Style: Progressive rock, symphonic rock (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: King Crimson, Camel, Vangelis, Anekdoten, Focus
Country: Norway
Release date: 25 July 2025

In the kingdom of the rock band, the throne usually belongs to the singer, who commands attention while the instruments orbit like loyal courtiers. There may be a guitarist lurking like a scheming vizier, angling to one day seize control, or a keyboardist playing the role of the staunch and trusty chancellor—perhaps the favourite of the court, even if the crown rests elsewhere. But in instrumental bands, the throne sits conspicuously empty. Some groups fill the vacancy by crowning another instrument as monarch. Others leave the court in disarray, offering tracks that feel like singer-less karaoke, shapeless without a clear voice from the throne.

But there is a secret third option: on their debut album The Book of Hours, Norwegian band Agropelter opts for a little throne room reno, removing the seat of power entirely in favour of a round table. Gathered around it are flute, organ, mellotron, guitar, fretless bass, piano, and more; each takes turns steering the conversation and weaving lush, indulgent harmonies. The resulting sound draws heavily on the pizzazz of 70s and 80s prog rock while peppering in jazz, classical, cinematic hues, and even a dash of AOR. It’s a lively musical dialogue, rather than a single ruling figure holding court.

Evoking everything from Rachmaninoff to King Crimson to the Old-School RuneScape soundtrack within a single track, one could easily imagine Agropelter’s multi-instrumental milieu feeling cramped or scatterbrained. However, The Book of Hours unfolds with unhurried assurance. Those who prefer their music structured will find no catchily-packaged verse-chorus deals here; the album flows more like a stream of consciousness, a winding road meandering towards something that always stays just past the vanishing point. Most of the time, this works: I wouldn’t bat an eye if you told me that the solo five minutes into “The Book of Hours Pt I” was lifted from a Rachmaninoff or Beethoven piano concerto, as its long phrases lope elegantly in arcing forms, but the final tumble down the keyboard’s low end to the waiting mellotron feels effortless and natural, too. However, not all twists in the road are as deftly navigated. Take, for instance, the bass solo that bubbles up from the murky bottom of the dense soundscape in “Burial Mound”. Though sharply executed and poignantly eerie, it trails off without a true resolution. And the same goes for album opener “The Flute of Peril”—Agropelter hasn’t yet mastered the art of gracefully laying a track to rest once the journey has run its course.

The Book of Hours opens with an atmospheric fricassée of cawing crows, thunder, and rain that occasionally reappears between tracks. Though the colourfully varied instrumental tapestry often delights with unexpected timbres poking out of the thrumming inter-track ambiance, there are fewer surprises when it comes to the melody. That is to say, Agropelter is content to resolve phrases and harmonies in ways that you might anticipate—pretty and satisfying rather than challenging, dissonant, or unsettled. For example, the cinematic major-key theme that closes “The Book of Hours Pt I”:¹ harmonically, its path is somewhat telegraphed, but the effect is less that of a predictable cliché, and more of a puzzle piece sliding neatly into place.

Whether it’s the sultry, jazz-tinged piano in “The Book of Hours Pt II” or the shimmering AOR glint of the keys and guitar that open “Levitator”, Agropelter’s stylistic flourishes never feel out of place. Instead, though the dominant accents are the brio of vintage prog rock and the elegant grandeur of Romantic Classical music, each voice still finds its place at the round table. Agropelter may have never crowned a ruler, but The Book of Hours proves that a court can thrive without one. Together, the album’s numerous influences and instruments coalesce into a debut that surprises and charms at nearly every turn.

Recommended tracks: Burial Mound, The Book of Hours Pt I, The Book of Hours Pt III
You may also like: Øresund Space Collective, Agusa, Änglagård, King Garcia
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Official Website | Instagram

Label: The Laser’s Edge – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Agropelter is:
– Kay Olsen (guitars, bass, church organ, keyboard)
– Jonas Reingold (fretless bass)
– Mattias Olson (percussion, synths)
– Andreas Sjøen (drums)
With guests:
– Jordi Castella (grand piano)
– Eli Mine (harpsichord)
– Norlene M (cello)
– Aileen Antu (double bass)
– Luis Vilca (alto flute)
– Hannah Danets (flute)
– Zhivago (bassoon)
– Edgar Asmar (duduk)

1. This and a few passages in “The Book of Hours Pt III” call to mind Mark Knopfler’s soundtrack work. ︎

The post Review: Agropelter – The Book of Hours appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: avant-garde metal, progressive metal, chamber music, progressive rock, Romanticism (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rush, Mertz, Liturgy
Country: California, United States
Release date: 1 August 2025

What makes metal metal? Indubitably, it’s some blend of attitude, riffs, lyrical themes, instrumentation, and “heaviness” (that last one is to say, you know it when you hear it). Until 2020, I would have thrown in distortion to the list of essential characteristics, but Kaatayra’s Só Quem Viu o Relâmpago à sua Direita Sabe, currently still my album of the decade, changed that as a fully acoustic yet recognizably black metal album. New avant-garde metal band Rintrah push my conceptions of metal even further, abandoning even the harsh vocals of Só Quem. That’s right, The Torrid Clime is classical acoustic guitar, drumming, and reedy, belted clean vocals. So what makes Rintrah metal? 

Their unabashed veneration for the Romantics. I mean, ask anybody; Romantic poetry is hella metal. But seriously, since metal’s earliest days, its practitioners have been neoromantics, intentionally or not. The genre’s acolytes are obsessed with individuality and freedom of expression, an idealization of the past and the exotic (through incorporations of folk music, for example¹), and, above all, a singular desire to attain the sublime. Metal mainstays—crushing heaviness, screamed and growled vocals, blast beats, crazy displays of guitar wizardry, singing of gore and nihilism—all act to make you, the listener, feel small compared to the display of sonic power. As eminent Romantic philosopher Edmund Burke said: “Whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.”² Like Romanticism, metal is, at its heart, a rebellion: against the shackles of a boring life, from the very start in the industrial hellscape of Manchester. It’s designed to make you feel something profound, with heaviness as its modus operandi.

Simply put, metal is obviously Romantic, and Rintrah fully embodies the philosophy more explicitly than any other band I’ve ever heard, so those dulcet acoustic guitars and blast beats are more than enough to be metal to the philosophical core. Rintrah’s Romantic aesthetic is, in a word, audacious. Adorning the album cover of The Torrid Clime’s is the 1818 painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich, a work which is literally first on Wikipedia if you search “Romantic art.” The lyrics across Rintrah’s debut record are pulled from various Romantic poets—William Blake, Percy Shelley, Emily Dickinson, Lord Byron, Charles Baudelaire, and Charlotte Smith.³ There is even a Mertz piece, “Nocturne, Op. 4, No. 2,” on the record fitted in as a mid-album interlude. 

So yeah, The Torrid Clime is pretty damn metal, although musically it’s a far cry from what I’d expect. There are no grandiose orchestrations here à la Mahler, Mendelssohn, or Dvorak. Classical guitarist Justin Collins manages to make his instrument sound like a harp, while Arsenio Santos on bass (Howling Sycamore) gives The Torrid Clime a Rush-like rhythmic edge. The vocals provided by Otrebor (Botanist) and William DuPlain (ex-Botanist) are also Rush-y, powerful, nasal-y tenors; like Geddy Lee, I could see Otrebor and DuPlain’s vocals being a sticking point for listeners. Yet their delivery of the various poems is admirable, with drama, bombast, and spot-on cadence. It’s quite the bardic performance, in fact, and one could easily imagine one of the vocalists with the charmingly strummed guitar lines traveling city to city performing their poetry.⁴ The guitar tones are succulent with plenty of technical embellishment, keeping the music quite harmonically complex. During the faster moments, like those in “Ozymandias” and “On the Giddy Brink,” I even hear strong hints of Kaatayra with the rhythmic intricacy of the guitar parts—not to mention the wonky rhythms of tracks like “The Chariot.” The compositions are also full of masterful transitions which perfectly underscore thematic shifts in the text, such as the transition between the main riff and the softer, richer one in “Fearful Symmetry.” 

For much of The Torrid Clime, the frantic blast beats are in wonderful juxtaposition with the calmer classical guitar and breathily belted vocals, but at times Otrebor’s drumming becomes completely detached from the plot as Collin’s guitar and Santos’ bass fall out of rhythmic contact with him—the vocalists are off doing their own thing in the stratosphere most of the time, regardless. Rintrah’s unique combination of sounds works in its favor until their delicate synergy becomes unraveled. Thankfully, for most of the tracks on The Torrid Clime, Rintrah stay in their lane, letting those euphonious guitar lines, thumping bass, unique vocals, and blast beats all interact with surprising cohesion. The tracks that change up Rintrah’s characteristic sound are also strong points on the record: instrumental “Nocturne, Op. 4, No. 2,” blast-less slow track “Mutability,” and a cappella finale “Into an Echo.” Even within the band’s focused sound, one can never know what to expect. 

The Torrid Clime is a unique album driven by guitars that sound like harps and charismatic vocalists who could travel town to town in some idyllic reimagining of the past. Fraught with gentle tension and unruly percussion, The Torrid Clime doesn’t induce the sublime as obviously as in lots of metal but rather in a wholly unexpected way; as I kept returning to the album, it revealed itself to me in the dramatic performance of the lyrics, in the percussive transitions between riffs, and in the complex, expansive chords. Rintrah is an intriguing project, undoubtedly not for every metalhead, but for those with an open mind and an appreciation for the philosophical, the sublime awaits.

