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

Opus V – Universe of Truths (Brazil)
Style: Traditional/Power (clean vocals)
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Review by: Dylan

There’s a lot of people that tend to misunderstand traditional/power prog metal nowadays. They expect it to be innovative, bold, and fresh, even though it’s a genre built by tropes from over 20 years ago. By now, if you’re a committed fan of this genre, you’ve learnt to accept that for (nearly) every new release you get of it, you shouldn’t expect anything new. What you SHOULD expect is for some badass songwriting, with catchy melodies, maybe a powerful voice, and a fair bit of instrumental wank. And it is with a fair amount of joy that I report that Universe of Truths is exactly that. 

It’s prog/power very similar to Symphony X. Lower register vocals, less cheese, musicians that are virtuosos, the whole deal. I’ll say that the band shines at it’s best in it’s instrumental moments; most of the passages are extremely well written, with plenty of keys thrown in there (which is something I’ll always welcome); they’re simply put joyful to listen to. The vocals are a bit more inconsistent though. I find that the singer either ranges from mediocre to borderline excellent, which is odd to even put into words. For whatever reason, in some songs it feels like the lines don’t quite fit the moment/note, but at least it’s a rare occurrence. Most of the time, they fit the type of music perfectly, and add more to this enjoyable release. 

Aside from another couple minor issues, I was very satisfied with Opus V’s output. You know what you’re gonna get when you listen to it, but it still makes for a fun time.

Recommended tracks: Universe of Truths Pt II, The Stone, Free
Recommended for fans of: Symphony X, Carthagods
Final verdict: 8/10

Alarum – Circle’s End (Australia)
Style: Thrash (harsh vocals)
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Review by: Andrew

I have had a very difficult time deciding where my opinion lies for this. On one hand, I absolutely adore the composition and instrumentation all the way through. On the other hand, the vocals are even worse than the usual thrash band vocals (sorry thrash fans) and are more akin to random shouting or chanting than actually singing. After enough listens, I decided that I can forgive the frankly weird choice of vocal style because everything else is so damn good.

Playing a unique blend of technical thrash and Cynic-style prog, Australian band Alarum isn’t new on the scene by any means. Formed in 1992, they’ve sporadically released albums and demos here and there — Circle’s End, despite releasing 28 years after the band’s formation, is only their fourth studio album. I have yet to hear any of their previous efforts but from Circle’s End, it is clear they’ve developed a unique sound. Equal parts Cynic and Vektor with a healthy range of other influences, Alarum’s instrumentation is absolutely fantastic. The riffs are heavy and technical, the leads are melodic at times and angular at other times, but always playing well with the rhythm section. There’s a ton of variety here — only infrequently does Alarum rely on traditional song structure and riff composition. They even have jazz breaks and interludes that heavily assist with the album’s atmosphere and memorability. 

As previously mentioned, the wonderful composition & instrumentation are the only things that allow me to forgive Alarum for the odd choice in vocal style. Like I said above, the singing is more accurately described as shouting. Vocal lines are never particularly long either, seldom going above a few words at a time. This makes me wonder whether having vocals was more of an afterthought or something that was planned? If there was an instrumental version of this album available, I would be all over that. Again, the instrumentation here is top-notch and I can look past the vocals as a result.

Perfectly technical and intense, Alarum have come out of the woodwork after a 9-year gap since their previous album with the compositional spectacle Circle’s End. Despite some intensely strong qualms with specific parts of the album, the rest is good enough for me to absolutely recommend it to any fan of technical or progressive thrash.

Recommended tracks: Szygy, In Spiral, Circle’s End
Recommended for fans of: Vektor, Cynic, Atheist
Final verdict: 8.2/10

Them Moose Rush – Dancing Maze (Canada)
Style: Psych (clean vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | RYM page
Review by: Tyler

It’s not terribly often that I get a piece of music that tests me as much as Dancing Maze has. On the one hand it has elements of some of my absolute favorite artists that I hold dear (see Freighter, Closure in Moscow, The Mars Volta, Trophy Scars, the list goes), all sort of mashed up in psychedelic King Gizzard burrito. It’s smart, it’s progressive, it’s clean, it’s precise. It’s a lot of things. On the other hand, I can’t really think of a more disjointed or obtuse listen in recent memory. It’s an album that took a bit of fighting to hold down.

Let’s touch on the points I made above. The writing on Dancing Maze is really something else. Lots of chromatic runs, interesting melodies times. That, mixed with the clear production, the first track was promising, albeit a bit to wrap my head around. The grooves on it were great, the band is just weird enough to be intrigued. But as the album progressed and things got weirder and weirder yet, my hope for this thing started to get out of reach. There were more passages where every instrument felt like it was playing it’s own song, they all just happened to be in the same room as each other. The times that the band members doing their own thing were starting to outweigh the times where their goals were the same.

