Tag Archives: melodic

Toehider – “Good”

by Jeff Nixon

Releasing tomorrow on October 19th, the aptly named new album from Mike Mills’ Toehider is not just “Good” it’s great! But that’s to be expected of Mike as he’s continued to push the envelope in the prog genre in weird and interesting ways.

Mike’s early work under the name Toehider consisted of twelve EPs that he completed in twelve months. Quite a demanding schedule that only someone as crazy and driven as Mike could accomplish. I first really started following Toehider around when he crowdfunded his last album, What Kind of Creature Am I?, on the … Read more

Bodhi – Ineffable

by Jeff Nixon


The Room Colored Charlatan guitarist Justin Seymour is about to release his first solo EP Ineffable on August 25th under the name Bodhi. This short but sweet offering of melodic instrumental prog is reminiscent of Plini and Animals as Leaders. The first track ‘Desire’ starts off with an atmospheric synth which is then joined by some pleasant melodic guitars, drums, and piano. The layered guitars sound amazing but the keyboard sounds great too and compliments the guitars well. For being completely a one-man operation, it is quite impressive. The title track ‘Ineffable’ is the longest on … Read more

Some Happy Thoughts – Épiphanie

by Dæv Tremblay

Born from Québec’s metropolis, Some Happy Thoughts is a metal band joining depressive suicidal black metal with doom. The lyrics, in French, talk about depression and the futility of everything, but elegantly so, with short poems fronting most tracks. There’s also a twist to it, an Épiphanie, hence the title. This vision of clarity brings a much appreciated silver lining to the suffocating black fog that the rest of the album represents. The full-length album is slow, heavy, and oppressively bleak, with a constant chirping tremolo guitar, a screaming but not shrieking vocalist, and decent production quality. Its nihilism … Read more

Karmakanic – Dot

by Jeff Nixon

Karmakanic’s fifth studio album, Dot, is a progressive rock album inspired by recent writings by Carl Sagan. Frontman Jonas Reingold stated that this inspiration stemmed from Sagan’s quote about the picture of the earth that Voyager 1 took in 1990 from the outer areas of our solar system. “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter … Read more

Armonite – The Sun Is New Each Day

by Jeff Nixon

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Released last year on June 22, 2015, Armonite’s second album, and first album in 15 years The Sun Is New Each Day is a vibrant instrumental prog album that is full of both complex and beautiful melodies. The prominent electric violin reminds me a bit of the Dixie Dregs. The album sounds like a Soundtrack at times, which makes sense since the band has published videos of a few movie theme covers from their show The Soundtrack is New Each Day. In fact, it sounds more like a video game soundtrack to me. ‘‘G’ as in Gears’ could easily … Read more