Recommended tracks: Fearful Symmetry, On the Giddy Brink, In Tempests, Into an Echo
You may also like: Botanist, Forêt Endormie, Howling Sycamore, Kaatayra
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp

Label: Fiadh Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook

Rintrah is:
– Justin Collins – guitar
– Otrebor – drums, backing and lead vocals
– William Duplain – lead and backing vocals
– Arsenio Santos – bass

1. The Romantics’ glorification of the past, promotion of shared heritage, and emphasis on extreme emotion all contributed greatly to the rise of nationalism. This is also how I believe NSBM became such a problem in the black metal world. Metal’s full embrace of the Romantics’ philosophy comes with its negatives, too. ︎
2.  From A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. ︎
3. Rintrah don’t even quote some of my favorite basic-bitch Romantic poets like Colerdige, Wordsworth, and Keats. Definitely look into all of these Romantic poets, though! ︎
4. The bard is a common Romantic motif in their exaltation of the past. ︎

The post Review: Rintrah – The Torrid Clime appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive rock, symphonic prog (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Gong, Steve Hillage, Rush, Motorpsycho
Country: Tennessee, United States
Release date: 4 July 2025

Very few works are as satisfying to come across as an overly ambitious yet brilliant opus. Azure’s Fym, Dissona’s Paleopneumatic, and Native Construct’s Quiet World are journeys across fantastical landscapes and across genres, dedicating themselves to a persistent theatrical grandeur; their lofty goals are overwhelmingly successful, and a slight lack of polish lends these records a timeless charm and a much-needed sense of humanity. Enter Pishogue, a genre-transcending duo featuring Georgia’s Finnian Boyson as Bælor’Throndoth and Tennessee’s Spife as, uh, Spife. Pishogue’s self-titled LP explored menacing and hypnotic Berlin school synths as a framework for an expansive story involving the collapsed continent of The Eldslunds, a setting rife with advanced technology, magical corruption, and prophecy. The duo’s latest release, The Tree at the End of Time, wholly recontextualizes the synths of Pishogue into a symphonic prog framework, detailing a pivotal moment in The Eldslunds’ history involving the transfer of knowledge and subsequent ascension of a Pishogue introduced in the debut. Like the titular character, do Pishogue transcend their expectations or do they collapse under the weight of their ambition?

Comprised of two expansive twenty-minute pieces, The Tree at the End of Time explores myriad textures as the movements weave in and out of free-form keyboard soundscapes and psychedelic, high-energy progressive rock jams. Dissonance is used as an accentuating feature, both in the synths (14:10 on “The Ascension of Metatron”) and in the guitars (4:30 on “The Tree”). In The Eldslunds, improvisation is the name of the game: each track moves about within a loose structure, focused more on the natural evolution of a song than on careful placement of motifs as Spife and Bælor’Throndoth play ideas off of each other. The record exudes 70s sensibilities, particularly in the fuzzy and warm production, the instrumental timbre, and in Spife’s vocal performance. Atop all this is an intricate story involving a Pishogue discovering a tree that imbues them with aeons of knowledge, cementing them as an avatar for the old gods.

Throughout both synthesized soundscapes and distorted progressive rock, the free and relaxed nature of improvisation is fully embodied across The Tree at the End of Time. Ideas introduced by Spife are allowed to stew for a few bars before Bælor’Throndoth introduces additional layers, and vice versa. Most notable is the accelerando drum buildup near the end of “The Tree”. Bælor’Throndoth smartly waits for Spife’s drum solo to culminate before releasing the tension with bright synth pads and swirling organ melodies, only to then build those into an utterly explosive finale alongside a cacophony of percussion. Additionally, the ferocious and kinetic jam at 4:20 on “The Tree” features keyboards that slowly creep in, allowing the listener to settle into the groove before being twisted into a frenetic and whining synth/guitar dance. Pishogue’s synergy is palpable across the record, as their performances show a prudence necessary to keep the loose song structures stable and cohesive. However, that doesn’t mean they restrain themselves entirely, as plenty of chaos is allowed to bleed in across both pieces in tandem with the more intense story beats. A frightening and volcanic section erupts around 12:40 of “The Ascension of Metatron”, where wailing guitars and stuttering drums are buried under harsh organ stabs, reflecting the inability of the Pishogue’s mind to comprehend the weight of The Tree’s gifted knowledge.

Whereas most prog prides itself on crystal-clear, almost clinical precision and cleanliness, Pishogue revel in an organic and raw feel that lends itself magnificently to The Tree at the End of Time’s improvisational nature. For example, the organ melody that introduces a Rush-flavored drum pattern on “The Ascension of Metatron” begins just a bit earlier than the drums, and the two fall out of lockstep for a couple of bars near the end of the first verse when briefly switching to an off-beat, but the section as a whole is so energetic and fun that the brief blemishes do little to mar the enjoyment. Where it becomes a bit more challenging to appreciate The Tree at the End of Time’s looseness is when these moments go on for too long: the organ solo at 4:50 on “Ascension” falls out of line with the drums a bit too persistently and ends up pulling me out of the experience for a moment. The track quickly pulls itself back together, though, with biting drum-bass interplay leading into a delicate and ethereal folk section. Additionally, many of the vocal performances are a little too raw and wild, particularly across “Ascension” during the blown-out and overwhelming vocals around 14:25 and the pitchy delivery in the track’s first verse. These are likely meant to represent the more fractured moments of the Pishogue’s sanity, but they are just a bit too grating in delivery; if anywhere could use some polish, it would be these sections.

Despite the occasionally eldritch soundscapes, free-form song structure, and use of dissonance, much of The Tree at the End of Time is ineffably cozy thanks to its unapologetic 70s sensibilities. The aforementioned folk section of “Ascension”, for example, features soft harmonized vocals, gently picked guitars, and wistfully delicate synth melodies not unlike the contemporary folk of the time; a playful flute dances around the section as well. Around 9:10 on “The Tree”, a fuzzy guitar melody evokes the feeling of entering an enchanted forest before leading into a triumphant solo. The more intense sections of the record often sit right alongside these more serene and bright sections, showcasing an effective compositional balance and evoking a dynamic narrative arc with logical flow.

The Tree at the End of Time shows a skillful collaboration between two artists, embracing the organic and sometimes messy nature of improvisation among monolithic symphonic prog pieces. Though a few sections could benefit from a bit of extra polish, particularly in the vocal delivery and in the rhythmic execution, much of the record effectively glides along its stream of consciousness and tells a dynamic high fantasy story.

Recommended tracks: The Tree
You may also like: Moving Gelatine Plates, We Broke The Weather, Karmic Juggernaut, David Bedford, Egg
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Instagram

Label: Independent

Pishogue is:
– Spife (drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, violin, vocals)
– Bælor’Throndoth (bass, keyboards)

The post Review: Pishogue – The Tree at the End of Time appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

– The Machine Stops, E. M. Forster, 1909

One of the most admirable qualities about musicians working in the progressive genres is their openness to new ideas. Indeed, it’s one of the guiding tenets of composing and listening to progressive music. Unbeholden to the conventions and tropes of other genres, true prog manifests as a willingness to push boundaries; it becomes an almost kleptocratic impulse to look across the entire musical spectrum, take the bits that work, and fit them into your own style. Perhaps the most obvious example of progressing genres forward is Meshuggah’s invention of a whole new rhythmic paradigm which has come to define the progressive music of the twenty-first century, birthed a genre, and begat a whole new subgenre thereafter¹. Recently, artists in progressive music have begun to incorporate microtonal elements (King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, The Mercury Tree, Kostnatění), leading to a whole new tonal language to play with. Meanwhile, French group Mantra masterminded Medium, an album with two tracks that can be played either separately or simultaneously to “create” a third song. The progressive spirit is insatiable and willing to try anything. Even an idea that may well break music. 

The rollout of so-called AI has happened at an inexorable pace, and as a result you’ll likely be familiar with its roll-out either in your job, your personal life, or just from the relentless pace of the news about it. While AI may or may not have utility in realms like medicine and science, we’re going to focus on how it pertains to art, and more specifically music. You’ll like have seen “AI art” in some form or another. Facebook has been flooded with plausible algorithmically generated pictures of idyllic scenes in order to farm views for money; Twitter (now known by its dwindling user base as X) is beholden to a Musk-made chatbot called Grok which kept telling users, including its creator, that they’re basically fascists, until they fiddled with its programming and made it a fascist itself; and Instagram has repeatedly shown me videos from an account where a scene from a video game plays while artificially simulated voices of Stewie and Peter Griffin from Family Guy dissect the history of a particular classic prog band. Last year, in an effort to make a small stand against AI slop in our scene, we published a short PSA saying that we would call out AI art used to make album covers, and requested bands credit the artists they work with so we could credit them in turn. We felt the gesture important, but perhaps it’s insignificant when so many genre giants are willing to play with a technology which stands in stark opposition to the creative impulse and contains much broader threats within its scope.

Introducing the Disrupters 

I know your face, I know your voice
I know your girls, I know your boys
I am the lover of your life (and a handy light at night)
I am the apple of your eye. 

– Life in the Wires Pt.1, Frost*

In a piece for The New Yorker, the sci-fi short story writer Ted Chiang writes that most art “requires an intention to communicate”. While there’s no universally agreed upon definition of art, it being a broad and nebulous thing, for the purposes of this essay, the general tendency for art to have an intention to communicate is key. Think of the scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in which Cameron stares awestruck into the pointillist masterwork of George Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. We don’t know what he’s feeling, but that the piece has touched him deeply is clear, and the scene is one of the best depictions of the power of art. A melody in a song, a face in a painting, a sentence in a novel—all can hit us like an emotional freight train. In the moment that an artist has communicated with us, a transference of ideas through a transitive medium that acts as a middle man through space and time takes place. What we get out of their art may not be what they intended. Ray Bradbury famously argued about this issue with a class of students studying his famous book-burning dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451; to him, the book was meant to be a warning about television. However, to basically everyone else who has ever read it, the book communicated a chilling tale of censorship taken to a terrible extreme. Nevertheless, such examples show that communication of a sort has nevertheless taken place. 

