Reports from the (progressive metal) Underground: January 2020 (part 2)

Hello reader! And now for the second time we delve into January albums. It’s a really solid edition if I must say so myself. Lots of high ratings on this one. I don’t really have much else to say regarding this one, so I guess we’ll just hop into it! Here’s the Spotify playlist with all the recommended tracks in advance. And if you’re new here and wonder what this is all about: check out our About page.

Sea – Impermanence (US-MA)
Style: Doom/Post/Sludge (mixed vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Matt

I’ve said before that all music should just be MIDIs, as I value composition over production. This idea breaks down when you get into the sludgier end of things, such as Impermanence here; the notes themselves are simple, maybe even cliche, but the presentation elevates them to something great.

The basic framework is mournful doom metal with a lot of reverb and post-rock tremolo picking, sometimes trading in the requisite tortured screams for eerie harmonized male/female vocals. Occasionally they’ll use a blastbeat, but even these somehow feel slow and crushing. The guitars aren’t really doing anything new, doling out low three or four-note riffs and wistful melodies, but there’s such conviction and emotion behind the songs that it works out fine. Each track is a lengthy meditation on loss, but the last one is especially adventurous, containing some more distinctive riffs that I appreciated. Of course, the whole thing is one big ambient experience, and you can’t separate one part from it so easily. As a 40-minute musical journey, Impermanence immerses you and leaves a satisfying impression afterwards.

The mix is largely to thank for this album’s success, with a natural warm fuzz that lends a cavernous atmosphere to the proceedings. Everything from the guitar tone to the distant-sounding snare works in service of the album’s bleak thematic content.

Impermanence is a subject that’s on my mind a lot… to a frustrating degree lately, really. I had considered the title for my own album, and that’s why this caught my eye – but yeah, they did it better than I would have. While I may be mostly concerned with the musical puzzle of moving notes around, there is something to be said for taking a subject and representing it artfully. I highly recommend this album if you’re at all interested in The Sad Stuff^TM.

Recommended tracks: Dust, Penumbra
Recommended for fans of: Neurosis, Subrosa
Final verdict: 8/10

Elder Druid – Golgotha
Style: Sludge/Doom (heavy vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Tyler

Hello. Wow, look at that Grumpy Gus in the album art. He sure is grumpy! Feels like me during these trying times. Six day work weeks from home, gotta love it! I listen to a lot of sludge as it is, and I gotta tell ya, it gets fatiguing. It takes a special something in order for me to really engage with the genre. The whole thing walks a thin line between it changing my life and wanting to beat my head against a wall. So where does Elder Druid land? They’re clinging to the underside of rope and crawling across. Sneaky sneaky…

What I mean by that, is that I really don’t know how I feel about this album. There are things that I really dig, but some things are just….off. I really love the overall vibe that I’m getting from the album. The vocals are a clear stand out, by far the best part of the experience. The agonized tone and raw emotion that’s coming out of the vocalist is mesmerizing. I like to picture an actual druid fighting the elements in order to find a crystal mcguffin at the top of the big tree, or whatever it is that druids do. Focusing on that really helped in keeping my focus, because in all sincerity, there isn’t all too much here in the way of songwriting.

The songs are there for sure, they have structure and the performances are solid. But it’s all par for the course when it comes to sludge metal. Slow, brooding rhythms. Some shimmery every now and again. Guitars that don’t know how to say ‘no’ to fuzz. The fuzz in particular is a pretty big mountain to climb. Elder Druid does not lay off of that tone for a second. Even when things are quiet, or trying to build tension, the fuzz comes in and now suddenly we’re in familiar territory again, so it makes any sort of build feel like it has no pay off. And if there is anything that sludge metal needs, it’s some sort of conflict in the journey of the album, because without that, we’re left with a homogenous experience that leaves us right to where we began. By song six, I was begging for a clean guitar tone.

I’m trying to touch on production less in my reviews, since it’s an easy target (especially for an unfortunate production snob like me), so I will touch it briefly here: It’s not terrible, but it could be way better. The drums need something done to them, anything really, they are dry as a bone, and with how saucy everything else is, they stick out in a not so flattering way. Also, somehow, the production made the band sound smaller than they are. There are SIX fellas in this band, but it sounds like there are only three. With some space, this could have sounded massive.

Golgotha is one of those instances where the sum of the parts is greater than the band is. When you look at each aspect, individually, it can be picked apart until it’s just a sun bleached skeleton. But, all together, I found something to groove to. And when I’m grooving, it makes me better at Super Smash Bros., so we’ll call it a wash.

