You! Yes, you!
Do you conduct the music you’re listening to; waving your hands in the air like a Hogwarts dropout as the Best Guitar Fill of All Time roars through your head? Do you get that look on your face (you know: the one where people aren’t sure whether you’re weeping or gently farting) when the drums completely switch up the tempo and blast beats the song into overdrive? Are your friends and loved ones in constant danger of being shushed as you count them into the Most Epic Part Of The Song?
Us too.
That’s why our brave contributors have put together our picks of some of the best moments in Prog. Epic cleans, amazing drum sections, solos, fills and bass drops, all here for your aural pleasure. Staying true to our underground focus, we’re bringing you huge musical moments from the smallest bands.
Scroll down to find our playlists, an explanation of what we chose from each writer, links to any featured band reviews, and the comments section; where you can tell us what we missed!
Nick
Selections: The Escapist by Jekyll (chorus), Alastor the Blind by The Morgana Phase (bridge), Typewriter II by Panzerballett (intro)
I’ll never forget getting out of work, flipping on my local alt rock station during their international showcase hour, and being thrown right into the transcendental chorus of “The Escapist” by Jekyll. Coming from The Whispering Galleries EP, Jekyll takes notes from the early works of Muse (particularly Showbiz) yet makes a sound that is entirely their own. First kicking in at 1:45 (nearly halfway through!) the theatrical chorus cuts through the built tension and unease. The lyrics themselves hit hard, portraying someone filled with regrets overtaken by emotion. It’s simple, but effective.
My second pick is from everyone’s favorite The Dear Hunter knockoff, The Morgana Phase. “Alastor the Blind” comes off of the badass rock opera II: The Eyes of Time and, while I’m an absolute sucker for the chorus, I also hate being repetitive. Instead of that, I’m going to be focusing on the instrumental bridge that begins around 3:23. Taking a page out of The Dear Hunter‘s theatrics playbook, they slowly build layer upon layer over a clever arpeggiation. While I rag on them for their obvious influences, their songs are filled with neat songwriting tricks like this.
Speaking of neat songwriting, I just HAVE to highlight the introduction to “Typewriter II” by Panzerballett. The toying with stereo sound, hopping ear to ear, is tightly executed and almost goosebump inducing. The use of a typewriter sound effects also help give the impression of the notes being keypresses. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that this may, in fact, be among the coolest ideas in the history of prog metal.
Christopher
Selections: Wilderun, Soulsplitter, Obsidian Tide, Subterranean Masquerade, Clément Belio, Meer
When asked for best song moments my mind instantly goes to about a dozen moments from Wilderun, but I’ll settle for just one: the climax of “The Means to Preserve” at 8:32 as the choir croons ‘Sleep at the edge of the earth, far from the spring of life’s…’ cue Evan Berry screaming: ‘… REBIRTH’ and then the epic instrumental section kicks in. Chills everytime. My second moment goes to “Disconnected” from Soulsplitter, and the gorgeous tapping sequence at 3:37 with subtle piano chords and delicate female vocal accompaniment which feels like being adrift in a psychedelic sea.
Obsidian Tide know how to do an epic moment and none grabs me like the climax of “Pillars of Creation” at 3:05: snare rolls and massive strums accompany some of the best lyrics I’ve heard in years: ‘a secret star a shining gem, a regal night sky diadem, the vault of heaven welcome’s another god’; an incredibly catchy evocation of something intangible and transcendent. Their kinfolk Subterranean Masquerade are also one of my picks. A song where the climactic refrain in the chorus is about ‘striking a minor note in a place that was made for fairytales’ needs to end on an appropriate moment of melancholy, and “Place For Fairytales” does it perfectly in its glorious final chorus (5:14) with the poignant revelation from our singer ‘I am the vagabond’ before the plaintive cry of a fiddle kicks in, perfectly encapsulating all the melancholy of the difficult journey ahead.
I’m a sucker for a bit of good piano work and two of these picks have it in spades: Clément Belio’s “Take Your Time” is a gorgeous prog/jazz symphony segueing through multiple movements until it reaches what sounds like a close, but then that piano solo at 6:37 kicks in and it’s like the sun has burst from behind the clouds to reinvigorate you. Meanwhile, “Honey” by Meer is a wonderful work of proggy art rock and in the epic final chorus (4:45) of this song there’s so much going on to enjoy the Haken-esque backing vocals, joyous piano work which culminates in an ascent up the keys which never fails to put a smile upon my face.