This communication is achieved because artists make choices. Chiang argues that art is the product of a series of choices made by an artist: every word in a novel, and every brushstroke of a painting is a choice. In music, the complexity of choices is immense: notes, instruments and their interactions, vibrato, tone, effects, production and a vast range more. With generative AI, people have been able to generate images, stories, and even music. But the number of choices made is minimal. As Chiang says:

When you give a generative-A.I. program a prompt, you are making very few choices; if you supply a hundred-word prompt, you have made on the order of a hundred choices. If an A.I. generates a ten-thousand-word story based on your prompt, it has to fill in for all of the choices that you are not making.

The same is true of AI music. Google, the company that dropped their infamous slogan “don’t be evil” when it became apparent they could no longer live up to that standard, utilises a database based on two million sound clips, mostly YouTube music clips, for its music generating AI program, Audioset. All the interacting choices usually handled by artists are instead being handed over to algorithms which draw on datasets of granularly analysed audio samples to make plausible decisions as to how your prompt should sound based on how all other music sounds. The result is a distillation, and herein is its anti-creative ethos. A human may be influenced by hundreds of different factors—god knows we’ve reviewed our fair share of bands who made the choice to sound like Opeth or Tool or Dream Theater—but it’s nevertheless a choice. Handing so many decisions over to a generative AI means that almost all opportunities for originality are neatly avoided. Of course, this is the point, as Mikey Schulman, CEO of the AI music company Suno said: “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now… It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software… I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.” Of course, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of why people engage with and produce art; as Chiang puts it, “Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.”

We now have a wealth of examples within the prog and metal scenes of AI use. Most of these are, thankfully, restricted to album art. Among bands we’ve reviewed, Time Voyager by Barock Project, The Path of Decoherence by Advocacy, and, possibly, The Lightbringers by Orion (art “by” Hugh Syme) all spring to mind. Veteran Floridian death metal outfit Deicide courted controversy after adorning their thirteenth album, Banished by Sin, with dreadful AI art; frontman Glen Benton responded with typical sang froid. Dream Theater’s longtime album artist, Hugh Syme, was also implicated by internet sleuths postulating that inconsistencies on the cover for latest release Parasomnia might be explained by AI use². Small artists with a tight budget utilising AI to generate their album art is understandable. It’s less forgivable for established groups with money at their disposal who could easily commission or license artwork from a human artist to utilise generative AI, let alone for established artists themselves, like (allegedly) Hugh Syme to lazily start using AI. Some artists stand by their use of the insurgent tech, others cave to fan pressure, as Pestilence did last year after presenting an AI cover for their greatest hits album, Levels of Perception.

AI album art is the thin end of the wedge. In the underground, some would-be artists are experimenting rather more heavily with AI. A content creator under the moniker D1G1T4L RU1N uses AI to create albums in a variety of genres—the second album of this project shows that sex doesn’t always sell: the AI synthwave record has zero downloads, despite the AI-rendered cover art of a large-chested, conventionally attractive woman³. A “label” called Rift Reaper Records (since removed from Bandcamp) took it a step further, inventing a roster of bands and their new releases collected under one umbrella. The music, as is often the case, sounded passable but uncanny. Singers tended to sound overly digitised, the production had a strange stereo vibe, and one could tell when the track had been edited thanks to incongruous changes in vocal style or instrumentation, the product of new prompts being inserted.

These people, whom I’m loath to call artists, utilise generative AI music apps like Udio and Suno to make their compositions. Such apps offer a range of tools. A user can write a prompt, e.g. “make a thrash song in the vein of Metallica” and receive an output that gives you perhaps two minutes of plausibly Metallica-esque generated slop (which sounds a lot like a description of the last couple of Metallica albums anyway). But with advanced tools, one can edit the initial result: add intros, instrumental sections, codas, change instruments, insert a solo. Doubtlessly, one has to know their way around these technologies to create twenty-minute songs, as many of these content creators do, but we come back to the Chiang problem: while these people make some choices, the bulk are made by the algorithms, and many of those are important qualitative choices. A real band making real music slapping AI art onto their album cover is annoying, but at least the music is real. Nearly everything about these exclusively AI creators, however, is artificial. 

In recent weeks, internet sleuths have uncovered a band called The Velvet Sundown, a blues group with over 1.3 million⁴ monthly Spotify listeners and 48,000 followers at the time of writing (a huge jump from 1,500 followers, just days before)⁵. The group’s two albums were released on June 5th and June 20th of this year, and the album art and band photo are clearly AI generated. The music is, too. Their Spotify bio even comes with an endorsement from Billboard: “They sound like the memory of something you never lived, and somehow make it feel real.” That quote, as you may have guessed, isn’t real; Billboard never said that. In an article for MusicAlly, writer Stuart Dredge points out that their Spotify “popularity” is largely generated by four Spotify accounts seeding their popular, pre-existing playlists with the content of this AI generated band: 

Take Extra Music for example. Its profile has just under 3,000 followers, but its ‘Vietnam War Music‘ playlist has 629,311 saves (accounts adding it to their libraries). The 330-song playlist has tracks from a host of Vietnam War-era artists: Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Rolling Stones, Buffalo Springfield, Jimi Hendrix. Oh, and The Velvet Sundown, whose tracks are nestled at numbers 24, 34, 43, 52, 61, 70, 79, 88, 97, 106, 115, 124, 133, 142, 151, 160, 169, 178, 187, 196, 205, 214, 223, 232, 241 and 250 in its running order. 26 tracks in all – 7.9% of the entire playlist for a band with no obvious ties to the war.

It’s not just Spotify. The Velvet Sundown’s music is available on all of the main music platforms, though Spotify is the one with the most obvious public metrics. Deezer, which has its own AI detection software, has flagged the band’s music as “AI generated content”, and the site estimates that around 20,000 uploaded tracks per day, around 18% of the total uploaded per day, are made with AI. Outside of those main music platforms, you’ll often find nothing. Though the band bio names band members—”vocalist and mellotron sorcerer Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, bassist-synth alchemist Milo Rains, and free-spirited percussionist Orion “Rio” Del Mar”—these people don’t exist, they return no search results⁶. The only purpose of the music is to harvest money from disingenuously obtained streams. Out of curiosity, I looked up the top band in the “fans also like” section on Spotify and that group, Flaherty Brotherhood, was also AI generated (as attested to by Deezer); if AI bands are finding themselves recommended in similar places, it suggests their promoters may be coordinating on pushing multiple groups.

While seeding playlists is one tactic for farming listens, one can’t discount the possibility that bot accounts are being set up to artificially bolster the listener and follower counts of fictitious bands; indeed, this is an existing problem with streaming services, and investigations by Wired suggest that bot accounts are artificially inflating the listens of AI generated music. The Velvet Sundown’s 1.3 million monthly listeners, while likely not an enduring figure, is equivalent to some of the largest bands in the prog scene—Dream Theater can boast 1.6 million at the time of writing. And yet these AI bands have virtually no internet presence beyond the streaming platforms. These fake artists live in a bubble of artificiality: non-existent accounts endlessly streaming the AI generated music of non-existent people, an entire fictive, digital world coexisting and bleeding into the wider, human-occupied internet. Naturally, a whole industry is being built to cash in on the AI music grift: free YouTube courses or cheap video tuition; a four week online course with the prestigious Berklee College of Music (worth one credit) that costs a cool $515; or a class run by an MIT alumnus—which, like every underground trad prog project ever, features a guest appearance from Jordan Rudess (who we’ll hear more from later)—that retails at an eye-watering $1,500. 

While greedy exploiters cash-in on the latest money-making scheme, it’s only a lucky few who will achieve The Velvet Sundown’s levels of virality. The bulk of these AI projects will be lost amid the clutter of new music releases, and most listeners will likely reject what they hear if they hear anything, repelled by the low quality and uncanniness of the music. However, as the technology improves, telling the difference will become increasingly difficult; artists who may not be using AI could be implicated if their music seems suspect, as in the recent case of Draugveil’s debut whose music and realness has been called into question but with seemingly little evidence. In the meantime, these AI communities support one another because they’re all adherents to the potential powers and possibilities of the technology, powers that extend far beyond music.

The_Book_of_Revelation.epub: A Brief Aside on the Cult of AI

We believe intelligence is in an upward spiral – first, as more smart people around the world are recruited into the techno-capital machine; second, as people form symbiotic relationships with machines into new cybernetic systems such as companies and networks; third, as Artificial Intelligence ramps up the capabilities of our machines and ourselves.

– The Techno-Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreessen 

Most readers will have glimpsed the contents of the slop-bucket that AI ‘art’ has created. From an AI stand-up special by deceased comedian George Carlin (the provenance of which may actually have been human comedians pretending to be AI), to terrible AI-generated Spongebob Squarepants covers of popular songs which led to hasty legislation protecting a person’s right to their voice likeness, the internet has been flooded with countless examples. The journalist Robert Evans has described this trend as “cultural necrophilia”: these algorithms, trained on the sum of human art, are robbing from the dead, as well as the living. Evans is something of an aficionado when it comes to cults, and cultishness is inherent to the AI movement. Silicon Valley has become a breeding ground for subcultures and communities with fanatical tendencies, from cult-like work environments in tech companies organised around a Dear Leader to a slew of cult and cult-adjacent movements such as the rationalists, post-rationalists, effective accelerationists, and the Zizians. As an anonymous former Google engineer put it: “If your product isn’t amenable to spontaneously producing a cult, it’s probably not impactful enough.” 

