shifts from light to dark. As if in response to your imminent need for shelter, the glow of a fire beckons from between the trees. Cautiously approaching, you see a strange man in foreign clothing, sitting at a campfire in a shallow cave shielded from the elements. Upon seeing a fellow traveler in need, he invites you in, and while you’re wary of sharing a cave with a stranger, it beats the prospect of staying out in the increasingly harsh elements. While cooking a modest meal upon the fire, the man shares stories and songs from a faraway land, some grandiose and fantastical, some muted and mundane. With every tale, his careworn yet smooth voice begins to meld with the surrounding soundscape of crackling logs and the pounding rain just outside, and the tension from a long day’s travel slowly seeps out of your soul. The journey ahead is long, and many dangers remain, but for a brief moment, there is respite.

Such is the experience of listening to the music of former Tribulation guitarist Jonathan Hultén. While Hultén is no stranger to abrupt genre swings, having overseen his previous band’s transition from straightforward death metal to blackened goth-rock, his decision as a solo artist to abandon metal entirely in favor of hushed, acoustic folk music on 2020’s Chants From Another Place was about as much of a 180-degree turn as he could have possibly made. For his latest effort, Eyes of the Living Night, Hultén aims to diversify his new sound into something more lush, dynamic, and sweeping. Sure, the soft, acoustic Nick Drake-isms of his previous work are still present, particularly in the campfire croon of “Vast Tapestry”, but with the addition of a more colorful sonic palette this time around. You’ve got electric guitars, synths, gnarly organ (“The Dream Was the Cure”), and programmed electronic beats (“Afterlife”), to name a few, and it makes the overall genre of the album rather difficult to pin down. Hultén calls it “ambient dream-grunge”, which seems at first blush like an intentionally absurd mess of self-contradictory terms, yet ends up being as good a term as any to categorize the fuzzed-out, melancholic, ethereal sounds on offer.

Still, with all this experimentation in genre, there is always the risk of straying from the carefully maintained tone of hazy, primeval warmth that wraps around the listener like a warm blanket, tossing it aside in favor of mere shallow gimmicks. Happily, that is decidedly not the case here; every switchup in the soundscape is but a tool in service of establishing the album’s positively immaculate sense of vibe. The closest comparison would be later-era Anathema, who similarly used whatever musical elements made sense in crafting their melodramatic yet ultimately sunny and optimistic brand of soft prog– and while Hultén may approach things with a bit more melancholic, woodsy mystique, he too makes music aiming to unburden the listener’s soul and make it soar. From the grandiose post-rock-adjacent dynamic swells in opener “The Saga And the Storm” to the atmospheric solo piano piece “Through the Fog, Into the Sky”, there’s a sense of sweeping, transportive magic throughout, no matter the scale, as though each song were its own unique yet equally cozy little fey dimension.

How Hultén achieves this is a bit difficult to neatly describe. The melodies are a part of it, to be sure. Like all of the best folk music, a number of the melodies here, such as the gentle yet hypnotizing waltz “Song of Transience”, feel timeless, as if they had thrummed for millennia in the collective subconscious of humanity before Hultén plucked them out of the ether and gave them physical form. The arrangements and production are also warm and full of depth, lending a sense of vitality and fullness throughout. However, the biggest X-factor here is Hultén’s voice. True, he’s not some showy virtuoso (though parts of “The Dream Was the Cure” and “Starbather” show he can belt it out if needed) but rather he sets himself apart through his absolutely stunning use of vocal timbre. Not only does his natural tone have just the right tinge of roughness to add a sense of humanity to an otherwise-angelic croon, but his use of layering and timbral shifts makes his voice blend into the instrumental arrangement in a truly unique way. Take, for instance, the thrumming, vibrant harmonies in “The Dream Was the Cure” that sound reminiscent of the drone tones in bagpipes or hurdy-gurdy. Or maybe the mesmerizing combination of rasp and vibrato that somehow makes a held note in “Riverflame” remind me of the talkbox intro to Snarky Puppy‘s “Sleeper”, of all things.

