Review: Kyros – Mannequin

Genres: Progressive rock, synth pop, neo-progressive rock, new wave (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Frost*, Yes, Haken (particularly Affinity), poppy Devin Townsend (Empath, Addicted, etc), Gunship, Ulver’s synth pop albums, Rush, Voyager
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 2 February 2024

Synths and prog go together like the UK and a completely dysfunctional electoral system that consistently delivers incompetently sociopathic governance¹. Emerson, Lake & Palmer were among the first to hinge their prog rock upon synth; Yes and Rush continued the trend, and Frost* took the torch and ran with it in the 2000s. Synth-pop, on the other hand, is a distinct genre which has never fully consummated with prog, though its trappings have certainly reared their head from time to time. Synth prog and synth-pop are two very different beasts; could they, like the Brits and beige, stodgy cuisine², possibly become bedfellows? 

Which brings us to Kyros, a British group who have been cruising the underground for over a decade now, originally under the name Synaesthesia, starting out as a solo project of founder member, vocalist and keyboardist, Shelby Logan Warne. Clearly influenced by Frost*, Kyros’s evolution over time has been toward blending that established keyboard-driven prog rock style with a maximalist synth-pop tendency. Marrying the layered progressive complexity they demonstrated on their Four of Fear EP with the catchy bops that adorned previous album Celexa Dreams, Kyros have fully blossomed into one of the underground’s most accomplished acts, finally consummating prog rock with synth-pop once and for all on their latest album Mannequin.

Opening with the chiming charm of innocence-drenched track “Taste the Day”, Mannequin explodes into life with “Showtime” which lays out a bass groove that could dance across the Rio Grande with Duran Duran’s John Taylor, while the synth glides around like it’s in a Mario soundtrack (Galaxy, Kart, Sunshine, take your pick and let’s-a go). The soupçons of pop, funk and synthwave that suffuse this instrumental can be heard across Mannequin—from the doos and dahs that open “Ghosts of You” which recall Shanice’s ‘90s pop bop “I Love Your Smile” to the enormous chiming synths that dominate “Liminal Space” (echoing “Cloudburst”³ from Vox Humana) and its utterly addictive chorus. “Esoterica” is perhaps Kyros’s best amalgamation of funk and synthwave with prog rock, with its thudding grooves and a veritable wall of keys evoking the cigarette-haze of a sweaty 1980s club, the audience a writhing mass of big perms, flashing neon and lascivious contorting, Canyo Hearmichael’s saxophone solo bursting through the wall like Sergio⁴ ready to ruin Andy Samberg’s life again. And yet the funk riff that bridges the track dares to send everyone in the club out of rhythm with a wrong-footing bar of 3/4. That’s prog, baby.

And you guys want to hear more about the prog, don’t you? Well, fear not, Mannequin is replete with compositional complexity, from the Devin Townsendian layering of a deluge of different musical elements to Haken-esque interpolations of utterly chaotic instrumental breaks as on “The End in Mind” which starts out whimsical and ends up sojourning through a phat bass groove, a chiptune solo and then an instrumental passage so chaotic that attempting to count the time signatures gave me a nosebleed. Similarly, thanatophobic closer “Have Hope” is dominated by ostensibly simple melodies that keep veering into utter chaos, only for those happier melodies to cheerfully reprise as if the crack in the facade never appeared—we’re all just about holding it together in the face of death, right? 

Mannequin’s genius lies in the fact that melody and synth reign supreme but the proggier passages often tear through like a sonic mental breakdown; appropriate because, lyrically, this is a haunted, yearning album, drenched in nostalgia and pleas for answers, connection, some semblance of sanity. The happiest tune imaginable plays and then you look at the lyrics and see “Yet my brain is bleeding out of my head” and you wonder if Warne is doing okay. The answer: probably not. Mannequin feels attuned to that particularly millennial malaise, born into a stagnating Western world at a time when the old myths are dying and the new myths are inadequate to the task of making sense of what humanity hath wrought upon itself. Warne is “floating in liminal space,” wonders if she’s fated to “symbolise ill-fated tries,” feels “broken in mind, dead inside.” At some point—probably around the advent of social media (have no fear, longtime Kyros fans, “Technology Killed the Kids IV” is in the tracklist)—we all became trapped in our own heads, a flimsy fortress against a crumbling world to which we’re unable to fully acclimate. How does one find identity in such a world when we’re all just victims of our own biochemistry as it intersects with a completely hostile environment? Sure, maybe I am having a depressive episode, but it seems like Warne is too, so at least we have each other. 

Anyway, I was reviewing an album, wasn’t I? Props have to go to guitarist Joey Frevola for his John Mitchell inspired melo-shred style, interweaving classic prog rock melody with bursts of more aggressive metal, his solos always elevating the tracks. Meanwhile, Charlie Cawood slaps and pops his way through the record providing a buffet of bass grooves, and Robin Johnson’s metronomic drumming keeps the songs tightly wound during the more chaotic interludes—the rhythm section’s performance on the instrumental bridge of “The End in Mind” deserves special commendation. Additionally, there are a lot of synthesised elements on Mannequin and hundreds of layers per song; that’s a lot to keep track of, but the production is sublime, every chiming synth, crashing piece of percussion, thrumming bass note, and all the myriad bells and whistles lovingly treated in the mix.⁵

We received the promo for Mannequin in 2023 a few months ago and, had the album been released last year, it would’ve easily taken second place in my top ten of the year. Kyros have turned everything up to eleven, delivering their danciest, proggiest, wildest album yet, fusing progressive rock and synth-pop in a way that sounds completely fresh. They also caused me to go two-hundred-and-fifty words over limit, whine about the decay of society, briefly tremble at my own mortality, and forget to mention a bunch of things I actually wanted to say about the album. If all that doesn’t herald one of the best releases you’ll hear this year then I don’t know what does.

Recommended tracks: The End in Mind, Esoterica, Have Hope, Liminal Space
You may also like: Temic, Maraton, 6:33, Pleasures
Final verdict: 9/10

1.  As a Brit, I’m allowed to say this.
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2. See footnote 1. ↩︎
3.  The Korg N-1 Olympian bell patch again, I bet.
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4.  Yes, I could’ve just said Tim Cappello, but I just wanted to share that sketch because it’s basically the best thing SNL have done (and it’s a pisstake of Cappello’s highly-memed cameo in The Lost Boys). ↩︎
5.  Warne made a video breakdown of the track “Esoterica” showing the myriad layers involved (and mistakes that made it into the final product and things she just plain forgot to do with the mix—I respect the honesty). 
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Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Label: White Star Records – Facebook | Official Website

Kyros is:
– Shelby Logan Warne (vocals, keys and production)
– Joey Frevola (guitar)
– Robin Johnson (drums)
– Charlie Cawood (bass)