Good day reader. For the final time we will be making these batch posts as our sole form of contact. I’ve discussed it a couple of times before but we’re moving to individual reviews starting with August. I’ll write another post fully explaining all our motivation next week I think. For now I’ll just focus on the edition at hand. It was a strange one. We originally had 15 reviews lined up, but two of those turned out not to be from July, but from April and October (??). Yeah, I have no idea how that happened either. And then five more reviews dropped off due to personal circumstances getting in the way of reviewing for three of our reviewers. Yesterday we only had six reviews in, so I wanted to wait a day to get a couple more reviews in. So apologies for the delays and that this series is coming to an end on such a fizzling manner, but none of us could do anything about it. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series, and I hope you’ll enjoy this final edition despite the lack of volume! Lastly, the Spotify playlist with all recommended tracks is in the embed below.
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.
Northern Crown – In a Pallid Shadow (US-FL)
Style: Doom/Gothic (clean vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Tyler
When I listen to these albums, I come to a specific crossroads more than most others about what direction I take: Endearing or Flawed? It seems like two completely separate distinctions that don’t really belong together, but In a Pallid Shadow is an odd duckling. It’s a flawed album for sure, but the flaws are almost what I find so endearing about it. The album is schmaltzy, cliche’d, at times over the top, oddly produced, but at the same time haunting, brooding, spooky, and sort of fun?
The two parts of the album meet almost like chocolate and cheese. Both occupying the same space, but getting completely different things out of them. The album from a style and production standpoint, is nothing remarkable. Just a doomy, gothic romp of a 45 minutes. The guitar leads are forgettable, the vocals are sometimes too much and have an odd warbly quality, and the accompanying orchestral parts sound real thin and fake. It’s just nothing special. But, in spite of all of this, I actually had a good time with this record. The songs are catchy, albeit a bit long, and the feel of the album is really moody and consistent.
There are also a lot of odd production choices that I actually dug quite a bit. The drums in the beginning of “A Vivid Monochrome” really caught me off guard. The vocals are really clear but then we have low fi drums that sound like the first King Crimson record. It was an odd mix, but one that I ended up liking a lot weirdly enough. Or the bit crushed sounding guitar melody in “8 Hours” that started annoying, but I grew to tolerate a decent amount. It also seemed as the record progressed, the inclusion of organs got more prevalent, like a parasite that was slowly infecting the sound of the album that made a lot of sense. No matter what though, one thing remains true. Whatever the hell that synth solo is at the beginning of “Observe” is just terrible. Terrible enough for me to call it out specifically.
I still don’t know where exactly I stand with this one. It’s sort of like the last song I just mentioned. There are parts that are dumb and cliched but I still thought were fun and catchy. That song is all over the place, and that’s how I felt about this in general. Just a big “I dunno”.
Recommended tracks: A Vivid Monochrome, 8 Hours
Recommended for fans of: Ghost, a good stage show
Final verdict: 5/10
Guardsman – The Entropy Illusion, Pt. II (US-IL)
Style: Traditional (clean vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Sam
For the first time in a very long time we were actually short on albums for July. Even with all of Jonah’s sources we came up short, so I went for a last resort: searching non-prog metal genres for mistagged prog metal albums, or those related to the genre (eg something like 00s Iron Maiden). Searching for “heavy metal” for this on metal-archives is easy as you can filter out 90% of the releases on song length alone. This release by Guardsman is the product of that search, as it was easy to identify that this was actually a mistagged prog metal release, and a good one at that!
Frankly this release is so prog, that I wonder where the “heavy metal” tag came from in the first place. In the first three songs some of the riffs could be considered heavy metal riffs, but other than that there’s barely anything. Almost none of the riffs, guitar harmonies or drumming of heavy metal is present on this album. And the vocals are about as heavy metal as later Ray Alder’s are (which is to say, not a whole lot). For the prog however there’s a lot to go on: softer passages, odd time signatures, overblown drumming and most of all: it’s a concept album. The Entropy Illusion, Pt. II was originally supposed to be one song, but for streaming reasons they cut it into six parts.
It’s strange. Compared to the wider prog metal world I wouldn’t consider the technical performances spectacular by any means, but still they managed to make this album very enjoyable to listen to. Clearly they’ve got talent for arrangement and melody. You can literally pick any point in the record and there’s something to grab your attention. It also flows superbly, so you’re almost immediately absorbed in the record. For how much they worship Dream Theater on this album, it’s impressive how much they still have a sound of their own. For example their drummer is so inspired by Mike Portnoy that despite literally copying the dude for at least half the record, he actually outperforms most of Mike’s output of the last 10 years or so on energy alone. Heck, he even does his own “Finally Free” impression on “Chapter VI” as he goes completely ham with the fills. His energy radiates throughout the album, spicing up literally everything. It’s so derivative, but so much fun to listen to.
I have a hard time grading this record. All my “objective” rationale says this shouldn’t be graded very high (too derivative, average performances, cheesy, etc.), but the truth is that I just had a very good time listening to this record. This album is damn fun, and no one can tell me otherwise.
Recommended tracks: Washed Away, Visions
Recommended for fans of: 90s Fates Warning, Dream Theater, Mike Portnoy
Final verdict: 7/10
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