Review: Raphael Weinroth-Browne – Lifeblood

Style: Modern classical, progressive metal, post-rock (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Apocalyptica, Max Richter, Hania Rani
Country: Canada
Release date: 3 October 2025

“What do you mean ‘modern classical’?” I hear you shout, “I thought this was a prog rock and metal website!” And you’d be right, but what if I told you that the subject of today’s review, Raphael Weinroth-Browne, a struggling cellist who, judging by his promotional photos, can’t even afford a shirt, is one of the most prolific musicians in the modern prog metal scene, and that you’ve likely heard his work a million times before? The cello work on recent Leprous albums and Einar’s solo album? Raphael. Not a Leprous fan? Fine. How about Kalandra? Or Maraton? Suldusk? His work in Musk Ox or The Visit? With Harry Stafylakis? Silent Skies? Lunar? Hands of Despair? Vitam Aeternam? Thrawsunblat? Woods of Ypres? Fates fucking Warning? Suffice to say, if you don’t know at least one of those bands, are you even reading our blog? Weinroth-Browne’s work has suffused a vast swathe of the modern progressive metal scene. 

On Lifeblood, his latest solo release, everything you hear is Weinroth-Browne and an acoustic cello¹, aided and abetted by amplifiers and effects pedals. One gets the impression that the Canadian cellist has spent many a year holed up in his studio twanging and whacking his instrument, experimenting with various manipulations in order to achieve the desired effect². What all these layers add up to sounds a lot like a full band: synthesiser-style ambiences, body-tapping percussion, and layered rhythms, leads, and harmonies. The overall sound recalls Apocalyptica, of course, but also the laminatory approach to composition sits at a confluence of modern classical artists like Max Richter and Hania Rani³, and the crescendousness of post-rock.

Nine-minute opener “Lifeblood” is a worthy introduction, starting with a simple rhythmic motif and a lamentatory solo incorporating Middle Eastern maqams. Later, a tapped-cello trip-hop groove and electronica rhythmic bed provide a playground for Weinroth-Browne to experiment with different rhythmic ideas and lead parts. In the end, he closes out the track with scraping ponticello cacophony over a djent-heavy rhythm. The metal influence is apparent, though it always comes with sublety. “Possession” features syncopated chugging and leans even further into the maqams, ominous and urgent in its ricocheting. But Lifeblood features many far lighter moments: “Pyre”, a more funereal and traditional string quartet piece successfully evoking the feeling of nothing but a fire being present to light a limited world. Similarly, “Winterlight” is another very effective mood piece, an ambient classical piece with shafts of sound breaking over the atmospheres like the sun’s apricity between snow clouds. 

Meanwhile, Weinroth-Browne’s prog credentials are on full display with the tracks that top ten minutes. The persistent beat of “Ophidian”, rooted around a catchy motif over uninhibited sections of cello shred, makes for an incredibly enjoyable vibe. Similarly, the eleven minute long “Labyrinthine” lives up to its name with rhythmic layers coiling around one another, moments of pizzicato playing and rapid glissando, and a final riff that’s more Meshuggah than Yo-Yo Ma. Though Weinroth-Browne is much more varied and also—[checks notes]—not a pianist, tracks like these in particular remind me of Ludovico Einaudi’s best work (In A Time Lapse, Nightbook, Divenire); long songs with insistent pacing and catchy motifs, simultaneously relaxing and gripping all at once. Although, on that note, “Nethereal” is the only track I’ve found myself unable to get on with, for the very same reason I could never absorb Einaudi’s “The Planets” or “Eros”; the motif simply doesn’t justify the amount of time the audience has to spend with it. 

Now, it’s easy to overthink albums when you’re reviewing. You start asking questions that aren’t all that important: “How does this advance the genre?”, “Can I find any problems?”, and “In this postmodern landscape, doesn’t the vaunting of classical instrumentation set up hegemonic hierarchies that are naught but gauche throwbacks to the age of the conservatoire, and doesn’t the ironic disposition essentially negate any sense of autobiographical commentary available to be construed within the piece? To wit, any artist in dialogue with the form is necessarily an arbiter of a dead paradigm if, indeed—invariably that—we are necessarily recapitulating established tenets of thought that are regurgitated incessantly; can one truly express autochthonous sentiment when restricted by such conformity⁴?” It’s easy to overintellectualise, but the fundamental point with this sort of instrumental classical(ish) music is: can I lose myself in it? And the answer to that is “Huh, did you say something? Sorry, I was swept away.” My first listens were hampered by a knowledge that I need to write about the album, but I first understood Lifeblood when I just stuck it on in the background and let it reach me on its own terms. Why does that descending run and those seven simple notes struggling against their own digitisation on the outro of closer “The Glimmering” remind me of when I saw a small flock of birds in the distance flying low over the sun-mottled ocean and thought ‘that’s what true freedom is’? That’s beyond language, that just is. 

The musical lifeblood that sustains us as listeners is a very personal thing, and while I come to Weinroth-Browne as prog metal reviewer, my connection with and enjoyment of his latest work is more rooted in my years listening to modern classical. To get back to near territory is a much-needed salve in a dire year, a refreshing break from 8-string chugs and scabrous shouts, but one that nevertheless retains a little of the genre’s magic hidden deep in its DNA. Fans of the myriad bands he’s worked with owe it to themselves to seek out Lifeblood, because Weinroth-Browne isn’t just some special guest, he’s an incredible artist in his own right.

Recommended tracks: Lifeblood, Ophidian, Labyrinthine, The Glimmering
You may also like: Harry Stafylakis, SevenSuns, Rebekka Karijord, Musk Ox, The Visit
Final verdict: 8/10

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

Label: Independent

Raphael Weinroth-Browne is:
– Raphael Weinroth-Browne (cello)

1. There’s a bass drum on two tracks but that’s the only exception. ↩︎
2. You and me both, brother. ↩︎
3. Who it turns out Weinroth-Browne has opened for. Check out Rani’s album Nostalgia. After you check out Lifeblood, of course. ↩︎
4. Which a) is barely a question, b) is a reworking of the old joke question by Donald Fagen (Steely Dan) to the composer Ennio Morricone,, and c) also owes something to me having heard how The Atlantic columnist Thomas Chatterton Williams writes and wanting to bleach my brain.  ↩︎