Will
Selections: Hands of Despair, Aquilus, Toundra, Alter of Plagues,
A truly epic moment in music is something hard to quantify or define – but we damn well know it when we hear it. It can be a moment when the song seems to be kicked into a whole new level. “Crimson Boughs” by Hands of Despair, a darling of this blog, has a double whammy here. First at the 2.50 mark with some menacing vocals and one of the coolest verse structures I’ve heard in a long time (also objectively the best pronunciation of the word ‘North’ ever committed to tape). This track keeps on giving with an epic build up and release of tension crashing into soaring clean vocals at the 5.18 point. That’s the beautiful moment that you listen to a track on repeat for.
In the theme of menacing sounds, Alter of Plagues‘ “Mills” is one of the most riveting introductions to an album ever. Piercing violin; distorted, demented spasms of vocals; down-tuned bass and ominous drum lines. The first drop of the bass and drums is the key moment that lets you know what you’re in for with this album.
I’m forever grateful to my colleague, Zach who introduced me to Aquilus. Listening through I was blown away by the ending to the track “Loss” where, for the final verse, the music pulls out and the rough, hushed vocals continue on mirroring a motif originally laid down by the piano. It’s beautiful, haunting and terrifying all at once.
Finally, to warm things back up again like a warm bath after a cold day, we have Toundra‘s opening track to their third album, “Ara Caeli”. Translating to ‘The Alter of Heaven’ this track is the first step in a beautiful journey of an album. After the opening delicate strings, Toundra‘s distinctive full, rich sound kicks in and it’s gorgeous.
Zach
Selections: Ne Obliviscaris, Wilderun, Dessiderium, Hath, Abiotic, Vale of Pnath, Aquilus, An Abstract Illusion, Aethereus, Dyssidia
I rarely, and I mean rarely love an album upon first listen. I think what a lot of people underestimate is that well-written music is no different from a well-written book in the sense that you won’t get everything on your first read. There are details that you’ll pick up on the second, third, and maybe fourth reread that’ll make you appreciate it that much more. But, you think of those seminal moments on the first read that made you go back for another go-around. With my favorite albums, I’ll remember those massive riffs or vocal lines, but I’ll catch new details or riffs that I’d never caught before. And that makes me enjoy the music that much more, but it all starts with a single moment that I caught upon first listen. That’s why there are so many picks up there.
So, we’re going to start with the moment that made me absolutely lose my god-damn mind the first time I heard it. The bass break in ‘Devour Me, Colossus’ by Ne Obliviscaris is quite possibly one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard. After nearly 9 minutes of going on this journey, building with each new section, you’re treated to an amazing bassline and yet another amazing buildup with the riff that starts underneath it, soaring right into one of the finest finales I’ve ever heard. Speaking of bass, Abiotic promised a dueling bass solo between Killian Duarte and Jared Smith from Archspire, and delivered on it to the highest degree.
It would be cheating to put ‘Blackwater Park’ on here, so I opted for the next best thing. Wilderun‘s ‘Garden of Fire’ with Evan Berry’s absolutely beautiful delivery of the clean vocals around the 6:15 mark that has provided plenty of motivation on those tough gym days. Hath, a band that don’t usually use clean vocals (but are welcome whenever they pop up), have quite the amazing line in ‘Decollation’ about being baptized in muck. Makes me feel like an Uruk’hai warrior riding into battle whenever I listen to it. And while we’re on the topic of amazing vocals, I can’t forget to mention the outstanding voice and delivery of Dyssidia‘s Mitch Brackman in the chorus of ‘Hope’s Remorseful Regret’.
Then there are the occasions where a riff is so good it makes me mosh in my living room. You take one listen to Vale of Pnath‘s ‘Unburied’ and tell me that ending riff isn’t one of the finest things to bless your earholes, especially with that blast beat behind it and how it evolves during the song’s last minute. Then there’s the keyboard and lead guitar combo in An Abstract Illusion‘s ‘Abode of a God’ that drives the song through its several movements.
But then there’s stuff that didn’t stick at all on first listen, which grew into the whole song being that one “moment”. And these are moments I consider my favorite. Dessiderium‘s Aria and Aquilus‘s Griseus have so many of these it was hard to narrow down. The title track on Aria has incredible, emotion-drenched screams throughout and a riff in the middle section that gives me full body chills. Griseus‘s intro track, ‘Nihil’, might be the perfect tone-setter for an album. Aethereus‘s ‘The Living Abyss’ is only last because I find it so much better in the context of Leiden, but that intro will hook any stray listener in immediately.
