“I love progressive metal fusions. To name just a few: Opeth, Cormorant, and Ne Obliviscaris are among my favorite bands. So the prospect of getting on board with a young and allegedly progressive black metal band early was certainly enticing. I say allegedly as our promo-meisters have been known to be deceptively liberal with genre labeling in the past, but I cut them some slack and acquired Chained to a Wolf by Katakomb with interest.” Wolves, chains and intrigue.
“I normally make a point of ignoring Facebook adverts. ‘I won’t be a victim to consumer culture!’ I say to myself; ‘you don’t know me!’ But the omniscient algorithms which now compose the base of all our interests and spending habits were once again validated. Promising progressive and post-metal, eye-catching artwork and a group local to me, Asira’s Efference beckoned with a sultry finger. And while I may have chided myself as I hit play on the single, I learned to re-love myself by its conclusion.” We frown on self re-loving.
“Self-proclaiming their music as ‘southern progressive metal’ sounds interesting on paper, bringing up imaginative scenarios, such as combining a dose of burly Down-styled metal with the adventure and bombast of prog. A number of similar scenarios whipped through my brain before settling in to jam Before a Human Path.” When prog-metal goes south.
“Today I shall be reviewing Motherless, the third album by the Swedish Trial. They are unfortunately unrelated to the sadly-defunct but happily-reincarnated, Chicago-based thrash outfit Trials. Upon consideration, I’ve come to regard Motherless as an album which my superiors will detest.” The rabble are roused.
“From the moment I heard the pummeling “Crusher Destroyer” from their landmark debut Remission some 15 years ago, I knew Mastodon were something special. My infatuation with Remission began a love affair with the band that bordered on fanboy-ism from one excellent album to the next, each a stirring and adventurous behemoth of sludge metal force and progressive smarts. However, my relationship with Mastodon started to get rocky when they followed their sprawling prog masterwork Crack the Skye with 2011’s The Hunter.” Mastodon on the rocks? Ain’t no big surprise.
“Gun to my head, I’d have to say that no metal sub-genre tickles my fancy as much as progressive metal. It’s hardly a fully independent genre, though, because how often do you call a band straight-up progressive metal? Well, sometimes, but usually it’s progressive death metal, or progressive power metal, or any of the other combinations. This is because while other sub-genres are more about a certain sound or atmosphere, progressive is almost exclusively about the structure of the songs, freeing the band from their verse-chorus shackles. This allows for longer songs with more room to explore, and the pull of a narrative structure leads to concept albums more than any other genre.” Is this a dream in a theater?
“One of my favorite bands is Tool, and for the love of all that’s good and pure put an album out already, boys! Okay, we know it isn’t happening soon, so we must clutch and grab at every band that shows up flying the Tool flag. Last year Source surprised us with a great record, loved by our own Zephyrus. Vangough strides forth this month with similar aspirations. Warpaint is the trio’s fourth studio album, and third overall to feature a rabbit on the cover. I mention that only because rabbit covers are weird. I mean, what normal band uses rabbits?” Watership Goughn.
“Even the most stigmatized genres within the metal canon were born out of an earnest desire to innovate, and as such I’m willing to give any style — or in this case, a combination of styles — a fair shake. Enter Greece’s Locust Leaves, a band I was rather eager to cover due to their proclaimed fusion of prog, black, thrash, and doom metal. Locust Leaves does indeed cover all of these styles (and more!) in the span of just thirty-six minutes on their long-gestating debut A Subtler Kind of Light.” Many Greek chefs, small kitchen…FIGHT!
“Repeat after me: Djent is not a dirty word. It certainly appears that way with the general consensus in the metal community of the often maligned offshoot sub-genre of progressive metal. The potential is definitely there for bands to take the basic template of the djent formula and manipulate the components in a myriad of interesting and innovative ways, yet the quality bands able to do this effectively appear few and far between.” Semper fi, or semper die, there is no semper try.
“Chicago has a busy music scene, and I can hardly be bothered to go to shows even when bands I already like are playing, so there are plenty of cool second city bands that I’ve always heard of but never checked out. One such familiar name is Without Waves, an experimental/prog metal/rock outfit set to release their third album, Lunar, into a crowded field of new music this March 17th.” In a crowded field, is this brutal enough?
