est album – a concept one at that – about the social movement of the same name. On that subject I think it does a great job of contextualizing it and making it accessible to the listener, so hurray! As for the music, it’s also very well crafted and played, and manages to create memorable and epic passages, as well as inspiring and impressive riffs from all members of the quartet. Go get it!
Thanks to Mike for this recommendation! Replacire might be one of the most promising technical progressive death metal bands I’ve heard! They released Do Not Deviate earlier this month, and you just have to listen to it to believe it. The riffs are brutal and demanding, executed with mechanical precision. In short, this album is a desperately needed addition to your heavy prog playlist!

In my last mini-reviews set, I’ve talked about Gnarwolf‘s debut, and that I was hyped for its successor. So, the band hooked me up with it (thanks)! I’ve got to say, however, that I’m a bit disappointed. II is unable to grab me with the same excitement and energy with which Abandon did. The ‘Wild West’ concept is not the most inspired itself, and perhaps it reflects in the music. Apart from a few pretty interesting moments, like the middle section of ‘Anne: The Widow’, this EP feels rather generic. The EP comes out on April eighth.
Chants et danses… With Strings! (Vol. III) is a rather mind-blowing album by Robert Marcel Lepage, René Lussier, and the Bozzini quartet. This album is a masterpiece of experimental music, joining together chamber music, noise music, and improvisation. The guitarist and clarinetist are joined here by an experimental and classical string quartet, which serves as support and filler more than anything else. Their role isn’t prominent but certainly gives more body to the record. It’s a really unique album I’d recommend to anyone!
You have most likely already heard of this. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is a progressive rock band truly stuck in the sixties, with their vintage sound. Flying Microtonal Banana is the band’s latest album, and it features, as the title puts it, instruments with quarter-tone capabilities. It took me quite a while for me to get into the album, as the single ‘Rattlesnake”s obnoxious and endless repetitions really put me off. However, I recently tried to go beyond that, and discovered quite an amazing album! The quarter-tone is impressively well-suited to the genre, and the band sometimes sound like an Arabic The Who, which is pretty amazing – the use of traditional instruments only adds to the charm of the release. I still don’t get the need for two drummers, which rarely even play something different or complementary – the band is no King Crimson, and certainly no Bisbâyé, where double drums is an absolute necessity -, but this isn’t detrimental to the experience, it’s merely puzzling. After having fallen under the band’s spell, I even started to like ‘Rattlesnake’. If you haven’t already, give this one a good try!
British Columbia’s post-hardcore outfit Kitsune is honestly one of the best things the genre brought recently. The main singer on Braver is just perfect for the genre and the music – which is pretty close to Dance Gavin Dance and other ‘Swancore’ music -, and it only gets better with the few guest vocalists on the record. I’ll keep it short, but this album is highly addictive, and you should check it out for sure!
Qud’shu is an intriguing drum and bass VI duo playing a sort of highly dissonant and rhythmically complex post-metal. The nature of the duo makes the songs on the Qud’shu EP sound a bit barren, but the beats and riffs are interesting enough to get more than a few repeats out of it. It’s a bleak and challenging EP that proves to be quite an interesting experience.
R’lyeh is a cryptic avant-garde black metal one-man band, and they just released Celestial Malefactor, the band’s debut full-length. Their music is founded on dissonant intervals, progressive song structures, and generally fast-paced and aggressive riffs. The production is raw enough to give it a sort of ‘underground’ or ‘trve’ aesthetic, but not so much as to make it unbearable. It’s a very interesting concept album relating, if I’m not mistaken, an alien abduction.

Portugal’s avant-garde black metal act Tod Huetet Uebel delivers a new creation in May, called N.A.D.A. It consists of only two songs, one being a seventeen-minute supplice of agony, misery, and impending doom. The band’s prowesses have been highly praised, following their last album, Malícia, and they no doubt will again, once this twenty-minute banger comes out! This is not a drill!