Naeramarth is a progressive metal band from Salk Lake City, and their debut album, The Innumerable Stars is coming out on 20 October. Stating influences as varied as Ihsahn, Leprous, Enslaved, and Opeth, Naeramarth cover an impressive range of metal genres, from black metal to doom metal, with a lot of straight-up progressive metal and prog death in-between. “Asterisms” is a pretty much perfect example of this, it covers well progressive black metal, with a very Opethian acoustic guitars corridor in the middle. Thanks to its 8:50 runtime, each part has the time to breathe, but its only about half … Read more
Tag Archives: progressive metal
Archspire – Relentless Mutation
Canadian band Archspire surely needs no introduction. With a single album, they defined themselves as the epitome of their genre and a paragon to strive for. That genre is technical death metal – tech-death for short –, and that album was The Lucid Collective, released in 2014. Earlier this month, the Vancouverites released their new album, under the edgy moniker Relentless Mutation. More than simply a follow-up, it’s actually a step up, as incredible as it sounds from a band already seen as over the top as this one. A while ago now, they teased a drum practice … Read more
Instar – The Ex nihilo Cycle
Instar is a narration-driven progressive metal band based in Austin, Texas. Their debut album, the self-titled Instar EP, came out in January of last year, and was a pretty interesting insight into what the project could become. With their debut full-length coming right around the corner, we get a better glimpse into the promising future of their formula. As for what they currently offer, I’ll be reviewing that right here.
First of all, narration-driven music can’t be good if the narration itself isn’t. In a day and age where the posh British accent is revered amongst many media – just … Read more
The Hirsch Effekt – Eskapist
Some albums come along and pleasantly join the ranks of what you previously considered “great music”. Some albums come along and make you question everything you previously classified as “great music”. The Hirsch Effekt’s fourth full-length, Eskapist, is the latter kind of album – a towering post-hardcore monolith that reaches a mountaintop I never imagined to be climbable, from which the view makes most other modern progressive acts look like ants.
The Hirsch Effekt are one of those bands whose sound cannot be tidily summarized in a couple of adjectives. Their own bandcamp liberally describes them as “rooted … Read more
Bodhi – Ineffable
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