Reports from the Underground: May 2020 prog reviewed (part 1)

Agora – Imperio
Style: Power/Heavy (clean, Spanish vocals)
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Review by: Matt

This album was difficult to review because I kept going back to the first song instead of finishing it. My god, does that opener kick ass.

Agora is considered a progressive band, but the only resemblance I hear is that the musicians are good. Maybe it’s a Tad Morose or Ivory Tower situation, where they reinvented themselves suddenly. Imperio starts off triumphantly power metal before settling into some slower heavy metal stompers, to my slight disappointment. The initial majesty only turns out to be sporadic. Don’t get me wrong though, everything here is pretty excellent. The vocals are exactly the right blend of toughness and soaring finesse, with amazing melodies, no matter what context. The guitarists are virtuoso shredders, but they know exactly when to deploy some tasty meathead pentatonics. The bass and drums hit like a truck, thanks to a massive flawless mix. The riffs in general are highly traditional and sometimes bluesy, but there’s the brain of a prog nerd working under there. It’s subtle, but these songs are extra sophisticated beneath all the rockin’.

Also in classic metal fashion, Agora sticks a couple less notable tracks in the back half before rallying with a great epic at the end. “Realidad Virtual” finally commits to the grandiose orchestral elements they’ve been hinting at, with awesome results. What a chorus…  What a singer. There’s also more unusual and ambitious arrangements, like some quick 7/8 drum patterns and a lydian part that might partially explain Agora‘s prog label. I spent a lot of the album waiting for some more of the melodic fury from the first song, and here I finally got hooked up.

Agora have been around for about twenty years now, and the experience shows. It’s strange that I never heard of them before… This band kills. Spanish-language metal has been lacking in my library, apparently. I think I might have enjoyed “Imperio” even more with different track sequencing, but I’m going to go back and give them all the attention they deserve. Brains and brawn… This is what metal was meant to be.

Recommended tracks: Imperio, Realidad Virtual
Recommended for fans of: Brainstorm, DGM, SOMETHING (??)
Final verdict: 8.5/10

Athaliah – The Dryad (US-MN)
Style: Blackgaze (80% clean vocals)
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Review by: Dylan

As a blackgaze veteran of this blog I always hammer home the fact that you really shouldn’t approach any new album of the genre expecting something super innovative. The genre is already specific enough for it to be hard to experiment with it without turning it into a dumpster fire. Something I have always wished to hear though was an album that kept clean vocals throughout it even when it committed to heavier bits. And Athaliah did just that. 

The result of this is a breath of fresh air; Gaze music that’s very much blackened, but that even in it’s heavier bits, preserves a kind of peacefulness that’s extremely unique. It’s something that was very pleasing to listen to, especially with the constantly present piano that just added that layer that so many releases miss.

And that’s about all I can tell you about The Dryad. It’s probably not gonna make your AOTY list or mine; the production is very muffled, most of the songs don’t blow you away, and at moments it gets kind of meh, but it is still a thoroughly enjoyable piece of art. 

Recommended tracks: Celestial Hymn, Cold
Recommended for fans of: Those who wished Alcest didn’t growl
Final verdict: 7/10

Blut – Hermeneutics (Switzerland)
Style: clusterfuck (mixed vocals)
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Review by: Josh

About a month ago, Sam mentioned this album to me for the first time. All I knew was that AngryMetalGuy had given it a 0.5/5. Naturally, I had to listen to it. Bad music is great when listened to ironically, right? As it turns out, it’s quite a struggle to ironically listen to a terrible 70-minute-long album several times with the intent to review it.

Everything that could conceivably go wrong with this album went wrong. Blut took a competent guitarist, bassist, and drummer, the three of whom could probably make a decent album together, then threw in two completely incompatible vocalists, one alright, one horrible, added in loads of bad synth work, forced themselves to make 22 songs when they realistically had nowhere near the amount of material to, changed genres whenever they felt like it, and ran it by a dollar store producer and mixer. Enter Hermeneutics.

I must begin with mentioning that this is a concept album. There are 22 tracks, each one representative of a tarot card. How much does each one represent its respective card? Barely, not of the time not at all. At the very least, this must make it more cohesive, right? Nope. This is the single most inconsistent concept album I’ve ever listened to. None of the tracks flow at all, to the point where listening on shuffle might result in a better listening experience. On top of that, the tracks themselves are utterly incoherent. The vocals are often off-beat, the instruments sound muddy, and any semblance of song structure has been thrown out the window. Lots of the shorter tracks, the sub 2 minutes ones that make up the majority of the album, feel entirely purposeless and I can only suppose were added in an attempt to make this album’s unworkable concept work. Some feel like buildup to a peak that never comes. Others just kinda go, no direction in mind. You could trim this album down to thirty minutes and lose nothing of value.

The actual music on this album ranges from serviceable to unbearable. There’s a dual vocalist dynamic going on here, but it fails to work as one of the vocalists is in dire need of more practice. While the female singer is a competent if uninspiring symphonic metal vocalist, the male singer sounds as if he stumbled drunk into the studio, was handed the lyrics without ever reading them, and heard none of the music before recording his vocals. His cadence is all over the place, often breaking mid-line in order to cram in more lyrics, none of which are anything above serviceable. On top of this, the album is filled with terrible creative decisions that serve to further obfuscate the quality of the more listenable parts. The peak of this is witnessed at the end of the track XIII, which ends with a sudden transition to loop of a music box occasionally interspersed with the voice of an old woman going “WHEN THE DEVIL’S IN THE MOOD, NIGHTMARES COME POURING OUT OF HELL.” It is truly baffling, and it must be listened to to be understood.