Recommended tracks: Dreadnought
Recommended for fans of: Minsk, Sleep, Neurosis
Final verdict: 6/10

Ether Coven – Everything Is Temporary Except Suffering (US-FL)
Style: Post (mixed vocals)
Related links: Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Tyler

Hey, Ether Coven. My name is Tyler. I like movies and coming up with song titles for albums that will never be worked on. Want to be friends? I like your vibe, and I’d like to give you some constructive criticism in the form of a review given from your third person perspective. Okay, here goes.

This thing is moody with a capital ‘oo’, in a good way. There is a lot of ebb and flow between the haunting ethereal parts and the crushing bits that come out of nowhere. The whole album feels like it’s rocking on the ocean, as cliche as that is. A big help comes from the vocal performance, my got this guy puts everything into his delivery. His heavy vocals hit like nothing else. They float somewhere between a hardcore punk and death metal growls, but everywhere they are applied, they are applied perfectly. I will say the cleans threw me through a loop. As someone in a band with a particularly throaty singer, I’ve found that there are some styles that lend itself well and others where the vocal style and the music clash more. On this album, it’s the latter. Everytime the cleans came in, I was thrown out of the mood that was set so perfectly by what came before it, and a different spin on the vocals would have made those transitions less jarring for sure (see “This House is a Tomb of Memories”).

Let’s talk about that too. The song writing on this is real good. Heavy and thick, but crisp where it needs to be, but clean and spacy during the interludes. Everything had a place to be, and everything felt like it had its own identity that helped the overall feel of every song. I will say that, I know we are in post metal territory, but a few of the songs could have stood to be a little shorter. I found myself more than once zoning, realizing that I was in the same song just a few minutes later, and that not much had changed. It would have been an even more engaging listen if some of those moments got condensed.

There’s not much more I can say about this one. It’s a cool journey if you are into the post/sludge metal stuff. A lot of this stuff typically doesn’t impress me as much as this album did, so if that says anything about the quality of work, do with that what you will. Good on ya boys.

Recommended tracks: Flower Crown, Enjoy Life
Recommended for fans of: Converge, The Ocean, Neurosis
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Gloe – Dead Wait (US-UT)
Style: Mathgaze (this is what they very adamantly call themselves) (Clean vocals, a little PhC style screaming)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | RYM page
Review by: Chris

When I saw this album on our review list I suddenly remembered it had been mentioned to me by someone close to me as “exactly your shit” a month ago and life had caused me to pass it by. I’m glad to report that my friend was correct and I am now regretting that 2 month period where I was not listening to this album. Simply put this album is what happens when you drench some mathy stylings in reverb a la -gaze genres, which is apt considering the band pushes themselves as a Mathgaze band.

“Dead Wait”(song) opens the album a bit slowly and I will admit this track did not immediately grab me, as it felt like a few other post bands I had used to listen to when I was younger. The guitars reminded me of something I might find in an Appleseed Cast song and the vocalist reminded me of the vocalist from HRVRD, which I had not listened to in years and gave me a nice nostalgic feeling. However, at about the 2:25 mark “Dead Wait” caught me with the cane hook and pulled me back in with a shuffling syncopated drum beat over the previous guitar part. I really feel the drums provide a lot of what is so great about this album. There are so many moments of almost Thomas Pridgen esque drum riffing that really are what caused me to feel so much The Mars Volta vibes in this album. Without some of these drums beats I feel some parts of the album might not succeed to the degree they do since the drums are really what are providing the new perspective and voice to these parts in my mind. 

That said, the guitars and basslines in this album are great though some fall a little flat for me and I find myself falling back onto just listening to the drums and head bobbing (I’m a drummer so it’s only to be expected). I feel sometimes the guitars are slightly treading ground that Circa Survive tilled and cultivated long ago, though there is much more gaze aspect here than they typically apply. 

The vocals are pretty good overall as well, I did have a strange tip-of-my-tongue moment for a while listening to this album, until I realized it really really reminded me of Brian Aubert from Silversun Pickups. I do feel they feel a bit samey for too many stretches in the record, though if it was done for overall atmosphere and feel for the album as a body of work I would let it slide. There are a few more staccato playful choruses and lines and those are the sections where I really find myself focusing on the vocals, and anytime the vocalist gave those Anthony Green style high fry vocals I was super into it.

I really really like this album and will be visiting it a lot more for a while as a nice addition to my “things that feel like they were made to be listened to by me” list. My main critiques are song length and how some sections drag on, I didn’t personally feel all the songs needed the amount of length they had, and  I would love in future endeavors to hear the guitars break more new ground in the way I feel the drums really really did for this style of music.

