This year, the festive spirit really seems to have gripped the Progressive Subway team. Christopher has been decorating our subway cars with boughs of holly, Doug is frantically stuffing a turkey with all the albums he reviewed this year and Sam has performed an unholy ritual to summon the Subway’s long lost playlist-smith back from the freezing wastes of the north. All in an effort to bring you, dear reader, a smidge of Proggy Festive cheer!
Across cultures and faiths, winter solstice celebrations are often to do with about driving away the approaching darkness – creating warmth and light and fun during the darkest, coldest and most desolate time of year. Our playlist is a Prog-infused tribute to this tradition: The first half representing the dark desolation of winter and the second representing that warmth and light we create to drive that darkness away.
Whether you want some extra music to spice up your parties, or if you’re just sick of the usual Christmas song pop fare, we hope you find something to enjoy these winter months here.
Christopher
I’m gonna be repping a lot of Mile Marker Zero here because they’ve released four covers of Christmas songs over the years, each in the style of a different legendary prog group. First up “Winter Wonderland” in the style of classic Genesis: lots of piano, acoustic guitar and of course, noodly synth solos, plus percussive Christmassy clapping. After that, go for a “Sleigh Ride” in the style of Rush which is replete with a “Tom Sawyer”-esque opening, hard rock riffs, that iconic keyboard sound and a sense of infectious groove. They also dropped a cover of “Please Come Home for Christmas” in the style of Queen as we were putting together this playlist, and yes, it’s as theatrical as you’d imagine.
However, Mile Marker Zero’s greatest gift is “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” in the style of Opeth. The instant that Dave Alley diminishes “year” in classic Akerfeldtian fashion, you know you’re in for a ride. Nailing all the quirks of Opeth—the haunting organ, complex lead guitar parts, eerie harmonies, and nasty riffs—it’s a fantastic homage and a legit Christmas song so the family can’t complain, even if they don’t like the slightly evil Swedish vibe.
Let’s not forget a classic while we’re here: Greg Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas” is a staple of Christmas CD collections, albeit lower down on the tracklist after the Mariah Carey and Slade contributions. The ELP and King Crimson singer released this scathing indictment of the commercialisation of Christmas in 1975 and while it’s not prog per se, the general influence of the genre remains, from the complex acoustic intro (played on a 12-string) to the lifting of a melody from Prokofiev to the eschewing of verse/chorus structure to the one-hundred-piece orchestra that delivers a crescendous finale. Remember Greg Lake isn’t just for your throwback prog listening, he’s also for Christmas.
Doug
As sorry as I am to say it, I’m an uncreative hack, and finding clever songs for this playlist was much too great a task for me, so instead here are a handful of songs very explicitly about winter and/or cold things. As I lack deep knowledge of random Christmas song metal covers or concept albums that take place around the winter holidays, from me instead you get two separate tracks effectively titled just “Winter” (and a couple others to go with them).
The first of these is Karma Rassa’s “Zima” (you’ll never guess what that translates to), starting off with thematically appropriate sound effects of footsteps in the snow, evoking the sparse desolation of the winter months even before the plaintive guitar and muted all-Russian vocals kick in. Contrast with “Snowbound,” Anubis Gate’s lively but frosty opener from their best album to date, showing a different but equally hostile side of the season in their crisp, clean execution.
On a slightly different tack, enhance your “Cold December Night” with this spooky track from Vanden Plas (the second of these bands whom I still can’t believe aren’t popular enough to escape our very limited standards of “underground”), showing that they can still bring it after all these years. And lastly we have Cydemind’s cover from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons “Winter” violin concerto, a piece which my parents put on every winter during the first snow of the year and so carries strong personal associations for me. I picked this more because it’s fun than because it’s great; in spite of my great love for last year’s The Descent, Cydemind don’t show nearly so much polish in their earlier recordings, but the piece lends itself well to metallification, and with a violinist already at hand, there are few better bands to tackle it than they.
Will
It’s been awhile!
Having been outside the exciting world of underground prog for a little while, I’ve felt somewhat limited in what I could bring to this playlist beyond facilitating and organizing. However, I did choose a few things to compliment my more talented colleagues.
I simply can’t get into winter without listening to Opeth‘s masterpiece Blackwater Park – with “The Leper Affinity’s” opening thesis statement ‘We enter winter once again’. On the nose? Yes. Awesome nonetheless? Heck yes.
Seeing my role as supporting Doug and Chris, I’ve tried to set music to offset and compliment their picks – for Christopher’s choices of classic Christmas songs reimagined in the style of prog bands, I chose classic, dark winter-y tracks from Opeth, Insomnium, and Uneven Structure. To compliment Doug’s busy, warm power metal infused choices, I preceded them with more minimalist stylings of Agalloch, Kauan, and Secret Garden. And for good measure added some warming tracks from Jethro Tull and Horslips.
I was sorely tempted to add “Winter’s Ghost” by Panoptikon but couldn’t justify a 20-minute behemoth of a song in this playlist. So, reader, please accept this as a bonus track.
Sam
Hello it’s me, coming in last minute. Winter to me has always been a time of introspection and melancholy. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of going on a stroll in nature under the blue skies of the winter sun. The glowing cheeks, the cold air, the fuzzy hormones in your underbelly… Nature is sleeping, giving all space to turn inwards as you reflect upon the world in its most stripped down, essential form. My dad passed away around this time last year, meaning my songs will be on the sadder end of the spectrum.
My first three submissions are meant to reflect this feeling. Subsignal have written many a song about winter, but the most fitting I find is “Some Kind of Drowning,” an incredibly poignant piano duet featuring Marjana Semkina from Iamthemorning about a loved one passing. On the more hopeful side, I went with “Thin Air” from Anathema to also reflect the light, uplifting aspects of winter and the love we feel for those close to us. And though winter is a time of death, it is also a time of rebirth, which is why my third song is “Departure” by Evergrey, my favorite tune in 2023. Though it’s about the end of a relationship, the tone is hopeful and optimistic about the future: “It’s not about the breaking, but the rising with an aim.”
To continue the upbeat trend, I wanted a couple of songs which were less musically sad. “Lady of Winter” by Crimson Glory is an early prog/power metal classic tune with a phenomenal sing-along chorus, “Daily View” by Maestrick adopted all your Christmas commercials into a goofy prog-power song, and “Cold Runs the River” by Borknagar is a majestic winter storm. And of course, no winter prog playlist can go without Enslaved and their introspective songwriting. I opted for “Ground” for its godly Floydian solo and comfy atmosphere. Finally, I wanted something heavier, for which I took the moody “Étoc” by Subway-darlings Hands of Despair. Happy holidays all!
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