“The NYC instrumental quartet Fall of the Albatross hides much behind their progressive metal label. Prog has always been a melting pot of any genre that wanders too close, but the genre mosaic of Fall of the Albatross is especially vivid. Their newest LP Rite evokes a diverse swath of influences ranging from the crushing mathcore of Car Bomb to the jazz fusion of Masayoshi Takanaka, with some dreamy Sithu Aye post-rock to round things out.” Prog bombing.
“They say you can never have too much of a good thing. But they’re wrong. Everything eventually becomes stale. As the age-old complaint/joke about technical death metal highlights, there is definitely such thing as too technical and complex. While it differs from person to person, everyone has a threshold beyond which music stops being enjoyable due to its dissonance, technicality, and complexity. With this preamble, I introduce New York progressive technical death metal group SARMAT, whose debut Determined to Strike is likely to approach if not leap beyond the threshold of many listeners.” Prog Depot.
“With a lineup of New York experimental metal and prog veterans, it’s no surprise that the group glint and dazzle like so many subatomic scintillations, but the strength of Vonals lies in its subtle ebb of the ridiculous and the restrained.” Jazz monsters.
“Voronoi is a progressive jazz metal trio hailing from Leeds, UK. The fact that keyboardist Aleks Podraza worked with the emotionally beautiful and genre-defying The Cinematic Orchestra immediately caught my eye. The band blends together the sophistication of classical music and modern jazz fusion with the heavy downtempo riffs of prog-metal. Imagine cutting edge jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan and math-metal experts Meshuggah teaming up to provide the background music for a dinner party.” Fusion turbulence.