Inherent to these groups is an almost messianic belief in the advent of artificial general intelligence (the classic sci-fi idea of “AI” as a sentient humanlike intelligence), taking them down all sorts of strange and unethical paths. In the effective altruism and accelerationist movements, this has manifested as a reticence to address ethical concerns, such as those surrounding deepfake pornography or algorithmic bias, on the grounds that it would limit the development of artificial general intelligence. At its furthest extreme, we get the strange case of the Zizians, and their belief in the Roko’s Basilisk thought experiment, the gist of which is that an otherwise benevolent godlike AI could come into existence and choose to punish all those who knew of its potential existence but did not work towards its creation. The Basilisk is essentially a restatement of Pascal’s Wager, the idea that a rational person should believe in God and behave as though He exists because the infinite torment of Hell isn’t worth the risk, and it has surprising traction—it’s how Elon Musk and Grimes met. In the case of the Zizians, their belief in Roko’s Basilisk and the justification of all their actions in order to bring about the coming AI God ultimately led to the murder of at least six people. 

Cults committing murders is the extreme end of this thinking, but a Messianic fervor suffuses Silicon Valley. The prominent venture capitalist Marc Andreessen claims in his Techo-Optimist Manifesto⁷: “We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder,” which is clearly a very dangerous assertion to make. Andreessen, a lifelong Democrat, supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election, citing concerns that Joe Biden would regulate AI, which Andreessen had heavily invested in; indeed, the entire tech sphere’s sudden pivot to support of the Republican party was largely motivated by such concerns, and it’s paid off for them. When the US Copyright Office asserted its position on AI content earlier this year—“making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries”—President Trump fired Shira Perlmutter, the Office’s Director. More worryingly still, Trump’s ridiculously named “Big Beautiful Bill” that just passed contains a clause that bans regulation on AI for ten years.

What one has to bear in mind is that their faith in the power of AI to come is just that: faith. While the science is by no means settled, tech experts suggest the current type of LLM-based AI inherently lacks the traits to ever achieve the artificial general intelligence that these gurus crave, regardless of increasing sophistication; the method by which tech is currently seeking to push towards sentient AI may well be a complete non-starter. Indeed, in The AI Con by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, the authors recall that “a paper written by OpenAI researchers… determined what kinds of tasks in what kinds of jobs could be handled by an LLM by asking the LLM itself.” There’s a circular logic at play in Silicon Valley, a willingness to believe an experimental machine’s algorithmic, ego-pleasing answers. A similar messianic fervour came with the crypto boom of recent years and the adjacent run on NFTs. True believers hailed the advent of an alternative to banking which avoided cruel government oversight; when thousands became victims of pump-and-dump schemes and fraud, people began to suggest that perhaps their deregulated currency needed banks to help regulate them.

One might reasonably wonder what Spotify’s stake is in the AI game, especially when, as we’ve seen, their platform is allowing the proliferation of AI music. Given that Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, recently invested $690 million into the defence company Helsing, which is developing AI-enhanced military hardware, the outlook doesn’t look all that promising. Indeed, Ek partnered with everyone’s favourite innovator in the domain of ranking female college students by their attractiveness, Mark Zuckerberg, to release a joint statement persuading Europe to embrace open-source AI, of the poorly regulated kind that LLMs are based on. While the statement makes some valid points regarding the inconsistency of European laws, the ultimate thrust is clear, jettison restrictions on AI content so they can bring you worthless products: “Given the current regulatory uncertainty, Meta won’t be able to release upcoming models like Llama multimodal, which has the capability to understand images.” Again, these billionaires only wish is to encourage countries to deregulate in order for them to hawk their dubious wares. 

The section of the Zuckerberg/Ek statement regarding Spotify is particularly galling: 

Looking back, it’s clear that our early investment in AI made the company what it is today: a personalised experience for every user that has led to billions of discoveries of artists and creators around the world. As we look to the future of streaming, we see tremendous potential to use open-source AI to benefit the industry. This is especially important when it comes to how AI can help more artists get discovered. A simplified regulatory structure would not only accelerate the growth of open-source AI but also provide crucial support to European developers and the broader creator ecosystem that contributes to and thrives on these innovations.

Given Spotify’s widespread renown as a platform that pays artists an insulting pittance per stream (maybe some of that $690 million could’ve gone towards paying artists fairly?), and the fact that the generative AI used on 2024’s Spotify Wrapped feature delivered such useless results that it caused a backlash, trumpeting anything about the Spotify experience beggars belief. It’s perhaps unsurprising that a company as distinctly unscrupulous as Spotify would take such a line on AI, but it’s nevertheless worth noting. These investors and company executives fear industry regulation on AI because they’ve invested unimaginable sums of money in it. Sold by tech companies as this cutting-edge technology that you simply have to use in order to not be left behind, those who are susceptible to such heavily-marketed fads partake and find, lo’ and behold, a product which takes the decision-making process out of art, and an all-powerful thing to evangelise about. If every piece of information can legally be harnessed by users of generative AI, then companies and users alike can reap immense profits from content they don’t own and have no right to own. I don’t claim to be a legal scholar, but that sounds rather a lot like theft. The internet has always been a regulatory wild west, but we need to catch up fast. Thank god the real artists haven’t been taken in by this stuff. 

Terror & Hubris in the AI-Generated House of Jordan Rudess 

There walks a god among us
Who’s seen the writing on the wall
He is the revolution
He’ll be the one to save us all.

– The Gift of Music, Dream Theater

The keyboardist and pianist Jordan Rudess is a musical institution. A child prodigy, he attended esteemed music college The Juilliard School when he was just nine years old. His work with Dream Theater and Liquid Tension Experiment is widely lauded; he’s performed guest spots with a litany of great artists from Steven Wilson and Ayreon to Gleb Kolyadin and Richard Henshall; and his masturbatory excesses in his solo project inspired one of the most disgustingly funny reviews in music criticism. He’s also the founder of Wizdom Music, a software company dedicated to developing apps that explore new virtual avenues for music creation and breaking down the process of composition. Wizdom has released a number of apps, the most notable of which is GeoShred, a guitar simulator with a breadth of customisability. While such innovations are legitimately great tools for artists, it should come as no surprise that a technophile like Rudess also showed an early interest in AI. If you journey to his Instagram page you’ll be inundated with content relating to the various AI companies he’s endorsing and partnering with; he’s even working with the music labs at MIT on the potential applications of AI. 

Sometimes you can just watch him shred or talk theory, and at other times you’ll end up watching videos he edited in Videoleap by Lightricks, an app that apparently allows him to turn himself into a character from The Polar Express who plays piano amid roiling clouds with an ever-changing number of fingers. Partnering with AI start-ups like Udio and Moises, Rudess highlights their capabilities, such as remixing generated rhythms and stem-splitting. The strange thing about all these apps is how unimpressive they are. Some of the features offered, such as stem-splitting, are certainly useful, but Udio is hardly the first to offer this technology—stem-splitting is a free plugin for Audacity (Audacity offers AI-based and manual options). As for breaking down chords for songs in real-time, yes, it’s a useful feature, but it also takes some of the fun out of learning; guesswork is often what yields the real artistic eureka moments. More crucially, preliminary research from MIT suggests that the use of ChatGPT leads to users’ brain scans exhibiting “weaker neural connectivity and under-engagement of alpha and beta networks”; while the study has yet to undergo peer review, if the same results apply to AI tools for music learning—an area which hasn’t been studied as yet—then such tools may actually come to put young musicians at a disadvantage. We simply can’t be sure of the long term effects of such radical, emergent technologies, and there may be hidden costs alongside the more immediately tangible benefits.

In an interview with Devin Townsend, Rudess talks about AI as simply the next tool for musicians and posits that “how you use it is up to you as a person.” But the tool he describes sounds an awful lot like cheating: 

My goal is to give the machines information about who I am so we can start to get to a point where you’re at home and you’re working on a song and you play something and, y’know, like measure 14 to 18 you can be like, “I don’t know I’m having a bad day or whatever just give me something based on my style.” And to me that’s like the next level tool.

Rudess’ believes that a sufficiently well-trained neural network could compose something in your style and that you could then look at what the AI gives you for those measures and choose to reject it or adapt it. That in and of itself isn’t an inherently unethical use of such technology, but Rudess’ “how you use it is up to you” absolves him of considering the potential for people to use such technologies to create terabytes of music trained on the work of others and then dishonestly sell it to the market at large. Although Rudess’ promotion of these companies seems to be in good faith, the slightly obsessive preoccupation of a technophilic boomer, he nevertheless seems blinkered to the reality that not everyone utilising these technologies will be acting responsibly and that AI contains massive potential for fraudulence.  

Rudess isn’t the only influential figure in music to pivot towards tech. Rick Rubin, the music producer/guru, a man proudly untrained in music playing, theory and producing, has taken his immunity to learning things and produced a digital book about AI: The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding. By his own admission, Rubin knows as much about coding as he does about music production. In fact, the genesis of the book is that Rubin heard the phrase ‘vibe coding.’ which he didn’t understand, and then kept seeing a meme of himself associated with it. “Based on” Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching and “adapted” by Rick Rubin, the “book” is a lot of aphoristic mumbo-jumbo on the topic of “vibe coding”—i.e. writing prompts into AI tools to do your coding for you⁸—and illustrated with graphics generated by Claude AI which the reader can modify, if they’re so inclined.

In an interview on The Ben & Marc Show⁹ (that’s Marc Andreessen of the aforementioned Techno-Optimist Manifesto and his venture capitalist partner Ben Horowitz), Rubin discusses various aspects of AI in the music industry. He describes AI as just “another tool in the artist’s arsenal”. He says the backlash against AI in art is because “the reason we go to an artist… is for their point of view” but we mistakenly believe that AI art is showing an AI’s point of view. In a moment of very muddled reasoning he states that “the AI doesn’t have a point of view. The AI’s point of view is what you tell it the point of view is to be.” But as we’ve seen, this isn’t true. If art is an accumulation of choices by the artist then handing over the bulk of those choices to a machine trained on the art of others isn’t a creative act at all. It’s true that AI doesn’t have a point of view, but the product it produces based on your prompts isn’t your point of view either; at best, it’s a funhouse mirror reflection of your point of view—a distorted aberration. 