There are some nice moments here, but they are few and far between, buried by the mountain of schlock that composes the majority of the album. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Recommended tracks: XIII if you want to really hear what they’re going for
Recommended for fans of: to know true peace one must first know true PAIN
Final verdict: 2/10

Silverkord – Liquid Air (UK)
Style: Stoner/Post/Doom (mixed vocals)
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Review by: Jonah

I’m just going to come right out and say that this album has one of the best vocal performances I’ve heard in 2020. Sweet holy fuck this man can sing. This vocal versatility on display here, not to mention excellent melody writing, gothic country influence, and incredibly subtle layering all lead to just a masterpiece of a performance.

None of this is meant to discredit the rest of the band, however. Every single performance here is stellar, and the instrumentalists made the wise decision to step back just a little to let the vocals shine. Nowhere will you find overly flashy guitar solos and drum fills, instead you get incredibly strong driving rhythms supporting the vocal melodies and you’ll get the occasional lead guitar melody that feels more home in grunge or gothic country than in metal, but it all combines into just an absolutely excellent package. 

On top of all of this production is absolutely excellent. It’s just fuzzy enough to add texture to the album without feeling muddy or lo-fi, but it never gets so clean that it damages the aesthetic the band is clearly going for. In addition to this every single instrument is clearly audible and present in the mix, with none overpowering any other, and I think I can confidently say this is also one of the better sounding albums I’ve heard this year.

I can’t stop listening to this album and neither should you. This band deserves to explode and I wait with baited breath to see where they go with their sound.

Recommended tracks: Halcyon, Inertia, Leviathan
Recommended for fans of: Alter Bridge, Witchcraft, 16 Horsepower
Final verdict: 9/10

Wexler’s Prime – Fossil Constellation (Canada)
Style: Traditional (mixed vocals)
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Review by: Andrew

Why is this album so long? Seriously, why? There are very few albums that I’d say justify excessive length. Ayreon, for example, makes 90+ minute albums that deserve every last minute. Fossil Constellation, however, is one hour and 26 minutes of basically the same thing. When there’s barely any variety throughout an album’s runtime, the album begins to get tedious. When an album is nearly 90 minutes long, it gets REALLY tedious. Usually, I listen to an album at least twice or thrice before writing anything; I listened to Fossil Constellation once. Given the similarity of the music throughout, one listen was effectively the same as two or three — it definitely feels like I’ve heard the album multiple times.

Let’s pretend for a moment that Wexler’s Prime decided to release half of the material from this album on its own — this would be an appropriate length for the number and quality of ideas present here. Rooted primarily in traditional prog metal a la Dream Theater, Wexler’s Prime borrows from several other genres — most notably technical death metal — in their compositions. Synths are prominent as well, as is common in traditional prog metal. They are present enough to make an impact but subdued enough to never take center stage.

Brendan Dean’s vocals are enjoyable. They’ve got a slight grit to them that adds a textural contrast to the clean production of the instruments. Dean’s harsh vocals come through sparingly in the several death metal sections; they suit the instrumentation well, but don’t really do much else. I should specify that Wexler’s Prime is a solo project — Brendan Dean does basically everything else on this record besides just the vocals. An impressive feat, especially considering the 90 minutes of music here. 

If Fossil Constellation was an hour or so in length, it would be a pleasant trad prog album. Unfortunately, the overly long runtime affects my engagement and focus so significantly that it detracts from the enjoyment. The music is good, but it’s a lot and a lot of the same. 

Recommended tracks: Idol Hands, Cedars, Diodes
Recommended for fans of: Dream Theater, Threshold, long long songs
Final verdict: 6/10

Dreichmere – The Fruit of Barren Fields (US-MI)
Style: Extreme (harsh vocals)
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Review by: Sam

Do you like the album Morningrise by Opeth? If so, you’ll likely like this album. If not, move on. End of review.

Okay maybe that was too easy, as there’s more to say. But seriously, the similarities are uncanny. It has a similarly murky production and meandering songwriting style, and there’s even a pretty aimless 20+ minute song. 

This thing was made by one person called Dustin Matthews. What’s weird about this album is that despite its 80 minute run time and seemingly free-form, kinda directionless song structures, it doesn’t become boring, which is already a great feat in my book. The sound is generally murky and melancholic. It’s a death metal-based affair, but also incorporates frequent black metal elements and other melodic (mostly acoustic) passages. No clean vocals though. The closest to that is some raspy whispering and a small guest vocal spot in “As Golden Dust”. The vocal performance is pretty great. The death growls sound properly tortured and demonic and Dustin’s various shades of blackened whispering are also pretty damn convincing. 

I think a large part of what made this album so enjoyable for me despite its length is the excellent understanding of dynamics and melodicism. There are intense, more fast-paced parts, soft acoustic bits, slower, almost doom metal-like tempos that still keep up the heaviness, tasteful guitar solos and more. The melodies vary from more conventional metal things to icy black metal harmonies and (again) acoustic playing. There’s also a nice piano-driven interlude in “Dolour” that works really well to give your ears breathing room. The individual parts are also really well done. It’s not the type of prog metal where you have riffs that only work in the context of the song. Most of the parts work just fine by themselves.

Yet despite all these good things, there’s one thing which keeps this record from getting a really high score, and that’s the songwriting. To make a great album it is key to write songs with a clear beginning, middle and end. While the individual parts of this are great, these songs just ebb in and out of existence (which is again reminiscent of Morningrise). Especially when the 21 minute song just… stops at the end I felt left wanting. This band has potential for true greatness, but as of now they (or rather, he) still have some work to do.

Recommended tracks: Pfingstlich
Recommended for fans of: Opeth – Morningrise, 2000s Enslaved
Final verdict: 6/10