Style: Progressive Metal, Avant-Garde Metal (Clean Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Cynic, Hällas, Primus, Devin Townsend
Country: United States
Release date: 8 August 2026

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Comparison is the theft of joy, but it’s also a really helpful tool to let somebody quickly deduce whether an album might be worth checking out. If I say something sounds like every melodic tech death or neo-prog rock band, I’ll bet you’ve already got a good idea if you’d like it. Or I could reduce something like Anciients down to “this is Opeth mixed with Mastodon”—although not a wholly accurate distillation, it’s helpful to establish the overall vibe. My job as a reviewer—helping you decide whether or not an album might be for you—becomes a lot harder when a band is so distinct I can’t provide many helpful sonic comparisons. Urakka’s sophomore album, the Bridge, is one such weird album.

The style of music Urakka play on The Bridge is a unique spin on 90s-era avant-garde metal—no coincidence as several of the members were actively playing music in the late 80s—that comes together into something wholly fresh. Riffs drunkenly lurch forward in odd time signatures, not quite as technical as Spastic Ink but with a similar style of melodic exploration. Sometimes Professor and Skromak’s guitar parts are crunchy and technical like Focus-era Cynic (start of “Biaph Ra’dm,” “Lichens Subscribe”), and at other times one will take up a trebly tone that sounds strangely surf rock-inspired. But despite engaging performances from the twin guitars, it is the lecherous bass playing of Tasty Cakes that provides The Bridge with its instrumental identity. The slinky grooves, Primus-informed slap parts, and technical, Spiral Architect-y ornamentations are punchy in the mix, the guitar parts written around Cakes’s lead—even when he’s more relegated to a background part, he demands attention. Last of the instrumentalists, Pounder’s drumming keeps the confusing rhythms steady, but his playing isn’t flashy, only taking a lead role during the slow, krautrock-y transitions, like near the end of “Last Call.”

As if the instrumentals weren’t odd enough to describe, Finny’s singing is downright perplexing, driving The Bridge further into its one-of-a-kind territory. He performs plenty of styles on The Bridge, from punky shouting at the end of “Lichens Subscribe” to something half-spoken, half-sung at the start of “Biaph Ra’dm.” And yet Finny also wants to be a rockstar sometimes, with hard rock belting during the bluesy doom metal riffs in the first half of “Amongst the Damn”; and sometimes he fancies a more western tone (“Biaph Ra’dm”) or wants to add in an affected gravelly quality. Most of the time, though, he is a wild tenor with a tone fluctuating between powerful belting and moaning croon—it’s immensely unpredictable which version of his voice will come out and when. His lyrics fit the scattered, strange vibe, though, with loamy poetry ranging in topic from the scalp-hunting (possibly historical) outlaw Judge Holden (“Practitioner”) to whatever the hell a “dickmouse” is (“Biaph Ra’dm”). Finny’s voice is perfect for delivering banger lines like “Cain’s murderous envy / manifest destiny” and the ones about the aforementioned dickmouse—“Bob in a pope hat / Riding a dickmouse / Shotgun in his hand / Dickmouse of the Apocalypse / At his command”. 

Just as I’ve kept discussion of the instruments and vocals entirely separate, Urakka also have little concern with how the two interact. Finny does as he pleases, his voice keeping no melody or harmony with the guitars—he stays in the same rhythmic paradigm as them at least. The disconnect creates enough tension that it holds the album back. But even these two disparate parts of The Bridge are combined with more care than the songwriting, with most of the tracks having at least one “transition” that might as well be a completely different song. For instance, “Last Call” goes from prog metal to krautrock in the middle with no warning, disrupting the song’s flow which was janky enough from the tipsy rhythms. “Honor Among the Damned” does almost the exact same thing, although a plodding bass riff at least keeps some continuity between the hard and kraut rock. Interestingly, the band cares enough for the cohesion of their songs that there are riffs used as motifs throughout each long track, even across the frustrating splices—“Practitioner,” especially, is focused on variations of a single strong riff.  

The wacky transitions and insane vocals fit exactly into the distinct sound I think that Urakka aimed to achieve on The Bridge; and I can only assume this would be a cult classic had it come out in the heyday of bands like Primus. The Bridge stands out as a strange oddity in 2026, but despite its various shortcomings, it’s an album well worth your time, with its distinct, confusing identity.

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Recommended tracks: Practitioner, Lichens Subscribe
You may also like: Spiral Architect, Inner Strength, Psychotic Waltz, Spastic Ink, Lunar
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

Urakka is:
– Tasty Cakes (bass)
– Pounder (drums)
– Professor (guitars)
– Skromak (guitars)
– Finny (vocals)