I’ve got good news for you all: I’m not going to bitch about the terrible quality of releases circa 2025 in today’s intro! As seems to be the typical prog trend, autumn delivers some of the best gems of the year, and September has continued August’s emergent trend with gusto. We have quite the selection: a genre titan returning refreshed and renewed, prog death that goes beyond mere Opeth worship, poppy prog djent to bang your head to, some post-punk flavoured chaos, melancholic prog metal best suited for the onset of autumn, trad prog with a singular sense of bombast, dependable death-doom, your regular injection of Galician folk, and an avant-garde final curtain. Sit back and watch the leaves wither while listening to our autumnal selections. Alternatively, if you live in the southern hemisphere, go watch the first flowers of the year bloom with our vernal picks!

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Cardiacs – LSD
Recommended for fans of: Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Oingo Boingo, Ad Nauseam, actual LSD
Picked by: Ishmael

We call this brékkek kékkek kékkek kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax… *cough*, sorry, fish bone in my throat. We call this “masterpiece”. Cardiacs latest—and presumably final—album, after the death of founder Tim Smith in 2020, LSD is a tour de force, the likes of which is seen perhaps once in a generation. (In this case literally once in a generation, since it took twenty-six years to write and record this LP.) The foremost (and only, really) practitioners of progressive punk, Cardiacs have returned from their hiatus to deliver this final magnum opus that is dense as quark-degenerate matter and as fractured as a Mandelbulb. Rhythms and melodies start and stop in unexpected places, lyrics slide in and out of intelligibility, and the eighty-minute double-album seems to pass in an instant and an eternity simultaneously. LSD is the kind of record you could spend an entire semester dissecting in a graduate-level music theory course, and the kind of record you could unconsciously absorb into your psyche while on LSD. It is a work of art, and ought to be appreciated as such, with slow, thoughtful contemplation. It is not for the faint of heart, or those seeking instant gratification.

Recommended tracks: Lovely Eyes, Men in Bed, Skating, Volob, Downup, Gen
Related links: Bandcamp | original review

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Between the Buried and Me – The Blue Nowhere
Recommended for fans of: Mr. Bungle, Intronaut, Protest the Hero, Thank You Scientist
Picked by: Ishmael

BTBAM have yet to release a disappointing album. We’ve come to expect large, expansive rock operas from them and while The Blue Nowhere doesn’t tick that particular box, it ticks basically all of the others: you’ve got genre-hopping (jazz fusion, surf rock, honky tonk, and industrial), squeaky-clean transitions, breakdowns, and—of course—the absolute technical mastery BTBAM are known for. Here is where I’d tell you to check out a particular song to get an idea of the album’s sound, but I’d have to give you at least three or four to do the album justice. The Blue Nowhere may not be the crowning jewel of the band’s catalog, but it’s a kick-ass album front-to-back that will definitely be in this reviewer’s regular rotation. Here’s hoping that the next one is a double-length concept album to make up for this one’s lack of a continuous narrative thread. A guy can dream, eh?

Recommended tracks: Things We Tell Ourselves in the Dark, Absent Thereafter, Slow Paranoia
Related links: Bandcamp | original review 

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Royal Sorrow – Innerdeeps
Recommended for fans of: Leprous, TesseracT, VOLA, Voyager, Ihlo
Picked by: Cory

The modern style of catchy, djenty progressive metal is more often “miss” than “hit” for me, but man, this one was right on the mark. Royal Sorrow’s Innerdeeps isn’t just extraordinarily accessible and instantly enjoyable—its polished songwriting, production, and level of detail put it right up there with the best of this modern progressive style. The album boasts one of the strongest vocal performances of the year, while also hitting with an incessant barrage of tight grooves and delivering a depth of textural layers. So come for the earworm choruses and chunky riffs, but stay for all the nuance packed beneath. 

Recommended tracks: Metrograve, Bloodflower, Give In, Innerdeeps
Related links: Bandcamp | original review 

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Green Carnation – A Dark Poem Part I: The Shores of Melancholia
Recommended for fans of: Katatonia, Pain of Salvation, Anathema, Opeth, Paradise Lost, In the Woods…
Picked by: Claire

Unlike the album’s somewhat unwieldy title, this one goes down real easy. The Shores of Melancholia sets the stage as the first installment in a planned trilogy of albums, showcasing Green Carnation’s expertise in gothic progressive metal. “Melancholic” is a pretty damn good word for it, but the band’s signature downtempo, sombre melodicism is zhuzhed up with progressive flair, ironclad pacing, and a few surprises along the way. Over thirty years since their inception, Green Carnation have honed a sound that’s recognisable, evocative, and somehow as fresh as ever. When’s Part II coming out?!