Rubin argues that AI in music is a further democratisation of the artistic process; just as the simplicity of punk rock before it allowed anyone with a message to convey it via music, so “vibe coding” is a democratisation of coding. Again, Rubin gets muddled here:

It can make animation that looks like your favourite cartoon and so then you see a million people doing that. That’s one idea, I want to see all the things it could do, to understand what’s possible, instead of just “I’m going to get it to do the same thing that everyone else is getting it to do.”

Rubin wants to see what the people who can “push the boundaries” can do with this technology. And doubtlessly, there are creative, talented people out there who will likely be able to push what generative AI can do to a higher level; one could become skilled at being a prompt generator, but that wouldn’t make them an artist. Again, Rubin doesn’t have a solid foundation on what AI is or that the way it produces anything; he doesn’t understand that all the outputs are tantamount to theft of existing art, including all the albums he’s ever worked on. When he says he’s “interested in what AI really can know…based on what is and not what we tell it we think it is”, he once again shows that he doesn’t understand that this isn’t an intelligent machine, it doesn’t know anything, it can’t create, and everything it makes is a regurgitation of content originally rendered by humans. 

It’s easy to dismiss Rubin’s views on this topic as the ravings of a spiritual man whose curiosity outweighs his inclination to actually conduct research, but he’s a heavy-hitter in the creative world, and his legitimisation of an ethically dubious technology without questioning the potential harms is a problem. The average user of these LLMs and AI-based programmes isn’t interrogating the industry they emanated from, the aims of the libertarian-inclined tech capitalists who own them, or the potentials for harm that come with the technology. Trusted industry figures like Rubin and Rudess allow the pushers of these technologies to maintain a veneer of respectability, as well as plausible deniability against the various issues that come with them.

Closer to prog, another icon who’s dabbled with AI is Steven Wilson. In December 2024, Wilson released a novelty Christmas track called “December Skies”. All the instruments, the vocals, and the composition itself are real human musicianship; only the lyrics were generated via ChatGPT prompts to give him lyrics in the style of himself. Wilson explained: 

It produced a lot, 99 percent of which was pretty awful. It was very generic, very clichéd, very banal, but about one percent it generated I could use. So it was really a question of me going through and picking out, “That’s a good line. That’s shit, that’s shit, that’s shit, that’s shit, that’s shit. Oh, that’s a good line,” and ending up with something that I thought was usable.

Ultimately, Wilson said he wasn’t interested in AI because it produces quite generic results and he was more interested in surprising ideas, adding that AI lacked that human sense of soul: “It’s kind of a reflection of a human being to lots of other human beings and seeing if those other human beings recognize themselves in that mirror.” AI can, at best, only fake that, much as Chiang said. But Wilson recognised that AI is here to stay and it could be a useful tool. After all, he argues:

For the last twenty-five years we’ve had software that can tune a singer that can’t sing in tune (like me). We’ve had software that can make a drummer that can’t play very well in time make them sound in time. We’ve had software that can emulate orchestras going back to the Mellotron. Since the beginning of electricity musicians have had tools that have helped them to make their music sound more polished and more impressive.

Wilson’s analysis seems more cautious than the AI enthusiasts like Rudess, but he still comes to the same point: this is just the next weapon in the arsenal. However, there’s a difference between those like Rudess who want to emphasise the potential utility AI might have for augmenting the composing experience of talented musicians like himself, and those who have no musical talent of their own and just want to cash in by generating soulless slop. Opposition to AI isn’t steeped in a technological consideration so much as it’s motivated by concerns of integrity. Understandably, most people have more respect for artists who have honed their craft over years of dedicated practice, who create without AI and who support fellow artists. Just as the AI album art used by bands often receives a backlash from fans, so musicians who make extensive use of AI will likely be called out for it, and it can make a difference—under pressure from fans who disliked his incessant promotion of AI, Rudess recently made new social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram which would silo the AI content to only those interested in following it. That may be a small concession to the Luddites, but it’s a minor victory nonetheless for prog’s top AI spokesman to recognise the unpopularity of his new obsession.

Fighting Back Against RoboSlop

What we are witnessing from the AI boosters is not much short of a crusade… They are waging a holy war to destroy every threat of their vision of the future, which involves all creative work being wholly owned by a handful of billionaires licensing access to chatbots [and] to media conglomerates to spit up content generated as a result of this. Their foot soldiers are those with petty grievances against artists—people who can create things that they simply cannot—and those who reflexively lean in towards whatever grifters of the day say is the best way to make cash quick.

– Robert Evans

What we have to realise is this is a systemic issue. While the true believers like Rudess and Rubin claim that this is merely a new tool for musicians to use, the reality is that an entire industrial edifice exists beyond the bedroom artist generating an image via DALL-E for his second-rate instrudjental album. An evangelistic fervour has captured Big Tech leading the industry towards a profoundly libertarian desire to burn down all regulation in order to ensure maximal profit from the sum total of human culture through an act of wide-scale thievery. The space for AI that has opened up in the digital sphere appeals to a pre-existing tendency to indulge in fantastical views of how the world work, one which has massive and terrible implications for our politics, for the environment, and for the concept of truth itself. 

We still don’t know the long-term harm of these technologies. Much has been written on the immense environmental impact of AI servers, with projections that they will be drawing on four to six times more freshwater annually than the entire population of Denmark uses in a year, and that AI data centres in Ireland may account for up to 35% of the nation’s total electricity output in order to maintain operation by 2026. As mentioned earlier, a preliminary study out of MIT showed weaker activity in brain scans of ChatGPT users, and another showed “indicators of addiction” including “withdrawal symptoms” when users were cut off from the chatbot. Reports of chatbot use causing or exacerbating mental health issues, including messiah complexes, paranoid delusions, and even leading to suicide have begun to make headlines—the Turing test now seems less like a measure of the humanness of artificial intelligence and more like a measure of the credulity of the human interlocutor. AI content on social media platforms can have marked political impacts, such as the satirical AI video of a Trump/Netanyahu conquered Gaza which was shared by the President, and disingenuous actors have begun to attempt to discredit their political enemies with AI generated content. It’s hard not to conclude that we’re living in a deeply stupid time¹⁰. In the artistic sphere, AI may be less popular than it is among essay-averse students, people in the midst of mid-life crises, and world leaders, but that doesn’t mean it’s going away. However, some people are coming up with tools to fight back. 

Programmers at the University of Chicago have developed the software tools Glaze and Nightshade, which scramble the AI’s ability to interpret images. Specifically, Nightshade “turns any image into a data sample that is unsuitable for model training” by effectively “poisoning” the images so that neural networks that attempt to read them hallucinate rather than reading them accurately. Similarly, independent musician Benn Jordan has pioneered a software called Poisonify which he claims works like Glaze and Nightshade but for music; his claims seem a little wild, and the degree to which this is a genuine technology is unclear, but it nevertheless shows that people are fighting back. Of course, technology is an arms race, and when the weapons of war are revealed, defence mechanisms are developed in parallel; forums like the r/DefendingAIArt subreddit monitor the tactics being used against their hallowed generative AI software.

These tools have their limits and they won’t be able to stop generative AI forever. The greatest tool against feckless billionaires is, as ever, the law. Regulation and restriction of the companies that train their AIs on the sum total of human knowledge with total disregard for ethics could and should be a significant priority. For one thing, if it destroys their derangedly large investments that will give us all some schadenfreude to take solace in, but the main aim is to protect. While the UK has held a consultation on AI and Copyright which seeks to support “rights holder’s control of their content and ability to be remunerated for its use” as well as ways of opting out of being used for training AI models, the consultation also sought to support “the development of world-leading AI models in the UK by ensuring wide and lawful access to high-quality data” which seems like a vested interest. 

Nevertheless, work like this and the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act at least show some recognition of the problems that have emerged from the rapid and unencumbered rollout of AI, as well as an awareness that there is a need to safeguard against its more immediate harms. When it comes to AI music, major record labels Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony have pursued lawsuits against AI companies Udio and Suno. As Robert Stringer, CEO of Sony Music says: 

There will be artists, probably there will be young people sitting in bedrooms today, who will end up making the music of tomorrow through AI. But if they use existing content to blend something into something magical, then those original creators have to be fairly compensated. And I think that’s where we are at the moment.

Such lawsuits will likely end in licensing agreements rather than the wholescale crushing of corporate models predicated on theft. While such a conclusion wouldn’t completely address the underlying ethical issues, some regulation on AI companies and recompense for exploited artists is certainly a step in the right direction.

But perhaps the most promising development in war of AI comes from the headquarters of the companies developing, funding and marketing it. The industry has become increasingly reticent to share financial data and user numbers in the wake of its revolutionary tech coup, and for good reason. OpenAI, by far the most successful of the AI start-ups and the parent of both ChatGPT and DALL-E image generation software, lost $5 billion in 2024, but projected potential revenues of $11.6 billion for 2025; revenues, it should be emphasised, are not profits. AI is extraordinarily expensive to run, and the industry runs at a loss because it simply isn’t being adopted at the necessary scale to make money: OpenAI claims 1.5 billion active monthly users, of whom 15.5 million are paying subscribers, or 0.96%; other estimates suggest the platform actually has more like 600 million active monthly users, which still puts paying customers at an abysmal 2.58%. For a technology that claims to be revolutionary and indispensable, these numbers are catastrophic.

Meanwhile, as AI products are forced on the workplace, many employees refuse to cooperate. A survey by the generative AI platform Writer, found that “31% of employees admit to ‘sabotaging’ their company’s AI strategy by refusing to adopt AI tools and applications”, two-thirds of company executives said adopting generative AI had caused “tension and division” in their companies. People simply don’t like AI, they aren’t adopting it at the scale the industry expected despite enormous investments and marketing efforts; if this trajectory continues, the AI bubble will pop and cause immense damage to the tech sector. Worse still, the utility of AI over time may well degrade rather than improve. As the internet becomes flooded with AI content, LLMs will begin to use that AI content to train themselves, and this leads to what’s known as model collapse. AI needs an immense quantity of data in order to improve itself, more than we’ve ever generated. When an LLM cannibalises too much AI content, it will “compound its own errors, forget certain words and artifacts that are less present in its training, and eventually cave in on itself.” Some researchers have dubbed this Habsburg AI, referring to the inbreeding and decline of the European royal dynasty.

