Category Archives: News

Warm up Your Throats! Audition to Be the Voice of II II II!

by Dæv Tremblay

II II II is amongst my favourite bands because of their unique style of composition. Their experimental, jazzy mathcore album, A Conundrum on My Coffee Table, from 2012, still gets played fairly frequently, which is quite a feat for me! The recent news of new material from the band, with the release of an instrumental demo on Youtube (below), stirred me up and got me very excited. It seems I wasn’t the only one because in response to the public’s reaction, the band decided to move on and concretize the new EP.

Right now, on SoundCloud, they have put … Read more

The Pitts Minnemann Project – The Psychic Planetarium

by Dæv Tremblay

coverpsychicplanetariumThe Pitts Minnemann Project released their first album in 2014 with the technical, fusion progressive metal album 2 L 8 2 B Normal, featuring keyboard virtuoso Jimmy Pitts and drummer madman Marco Minnemann, completed by a long list of musicians amongst whom are found Tom “Fountainhead” Geldschläger, Ray Riendeau, and Jerry Twyford. This album is basically a 52-minute, 27-part song of the best fusion progressive metal out there, and I keep going back to it quite regularly. Two years later, and we’ve got The Psychic Planetarium. Does it raise the bar for the future or does it fail … Read more

OSR: March 25th, 2016

by Dæv Tremblay

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What’s up, fam?

Valerinne is a post-metal band from Romania, and Monumenta is their third full-length. It’s a pretty good, instrumental take on the genre, with typically lengthy songs in which minor-sounding riffs are developed. A standard post-metal release, but enjoyable nonetheless. The stream is from their last album, An Ocean Held Me, but I’ll talk about Hope for a Mourning, which’ll come out on April 15th.
New Zealand’s prog rock/indie band Mice on Stilts‘s sophomore album is, basically, more of the good stuff that’s on “An Ocean Held Me”. It sounds a bit neo-prog, like Sanguine Hum,… Read more

OSR: March 21st, 2016

by Dæv Tremblay

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Let’s start this up with Chaoh Reiccuk‘s first full-length album, Nantes. As with their February EP, it’s what could be called MIDI-math fusion jazz. Even though every track is treated with decent VST instruments, there are only so much tweaks made to humanize the sound, so that it sounds robotic, mechanical. But is that a flaw? I say no, it’s a new sound that takes advantage of and doesn’t try to hide the fact that we all make music using computers nowadays. Some kind of robojazz, which I like.
Vampilia releases My Heart Will Go On on… Read more

OSR: March 16th, 2016

by Dæv Tremblay

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Let’s begin with Usti Waya‘s folk-lined experimental drone album, From Dust, We Rise. It’s a wonderful journey with loads of instruments thrown in – violin, clarinet and banjo to name a few – in order to create an exotic and intense sound. I’m not big into drone music, but this one is very good!

[Click here to stream Vexxes – Common Ground]
Releasing on May 6th, Vexxes‘ new EP, Common Ground, is a punkish alternative post-rock album. It’s a bit of an awkward description, but I bet you can imagine how it sounds by reading it. … Read more