Style: Progressive metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Tool, Leprous, Porcupine Tree
Country: Spain
Release date: 14 August 2026

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Never underestimate the appeal of cold hard cash. Many a guest appearance on an album can be explained by a young band who’ve scraped together enough money to hire a guest in the vain hope that a keyboard solo from Derek Sherinian will help them stand out from the crowd. It won’t. Every release Friday, an average of six albums will be released with a Sherinian feature and experts estimate that there will soon be more Sherinian guest keyboard solos than grains of sand on all the world’s beaches. Other guests are available, of course, and while I’ve seen the trio we’ll be focusing on today help out other artists before, to see them all together rounding out a band line-up for an obscure Spanish debut is a surprise, to say the least. 

The brainchild of composer, vocalist and guitarist César Parra Rojas, slq is a one-man project on paper, but Rojas has managed to coax keyboardist Diego Tejeida (Haken, Temic), drummer Baard Kolstad (Leprous, Rendezvous Point), and bassist Nate Navarro (Devin Townsend, Porcupine Tree live) to support his vision. Debut album Crown Shyness is named for the botanical phenomenon whereby trees sense one another and allow each other room in the canopy. Will these three titans of prog leave plenty of light for the upstart composer, or will Rojas be left a struggling sapling in the underbrush?

slq’s sound owes a legacy to Tool, with a similar riffing style and tom-focused drumming often colouring the compositions, while the contribution of the guest performers naturally lends notes of Leprous, Haken, and Porcupine Tree. However, Crown Shyness chiefly sounds like an album that hasn’t quite figured out what it wants to be, a sort of primordial prog metal that feels a little undefined. As a result, the moments that stand out tend to be exceptions to the general sound: the piano-led salsa groove that bifurcates “A Chasm”, for example, or the blues rock instrumentals of “A Deception”. Rojas’ guitar work might not quite reach the standard of his session musicians—his riffs can be somewhat derivative—but he provides quite a few tasty solos, and as far as compositional set-dressing goes, his work is always serviceable. 

Unfortunately, there wasn’t room in the budget for a session singer. With the best will in the world, Rojas’ vocals are the clear weak link on Crown Shyness. While you can usually hear what Rojas is going for with a vocal line, he rarely has the control to pull it off, meaning that almost every delivery is either pitchy, oversung, or too meek to have impact. The boosting of his vocals in the mix to make up for his quietness means that any little vocal wobbles are amplified. And the consistency of these deficits lends a homogeneity to Crown Shyness—the same problems recur with such frequency that they colour the entire record. The composition at large, while progressive and well-performed, also lacks a sense of destination. Structurally, tracks often feel like they meander through a vibe or a succession of ideas rather than cohering into a unified vision. 

Which means that enjoyment of Crown Shyness tends to happen at a micro-level. When the performers all lock in, slq can produce good work. The aforementioned salsa section on “A Chasm” is an easy highlight, and “A Delusion” features a very strong guitar solo from Rojas in a fun instrumental section. As one would expect, Tejeida inserts sublimely designed keyboard work in a variety of tones and styles, such as the skittering synths that appear on “A Chasm”, or the unshowy yet emotive piano on “Lazarus”-esque ballad “A Beacon” which also features a gorgeously melodic solo from Rojas over a texturally provocative riff from Navarro. Meanwhile, Kolstad slips in as many off-kilter rhythmic shenanigans as he can—even if his attempts to gin up the pointless chugging of “A Soliloquy” prove futile. And there are a few scattered moments when the four performers really bed in and feel like a synchronised unit. The grandiose bluesy outro of “A Deception”, for example, which sees Rojas’ wah-drenched soloing hurtle over Tejeida’s strident organ, or the solo section on “A Return” which gives us some of Rojas’ best playing, energetic drumming from Kolstad, and playful piano from Tejeida. Regrettably, however, these highlights are rare, and Crown Shyness is too often a lot of slog for not enough reward. 

Crown Shyness feels like a record striving towards a vision that hasn’t quite yet clarified. The addition of three all-star session musicians can’t mask the obvious deficiencies that underlie slq. That isn’t to say that Crown Shyness is without its merit. Instrumentally, it’s a very listenable record with some impressive flourishes and intriguing compositional swings. Rojas spent years crafting a vision and it won’t be for everyone, but he got to work with some cool people and bring his record to life. Crown Shyness might seem a struggling sapling but shoots are beginning to bud and there’s plenty of room to grow. 

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Recommended tracks: A Quest, A Chasm, A Return
You may also like: Human By Nature, Inhalo
Final verdict: 4/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Instagram

Label: independent

slq is:
– César Parra Rojas (vocals, guitar, main composer)

With: 
– Baard Kolstad (drums)
– Diego Tejeida (keyboards)
– Nathan Navarro (bass)
– Marius Ergo (additional percussion on track 5)