The Big Fat Meanies – The Time Has Come…
Rarely have I grinned so much while listening to a recent progressive rock album. Thanks to their ska band roots and influences, Pennsylvania’s Big Fat Meanies make energetic and uplifting prog ska music on their most recent album. The Time Has Come… is over one hour long, but never feels like it’s too much. Brenna’s vocals are a perfect blend of power and emotion, and the brass and woodwinds quartet is an uncommon sight in the prog scene that adds a ton to the music. Truly, an album that shouldn’t go overlooked!

Date Stuff – Date Stuff
Chicago’s duo Date Stuff released their second EP this autumn. This eponymous release is an interesting mix of indie pop, jazz, and emo math rock. Date Stuff is soft and sad, but pretty and really good. Jam this.

Crawl across the Sky – The Silent God
The Silent God is an ambitious album. First off, it’s an intriguing bridge between post-rock and black metal, and secondly, it’s a double album with five massive compositions split into a total of twenty-one tracks. The music itself is great, and I’d enjoy it without hesitation were it not for the poor production that really works against the music. Please, remix this!

ジズー (Jizue) – Grassroots

ジズー (Jizue) is a Japanese jazz fusion band that seems to draw some inspirations from melodic math rock. Grassroots is their latest EP and it’s a really wonderful little one. It’s very enjoyable and done with a lot of taste.

Andrew McCommons – Passion; Obsession
The debut release of Seattle-based musician Andrew McCommons leaves its mark! Passion; Obsession is an intricate and ever-changing instrumental progressive metal EP that leads you through many different small rooms, each with its very own character and atmosphere. That’s what getting through one song is like, and I like it. I hope to hear more from this project soon!

Excessive Visage – You Are Lost Anyway
It’s a shame I missed this album during October, because it had good odds of making it to the Monthly Recommendations list. This German avant-garde progressive rock quartet has some interesting quirks that put them apart, but doesn’t make them much more difficult to listen to. In fact, this album is perhaps one of the most accessible avant-rock releases I know!

Matt Mitchell – Mått Mitchelł (Tìm Bernę) Førage
This album is awesome. It’s a bunch of Tim Berne compositions played on piano, and it’s just that (although they were slightly adapted and modified by Matt Mitchell), but they are almost incomprehensibly impressive. This is some avant-garde jazz of the highest level, and it’s as difficult to approach as it is to play, I assume. But, really, I lack the words to describe how amazing this album is. Listen to it!

Akakor – Akakor
Akakor is a defunct Canadian instrumental technical progressive death metal band, but they’ve had the kindness of releasing (for free!) the instrumental version of the album they were working on before disbanding. Even though it’s incomplete, the album has been recorded and produced by Colin Marston, so it sounds absolutely terrifying. If you want to listen to the band with vocals, listen to their debut EP, it also sounds really good!

Luna’s Call – Divinity
Divinity is really a superb progressive death metal album. It’s filled with metric modulations, triplet riffs, and all sorts of good stuff. At times melodic, at times harsh and unforgiving, Luna’s Call‘s debut is highly promising and, since it came out in 2016, makes me hope for something new relatively soon!