Style: Progressive Metal (Clean Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Fates Warning, Queensrÿche, Threshold, Circus Maximus, Dream Theater
Country: United States
Release date: 3 July 2026

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Around the ages of nine to fifteen, I think most people have some pretty major realizations: that other people live equally complex lives as we do (often given the neologism sonder), that the odds of life existing as we know it are infinitesimal, and that humanity is pretty small in the grand scheme of the universe.¹ These are incredibly deep ideas… for a thirteen year old. Peri Rocha, the man behind up-and-coming Seattle-based prog metal band Ruin and Reverie, based the concept of his debut album, The Seed of Chaos, on his own essay. It’s some cornball type shiii. As a grown ass man, he is asking us: “Do you realize how fucking insignificantly small we are in the vast cosmos?” He is asking himself: “there are thousands of different religions and Gods, so which one is the right one?” And he is stating the most obvious things of all time: “Between the big bang and today, a lot happened…. We know the dinosaurs existed and now they don’t” and “The earliest known human is dated at 2.8 million years old. That means it took 2.8 million years from the first human to Jimi Hendrix.”

Working with this as the source material, Peri and his studio band enlisted the help of one Ray Alder (Fates Warning) to write lyrics for and sing on their concept album, which explores “mankind’s exodus from a dying Earth and the desperate search for a new home.” There’s no way around it; that’s the single most overused concept trope in all of prog metal concept albums. Alder’s not exactly working with brilliant literature as inspiration, but The Seed of Chaos’s story is insipid. The first two tracks are random soundclips and radio broadcasts in several languages about our having to leave earth, the James Webb Space Telescope, and some crowd-chanted “hey hey hey”s; the usage of these clips is reminiscent of Dream Theater’s “The Great Debate” but done worse—“The Poor Debate” if you will. Thankfully, the rest of the album’s lyrics can be ignored like with most traditional prog metal, and I won’t roast the story more.

Musically, Fates Warning and Dream Theater heavily inspire The Seed of Chaos, with old-school melodic prog metal riffs, early 00s synths, and, well, Ray Alder himself on vocals. The moderately wide range of synths and keys form the most notable part of the soundscape, providing the album with a spacey atmosphere to match the concept (“Pt. VIII: Newfound Existence”), taking the lead in a piano-forward (and boring) ballad (“Pt. VII: Drifting Away”), playing solos (“Pt. IX: Pull of Fate”), and even imitating Tangerine Dream with cutesy arpeggiation (“Pt. V: Fractured Entropy”). The drums, meanwhile, provide a tight foundation, never overplaying, sounding like Parallels-era Fates Warning. Unfortunately, the production mostly swallows the bass, and many of the guitar melodies are nothingburgers—“Pt. III: Rise” has the only riffs I remember more than a couple minutes after hearing, and for the most part, there are no stellar solos, Ruin and Reverie mostly opting for bland melodicism over virtuosity. 

Moreover, I have a complicated relationship with Alder’s contribution to the The Seed of Chaos. Many of the album’s best moments are because of his vocal lines—in particular when he harmonizes with backup vocals like a couple minutes into “Pt. III: Rise” and around the middle of “Pt. X: Under the Stars.” His commanding voice towers over The Seed of Chaos at its best, but he also sounds uninspired for large swaths of the album, the vocal lines staying in a very narrow range that makes for some legitimately bland moments. The songwriting only worsens Alder’s boring parts by having extended instrumental sections that seem to lead nowhere; they’re not exactly representative of prog metal’s famous instrumental wankery and attention-demanding and awe-inspiring performances. The record feels bloated from its lack of focus. The track listing also hurts The Seed of Chaos, as the title scheme and first few tracks make it seem like the whole thing will flow as one larger suite, but it doesn’t, and the transitions are sometimes awkward. Why the ticking clock at the end of “Pt. IV: Into the Nothing” without any segue into “Pt. V”?

Ruin and Reverie are capable of playing excellent music, but Peri and Alder need to improve the songwriting and pacing of a future release because so much of The Seed of Chaos either leads to nowhere or feels too similar to Fates Warning. It’s not catchy enough to hook the listener like melodic prog nor virtuosic enough to capture the Dream Theater fanbase. Peri provides the meaning to life at the end of his essay: “Maybe the purpose of life is to survive. And if that is the case, we will have to realize that all the luck we’ve been given must be honored. We must find ways to survive.” He’s survived the criticism and written a passable album, but can he honor the gifts he’s been given and improve the overall package? I hope so.

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Recommended tracks: Pt. III: Rise, Pt. IX: Pull of Fate
You may also like: Redemption, Dimension Act, Darkwater, Arch/Matheos, Ray Alder
Final verdict: 4/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: independent

Ruin and Reverie is:
– Ray Alder – Vocals
– Peri Rocha – Guitars
– Eleni Nota – Drums
– Alexandre Panta – Bass
– Flavio Sallin – Keyboards

1. The prog metal world really loves this last one; how many bands do you know that have sampled or referenced Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” speech? Too many. ↩︎