Sebastian
Selections: Overtoun, Cryptodira, The Offering, Charlie Griffiths, Sweven, Growth
I don’t remember which one of these people thought of the idea of “best song moments” for our next Subway Playlist, but I will say, they did not know what kind of can of worms they were opened by such a suggestion. When each of us got down and started listing our favorite song moments, whatever we had just wasn’t enough. A snowball becomes an avalanche. One “Omg, but how can we forget about this track!” leads to another and we then have 20 picks each to choose from, which would be far too many for a digestible playlist. So, I took the task of whittling down my list to a manageable six choices of cool moments of underground (and underground-ish) prog metal artists and wrote about them enough so that I feel like I gave them justice.
I will begin with a track from one of my favorite progressive/tech death metal albums of last year Overtoun‘s “Pitch-Black”. This track begins with more of the band’s signature style of mixing the technical death/thrash style of Revocation with the old-school death metal tendencies that Death inspired, full of squealing pinch harmonics, groovy riffage, and death growls. However, what really stood out to me on my first few listens to this was the smoothest of Opethian transitions at 2:23 from the hostile combination of hostile growls and electric, high-gain guitar riffs to an unexpected sentimental interlude of acoustic guitar chords (with a timber almost sounding like a ukelele) accompanied by growing violin flourishes. This interlude is then followed up by more prog death from your inner hell, but this moment of lush respite is akin to a ray of hope amongst the dark storm that surrounds it.
How often is it that you hear harsh vocal poetry? Honestly, Cryptodira showed me that it should be a hell of a lot more than I currently do because their intro to “Self-(Affect/Efface)” is really neat. Beginning with nothing but an ominous ambiance and solo drum fills, the fills back chanting growls which fill this minimal space with disgust, grief, and brutality. The growls are actually done by two of the band members who have their own harsh vocal styles and cadences, and having them alternate gives you that similar love for acts like White Ward and Hands of Despair. It’s always brilliant hearing different harsh vocal styles implemented side by side, and on the same track, and having them lament the suffering of history and the separation of the self makes it all the more novel.
To make a third quick mention to one of my favorite proggy dissodeath bands Growth, their 2020 output features some of the chunkiest, technical riffs I’ve listened to, and “Darkly, It Tightens Its Grip:” is not different. It finishes its six-minute attack of dense dissonant instrumentation with a dense, bulky riff that meticulously pounds you into a fine paste. But the moment I want to focus on here is what follows: an out-of-place spoken word interlude that escalates to a screamed word interlude as a woman pleads to someone unknown (Her significant other? Her nurse? The audience? Herself? We don’t know) but what we don’t know about this situation makes it all the more absurd when we hear it, and it’s very uncomfortable. This makes for quite the memorable transition into the next track.
The next moment I will reference has pretty much become an underground metal classic at this point. And yes, I am referring to the phenomenon that is “Just another way! Another Way! Another Step into the…” in The Offering’s debut album. It is in the second track of the album which is probably my favorite in a group of high-class songs. You are introduced to this moment at the 0:24 second mark, and it is a thrashy, groovy chorus, which is followed by technical riffs, guitar techniques, and soaring vocals more fitting to power metal (this band is certainly a fusion of many metal genres). But it is not until the build-up that leads to the moment at 2:02 where this familiar chorus really pops off with a three-member vocal harmony. This pop-off still gives me the stank face to this day.
The next artist I’ll mention is also not entirely unknown, but his Spotify page has less than 10k monthly listeners, and that is Charlie Griffiths. It really wasn’t until his solo album that I finally realized that he was for sure my favorite Haken member. All those years of listening to their zany, groovy riffs and I didn’t realize exactly how much Griffiths played a role in Haken’s songwriting that made moments in their material amazing. The moment from one of his songs I wish to mention is in “Dead in the Water”, one of the most rhythmic and avant-garde tracks on the album. This song introduces a few headbanger riffs from djentle chugs to riffs closer to a wacky prog/avant-garde death metal band but one of these riff arrangements is reorganized into an instrumental duo breakdown played by the sax and xylophone-sounding synths which is soon accompanied in harmony with some guitars, and you have a memorable groove.
The final moment I’ll be writing about is from one of my favorite underground prog metal debuts The Eternal Resonance by Sweven. The album is filled with many impressive climaxes like this one but the moment on “Mycelia” is easily my favorite. For the first four and a half minutes, the song ebbs and flows with atmospheric, distorted guitar chords, blast beats, and vocals reminiscent of Chuck Schuldiner. This all builds tension as the song goes on with reverb that makes you feel like you’re in a chasm. Then at 4:56, the band introduces a guitar riff that’s as ominous as it is epic. While Sweven fleshes out this big doomy riff, various instruments accompany it: rolling drum fills, jazzy rhythm guitar, groovy bass, and fluttering keyboard arrangement embellish the backdrop with increasing velocity as the riff is drawn out to a satisfying conclusion.
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