While there are some promising moves towards regulation that aim to curtail the most extreme excesses of generative AI and those invested in it, and the sector itself seems to be teetering upon the precipice of failure, it’s down to us as consumers to be informed, aware, and ethical in our choices. We can politely tell our favourite artists that we would like them to avoid using AI content and alert them to the harms therein; we can tell them that we won’t financially support them if they insist on using a technology that hinges upon theft; and we can choose to boycott streaming services that take a relaxed line on AI content or even actively promote it. Consumer choice might not change the world, but it will yield some small victories and leave our consciences clean.

The world of AI is a strange new frontier for digital content creators, and one can’t blame people for being curious to experiment. However, the myriad ethical issues, from copyright theft to significant exacerbation of climate change, as well as the single-minded domination of an unregulated and errant tech sector, show that the technology as a whole is significantly flawed. Procedurally generating AI album covers may seem a harmless act, but it tacitly supports a deeply immoral industry gambit predicated on an act of wide-scale data thievery that has a surprising range of deeply worrying externalities. If we love music, we must do what we can to defend it from such threats, and though AI may have a limited place within the future of music composition, it behooves us to resist so-called “AI art” and “AI music” as much as we can. So keep away from tech bros, listen to AAI not AI, and make art the good old-fashioned way: with Pro Tools. 

Footnotes:

1. Thall. If you think djent isn’t a genre, boy are you gonna be pissed I said thall is a subgenre. ︎
2. Syme also caught flack for seemingly reusing a piece of art from Orion’s album booklet for Parasomnia’s, which, as I said, he may have used AI for anyway. ︎
3.  The next release, Djentlemen of Groove, opted for a group of topless women standing around a muscular Latino man in leather shorts and yielded D1G1T4L RU1N a single download. Did the user buy the album because of the sexy AI art, or for such classic hits as “Don’t Cum”, “I’m Gonna Cum”, and “Gawk Gawk 9000”? We may never know.  ︎
4. When I first came across the story, they had a mere 300,000 monthly listeners, but the resulting media attention has massively boosted them. ︎
5. It’s best to assume that everything about this piece is beholden to the rule of “at the time of writing.” This article has been a nightmare because the situation is so fluid and evolving. Things keep happening.  ︎
6.  An Instagram page for The Velvet Sundown was created after the band went viral, populated with obviously AI images, naturally. ︎
7. The full document’s worth a read. It’s a wild ride through the mind of a guy who read a lot of sci-fi and didn’t understand it, and a lot of Ayn Rand and, tragically, did understand it. ︎
8. Vibe coding has nothing to do with music and Rubin doesn’t seem to understand that because, y’know, he doesn’t do research. ︎
9. I link this for being true to my sources, but for the good of your own health, don’t watch this, it’s interminable nonsense. ︎
10.  I have to maintain some sense of objectivity, so I can’t really say that I think every tech CEO should be on trial in The Hague, but it’s a belief that writing this essay has driven me towards. ︎

The post The Machine Starts: Progressive Music, AI Slop, and the Fight for Artistic Expression 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.

Style: Post-metal, progressive metal, progressive rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Ocean, Steven Wilson, Pink Floyd, Alice In Chains
Country: Greece
Release date: 13 June 2025

Just last month, I was in Kalamata, Greece, my then-fiancée’s hometown. She and I had spent a few days there, and the next day we were to travel up to Athens, where we’d stay for a few more days and have our wedding. While lounging at a fancy Kalamata hotel and looking for something to listen to, I happened upon The Lotus Matter—a young post-metal group based in Athens who had just released their debut, In Limbo Pt. 1. This bit of serendipity was enough to give them a try. Fittingly, the album ended up accompanying me on the drive to Athens and during the little time I had to explore the city before the big day. For better or worse, in my brain, In Limbo is now inextricably tied to the most notable time of my life. An odd pairing with the start of marital bliss, but that’s how things go.  

Although The Lotus Matter play a style that’s categorizable as post-metal, a mishmash of influences make its way into the music. With surprising accuracy, the band describe their sound as including aspects of The Ocean, Porcupine Tree, Alice In Chains, Opeth, Radiohead, and others. More than anything, though, The Lotus Matter are ambitious and not afraid of sonic exploration. In Limbo Pt. 1 holds only five tracks, one being a seventeen-minute epic, and a roster of guest musicians that’d be robust for even a well-established band. Does this group of young Athenians, who now happen to own the mental soundtrack to my marriage, pull it all off—or have they spoiled my matrimonial memories?

A lush, atmospheric opener primarily of piano chords, light synths, and female vocals—building into a passage of swelling strings—immediately draws in the ears and provides a promising start. “Into the Bone” then follows, with riffs and ambience sounding somewhere between Steven Wilson and The Ocean. Color me impressed. Quickly apparent is the band’s ability to create enticing, intricate soundscapes filled with music that finds a balance between progressive and accessible. The bridge of “Into the Bone” is particularly strong, offering layered vocal melodies, modern-era Opethian guitars complemented by jazzy piano, and some play with the meter. The spirit of sonic exploration is furthered in the penultimate track “Run,Rest,Return,” a seventeen-minute epic that morphs slowly across several influences. Whether it’s post-rock atmospherics, heavier riffing, proggy synths backed by groovy bass, a soulful Gilmour-esque solo, grungy belting followed later by Radiohead-like vocal apathy, or swingy 3/4 with female vocals oooing and ahhing á la The Dark Side of the Moon, The Lotus Matter find a way to work it in without being too jarring. The track is quite the ride. 

The ambition showcased in In Limbo, however, comes at a cost. While “Run,Rest,Return” is a success overall, some of the proggier parts in its first half feel as if they were thrown in to add complexity rather than contribute to the song as a whole. Meanwhile, the strong riffing and compelling Alice In Chains-inspired vocals in “Erased?” are somewhat squandered by the track’s awkward rhythmic variations and transitions. The song seems to get lost within itself, covering too much ground without enough thought given to keeping its entirety coherent. It also features bagpipes that, while a fun touch, strike more as a gimmick than a meaningful addition to the composition. And closing track “The Shepherd” puts a lovely bow on the album, but contains another overtly Pink Floyd-like solo section; it too closely retraces the one in the track before, which was a welcome surprise that works only once. With In Limbo, The Lotus Matter are willing to take risks, and not all of them land. But the effort is commendable, and, to be sure, several of the band’s more interesting choices end up working out. 

Still, a few other issues hold In Limbo back from sitting among the upper echelon of progressive post-metal albums. Although the vocal lines and melodies are well-written and the guest vocalists are effective, the main vocals could use some polish and emotion. For music as expressive as that of In Limbo, the vocal performance is comparatively monotonous. In a similar facet, and perhaps an issue with the production, the band never quite explode out of the soundscapes they create or the tension they build—sonically, the bigger moments fall a little flat. This is especially apparent given the noticeable influence of The Ocean, a band that thrives on a planet-smashing sound bursting out of layered ambience. A more spirited vocal performance and production would liven up and enhance the album’s dynamic composition.

Nevertheless, In Limbo Pt. 1 is ultimately a relative success. The Lotus Matter swung for the fences, and although they didn’t knock their debut out of the park, they made solid contact. Much of the album is beautifully done, and overall, the band made good use of their extensive guest roster. Even if slightly messy and sonically lacking at points, In Limbo feels complete and compelling. The Lotus Matter have a high ceiling, and I imagine their next effort will see the rougher edges smoothed and a more mature sound. In the meantime, In Limbo Pt. 1 will remain an odd but pleasant enough matrimonial soundtrack.

Recommended tracks: Into the Bone; Run,Rest,Return
You may also like: Obscure Sphinx, SIKASA, Oak
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Sound Effect Records – Facebook | Official Website

The Lotus Matter is:
– Constantinos Nyktas (guitar, vocals)
– Giorgos Petsangourakis (guitar)
– Aggelos Bracholli (keys, vocals)
– Panagiotis Vekiloglou (bass, vocals)
With guests:
– Lazaros Papageorgiou (drums)
– Katerina Charalampopoulou (lead vocals on “In Limbo,” backing vocals on “Into The Bone” and “Run,Rest,Return”)
– Stavrialena Gontzou (backing vocals on “Into The Bone” and “Run,Rest,Return”)
– Kostas Trakadas (trumpet on “Run,Rest,Return”)
– Konstantinos Lazos (bagpipes on “Erased?”)
– Aggeliki Ikonomou (violin on “In Limbo”)
– Nikos Firgiolas (viola on “In Limbo”)
– Rafail Kontogouris (viola on “In Limbo”)
– Marianna Maraletou (cello on “In Limbo”)

The post Review: The Lotus Matter – In Limbo Pt. 1 appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive rock, progressive metal (mostly clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Haken, prog rock Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Riverside
Country: Norway
Release date: 13 June 2025

What do you know about America’s tenth president, John Tyler? I’m willing to bet the answer is ‘not much.’ Succeeding William Henry Harrison, who died a month after his own inauguration, Tyler’s leadership was mocked for the unorthodox—and, at the time, unprecedented—way he had come to power. Fearful of alienating political allies, he kept his predecessor’s cabinet despite the fact many of them actively disliked him. At the same time, he took stances in such flagrant opposition to his own party’s platform that they tried to impeach him. Generally regarded as an unremarkable president with a few minor achievements to his name, he carries the ignominious honour of being the only president whose death wasn’t officially recognised in Washington (because of his allegiance to the Confederacy). You haven’t heard of him because historical memory rewards the noteworthy, be they good or bad. The John Tylers of history tend to be forgotten. 

