French quartet Asylon Terra recently released Blind Man Running, their first, full-length release. Between contemporary jazz, ambient music, and progressive rock, the compositions of Pierre Lordet, clarinetist of the group, take shape on this entrancing album. Anne Quillier, about whose sextet we already wrote, takes seat behind the omnipresent keyboards – the Rhodes and Moog -, while Lucas Hercberg takes bass duties, and Clément Black takes care of the drums. The whole is an astounding result. Blind Man Running will take your breath away. The vast soundscapes played here will submerge you, and even the harder-hitting compositions – … Read more
Tag Archives: progressive
Grizzly – Reaper
Ontario’s Grizzly band just released their second publication, Reaper, and it rips. Don’t get fooled by the opener, ‘Grave’, this is not horror ambient, but rather some crushing and technical experimental grindcore. You can see this right on the second track, but they keep on providing extra crunchy riffs with weird timings and rapid successions of notes. Though it is barely more than ten minutes long, excluding the Pantera cover at the end, this EP shreds mountains. I guess mathgrind wouldn’t be too far-fetched a description, as it certainly has aspects of both mathcore and grindcore working together. Reaper … Read more
The Clockwork Deity – An Anthology of Human Sickness
An Anthology of Human Sickness is the debut EP of UK-based solo symphonic deathgrind project The Clockwork Deity. At under ten minutes long, it’s quite a short EP, but the three songs plus introduction are more than good enough to warrant a good time. While the symphonic elements were more upfront on ‘Spontaneous Abortion.’, the other songs integrate them fully and naturally to the grinding compositions. It’s quick, it’s aggressive, full of blast beats and technical riffs, and with a touch of classical music in the orchestration. The Clockwork Deity manages to craft something rather unique and entirely good. … Read more
Mammoth – Deviations
In the world of progressive rock and metal, instrumental albums are pretty common so it’s a bit hard to stand out. Mammoth absolutely manage to do this with their new album Deviations. Impressive playing paired with amazing production quality and beautiful tones prove that these guys are at the top of their class.
The first song, ‘Entanglements’ sounds like an entanglement of instruments weaving wonderfully through each other. Impressive guitar arpeggios and solos are complemented by ambient keyboards and intense drums. The middle section of the song calms down with a bright clean section that builds back up into … Read more
Devin Townsend Project – Transcendence
Devin Townsend has gone many different musical places in his career, frequently doing something drastically different that what he’s done before, most notably on his first four albums in the Devin Townsend Project with Ki, Addicted, Deconstruction, and Ghost. Transcendence is no exception, as it takes his sound to a new level. On this album, Devin took input from the rest of the band, musicians he’s been working with for 10+ years, and relinquished some control to them. Because of this, the band sounds more united than on other recent DTP albums, like Epicloud and Sky Blue.
This was brought … Read more