Sticks and stones may break my bones, but boats will take me down a river carved out by an eldritch sky rock The post Lost In Time: Kayo Dot – Hubardo appeared first on The Progressive Subway ..read more

Style: Technical/dissonant death metal, avant-garde metal (harsh vocals) Recommended for fans of: Gorguts, Imperial Triumphant Country: New Jersey, United States Release date: 12 April 2024 Over the past few years, the Subway’s research and expansion division has observed a phenomenon only known as The Cave. See, we’re trying to move from the abandoned Cleveland, Ohio office building that we call our headquarters, and quite frankly the only place with lower rent is the giant hole smack dab in the middle of [LOCATION REDACTED]. But we aren’t stupid, we had to do our research regarding The Cave ..read more

Genres: avant-garde metal, prog metal, prog sludge metal (all the vocals) Recommended for fans of: Between the Buried and Me, Mr. Bungle, Strapping Young Lad Country: California, United States Release date: 3 March 2024 The Velvet Underground: one of those critically acclaimed music nerd bands I can’t dig no matter how much I try. The same goes for frontman Lou Reed’s solo work—from the unilaterally awful glam rock of Transformer to one of the seminal harsh noise albums Metal Machine Music to goddamn Lulu, he’s just absolutely the antimatter to my taste. Considering he died in 2013, I was sur ..read more

Genres: dissonant death metal (mostly harsh vocals) Recommended for fans of: Ulcerate, Blut Aus Nord, Blood Incantation, Tomb Mold, The Ruins of Beverast Country: Minnesota, United States Release date: 26 January 2024 I find talking about the album cover as the intro paragraph to be a bit of a cop out, an easy choice when a vast array of other creative options are possible; the cover art for Vampiric Spiritual Drain, the debut album by Feral Light’s front man A.S.’s new band Unsouling, does not allow me the luxury of ignoring it. Thirteen glowing, comatose wolves are being sucked into a giant ..read more

Genres: prog black metal (harsh vocals) Recommended for fans of: Dødheimsgard, Arcturus Country: France Release date: 12 January 2024 The new year has brought some pretty drastic changes to my listening habits. I still consume a frankly nauseating amount of new music, but I’m more discriminatory with it, pretty much only doing stuff I actively like or that’re attached to my several listening projects instead of taking everybody’s sloppy seconds along with various leftover detritus like some benthic worm. Accordingly, I realized how good music can be when I listen to more stuff I actually enjo ..read more

Genres: avant-garde metal, instrumental prog metal, electronica, industrial metal (instrumental) Recommended for fans of: The Algorithm, Master Boot Record, Neurotech, Space Mountain soundtrack Country: Poland Release date: 6 January 2024 With a name like Evelyn and an album cover that reeks of Vieux Boulognendue, I figured Multidimensional Transformation must be generic symphonic metal, no different than any of the other five hundred bands that ape Nightwish—probably replete with a hot, goth-adjacent singer named Evelyn that would make my peer Zach instantly fall in love, too. To be sure, Mu ..read more

Genres: progressive metal, “avant-garde” metal (instrumental) Recommended for fans of: Tardigrade Inferno, Diablo Swing Orchestra, Art Ensemble of Chicago Country: Canada Release date: 1 January 2024 Ah 2023, we collectively bemoaned about the state of progressive metal enough that it’d be beating a dead horse to comment any more on it in my first review of the new year. Needless to say, I’m beyond excited to start reviewing 2024 releases—surely they’ll be better than last year. First, don’t call me Shirley, and second, Molmolti Volti is not the promising start to the year I would have liked ..read more

Style: avant-garde doom metal, experimental rock, drone, dark ambient (clean vocals) Recommended for fans of: Bohren & der Club of Gore, Lingua Ignota, Spencer Zahn, Talk Talk, Bell Witch Review by: Andy Country: Denmark Release date: 24 November 2023 I would name my child after Italy’s I, Voidhanger records if I could: their motto—“obscure, unique, and uncompromising visions from the metal underground”—says it all. Their roster of eclectic, artistic bands has no parallel, and essentially every album is worth listening to because you don’t know if you’ll get freaky jazz fusion tech death ..read more

Style: avant-garde jazz, jazz fusion, avant-garde metal (instrumental) Recommended for fans of: King Crimson, Cynic, Alan Holdsworth, Frank Zappa, Krallice, Mahavishnu Orchestra Review by: Andy Country: United States-NY Release date: 13 September 2023 Colin Marston is a musical genius in the metalsphere, a wizard on bass, guitar, and keyboards, and a production savant. And somehow, the two most normal projects he’s attached to are Gorguts and Krallice, so his personal projects certainly aren’t the most accessible content out there. Aside from a very productive string of Krallice albums, Marst ..read more

Style: avant-garde black metal, experimental ambient, drone, harsh noise, electronica (harsh vocals) Recommended for fans of: Blut Aus Nord, Meshuggah, Merzbow Review by: Andy Country: United States-WA Release date: 5 September 2023 Jute Gyte are the modern art of progressive metal, obscuring the boundaries of music so severely that several of my peers likely wouldn’t even consider the project listenable. But through violence Unus Mundus Patet strikes a delicate balance between metal and an axiomatic, Socratic form of music that at times is without really doing. For the uninitiated, Adam Kalm ..read more