Vying for the title of “the John Tyler of prog” comes Norwegian outfit Avkrvst with their sophomore effort Waving at the Sky. Like their peers in Altesia and Moon Machine, Avkrvst’s sound sits somewhere between prog rock-era Opeth and early Haken with splashes of Porcupine Tree and Riverside for good measure, straddling that thin marigold line between prog rock and prog metal. If my memory serves me correctly, we didn’t end up covering their 2022 debut The Approbation because the writer who had opted to review them suddenly left the site. If that sounds like an inauspicious start for Avkrvst in our dank, poorly-lit halls, then I’m afraid all that talk of John Tyler up top isn’t a harbinger of any improvement.

Instrumental opener “Preceding” gives a flavour of things to come: wonky time signatures and staccato riffing plus melodic lead guitar and synth lines backed by whimsical Mellotron. Like so many intro tracks, it adds little to the overall album. At least follow-up “The Trauma” gives us some galloping drums and a tension-building riff to feast on before presenting Waving at the Sky’s predominant issue which, like the band, we’ll avoid for a hot minute. Tracks like “Families are Forever”¹ and “Conflating Memories” offer us some melodic, almost Floydian guitar solos, the latter also featuring a spicy flute cameo, while a couple of synth leads adorn “Waving at the Sky”. “Ghosts of Yesteryear” offers an adrenaline booster of much-needed energy with strong riffing and energetic drumwork. Indeed, the rhythm section in particular excels throughout the record, with the low-tuned, Yes-inspired bass work (credited to both Simon Bergseth and Øystein Aadland) thrumming pleasingly in the mix at all times, and the energetic drumming of Martin Utby being the most obvious plumes in Avkrvst’s cap. 

These better angels of Avkrvst’s nature, however, are the exception rather than the rule. It takes Waving at the Sky five minutes to introduce the vocals, and when they do arrive you can see why the band filibustered with instrumental prevarication. There’s no sugar-coating the fact that Simon Bergseth’s vocal performance is bland². He invariably sticks to safe, tried-and-tested vocal lines, singing whole notes in a barely varying cadence and with a near-total lack of expression. Every note is extended long beyond the point at which any interest could be maintained and he never varies from this mode of delivery. Harsh vocals are used sparingly, which is for the best because they’re always superfluous to the band’s sound; Avkrvst don’t need them, and they hang awkwardly every time. 

“Families are Forever” is by far the worst offender in this vein. In practice, the restrained instrumental work, the low burr of the bass and the nuance of the drumwork, is perfect for this sort of track. But Bergseth’s utterly lifeless vocal melodies, which should be the focal point of this section, instead rob the song of any intrigue. And this happens every time, the band members almost sabotage themselves in trying to match the soporific quality of the vocals. Historically, I haven’t been all that kind to Ross Jennings’ guest appearances (will his turn on the upcoming Scardust change that track record?), and I’m hardly going to start now, but his cliched and rather unremarkable contribution to “The Malevolent” is leaps and bounds ahead of any other vocal performance on this record. Whatever mitochondrial deficit the band were suffering from heretofore briefly abates and the band finally finds some damned energy which certainly helps “The Malevolent” as well as Jennings’ chances to steal the show.

That same energy rears its head a few times and always sees Avkrvst at their most compelling. “Ghosts of Yesteryear” features some sick bass, animated drumming, and big guitar chords all with a flavour of Porcupine Tree’s iconic “Deadwing”. Strong riffing and an ominous lead motif with an almost saxy timbre all make for a standout track—like John Tyler’s annexation of Texas, it’s probably their greatest achievement on the record. Naturally, the vocal-led sections are still a dirge, but the band at least manage to vary the track enough to keep it interesting. Twelve minute closer “Waving at the Sky” possesses a certain portentousness absent from the rest of the record, and the sense of a compositional goal in mind. With a wealth of solos and ominous riffing in its instrumental back half, it’s hardly surprising that it’s one of the better tracks. But the track also features a moderately interesting chorus. That may sound like damning with faint praise—probably because it is—but on a record with vocal performances this expressionless, moderate intrigue is a win. 

Ultimately proving as insipid as its title, Waving at the Sky contains flashes of compositional talent and energy in an album that, for the most part, has a contrarian tendency to be uninteresting in spite of the obvious potential that occasionally rears its head. And yet, I don’t want to sound too harsh; Avkrvst’s main sin is John Tyler-style blandness, not James Buchanan-esque badness. A focus on strengthening and varying vocal melodies in a way that matches the rest of the band’s talents would provide a much-needed shot of energy to the compositions. Then again, why should Avkrvst listen to me? After all, a certain president never listened to his haters³. Can you guess which one?

Recommended tracks: Ghosts of Yesteryear, Conflating Memories
You may also like: Altesia, Moon Machine, Keor, Novena
Final verdict: 5/10

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

Label: InsideOutMusic – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Avkrvst is:
– Simon Bergseth (lead vocalist, guitars, bass guitar)
– Martin Utby (drums, synthesizer)
– Øystein Aadland (bass guitar, keyboards)
– Edvard Seim (guitars)
– Auver Gaaren (keyboards)

1.  You know who might have something to say about this song title? John Tyler! He was both the first president to lose his wife in office and the first to get married in office (to his second wife). Woodrow Wilson would later become the second and only other president to become both widowed and remarried while in office. ︎
2.  Unlike John Tyler, who reportedly had a rather pleasant singing voice and could play many instruments. Given how much everyone seemed to dislike him, we can assume he really must’ve been quite good. ︎
3.  “My own personal popularity can have no influence over me when the dictates of my best judgment and the obligations of an oath require of me a particular course. Under such circumstances, whether I sink or swim on the tide of popular favor is, to me, a matter of inferior consideration.” God, what a bore.  ︎

The post Review: Avkrvst – Waving at the Sky appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive metal, progressive rock, avant-garde (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Green Carnation, maudlin of the Well, Orphaned Land, Opeth
Country: Israel
Release date: 21 June 2005

We’re now twenty years from the release of Subterranean Masquerade’s debut LP, Suspended Animation Dreams. Small in its reach but huge in its scope and ambition, this charmingly weird record has mightily stood the test of time, though unjustifiably forgotten—all dusty from the crime of aging, to steal a lyric. An eight-year hiatus would follow the album, as would the band’s triumphant return, offering a solid string of releases that notably includes Subway favorite Mountain Fever in 2021. But even with SubMasq firmly back in the world of progressive music, Suspended Animation Dreams remains mired deep in the underground. So join me on a subterranean ride through a bizarre, sonically marvelous cult classic.

Subterranean Masquerade’s approach to Suspended Animation Dreams is no different from that of so many other young, progressive bands: throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Grabbing handfuls of ideas, sounds, influences, and compositional techniques, and then hurling them exuberantly into an album is practically a rite of passage. But miraculously, just about everything SubMasq throw sticks: metal, Floydian prog, lounge jazz, Middle Eastern folk, an array of instruments and vocal styles (including the most articulate growls you’ll ever hear), a massive roster of session musicians, intertwined lyrical vignettes tackling different aspects of the human psyche, and much more. These elements combine seamlessly into a listening experience that matches the album cover’s glowing shade of orange and surreal, half-sketched figures—a warm and mystical soundscape expands and contracts into different exotic forms but never quite actualizes into something real. The whole thing’s a trip. Let’s descend further. 

Though Suspended Animation Dreams was released in 2005, its production sounds similar to a ‘90s Dan Swanö project.¹ The fuzzy guitars have body but don’t attack the ears; the drums, vocals, and bass are given enough punch to drive the music but no more; and the myriad other instruments cut through the mix but retain authenticity rather than shimmer artificially. The sound is warm, not bright—a candle softly lighting a cave, not a floodlight bleaching its walls. Suspended Animation Dreams’ mix is key to its success, as the album’s enchanting compositions maintain a dreamlike flow not disrupted by jagged sonic edges.

And flow the tracks do, each wandering freely among various textures and styles. There are a few recognizable verse- and chorus-type patterns, but they’re typically repeated or built upon with new elements—a violin accenting the second verse of “Wolf Among Sheep (Or Maybe The Other Way Around),” for example, or added percussion giving a tribal feel to what’s conceivably part of the verse in “No Place Like Home.” More representative of the album are lengthy excursions into territories less familiar to metal albums. “The Rock N Roll Preacher” may begin with relatively straightforward metal, but it soon gives way to a smooth piano-led bridge and ends with horns driving a jazzy melody. Meanwhile, after some distorted riffing and leads, “No Place Like Home” closes with an extended foray into Middle Eastern folk, complete with wordless, chant-like vocalizations. Each track has at least one passage—and more often several—that extends Suspended Animation Dreams’ aural landscape in a new, interesting direction. The fourteen-minute epic and penultimate track “Awake” then flows gracefully through nearly all of them, covering an immense amount of ground while remaining comprehensible. This stylistic cornucopia makes Suspended Animation Dreams truly unique, even twenty years after its release.

In addition to blending diverse styles intelligibly, Subterranean Masquerade perform each with incredible detail. The loungey, jazz passages dispersed across the album are lush and full. Ambient touches, such as those in the title track opening the album, are well placed and draw the ears in. And the ‘70s rock closing the album in “X” is impassioned, featuring a brilliant, Gilmour-inspired solo. When the band lean into Middle Eastern folk, the result is lively and robust, making fantastic use of both standard rock instrumentation and an eclectic mix of woodwinds, traditional percussion, and more. Between all this, it’s easy to forget that Suspended Animation Dreams is a metal album at its core, until SubMasq remind you with moments like the infectious guitar leads bookending “Six Strings To Cover Fear,” and the tremolo picking and double bass lying beneath the track’s growled verse. “Awake” ends with similarly catchy guitar leads soaring over distorted riffing, offering a climactic ending to the track’s winding, epic composition. These passages aren’t necessarily “heavy,” but the bit of added heft provides excellent juxtaposition to the lighter stretches for a richer sonic palette. 