Recommended tracks: Casualty Officer, So Without, (Aichmåloto) Asterias
Recommended for fans of: Circa Survive, Minus the Bear, The Mars Volta, HRVRD
Final verdict: 8/10

Oberst – Paradise (Norway)
Style: Post Hardcore (melodic harsh vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | RYM page
Review by: Dylan

Let me just say right out the gate; Orbest are not really all that progressive. They play post-hardcore very simlar to something like most Refused worship bands. But if you know Refused, you can say that even though they’re not progressive per se, they can definitely be included in the ‘’prog-adjacent’’ area. And that’s exactly where I’d locate Paradise. 

This release is pretty damn poppy for this blog’s standards. The longest track here is 5:20, which is the standard shortest track for 90% of albums here. Instrumentally, there’s not much that’s polyrhythmical, wanky, or dissonant, it’s mostly filled to the brim with post hardcore riffs, which are also very melodic. The vocals are purely harsh which is not something that’s very common for post hardcore; they add a certain heaviness or ‘’oompf’’ factor to the album. 

And yes, the melodic aspect of the instrumentals do compliment the harsher vocals very well. It’s mixed really well, played proficiently, fun to listen to, catchy,  infectious, and groovy. If you’re by any chance remotely interested in other post hardcore acts, this is something you should by all means check out. 

Recommended tracks: A Stranger Place Pt. II, Dreambeast, Snakes
Recommended for fans of: Refused, At the Drive-In, Future Corpse
Final verdict: 8/10

Thermohaline – Thermohaline (International) [EP]
Style: Avantgarde/Black (harsh vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Andrew

On their Bandcamp page, Thermohaline describes themselves as “Thermodynamic Oceanic Black Metal.” Naturally, I had no idea what this description meant or what they were trying to say about the music with it. After the first track, I understood the “Oceanic” part – throughout the entire song, I felt like I was drowning. No, not the good kind of drowning where the music is flowing over you in a pleasant and dreamlike state. I was being suffocated. 

A seemingly constant barrage of lo-fi blast beats and brutal black metal riffs separated by incredibly interesting nonmetal sections, Thermohaline’s self-titled debut EP does exactly what the group sets out to achieve. An international collaboration spanning from Brazil to Argentina to Belgium, Thermohaline EP simultaneously shows off the savagery and the beauty possible in the avant-garde black metal subgenre. At three tracks and 30 minutes long, Thermohaline EP is concise and wastes no time establishing its themes and mood. Like I said previously, the black metal sections are suffocating. Normally, this constant flood of energy and brutality would be a turn-off for me. However, Thermohaline incorporates many other musical styles and elements placed throughout each song. The Calling has a section that is almost trance; Thy Skull Shall Be Mine has a harp break. These sections break up the brutality in such a way that when it comes back, it feels just a bit more fresh. 

By the end of my first listen, I understood what Thermohaline means by “Thermodynamic Oceanic Black Metal.” The music incorporates many aquatic elements such as the sounds of crashing waves. Deeper than the surface, the album feels like it’s underwater. Furthermore, the ever-changing moods and temperatures accurately reflect the “thermodynamic” descriptor. However, due to these constantly changing moods, the EP lacks a sense of cohesion that can be found in many other releases of the style. Suffocating at times and beautiful at times, there is nothing that draws the two extremes together. Despite this, I still enjoyed the Thermohaline EP and even learned a new word from it! (thermohaline circulation (noun) – the movement of seawater in a pattern of flow dependent on variations in temperature, which give rise to changes in salt content and hence in density).

Recommended tracks: The Calling, Thy Skull Shall Be Mine
Recommended for fans of: Sigh, Blut Aus Nord
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Dead Kosmonaut – Gravitas (Sweden)
Style: Heavy (clean vocals)
Related links: Spotify | Label Website | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Sam

I’m never quite sure what to expect with (progressive) heavy metal for this blog. Heavy metal itself is often quite limited in sound, often restricted to 70s/80s worship bands in one form or the other. Progressive heavy metal though, is a tad more varied in sound (as is to be expected given it’s prog), and sometimes even (dare I say) inventive, so it’s less obvious just what flavor you’ll get. It’s almost like a Christmas present in that respect. Granted, the songwriting with these bands is often a tad mediocre, but still, it’s exciting to unpack a new album in the style nonetheless. What remains of course is the question of what flavor of (progressive) heavy metal Dead Kosmonaut is, and if they’re competent.

