Art by nu studio
Style: Progressive rock, progressive metal, alt metal (mostly clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Porcupine Tree, Riverside, Katatonia, The Pineapple Thief
Country: United States (California)
Release date: 11 October 2024
After my somewhat self-indulgent pick of a band I knew and liked for my last review, I figured I’d balance things out by throwing a dart at a list of our unclaimed promos and picking my next one sight unseen. (Sound… unheard? Whatever.) This led me to the latest record from In Progress, a rather difficult-to-Google act whose last record, North Atlantic Echoes, was an intriguing foray into electronica and film-score music and soundscapes. It also came out over ten years ago, with the band’s name becoming unfortunately apropos as their long-planned return to more direct, guitar-driven music ran into numerous delays. But, at long last, Gravediggers has arrived– has its decade-plus development period forged something worth the wait, or was this one better left in the drafts?
Perhaps the most obvious sign that the album has been in the works for a long time is just how untouched it is by any of prog’s more recent trends. In essence, the record’s sound strikes a similar balance between pensive, keyboard-led atmospherics and snarling, distorted metal riffs to later-period Porcupine Tree or a slightly heavier Riverside, and if I told you it had released in 2004 between In Absentia and Second Life Syndrome, no one would bat an eyelid. Even when the guitar riffs get heavy and aggressive, they seldom really djent, and the clean vocal melodies hew far closer to the melancholic croons of Katatonia than any of the slicker, post-hardcore influenced choruses of the new school. It’s not quite old-fashioned enough to be “boomer prog”, but it is undeniably “Gen X prog”, a sound that I expect to see more bands showing nostalgia for in coming years.
The two main members of In Progress are singer/guitarist John Dillon and keyboardist Jake Rosenberg, and they’ve clearly formed a tight musical rapport over the years, nimbly swapping places in the instrumental driver’s seat while still backing the other up throughout. When Dillon is punching out aggressive riffs, Rosenberg is there providing layers of synth and organ to beef them up, and when Rosenberg’s piano takes the lead, Dillon provides cleaner guitar parts that interlock satisfyingly with the keys. There’s not much of a focus on shredding (barring a quick, flashy guitar solo in “Need Machine”), but the two clearly know how to play to the song and bounce off each other’s ideas. Interestingly, though, the first thing we hear on opener “Our Escape” comes from neither of them. Rather, it’s session drummer Rickard Langnesund with a direct, snare-forward beat that immediately catches the listener’s ear. In fact, he’s a highlight throughout the whole album, adding plenty of tasty fills and interesting rhythmic accents that elevate tracks like “Deadworld” and “Along the Coast” significantly. It doesn’t hurt that the production makes him sound full and crisp, either, and I’ll give the album an extra half point for Langnesund’s performance alone.
Eagle-eyed readers will notice I haven’t mentioned Dillon’s vocals yet, and this is because they are, unfortunately, not great. The man’s clearly trying his best to pull off a varied, engaging vocal performance to match the diversity in the compositions’ energy, but his voice just doesn’t have the strength to pull it all together. Sometimes, like in “First Light”, his softer tone in the verses sounds perfectly serviceable, but his amateurish belting tone makes the otherwise well-written chorus memorable for the wrong reasons. Other times, though, his quieter lines start sounding somewhat squirrelly; tracks like “Our Escape” and “Half Way Back” feature a weirdly fryish, breaking-apart quality that I presume is meant to evoke emotion, but the only emotion I feel while listening to it is concern for this man’s poor throat—like, get a drink of water, dude, it sounds like you’re dying. On the whole, his vocals aren’t terrible by any stretch, and the writing generally is enough to excuse them, but mid-album ballad “Someday” is an exception, having Dillon’s voice meander through the album’s dullest melodies with all the force of a coughing baby, and with precious little beyond a few echoey guitar strums to back him up, this should have been an easy candidate for the cutting room floor.
Regardless, though, there’s enough entertaining stuff here to give Gravediggers at least a modest thumbs up. Penultimate epic “Wasteland” is a bit ponderous, but does a great job of steadily building up its foreboding dynamics, with a neat little touch of slide guitar. The midsection of “Deadworld” has some neat odd-meter riffs with Rosenberg adopting a nasty, growly synth tone. But genuinely, the most fun I had with the album was when it tried to be edgy. From the snarling, middle-finger-in-the-air intonation of “Fuck this world, it’ll never get me” on “Afterflame” to pretty much the entirety of the wonderfully aggro “Need Machine”, a decent chunk of this record sounds like if James Labrie were hired to write songs for the Shadow the Hedgehog game soundtrack, and no matter how silly that may sound, it put a big grin on my face, so I’ll count that as a win. The heavier segments, in addition to their generally strong riffs, also benefit from some of Dillon’s better vocal passages, including a couple of powerful, raw screams that spice up the material considerably. If In Progress continue playing to their strengths in the arena of metal while shoring up their frontman’s vocal weaknesses to make the more melodic and atmospheric parts of their music click, their next record has a good deal of potential. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take until 2034 to come out.
Recommended tracks: Need Machine, Deadworld, Afterflame, Wasteland
You may also like: PreHistoric Animals, Look to Windward, Fjieri
Final verdict: 6.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
In Progress is:
– John Dillon (vocals, guitars, bass, additional synth)
– Jake Rosenberg (keyboards, piano)
With:
– Rickard Langnesund (drums)
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