Style: Progressive rock, progressive metal, rock opera (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Ayreon, Dream Theater, Queen, Haken (Aquarius), The Dear Hunter
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 3 April 2026

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The differences between British English and real… er American English sometimes cause mild tension at the Subway, due to our cast of international writers. I’ve won the good fight in our style guide of not using spaces with em-dashes,¹ but try as I might, some of our writers refuse to put punctuation inside of closing quotation marks, and if I change one more instance of “s” to “z” in a word (for example, civilization) while feedbacking Christopher, it may come to fisticuffs. Across differences in regional usages of the English language, though, I have encountered several intriguing phrases, my favorite being “can’t be arsed,” which I use nearly daily. HeKz’s promotional material introduced me to an incomprehensible-to-the-American-mind phrase that the blog’s resident Brit had to explain. 

PROG Magazine said of HeKz: “Think Queen having a barney with Dream Theater as Rush and Iron Maiden duke it out on the sidelines!” What the hell is “having a barney,” you may ask? Essentially, it’s a heated quarrel, but of all the pull-quotes bands use, that phrase is certainly among the worst. At least it’s an accurate enough description of the band’s sound, as HeKz blends theatricity with a proggy heavy metal base, leading to a final product close to Ayreon in sound. Indeed, the real tragedy is that HeKz describes Qisma on the band’s website as a record “set to redefine what’s possible in the genre… fearless and inventive.” The album not only fails to reinvent anything but is, in fact, a style of prog metal that was cliché by the mid ‘00s; and if one readily admits to their sonic comps being Queen, Dream Theater, Rush, and Iron Maiden, then that person cannot possibly call themselves inventive and fearless without lying through their teeth. I can look past a poor first impression and overblown promo material if the music is competent, though, so how does Qisma actually fare?

Well, Qisma is slightly insipid, theatrical prog rock/metal made by talented musicians. Let’s start with the good: bandleader Matt Young is a charismatic vocalist with solid range and particularly tasteful vibrato when he really takes a metallic section in full stride; Tolis Zavaliaris’s guitar solos have all the face-melting shred and saccharine feels one would want on a cheesy prog album; the rhythm section of Jerry Sadowski (drums) and Young again on bass don’t overplay but fit into solid groove pockets; and Lucia la Reza really takes the spotlight when she shows up, mainly playing violin, but also cello and double bass. The performers are all highlighted in different ways as HeKz pull influences from across the prog spectrum. For instance, the fiddle and vocals take the center on the extraordinarily cringy “The Future Is Here,” which features lyrics about the circus with a quirky, finger-snapping, horn-blaring main theme—the song could have easily come from one of the first The Dear Hunter albums, or one of the worse parts of Haken’s Aquarius. A couple tracks, like “Qisma” and the twenty-four-minute centerpiece “The Great Out There,” pull straight from the early ‘00s Dream Theater playbook, invoking a sense of strange déjà vu² with the complex, heavy riffs and wailing prog vocals on top. Those heavy riffs are some of the best moments on Qisma, however, as the writing does a good job mimicking Dream Theater without bordering on plagiarism. HeKz even induce a hell of an eye roll on the overly sentimental prog rock finale, “A Leap of Faith,” which falls under the influence of an act like The Neal Morse Band. And about a minute into “Captured” sounds just like something off of Ayreon’s The Human Equation. The more prog metal-informed sections like that and the Dream Theater-y riffs scattered throughout Qisma are much stronger, even if they, too, are derivative at best. 

We all know a well-played prog album with above-average vocals wouldn’t get such a sarcy (another Britishism I’ve picked up) second paragraph earlier in the review unless something distasteful were afoot. What’s that? Qisma is ninety-seven minutes long? I suppose not self-editing this could be considered fearless, although I don’t think that’s how HeKz meant to use that adjective. The band try their best to make the record cohesive despite its monstrous length, but a substantial part of that effort is including sci-fi beeps and boops, as well as godawful robotic spoken word at the end of nearly every single track to manufacture some sort of narrative. HeKz manage to craft several recurring melodic motifs, however, and those are one of the only saving graces, providing a needed sense of grounding with some of the most memorable and tasty melodies the record has to offer. The better of the two hulking, twenty-plus-minute epics, “The Overlord,” opens with a piano reprisal of a prior theme, and the violin transitions from a solo back into that same melody near the end of the track to bring the thing full circle. Unfortunately, the other epic “The Great Out There” isn’t so successful with songwriting, coming across as much more stitched-together. 

I genuinely think that Qisma has several brilliant melodic moments (for instance, the start of “The Great Out There” or the heavenly “Virtual Utopia”) and a seriously talented singer as far as prog metal goes. And so it’s such a shame that the band blew it with a ridiculously long and bloated album, filled with lame robotic spoken word clips. I don’t think barneying will make my vocabulary.

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Recommended tracks: Qisma, Overlord, Virtual Utopia
You may also like: Aeon Zen, Frost*, Arena, Guilt Machine, Shadow Gallery, Terravia
Final verdict: 5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: independent

HeKz is:
– Matt Young – Vocals, Bass Guitar, Keyboards, Additional Guitars, Percussion
– Tolis Zavaliaris – Guitars
– Lucia La Rezza – Violin, Cello, Double Bass
– Jerry Sadowski – Drums
With guests:
– Mark Bogert – Guitars (track 7)
– Adam Holzman – Keyboards & Moog Solo (track 11)
– Moyano el Buffalo – Percussion (track 8)
– Stella D Angelo, Duncan Greenway, Lucia La Rezza, Tolis Zavaliaris – Choir (track 12)

1. Except for Ian. Screw you, Ian. Sentence space en-dash space phrase space en-dash space sentence again is obnoxious. ↩︎
2.  Although more seriously, it sounds like Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, not Scenes from a Memory. ↩︎