Any criticisms I can muster towards Eyes of the Living Night are relatively minor, and stem largely from personal taste. I would say that Hultén’s complete avoidance of any outright solos or anything remotely “metal” does slightly dampen the album’s more energetic songs. Some slightly heavier guitars at the climax of “The Saga and the Storm” would have made it hit so much harder, and adding in some kind of extended, progressive instrumental passage to “Starbather” would solidify the ’70s prog throwback vibe the song flirts with but doesn’t quite commit to, while also making it feel like a proper showstopping closer. In addition, the ballads’ melodies do occasionally skew a bit simple and “nursery rhyme” for my liking (“Vast Tapestry” in particular), and “A Path Is Found” is a decent but somewhat inessential interlude where the guitar and violin mostly spin their wheels for a minute.

At the end of the day, though, these are small blemishes upon an absolute stunner of an album. It successfully takes the sounds of Hultén’s previous work through a marked expansion in scale and musical diversity without sacrificing the fragile yet heartfelt coziness that made it special in the first place. Eyes of the Living Night takes that quiet, peaceful inner sanctuary and expands it into its own world, a starlit realm whose shadowed corners hold no dangers, just treasures that the light hasn’t quite reached yet. The night within is, in its own way, a living thing, a dynamic entity whose darkness and dread can be dispelled if one has the determination to press on and the will to switch one’s perspective. It is a challenging journey, yet a rewarding one, and there is no shame in resting for a moment by a nice, warm campfire before pressing on.

Recommended tracks: Afterlife, Riverflame, The Dream Was the Cure, The Ocean’s Arms
You may also like: Tvinna, Silent Skies, Oak
Final verdict: 8/10

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

Label: Kscope – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Jonathan Hultén is:
– Jonathan Hultén (vocals, all instruments except those noted below)

With:
Esben Willems (Drums)
Ida Nilsson (Harmonica on “Dawn”)
Maria Larsson (Violin on “A Path Is Found”)

The post Review: Jonathan Hultén – Eyes of the Living Night appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Cover art by Trevor Niemann

Style: Progressive rock, progressive metal, shred (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: The Aristocrats, Steve Vai, Buckethead, Sons of Apollo
Country: New Jersey, United States
Release date: 24 January 2025

Though his latest record may be entitled “Returns!”, it’s hard to say that fretless guitar wizard Ron “Bumblefoot¹” Thal has really gone anywhere. Best known for his stint as lead guitarist for Guns n’ Roses during their Chinese Democracy release and subsequent tour, Bumblefoot has had quite the prolific career before and after, releasing numerous solo albums, being one of the better parts of prog supergroups Sons of Apollo and Whom Gods Destroy², and even serving a brief stint as the frontman for Asia of all bands. But, of course, Thal means the title as a reference to his return to releasing instrumental shred music, which he has largely stayed away from since his early Shrapnel Records days in the ’90s. While much of that subgenre is often maligned for being a series of pointless exercises in onanism that spurt out a million notes without a single one sticking in the listener’s brain, Thal has a unique advantage in coming back to it thirty years older and wiser, carrying decades’ worth of experience crafting actual songs around his guitar wizardry in a variety of genres. But can he utilize that growth in musicality to craft something vibrant and interesting, or is this new offering simply a return to old habits?

The answer, much like the music itself, is complicated. True, eight-minute opener “Simon in Space” doesn’t put its best foot forward, with its abrupt in medias res opening salvo of chaotic, directionless odd meter djent riffs backed by synths that can only be described as “flatulent”. After a bit, though, it opens up into something more spacious and restrained, with two separate melodic refrains and a generally sparser backdrop that gives his frankly extraterrestrial flights of sweeping and tapping fancy room to breathe. And, for the most part, this is a pattern that holds throughout the rest of the album. Though there’s certainly enough impossibly intricate technique on offer here to send your average guitar nerd into reflexive stank-face mode, tracks like “Planetary Lockdown”, “The Thread”, and especially the soaringly tuneful “Cintaku” balance their virtuosity with a clear focus on melodic songwriting and a refreshingly tasteful approach to phrasing that makes even their most fleet-fretted passages go down smooth. Of course, not every creative decision lands—”Monstruoso” features the unwelcome return of the farty djent with an additional dubstep twist—but on the whole, this is some top-shelf shred that even the uninitiated can enjoy.

