Style: Progressive metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Caligula’s Horse, Periphery, Protest the Hero, Fair to Midland
Country: United States
Release date: 31 October 2025

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Progressive metal bands love a good dichotomy. Light and dark, beauty and brutality, heaven and hell, [checks notes]… thunder and water? I guess if you squint, you can see the vision: thunder suggests an explosive, sky-rending heavy force, while water calls to mind a flowing, fluid emotional undercurrent. Whether those two ideas meaningfully fuse or clash immiscibly like oil and water is the guiding question of Thunder and Water: Act Two, the third album from young Chicago band The Untold.

Though The Untold profess a penchant for genre-bending, citing on their website that they “dip into countless sub-genres of heavy music”, nothing that happens on Thunder and Water: Act Two will truly surprise a connoisseur of modern prog metal. Operating in a warmly melodic space, the band blends a lyrical, loping elegance reminiscent of Caligula’s Horse with an edgier ’core-tinged punch that suggests influences from Periphery and Protest the Hero. Across the album, The Untold deploy prog metal cheat codes to dial up the energy and dynamism: call-and-response between clean and syncopated harsh vocals, background oohs and ahhs that crest beneath the choruses, an emotional swell of strings.

Then, of course, there’s the gimmick: The Untold proudly describe themselves as storytellers—so proudly, in fact, that their entire project leans on a literal invitation for listeners to submit their own “untold” stories (get it?!) via a form on the band website, to be interpreted in song. Perhaps it’s harsh of me to call this a gimmick, but the submission page rather resembles an online inquiry form for booking a corporate holiday party, complete with checkboxes, text fields, and captchas, and I simply can’t get past the goofiness. It’s unclear whether The Untold want to bring attention to important subjects and underrepresented voices, or simply crowdsource lore for future albums, and so the approach comes across a bit hackneyed.

Nonetheless, Thunder and Water: Act Two displays a kind of compositional humility that helps The Untold to avoid many pitfalls common amongst lesser bands in the space. The album’s tidy thirty-four minute runtime speaks to The Untold’s willingness to murder their darlings, maintaining an energetic pace that pushes past the occasional well-worn grooves of tropes. For instance, album closer “Thunder and Water” is tightly constructed: though it’s ten minutes long, the track feels shorter, neither overcrowded with ideas nor skewing into the self-indulgence of an unearned “epic”. Further, there’s little technical showboating on display. While The Untold clearly comprises a group of skilled musicians, they emphasize melody and storytelling rather than the ostentatious notes-per-minute approach of some peers. You can clearly hear the success of this approach in the fluttering bass passage on “Cascadia” that blooms into a guitar solo straight off of, well, Bloom.

Vocalist Kyle Dupuis capably deploys smooth cleans across a wide range, as well as a venomous harsh register. However, his tone turns gurgly when pushing the boundary between the two styles, like in the opening of “Rust”, as this in-between timbre lacks the confidence of either technique. In the lower clean register, too, there’s a youthful raspiness that suggests inconsistent support, which is particularly apparent in the understated “Salt”. Dupuis is at his best in Thunder and Water: Act Two’s heaviest moments: the viciously snarled command to “purge your parasitic plague”¹ in “Thunder and Water” might be his best moment on the album. 

Indeed, The Untold at large seem to be flirting with a heavier sound, leaning further into the thunder of their sound in comparison with the tamer Thunder and Water: Act One. These traces, paired with hints of a more epic, anthemic sound in “Thunder and Water”, suggest an avenue where The Untold could carve out a more recognizable signature.

The Untold may not yet be commanding the storm, but they chart a steady course armed with clarity, restraint, and, of course, a mailbag full of user-submitted prompts. Thunder and Water: Act Two shows a band gaining confidence in their heavier impulses without losing sight of their melodic eloquence. Should The Untold continue edging toward the darker horizons glimpsed here, refining a clearer sense of identity and steering clear of the occasional cliche or vocal misstep, their next release could see an even more assured sound emerge. Consider this your reminder to limber up your clicking finger for whatever captcha-gated saga comes next.

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Recommended tracks: Cascadia, Thunder and Water
You may also like: The Offering, The Stranger, Tiberius, Aviations, Voidchaser
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

The Untold is:
– Luke Dupuis (Vocals, guitar)
– Cole Dillow (Guitar)
– Rob Runnels (Bass)
– Alex Kennedy (Drums)

1. Stylized in ALL CAPS in the Bandcamp lyrics for dramatic effect. ↩︎