Suspended Animation Dreams’ instrumental and compositional diversity is nearly matched by the diversity of its vocals. Paul Kuhr’s (Novembers Doom) primary delivery is a well-enunciated growl, one in which you can make out each word and subtle change in emotion. These harsh vocals fit the album’s more intense moments while also providing an emphatic contrast to softer ones—particularly effective are the emotive growls over the gentle piano passage in “Awake.” Across the album, Kuhr cycles consistently among differently textured cleans as well, ranging from stylized narration to subdued, melodic singing. Soulful female vocals embellish many of the tracks, whether as backing accents in “The Rock N Roll Preacher” or by taking center stage through much of “Awake” and “X.” The ever-changing vocals further imbue the album with a dreamy feel: one moment, an articulate demon is speaking; the next, an inner voice is narrating; and soon after, a women’s choir echoes through with a sense of hope. Yet, somehow, it all remains coherent. 

Ultimately, it’s the album’s full experience that makes our expedition deep in the underground worth the effort. Beyond what Suspended Animation Dreams offers musically, its surreal atmosphere and sense of adventure give it enduring appeal. The descent begins with the titular opener, as Kuhr announces, “For the rest of the session, you will be asking yourself, ‘Am I going crazy?’” From there, a transportive magic takes hold as the tracks unwind, journeying the listener fluidly through different aural surroundings until unintelligible chants intensify behind the final guitar solo in “X” and end abruptly to close the album. This sudden ending is a snap back to the above-ground world left waiting as our voyage ran its course. I’m yet to experience another album quite like it. 

With Suspended Animation Dreams, Subterranean Masquerade charted a spellbinding trip that sacrificed nothing in its songwriting or performance. The album stands as one of progressive metal’s great, unique debuts, even if it continues to reside deep below the genre’s surface. Although Suspended Animation Dreams holds an unrepeatable magic, fortunately, the band have steadily released quality album after quality album, cementing themselves as a Subway favorite and a stalwart of folky, progressive music. SubMasq’s debut might have been lost in time, but the band remain present—and with four years since their last release, we’re about due for another one. If the last twenty years have taught us anything, we’ll be shouting their praises from the underground again soon enough.

Recommended tracks: No Place Like Home, Six Strings To Cover Fear, Awake
You may also like: Papangu, OMB, Seventh Station, Obsidian Tide, In the Woods…

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

The End Records

On Suspended Animation Dreams, Subterranean Masquerade was:
– Paul Kuhr (vocals)
– Tomer Pink (guitars, dulcimer, harmonica)
– Jake DePolitte (guitars, bass guitar)
– Steve Lyman (drums)

With guests:
– Kobi Farhi (additional vocals in “No Place Like Home”)
– Mike Sartain (additional vocals in “The Rock N Roll Preacher”)
– Mitch Curinga (electronics)
– Joe Chrisholm (trombone)
– Willis Clow (guitars, mandolin, spoken vocals)
– Andrew Kuhnhausen (saxophone, clarinet, flute, spoken vocals)
– Wendy Jernijan (additional vocals in “Awake”)
– Wayne Burdick (percussion)
– Yishai Sweartz (additional vocals in “No Place Like Home”)
– Sarah Pendleton (spoken vocals)
– Bronwen Beecher (strings)
– Susan Naud (vocals)
– Dave Chrisholm (trumpet)
– Ben Warren (piano, hammond organ)
– Samuel Johnson (spoken vocals)

1.  Dan Swanö wasn’t involved in Suspended Animation Dreams, but he would go on to mix and master both the first EP and LP Subterranean Masquerade released following their hiatus. What’s more, Swanö handled mixing duties for now-ex-SubMasq vocalist Paul Kuhr’s other band, Novembers Doom, on their album The Pale Haunt Departure, which was released just months before Suspended Animation Dreams. ︎

The post Lost In Time: Subterranean Masquerade – Suspended Animation Dreams (20th Anniversary) 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.

Style: symphonic rock, progressive rock, psychedelic rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Electric Light Orchestra, The Grateful Dead, The Beatles, Love, Supertramp, Motorpsycho
Country: Australia
Release date: 13 June 2025

Twenty-seven studio albums in a plethora of genres within thirteen years—and no sign of stopping. That is the modus operandi of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. The genre-hopping gimmick and incomprehensible prolificness have netted the Aussie sextet an absolutely massive cult following as their work ethic and (apparently) riotously fun live act have captured the hearts of terminally online music nerds and casuals alike. On the Gizzy Lizzy’s newest record, Phantom Island, the group has attempted something new stylistically yet again: orchestration.

Originally written and recorded alongside 2024’s Gizzard version of boogie rock (Flight b741)—remnants of which remain in the new record—Phantom Island was deemed incomplete by the band, who enlisted Chad Kelly to compose orchestrations to be superimposed atop the original studio tracks. The result is energetic symphonic and progressive pop/rock, similar to Electric Light Orchestra. Blaring brass and uptempo hand drums create a full soundscape at the expense of drowning the listener in its cheesy outdatedness of Phantom Island’s tone (“Deadstick,” “Eternal Return,” “Panpsych”). Vocal harmonies straight out of the late 60s crop up all over the place (“Eternal Return,” “Aerodynamic, “Sea of Doubt”). Unfortunately, when frontman Stu Mackenzie takes sole vocal responsibilities, he has a tendency to slide into a grating, unrefined falsetto (“Deadstick,” “Silent Spirit,” “Grow Wings and Fly”) that feels out of place with the prettier orchestral arrangements on Phantom Island.

Chad Kelly and the Wizardy Lizardys’ arranging skills are at times brilliant. On the opener and title track, “Phantom Island,” a descending piano motif acts as a throughline across the jazzy track; the song culminates in a speedy, jam build-up, raucous yet focused. Tracks like “Lonely Cosmos,” with its acoustic ditty intro and psychedelic jazz conclusion, and “Aerodynamic,” with its excellent blues guitar tone, craft enough of an identity to stand out from the rest of Phantom Island—an album that, yet again, finds King Gizzard mostly playing firmly within their comfort zone.

Despite the different aesthetic surface differentiating any King Wizard & The Lizard Gizzard album from another, KGATLW know exactly who they are. Whether they’re playing with microtonality, thrashy sludge metal, electronic music, or spoken word, The Lizard Wizard & King Gizzard are the exact same under the hood; the group merely steal the aesthetic of a genre without any mind for composition or ethos. Phantom Island is progressive pop, jazzy, and, of course, symphonic, but at its core it’s another psychedelic jam album with the same structure as any of their other gazillion albums The record is utterly lifeless and boring apart from its couple aforementioned highlights. The horns sound forced, the record clearly not written with them in mind, and the songs that bristle with the most instruments are chaotic. Moreover, by the end of Phantom Island, The Lizard Wizards have basically dropped their schtick for the album, sounding outright like the psych rock band they are; I dearly miss the ELOisms of the earlier tracks starting at “Sea of Doubt” (although even those earlier ones often add a sort of ‘let’s-all-hold-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya’ vibe that’s a bit too ingratiating). Orchestral elements still appear in the later tracks, but they seem completely detached from the main compositions, like the afterthought they are. 

Y’know what might have fixed some of the fundamental compositional issues? If the King Lizard spent more than a couple months releasing an album. The ‘chuck every composition into an LP’ approach has yielded winners for the Gizzard Wizard in the past, but their discography has far more stinkers because every album feels like an incomplete exploration of a sound. Is Phantom Island a fun record? Yes. And I know that King Lizard & The Gizzard Wizard will continue to be successful because of that, deservedly one may say. But I can’t help but feel like this opus—like most of their others—is vapid pastiche as far as artistic merit goes.

Recommended tracks: Phantom Island, Lonely Cosmos, Aerodynamic
You may also like: Himmellegeme, Adjy, Kosmodome
Final verdict: 5/10

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

Label: p(doom) – Bandcamp | Official Website

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard is:
– Ambrose Kenny-Smith – vocals (all tracks), piano (tracks 1, 2, 4–6, 9, 10)
– Michael Cavanagh – drums, percussion (all tracks)
– Cook Craig – bass (tracks 1, 3, 8, 10), Mellotron (tracks 1, 6), organ (tracks 2, 4, 9), vocals (tracks 1, 3, 4, 8, 10)
– Joey Walker – guitar (all tracks), bass (tracks 1, 4, 5), vocals (tracks 2, 4–7, 9, 10)
– Lucas Harwood – bass (tracks 1, 2, 4–7, 9, 10), piano (track 4), vocals (tracks 4, 5)
– Stu Mackenzie – guitar, vocals (all tracks), bass (tracks 1, 3–8), Mellotron (tracks 1–3, 5, 6), organ, piano (track 1)
With additional musicians:
– Sam Joseph – pedal steel (tracks 5, 8, 10)
– Chad Kelly – orchestral arrangements, piano
– Brett Kelly – conductor
– Tim Wilson, Lachlan Davidson, Phil Noy – saxophone
– Patrick McMullin, Daniel Beasy, Shane Hooton – trumpet
– Chris Vizard, James Bowman, Joe O’Callaghan – trombone
– Abbey Edlin – French horn
– Wendy Clarke, Lachlan Davidson – flute
– Natasha Fearnside – clarinet
– Matthew Kneale – bassoon
– Madeleine Jevons, Jos Jonker, Miranda Matheson, Ruby Paskas, Josephine Chung – violin
– Merewyn Bramble, Karen Columbine – viola
– Gemma Kneale, Paul Zabrowarny – cello

The post Review: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Phantom Island appeared first on The Progressive Subway.