Still, Bumblefoot is clearly aware of how samey a set of solely speedy shredding can become, no matter how tastefully done, so there’s an obvious effort to spice things up by giving each song its own unique identity. One of the ways Thal keeps things interesting is by inviting a series of guest musicians, including some serious heavyweights like Steve Vai, Guthrie Govan, and even renowned astrophysicist Brian May. While all three are welcome features, Govan definitely has the most substantial presence on his track, and listening to him trading mind-bending solos back and forth with Thal on “Anveshana” is a treat—just two incredibly skilled musicians throwing ideas at each other and clearly having a blast doing so. 

Beyond guest features, though, there’s also the inclusion of wildly diverse sound palettes from a variety of genres, with Thal seemingly tossing in anything that he thought would sound cool in various little bits of musical gimmickry. There’s a square-dance country tune (“Moonshine Hootenanny”), a bit of classical (“Chopin Waltz Op64 No2”), and an obligatory Spanish guitar interlude (“Andalusia”), among others. His commitment to each musical bit, however, is oddly inconsistent. Sometimes, as in “Moonshine Hootenanny”, he seems to lose interest in the chosen genre midway through, wandering off into a series of decidedly un-country prog metal solo passages before abruptly realizing “Oh, whoops, I’m supposed to be doing that yeehaw shit right now” and jumping right back into it as if nothing happened. Meanwhile, in “Funeral March” (featuring Ben Karas of Thank You Scientist³ on violin), Bumblefoot runs into the opposite problem—the mournful atmosphere cries out for a weeping, Gilmour-esque electric guitar climax, but Thal chooses this moment of all moments to hold back on the fireworks. 

And yet there are times more often than not when his genre exploration strikes a strong balance between fitting into his chosen sound while still adding the distinct Bumblefoot style. His take on Chopin works in a great deal of variety in its arrangement, adapting the melody from a calm, well-mannered classical guitar waltz to Malmsteen-esque neoclassical virtuosity to even some Latin-esque rhythms. The loose, freewheeling “Griggstown Crossing”, meanwhile, offers a killer fretless talkbox solo that takes on the sound of Southern rock in a way that only Ron Thal truly can. In fact, his expert use of the fretless half of his signature double-neck guitar offers Thal a distinct niche among the shred landscape, providing an idiosyncratically liquid and free-flowing sound that stands out from a sea of milquetoast contemporaries.

On the whole, while …Returns! might not land every wild creative swing it throws, it remains an eminently enjoyable and undeniably impressive trip through the quirky mind of one of the most underappreciated guitar slingers out there right now. For the shred faithful, it’s an absolute slam dunk of a recommend, with enough arcane techniques and brain-breakingly complex ascensions up the fretboard to inspire months of fine-toothed analysis. Even for those who don’t know their sweeps from their taps, though, it’s just a fun, dizzying ride of soaring melodies, delightful genre dabbling, and some damn good guitar. It may have taken a while, but the artist known as Bumblefoot has indeed returned, and I hope he sticks around a bit longer this time.

Recommended tracks: Chopin Waltz Op64 No2, Cintaku, Anveshana, Griggstown Crossing
You may also like: Whom Gods Destroy, Consider the Source, Marbin
Final verdict: 7/10

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

Bumblefoot is:
– Ron Thal (double neck guitar, bass, synths)

With:
Kyle Hughes (drums, percussion)
Steve Vai (guitar solo on “Monstruoso”)
Brian May (guitar solo on “Once in Forever”)
Jerry Gaskill (drums on “Once in Forever”)
Derek Sherinian (keyboards on “Once in Forever”)
Guthrie Govan (guitar solos on “Anveshana”)
Ben Karas (violin on “Funeral March”)

1. Named after a foot infection common in chickens. Yes, really. ︎
2. The thing with this, of course, is that every member of those groups was “one of the better parts”. It was the whole that left something to be desired. ︎
3. Fun fact: TYS founder Tom Monda received guitar lessons from Bumblefoot as a teenager, which would heavily influence his own fretless technique. ︎

The post Review: Bumblefoot – …Returns! appeared first on The Progressive Subway.