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

Hello there. I, Sam, am back from holiday to yap at you again with some random bullshit. Chris took over for me last week and questioned what the purpose was of those random stream of consciousness intros in his intro. He figured it’d be a form of attention seeking, which maybe has some truth to it, but honestly it was more that I had no idea what to write in these intros anymore so I got bored and started with random things. I could also try to form up actually interesting thoughts on things, but those take a lot of time to put together and don’t generate nearly as much discussion as it would should I make a Reddit post for example. Especially as my thoughts tend to be more long winded and I take long to get my points across it’s just unfeasible.

So, June. It’s a weird month. We have literally 6 albums rated an 8/10, which is nice I think (and also remarkable because June is the 6th month). This edition is a bit less packed than usual since Stephen’s still on Holiday from reviewing, my review is postponed for next week and two of Andrew’s reviews fell into the water due to the bands having over 10k monthly Spotify listeners (which is our listener cap). We do have a guest review though from the person behind the avantgarde death metal band Sanity Theorist. I’ll mark their review with an asterisk (*) and you can check out their Bandcamp here. Now to wrap things up I’ll just dump the Spotify playlist with recommended tracks here and you can start reading.


New here? Check our About page and take a look at our social media accounts (links in the sidebar). In short what we do is that we search for promising underground prog metal (and related) bands through Metal-Archives advanced search, Bandcamp and other sources, group them together by the month they were released in, and then write a review on them. Do you want your band reviewed? Send us an email at theprogressivesubway@gmail.com. Just make sure it’s from a month we haven’t covered yet, that the release is over 20 minutes long and that you don’t have more than 10k Spotify monthly listeners.

Zmey Gorynich – Чёртовы пляски / Devilish Dances (Russia)
Style: Symphonic/Folk/Deathcore (mixed vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | VKontakte | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Josh

While a great genre, prog often feels like it’s got a stick up its ass. Zmey Gorynich have removed that stick, fashioned it into a wand, and used it to conjure up the spirits of Vladimir Lenin and Peter the Great from beyond the grave. This album does not take itself seriously. It has a Pitbull cover on it, for God’s sake. This is not a weakness, though, but rather a strength.

Sonically, this album is a blend of polka, symphonic metal, and deathcore. It’s not cohesive like a concept album, and that works in its favor. Zmey Gorynich experiment with just about everything here. There are power metal choruses, black metal riffs, breakdowns that are rapped over, a Pitbull cover, and polka/deathcore sections with major key riffage. You never really know what’s gonna happen next, and that makes for an incredibly fun listening experience. I’ll admit, though, that sometimes it’s a bit too jarring. Occasionally you’re hit with a breakdown out of nowhere in the middle of a folk section, and that just doesn’t flow at all.

For an album that feels so schizophrenic on paper, it flows surprisingly well. The band tends to fixate on one style at a time, then sculpt all the others around it. This means ominous clean polka vocals over deathcore breakdowns and happy metal riffs in polka sections. Because of this, there’s never really much stylistic clashing, as everything is played with coexistence in mind. This is not a rule, however. Zmey Gorynich occasionally do something completely unprecedented that shouldn’t work at all, and a good deal of the time it ends up working out. My favorite example of this is the intro to Капель, which is straight polka… until the harsh vocals come in. It’s so absurd and jarring that it’s not, which in turn makes it even more jarring, and somehow it works!

If you’ve got thirty minutes or so free and want to have some good fun, definitely check this album out. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but it’s a deathcore-polka fusion album with a Pitbull cover (which fucking slaps, by the way). You don’t see that every day.

Recommended tracks: Матрёшкинъ Попъ, Кузькина Мать, Капель
Recommended for fans of: Russkaja, Mr. Bungle, Pensees Nocturnes, Diablo Swing Orchestra
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Firelink – Firelink (US-GA)
Style: Black (harsh vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Jonah

This has been a hell of a year for me and black, or blackened, metal. Between Wake from earlier this year, the Gaerea album that just came out, and Firelink’s new self-titled I’ve been up to my neck in high quality tremolo riffs and shrieks. If any of you remember my review from our Missed Albums edition, you might recall that I spouted oceans of praise onto Firelink’s debut album, and rightly so. Especially given it was a debut by two guys with, as far as I am aware, no previous experience making music, it was tremendously impressive. Add to that a real gift for atmosphere and some incredibly interesting songwriting choices and you have one of the best black metal albums I heard in 2019. Now the band is left with the daunting task of following up an album I very nearly consider a masterpiece. Do they manage to do so successfully?

Not entirely, no. After a multitude of listens I can firmly say that I think some of the magic that was in the first album is missing here. The songs are tighter, the performances are equally impressive, but there just aren’t as many “wow” moments as the first album. That being said, this is still a damn good black metal album. The riffs are massive, the tremolo sections are sinister, the drumming is pummeling, and the vocals are as demonic as ever, with the trade-offs between shrieks and roars incredibly effective. I keep coming back to this album over and over again, even if it’s not quite at the level of their debut, and god damn this is still some good stuff.

The production could have used a bit more love as well, although I’m sure the muffled nature of it was something of an aesthetic choice. I’ve never been a fan of black metal with more rough or lo-fi production, and while this album isn’t particularly offensive in that regard, I do think it might have benefited from a slightly cleaner mix.

This all being said, for those that are fans of the genre, or enjoyed their debut, Firelink’s new album is more quality melo-black with hints of death and doom influence and some absolutely massive vocals and riffs. Excellent stuff yet again, and I’m sure we’ll only see more of it from these guys in the future.

Recommended tracks: Where Demons Bore, Cloak of Marrow, Kingseeker
Recommended for fans of: Alcest, Gaerea, Agalloch
Final verdict: 8/10