Reports from the Underground: 2022 Albums of the Year

Hello and welcome fans of prog, metal, and everything in between!

It brings us great delight to bring to you today The Progressive Subway’s first ever official top ten Albums of the Year: 2022! This year, instead of ranking albums in tiers, as we’ve done in the past, we decided to have each of our eight active writers put together a personal top ten of their favourite underground prog albums of 2022. We then created a score system to create the Official aggregate top ten you’ll find below!

This post summarizes a year of reviewing underground (we draw the line at 20k monthly listeners on Spotify or fewer; if a band has dropped below that threshold sometime this year, they’re fair game), progressive metal albums and albums from adjacent genres (technical death metal, avant-garde metal, and post-metal are some such genres). Since July of last year, we’ve recruited a large swath of new, eclectic prog enthusiasts to the team, and in light of this new era in our blog, we thought it would be great to highlight the differences and similarities in our individual reviewers’ tastes.

The aggregate top ten can be found below! On the following pages you will find each of our reviewer’s individual AOTY top ten rankings, followed by an annual recap of our best reviewed albums. This was a fantastic year for underground prog metal and we’re hoping 2023 will prove every bit as exciting!

10. Aeternam – Heir of the Rising Sun (Canada)
Style: Prog/Folk/Symphonic Melodeath (mixed vocals)

1 vote for 3rd place.
1 vote for 5th place.

Andy said: “Heir of the Rising Sun showcases a new Aeternam, composing an album that flows and dances like a river nymph. Epic choral arrangements and bombastic orchestrations are a songwriting technique that will never go out of vogue, and the band’s proficiency at composing tasteful orchestrations now rivals Wilderun.” Read the full review: here.

9. Atomic Symphony – Hybris (Switzerland)
Style: Progressive Metal, Symphonic Metal, Power Metal (clean vocals)
1 vote for 3rd place.
2 votes for 8th place.

Doug said: “HYBRIS showcases the band firing on all cylinders. Singer Jasmin Baggenstos has a beautiful and powerful voice and is, unsurprisingly, the obvious standout. But none of the other elements are noticeably lacking even by comparison to her excellent performance, and overall the album achieves an excellent balance among all its parts, in terms of both musical dynamics and how much focus is given to each in the composition.” Read the full review: here.

8. Ashenspire – Hostile Architecture (UK)
Style: Avant-garde/Progressive Black Metal
1 vote for 7th place.
1 vote for 6th place.
1 vote for 5th place.

Zach said: “Ashenspire have created something anxiety-inducing, grim, and downright terrifying–but incredibly important nonetheless. It harbors a great deal of wisdom when speaking about the subjects of the capitalist hellscape we’re all trying to survive in… Who cares if it lacks subtlety? What has to be said in this album needs to be said in the plainest terms possible.” Read the full review: here.

7. Obsidious – Iconic (Austria)
Style: Progressive/Technical Death Metal, Power Metal (mixed vocals)

1 vote for 9th place.
1 vote for 8th place.
1 vote for 6th place.
1 vote for 1st place.

Andy said: “Obsidious do not disappoint even with the herculean task of having expectations of Diluvium 2.0 placed on them. They lift those expectations like Atlas balancing the Earth on his back… Obsidious had the most pressure I’ve placed on any debut album ever: They paid it forward with one of the best debuts in recent memory.” Read the full review: here.

6. Bríi – Corpos Transparentes (Brazil)
Style: Minimalist/Folk/Experimental/Prog Atmospheric Black Metal, Trance (mixed vocals)
1 vote for 10th place.
1 vote for 7th place.
1 vote for 4th place.
1 vote for 1st place.

Andy said: “Corpos Transparentes remains engaging on a second-to-second, note-to-note basis, an impressive feat for a single substantially minimalist song clocking in at well over half an hour. The complexities of layering the soothing synths atop energetic drum lines while juggling everything else–even without electric guitar–takes a fantastic production job. Everything sounds as clear in the mix as the warm Atlantic waters during a Brazilian summer.” Read the full review: here.

5. Charlie Griffiths (United Kingdom)
Style: Progressive Metal (mixed vocals)
1 vote for 4th place.
2 votes for 3rd place.

Zach said: “I never felt that songs ran too long or too short. Every song seemed to have the perfect amount of breathing room, and even though each song transitions into the next, the insane amount of creativity between all nine songs made all of them standouts. And this album took me a few listens to really click, just like every Haken album ever. But believe me, between the lyrical callbacks and riffs, it makes it beyond worth it.” Read full review here.

4. Disillusion – Ayam (Germany)
Style: Progressive/Melodic Death Metal (mixed vocals)
1 vote for 10th place.
2 votes for 2nd place.
1 vote for 1st place.

Chris said: “Disillusion’s masterpiece was a long time coming; they’ve always been great, but hiring Jens Bogren to handle the mix bestows the fathoms of sound and lyrical murkiness that await the prospective listener with palpable depth. To conquer both dreams and oceans in one record is an immense feat, one that Disillusion prove eminently capable of achieving, making Ayam perhaps their best record yet, a grandly ethereal contemplation in sonic form, bobbing on the waves—adrift, alone, and beautiful.” Read full review here.

3. Psychonaut – Violate Consensus Reality (Belgium)
Style: Progressive Post/Sludge Metal (mixed)
1 vote for 10th place.
1 vote for 4th place.
1 vote for 3rd place.
2 votes for 2nd place.

This Psychonaut barely fell under our Spotify listener limit so none of us have reviewed this band yet, but perhaps I (Sabrina) can say a few words: This is a band that took everyone by surprise during the release of their debut album Unfold the God Man back in 2018, so going into Violate Consensus Reality, expectations were high. Thankfully for us, they delivered in spades here with technical, hooky riffs, spiraling climaxes, and overall stellar unconventional songwriting. Along with The Ocean, Psychonaut is probably one of the leading frontrunners of modern progressive sludge. I expect great things to come from them in the future.

2. An Abstract Illusion – Woe (Sweden)
Style: Blackened/Atmospheric Progressive Death Metal (mixed)
2 votes for 6th place.
1 vote for 5th place.
1 vote for 3rd place.
1 vote for 1st place.

Zach said: “Woe reminds me why prog-death will forever be my favorite subgenre. The skill it takes to make something of this magnitude can’t be put into words and can only be heard in the album itself. I get why they took so long to make Trejde now: they had to make it completely, utterly ironed out. Without a bit of filler, failed riffage or lyrics that fell flat. I can only imagine the long hours these three poured over every single bar of music, all while staying relatively silent the whole time.” Read full review here.

1. Wilderun – Epigone (US-MA)
Style: Symphonic/Progressive Death Metal (mixed vocals)

1 vote for 5th place.
1 vote for 4th place.
1 vote for 2nd place.
2 votes for 1st place.

Sabrina said: “Each of the first four, nearly perfect tracks, are full of contrasting compositions with progressive tempo shifts; all of which do exceptionally well building with soothing, clean vocal melodies (with complementing female vocals by Katie Müller), acoustic guitar tones, and seamless stringed orchestrations which lead to swirling crescendos that’ll blow your socks off.” Read full review here.