Review: SerapiS Project – Side Stories

Style: progressive metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Ayreon, Dream Theater, Circus Maximus, The Dear Hunter (conceptually if not musically)
Country: Spain
Release date: 23 May 2025

It’s a great tragedy for artists everywhere and in every medium that passion is not sufficient for success. Passion can carry a creator through the travails of completing their work and releasing it to the public, but it can never guarantee that the end product will be of high quality, nor that it will receive the attention it deserves from the target audience. SerapiS Project have invested their passions mainly in the Patreon model for funding and distributing their creative efforts, offering a persistent fantasy universe with a continuous narrative. Their previous full-length album Palingenesis laid the foundation for this storytelling effort, establishing primary characters and motivations, mainly drawing on historical and mythological figures relating to the underworld, from the titular Serapis to Hades and even the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. Side Stories continues in the same world, instead diving deeper into the characters’ backgrounds through a set of (you guessed it) side stories. I have a lot of respect for the ambition of a project like this; large-scale storytelling through music remains an underexplored space, with few artists other than Ayreon or The Dear Hunter willing to commit to such an effort, and the few who do rarely do a good job of it. As you might have inferred, SerapiS Project don’t seem to be any exception to the latter.

There can be little doubt that the members of SerapiS Project have placed a tremendous amount of emotional investment in their shared creative project, but little of that passion shows through in the qualities of the music itself. The compositions are formulaic and dull, the performances primarily stilted and unemotional—ostensibly progressive metal, but only of the most generic kind, with no particular depth in their songwriting and the smallest possible amount of lip service paid to the hallmarks of the genre. Songs change tempos and time signatures not so much because of any artistic purpose for doing so, but because that’s what happens in progressive metal songs. Often these changes feel sudden and jarring, such as around the 3:25 mark of the closing track “Order and Justice.” Even the more gradual transitions, such as in “The Gravest Mistake,” don’t add meaningful intrigue or complexity, they just serve as transitions between parts that sound slightly different for the sake of being different.

The Bandcamp page for SerapiS Project describes the band’s sound thus: “Swinging between minimalist, acoustic, clean vocal passages and powerful heavy riffs with harsh vocals.” It’s difficult to agree though; acoustic elements mostly make their appearance in minor openings and interludes rather than featuring as a main component of the band’s sound, and “minimalist” is one of the last words I would choose to describe Side Stories given how many of its arrangements consist of arbitrarily layering different parts on top of each other with little artistic intent. Admittedly, the soft acoustic guitar sections might be the strongest, as they accept the limitations of the format and don’t overreach the capabilities of the instrument or musician, instead embracing simple, gentle compositions which highlight the natural beauty of the instrument. However, being such a small, non-integral part of the album as a whole, these brief asides can’t do much to salvage a positive impression.

In numerous ways, this release seems to be an afterthought for SerapiS Project.¹ For better or for worse, that doesn’t seem to have significantly improved or hindered the quality of the music itself; Side Stories is just as unfocused in its structure as its predecessor. When SerapiS Project are able to keep attention on a mere one or two musical elements, such as during the atmospheric, acoustic segments or when the guitars are given free rein to play a flashy riff or two backed by simple drum licks, it’s easier to see the vision for what this album should sound like given capable performances. The main flaw which undercuts that vision is in the cohesion of all the pieces put together, which tend to blur and melt into an indistinct blob the more elements are piled on top. While the opening of “The Fury of the Storm” sounds fairly impressive with fast guitar arpeggios, the title track has those same musicians struggling to maintain a tight tempo when they try to offer a quick fill between repetitions of the melody in the closing verse, folding into a muddy mess instead.

Digging into the peripheral content they’ve released, such as YouTube Q&A sessions with fans and patrons, it’s clear that SerapiS Project carry a deep passion for the music they create and the story they’re telling through it. The band members obviously relate emotionally to the characters they’re depicting and the narrative themes of ascension and revenge, and most of all they want to share those treasures with a wider fan base. However, passion itself is not enough to write and produce a good album. If Side Stories were being performed live at the far end of a crowded bar on a random week night, I would enjoy the evening’s entertainment and generally be pretty impressed at the effort required to produce an entire original album. Given that it’s been released in full for an online audience, with accompanying bonus content to entice prospective patrons to support the band financially, I have more concerns. It’s 2025, and the internet is already filled with more music than anyone could ever hope to listen to. If you want to make music with your friends and band-mates for the fun of it or as an outlet for creative expression, great; if you want people to give you money for it, you should probably make sure it actually sounds good.

Recommended tracks: Emptiness, The Fury of the Storm if you stop listening after the first minute
You may also like: DGM, Hemina, Master Sword, Daydream XI, Azure (for the storytelling)
Final verdict: 3/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Independent

SerapiS Project is:
– Joaco Luis (guitars, backing vocals)
– Kristina Vega (vocals)
– Agus Milton (drums)
– Lucas Luis (bass)
– Sergi Martínez (guitars)

1. The album wasn’t available on major streaming platforms until roughly a week after its official release date, and at time of writing, it still isn’t available on Bandcamp except as a pre-order. Despite the band uploading numerous videos to their YouTube channel so far this year, I can find only a handful that pertain directly to Side Stories, including the announcement for its release. The band members seem more interested in the creative act of telling a story through music, and their YouTube channel offers a wealth of background detail and behind-the-scenes content for the project’s core narrative. This approach doesn’t cultivate the audience’s musical entertainment as well compared to releasing their albums through more traditional means and putting more effort into improving as musicians and songwriters. Even since the release of Side Stories, their demo and live-recording content continues to feature mainly tracks from Palingenesis. ↩︎