For the first question I’ll happily report that this is of the more inventive flavor. The second one we’ll get to later. It’s mostly based on a chill 70s heavy metal sound, but some of the harmonies have a distinct 80s (or should I say Iron Maiden) flavor to them, and the tempo is also more 80s (aka higher). They also use a hammond organ, which is a surefire way to get bonus points from me. It’s not the riffiest heavy metal you’ll hear. It’s more based on guitar harmonies, keyboard leads, vocal hooks and the like. What also surprised me is how atmospheric the album can get. You’d say a band like this would rely solely on the singing prowess of their vocalist in softer parts, but Dead Kosmonaut make sure to really immerse you in the entire setting with more spaced out harmonies, washy guitar effects and cool synthesized soundscapes. Just listen to “Hell/Heaven” and tell me that’s not trippy af. Sonically the album is fantastic too. It’s a very airy, spacious mix. Everything sounds very balanced and it’s in no way tiring to listen to.

Now for the answer to the second question, it’s an easy one: damn straight they’re competent. What really makes this band stand out is the songwriting. They just do everything well. The hard rockers, the moody epics, the long solo passages, the vocal performance. These guys are tight alright. It’s just entertaining at every minute. There’s only one major qualm I have with this album, and that’s the pacing. The first four songs are rockers, and the last four are essentially two moody epics (with some interludes). It makes for a pretty disjointed experience. I’ve been told it was pretty standard practice back in the day to make the first half of your LP full of bangers, and the second one more experimental, but now in the digital age things just don’t work that way anymore. The songs in the second half also tend to be a bit too long. I wish they had paced the album differently, because then it likely wouldn’t have bothered me as much. Don’t let this keep you from listening to this album though. Gravitas is a lovely breath of fresh air in the heavy metal genre and is worth all your attention if you’re a fan of the style.

Recommended tracks: Black Tongue Tar, The Spirit Divide, Hell/Heaven
Recommended for fans of: Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, (early) Judas Priest
Final verdict: 8/10

Shi ~ 死 – Depressive Suicidal Stoner Doom (US-KY)
Style: Do we really need to say anything??? (harsh vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Metal-Archives page
Review by: Dylan

Okay so first of all let’s get the elephant of the room out of the way. Other than it’s lyrical themes, there’s nothing depressive and/or suicidal about this album. The instrumental theme of this album is 100% ‘’stoner doom’’, no other way to go about it. And it’s a good thing that it’s 100% that, because boy, this album is quite a treat.

Let’s start off by saying that this is really, really heavy stoner. The album is a massive riff fest, with a really fuzzy and distorted bass accompanying them, alongside some very simple yet crushing drums. The vocals are harsh, but they’re not precisely growled, as a matter of fact, I can’t really describe them? They’re really gritty and putrid, but I can’t relate them to any sort of vocal style. What I do know is that they fit the style of music perfectly. 

What you read, and the impression you get from the album’s name, is what you get here. Nothing more but nothing less. It gets my seal of approval because it knows what it’s doing, it’s varied enough to separate one track for the other, it’s perfectly produced for the style, and lasts just what an album like this should. At just 42 Minutes, 死 deliver a fantastic album which is bound to have you headbanging your way through it.

Recommended tracks: Swamp Hag, Spit and Swallow
Recommended for fans of: F U Z Z Y S T O N E R
Final verdict: 8.5/10

Thematic – Skyrunner (US-IN)
Style: Modern Progressive Metal (mixed vocals)
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | RYM page
Review by: Jonah

Alright so I’m just going to get this out of the way. Thematic plays the same kind of modern prog metal that you’ve heard from dozens of bands by now, especially a lot of the genre greats like Haken and The Contortionist. Add in just a smidge of the BTBAM style of chaos and you’ll have a near perfect picture of what this band sounds like. They’ve got riffs in weird and wacky time signatures, tenor vocals taking advantage of the abnormal song pacing to do some fun melodic swoops and soaring choruses, and the drums are erratic and fun.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about the performances here except that they’re all strong and enjoyable. Every element of the music is clear and audible, and while I would’ve liked a slightly cleaner mix on the album as a whole it’s very well produced. The songs are punchy and the writing is solid, and all in all I have a good time listening.

All of that said, I don’t find myself coming back very often. I think this is more of a side-effect of exhaustion with this particular style of prog than any reflection on the band as a whole, but every time I listen to this album I can’t help but find myself going and listening to one of the bands they clearly draw influence from. I think that Thematic may very well go on to release an absolutely incredible album in the future given their clear talent and songwriting ability, but I don’t think they are quite there yet. Nonetheless, as with every single album I’ve covered for this edition, there’s quite a bit to enjoy here. Give it a listen!

Recommended tracks: Skyrunner, The Open Arms of Grace
Recommended for fans of: The Contortionist, Between the Buried and Me, Haken
Final verdict: 7/10