Recommended tracks: As Silence Took You, The Slave That You Are
Related links: Bandcamp | original review 

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Novembers Doom – Major Arcana
Recommended for fans of: In Mourning, Opeth, Katatonia, My Dying Bride, Nailed to Obscurity
Picked by: Vince

In a world as tumultuous as ours, there’s a lot to be said for the empowering comfort of consistency—of knowing exactly what’s coming, and that it’ll be good. Novembers Doom have been carrying that flag for me since I first heard 2011’s Aphotic, delivering on a potent mixture of vicious, thundering death metal and melancholic doom. Their latest, Major Arcana, represents another dark jewel in the Chthonian masters’ obsidian crown: A masterfully-delivered slab of bestial fury, grand sorrows, and tortured romanticism. Paul Kuhr’s Janusian vocals are as spellbinding as ever—the man’s cleans continue to age like fine wine, and his growls are still some of the best in the business, savage and titanic. The wider future may be obscured by uncertainty, but the readings are clear here: Major Arcana is a winning hand.

Recommended tracks: Ravenous, Chatter, The Dance, Bleed Static
Related links: Bandcamp | original review 

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Sindar – Tower of the Sun
Recommended for fans of: Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Numenorean
Picked by: Daniel

A plethora of progressive and death metal bands take influence from Opeth, but I am hard-pressed to think of one that worships the Swedes to the degree that Sindar do on Tower of the Sun. It’s not just the give-and-take between enormous dissonant riffs and eerie acoustic interludes, nor the leviathan growls giving way to a clean baritone or falsetto—it’s the entire philosophy beneath the musical mire that makes this album notable for me. The band channel nearly every era of the standard bearers with the conviction and reverence of a master’s apprentice through their lovingly crafted labyrinthine prayers to the prog-death gods. Given their reverent homage to one of my all-time favorites it might be obvious that Sindar end up on my month end list, but there’s also a bit of local bias at play here, and I’ll happily admit that discovering a band this devoted to the Opethian craft right here in Utah gives their music an extra spark of personal significance.

Recommended tracks: Greenfields, Anor (Tower of the Sun), Nightingale, Inheritance
Related links: Bandcamp | original review 

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Maruja – Pain to Power
Recommended for fans of: Black Country, New Road; Squid; Colin Stetson; Black Midi; HMLTD
Picked by: Andy

Unlike Claire, I don’t typically like men shouting at me, so I find most post-punk-y stuff obnoxious (despite reviewing a lot of it since I think proggy post-punk like the Windmill Scene is where the heart of modern prog rock lies), but ever since their first few EPs, Maruja break the mold. From pretentious but quality poetic lyrics being shouted at you in a strong Manchester accent to superb sax-playing redolent of Colin Stetson to a fantastic sense of pacing with excellent build-ups and breakdowns in true post-rock fashion, Maruja’s debut LP captures the heart of progressive rock. Is it conventional and will prog fans all like it? No. But it’s a whole lot more interesting than whatever old man symphonic prog is coming out of Sweden or Neal Morse’s studio or whatever. It’s worth a shot for any fan of progressive music, that’s for sure.

Recommended tracks: Look Down On Us, Born to Die, Break the Tension
Related links:  Bandcamp | original review 

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Cea Serin – The World Outside
Dream Theater, Pain of Salvation, Fates Warning, Vanden Plas, Shadow Gallery
Picked by: Sam

I am nothing if not predictable. My colleagues here at TPS often joke about how every year I seem to find a random obscure “sounds like Dream Theater” band to obsess over for (to them) inscrutable reasons. In 2025, Cea Serin is that band. The World Outside is simply prog galore from start to finish: six tracks, all over ten minutes long full of amazing melodies, infectious riffage, strikingly emotional keyboard work, and more guitar solos than anyone could reasonably ask for. You’re plunged from one climactic moment into the next with only the occasional synth/piano section to let you catch your breath. By all reasonable means, The World Outside is too much, too much everything, but it’s so gosh darn fun to listen to I can only bestow the highest possible praise upon it. 

Recommended tracks: Where None Shall Follow, The Rose on the Ruin, When the Wretched and the Brave Align
Related links: Bandcamp | review coming soon™

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Sangre de Muérdago – O Xardín
Recommended for fans of: Trobar de Morte, Ulver (Kveldssanger), Osi and the Jupiter, The Moon and the Nightspirit
Picked by: Dave

Sangre de Muérdago’s 2024 collaboration with Judasz + Nahimana, A Ilusão da Quietude, was a revelation in experimental folk and drone. On latest record O Xardín (The Garden), Sangre de Muérdago heartily take instrumental and progressive cues from A Ilusão, but dial back the arty experimentation. In its place, the quartet embraces a softer, more jubilant sonic space within its massive cast of Galician folk instrumentation. “O Xardín” begins with gorgeous vocal interplay (featuring Priscila da Costa of Judasz + Nahimana!) overtop delicate picked guitars, concluding with a jaunty flute solo; following track “O Abismo” is mysterious and brooding thanks to a buzzing hurdy-gurdy, but patiently builds into an utterly danceable climax without losing its identity; and “A Chave” is delicate yet profound, unfolding in bloom while Pablo C. Ursusson reflects on ideas of reciprocity and mankind’s place in nature. Take a seat in The Garden and catch a glimpse of the last flowers of the season.

Recommended tracks: O Abismo, O Xardín, A Chave, O que Mora no Lume
Related links: Bandcamp | Original review coming soon 

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Non-Subway Picks

Flur – Plunge (chamber jazz)
Made up of sax, drums, and harp, this new jazz trio writes delicate, whimsical music. It’s classy.
Picked by: Andy