Behold the Arctopus surreptitiously released Cognitive Emancipation when everyone was looking at the United States’ election results unfurl. Even though they claim it’s not an EP, it technically is, at twenty minutes long, but I agree that the segregation of EPs and LPs is arbitrary and should be stopped. The band’s trademark drummer change now brings Jason Bauers, of Psyopus. The music on Cognitive Emancipation is somewhere between Skullgrid and Horrorscension, but is at the same time something new and unique. It sounds like Behold the Arctopus, and fans on the band will relish it, but it sounds like … Read more
Mini-Reviews XXX
Cultural Lungs is a symphonic progressive rock band from Portugal, and Fortress is their newest album. The concept behind it is rather interesting, too. It’s basically a choose your own adventure type of experience. The ‘happy ending’ version consists of rather upbeat progressive rock (songs 2-8), while the ‘sad ending’ consists of more cinematic songs, almost like a movie soundtrack (songs 10-17). It’s basically two EPs in one album. The music itself is well-done and has a sort of almost minimalistic, indie feel, which is somewhat charming. Hint: create two playlists – one ‘bright side’ consisting of tracks 1 to … Read more
EXCLUSIVE: Prog Band Troika Streams ‘Mandala’ from Their Upcoming Album
With their third full-length album, My Brain Is a Receiver, coming out this week, New Zealand progressive rock act Troika decided to make ‘Mandala’, the third track on record, available for streaming. At over nine minutes and a half, the song is drenched in post-rock, with the 7/4 motif being repeated, altered, interchanged, and built upon in order to create release and tension over an underlying swelling of the tides. The abundance of effect pedals, past the halfway point, contributes to the power and personality of this track.
My Brain Is a Receiver comes out on November 12 on … Read more
Mini-Reviews XXIX and Site Update
This iteration of Mini-Reviews marks a new step in Can This Even Be Called Music‘s. Since our inception, we’ve been growing further and further from review scores because of the many problems inherent to them. The previous step was the shrinking from percentage scores to a simplified, three-level system, but it still retained many of the problems that any scoring system has. Namely, they oversimplify an often complex and subtle appreciation of a piece of art, they cannot represent integrally the complete written review, they can be misleading, and people might only look at the score without even reading … Read more
Mini-Reviews XXVIII
This week, I came across Stranger Aeons, one of my new favourite music blogs, where I discovered Numenorean and Gilded Lily, which I will be reviewing today. Go check this website, and here’s to many more discoveries!
Numenorean is an atmospheric black metal/blackgaze band from Canada, and Home is their debut album. They include a lot of post-rock elements to their songwriting so the contrast between these atmospheric buildups and the apex moments is rather cathartic. Home came out earlier this year, and is a very promising album.
Nova Incepta is a cinematic progressive metal band from Australia. New … Read more