Structure wise, the songs mostly follow the standard flow that you’d expect, nothing is too out of the ordinary there. However, there are more than a few songs with outro sections that didn’t seem to add much. Most of the time they are extended sections with lots of vibrato/tremolo/fuzz effects that just sort of fizzle out, almost to add run time to the song. These outros aren’t over offensive in any great way, but shortening them or cutting them completely would have let me with a much more finished feel. These actually helped make the album seem longer than it really is in a not so good way, which is a pretty big thing to say when it clocks in at just over 35 minutes. 

There should be a lot to like on Dancing Maze, but there just wasn’t enough for me to grab on to. The lack of cohesion between the band members really made everything sound pretty vulnerable and weak. Had the band had more section of unity or more layering, or really anything to thicken up the sound so my focus wasn’t bouncing around constantly, we’d all be looking at a pretty different review right now none of the songs were really inherently bad at all (save for the Primus worshipping “Dolly’s Wedding Song”), there just isn’t anything too substantial to grab on to and get behind.  

Recommended tracks: Jude’s Got Another, Yvvone’s Getting On
Recommended for fans of: Freighter, The Mars Volta, King Gizzard (keep in mind, these are greater than the sum of their parts.)
Final verdict: 4/10

Properties of Nature – Wolves in Business Suits (US-UT)
Style: Post-Hardcore (mixed vocals)
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Review by: Chris

It’s swancore y’all.

I really think saying that phrase alone gets a lot of the ideas this EP contains across, as bad as I feel for saying something that reductionary. Unfortunately, it’s a specific genre space that really has been extremely saturated lately. The main problem is outside a few standouts, I find that the swancore esque bands that tend to be interesting and more unique are the ones with Will Swan himself involved instead of the other bands chasing the same stylistic choices. I should make it clear I’m not against the genre, as Dance Gavin Dance is pretty regularly a top 5 plays band all time for me, but I really have a hard time getting into anything else that tries to follow the similar formula.

Properties of Nature most definitely attempt to follow the formula, and being honest they succeed in following it. But success in following the formula doesn’t translate 1:1 with making something interesting. Yeah this EP has a lot of high tapping guitar licks, swooning higher pitched male vocals, PhC screams, and innate jumpiness in a lot of the parts you would expect. It does somewhat elicit that feeling of perhaps taking your date up to makeout hill or whatever to find out they really aren’t that into you. The production is standard fare for the genre, though I found the drums (especially the snare) to be the weakest aspect in the mix. The clean vocals dance somewhere in a liminal space between early Panic at the Disco, Eidola, and Dance Gavin Dance, while the harsh vocals remind me of earlier A Lot Like Birds. There are definite variations in song structures and sections, but some are honestly a bit out of place in my mind.

The biggest thing about this EP is the lyrics truly are pretty cringy in an almost unbearable way. Dance Gavin Dance get away with their many times terrible lyrics because either they are complete and utter nonsense delivered with unbridled fury or passion (Jon Mess), or they are just kind of cringy (Tilian Pearson’s). What gets Tilian’s over the hump is the arrangement of parts and the fact that his innate flirty, promiscuous sounding voice has an undeniable charm where you can’t help but sometimes smile and let him get away with the lyrics. Unfortunately, in both the harsh and clean aspects Properties of Nature aren’t getting away with it.

This is one review that even though it is supposedly obvious I like to make completely clear this is just not for me but I know people that love Swancore stuff will eat this up. So if you kinda miss A Lot Like Birds or want something that can sit comfortably in your playlist of more modern PhC, this is definitely it.

Recommended tracks: Sarcoma, Giraffulo, You Didn’t Start a Fire in My Heart, You Started it in My House!
Recommended for fans of: Dance Gavin Dance, Eidola, A Lot Like Birds
Final verdict: 6/10

Kenziner – Phoenix (France)
Style: Power/Neoclassical (clean vocals)
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Review by: Dylan

It’s honestly a tragedy when you pick 2 albums to review for an issue of this blog with around 50 possible choices, only for one of them to be your typical shrug factory.

What do I mean by shrug factory you may ask? Those albums that are very generic in their style of prog, and that their efforts for an album are not bad, but will never ever be good. Phoenix is exactly that, an album that strikes me as painfully serviceable. If this was the demo done by a band in 1985 we’d admire how they had an idea of what prog metal would become albeit having some natural flaws with the songwriting, but it’s not. It’s a band from 2020 that has billions of references that have taken this wonderful genre to masterpiece levels, yet they can’t make something that sticks out even barely. I don’t even mind bands that obviously take inspiration from others (See: My other review in this issue) but if you fail to create memorable tracks, you lost me. 

Not a bad album, just not a good one by any means. Painfully average

Recommended tracks: …
Recommended for fans of: Blind Guardian
Final verdict: 5/10