Album Review: Gros Coeur – Vague Scélérate

Band: Gros Coeur | Album: Vague Scélérate | Genre: Krautrock, Progressive rock | Year: 2025

From: Liege, Belgium | Label: Spinda Records

For fans of: King Gizzard, Wand, Mother’s Cake

Gros Coeur is a band out of Belgium, and Vague Scélérate (Eng.: Rogue Wave) is their sophomore release. Belgium isn’t exactly some hotbed of prog; to my recollection, Neptunian Maximalism is the only Belgian band I’ve featured on here before. And even the other Belgian bands in my library are kind of…marginal. Nessie, Phylter, and Womega are hardly essential acts; and I just don’t like Univers Zero that much.

Vague Scélérate, however, is a great record. It’s rather diverse with a wonderful, distinctive sound.

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Album Review: Stinkbug – Between Timid and Timbuktu

Band: Stinkbug | Album: Between Timid and Timbuktu | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2025

From: Portland, (OR,) USA | Label: Independent

For fans of: Yes, Yezda Urfa, K’mono

Bandcamp

Stinkbug is a prime example of why I like going to live music. I discovered them about five days ago (at time of writing) when I went to see Dust Mice perform. (Dust Mice is a Seattle-based space rock band very heavily influenced by Hawkwind, and I only discovered them when I went to go see Everything Oscillating play. And I only know about Everything Oscillating because they’re a Moon Letters side project, whom I first discovered opening for Pinkish Black. Support local live music, folks!) Stinkbug was the second band on the bill, and I was absolutely blown away.

Their sound is definitely rooted in a lot of classic progressive rock, and all four members have experience in jazz. Accordingly, there is a ton of speedy, technical playing and unconventional songwriting on their debut record, Between Timid and Timbuktu. They also add in heavier music, especially thrash metal and punk, but the sound is overall rather sunny and bright.

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Album Review: Coroner – Dissonance Theory

Band: Coroner | Album: Dissonance Theory | Genre: Progressive thrash metal | Year: 2025

From: Zurich, Switzerland | Label: Century Media

For fans of: Voivod, Dark Angel, Vektor

Bandcamp

As I’ve noted before, progressive thrash is currently one of the less-popular varieties of metal out there. A few bands still carry the torch (like Vektor and Anarchÿ), but black, death, and sludge bands are much more likely to fold progressive elements into their music. For a while in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, prog-thrash was relatively more vibrant. Bands like Dark Angel, Toxik, Voivod, Watchtower, and even Metallica wrote long, multiparted compositions and demonstrated some major artistic ambitions.

One of those classic early prog-thrash bands was the Swiss trio Coroner. Their songs were usually relatively to-the-point, only rarely going over six minutes. But their composition was some of the most varied and intellectual in all of thrash metal. Jazz, classical, and avant-garde elements often found their way into the band’s riffs. The last time Coroner put out an album was their self-titled quasi-compilation album from 1995. They broke up and went on an extended hiatus. I wasn’t even aware they’d reunited!

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Album Review: Lazersleep – Gravity

Band: Lazersleep | Album: Gravity | Genre: Heavy psych, Space rock | Year: 2025

From: Helsinki, Finland | Label: Independent

For fans of: Elder, Pink Floyd

Bandcamp

Lazersleep is a band that wholeheartedly embraces textures and sonic effects as practically instruments unto themselves. They play a variety of psychedelia awash in phasers, flangers, wahs, and more, all in service of building up powerful atmospheres. The band describes their own music as “a psychedelic delay-bath,” and the lush soundscapes on this record even prompted them to tag this record with the confusing-but-fitting term “heavy nap.” Gravity is their debut record, and it is an impressive first statement.

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Album Review: Syrinx – Time Out of Place

Band: Syrinx | Album: Time Out of Place | Genre: Progressive rock, Heavy metal | Bandcamp

From: Vancouver, Canada | Label: Ocula Records

For fans of: Rush, Queensrÿche, Iron Maiden

Bandcamp

After six years, Vancouver’s Syrinx is back with their sophomore album. Their 2019 debut, Embrace the Dark – Seek the Light blended classic heavy metal with progressive rock to make one of my favorite releases of that year. In particular, “Time out of Place” with its Geddy Lee-inspired synth line and the sprawling suite “ZXY” stood out.

Time Out of Place sees the band even more fully embracing progressive rock than on their debut. They’ve hardly eschewed their heavy metal roots, but they have deemphasized that element of their music a bit. The band also boasts about how this was all recorded on analog, which doesn’t really have any effect on me. I don’t care if this was recorded with tapes or computers; what I care about is the strength of the writing and playing.

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Album Review: Between the Buried and Me – The Blue Nowhere

Band: Between the Buried and Me | Album: The Blue Nowhere | Genre: Progressive metal | Year: 2025

From: Raleigh, USA | Label: InsideOut Music

Bandcamp

Four years after Colors II, Between the Buried and Me has returned with their twelfth studio album, The Blue Nowhere. The band’s Bandcamp claims that this is the band’s “most […] eclectic record yet”. Now, BTBAM has a very distinct sound they normally hew pretty close to. Every album also has its own distinct foibles.

I like to go into BTBAM records blind, but after listening to this album a few times now, I can say they definitely oversold the eclecticism. This might even be their most eclectic record, if you were to crunch the numbers and see how many minutes were death metal and how many minutes were any number of other things, but this is still a BTBAM record. If you know the band, you know the sound you’re getting.

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Album Review: Cardiacs – LSD

Band: Cardiacs | Album: LSD | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2025

From: Salisbury, UK | Label: Alphabet Business Concern

Bandcamp

Cardiacs is a band I’ve mentioned a number of times on this site. For anyone unfamiliar with them, they are one of the most singular and unique progressive rock bands ever. Their early material blended the energy of punk rock with proggy ambition, which occasionally earned them the genre tag “pronk.” And as their career progressed, bandleader Tim Smith’s musical ambitions grew, culminating in 1996’s masterpiece, Sing to God.

LSD is an album I never expected to hear. Their last album was 1999’s Guns, and the first single for this album, “Ditzy Scene” came out all the way back in 2007. But a slow work schedule wasn’t why I doubted this would ever be released.

In 2008, Tim Smith, the primary driving force behind the band, suffered a heart attack which ultimately led to him experiencing some brain damage. Work was immediately put on pause, and numerous fundraisers were held on Smith’s behalf. By 2016, though, the other members of Cardiacs confirmed that LSD was still in the works.

Smith continued working with Cardiacs throughout the late 2010s, but he ultimately succumbed to his health issues in 2020. The band continued to put the final touches on LSD, however, and now it has arrived. And Jim Smith, the band’s bassist and Tim’s brother, has said Cardiacs has “at least” two more albums planned.

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Album Review: Phantom Spell – Heather & Hearth

Band: Phantom Spell | Album: Heather & Hearth | Genre: Progressive rock, Hard rock, Heavy metal | Year: 2025

From: Murcia, Spain | Label: Wizard Tower

For fans of: Wishbone Ash, Uriah Heep, Queensryche

Bandcamp

Phantom Spell is the solo project of Kyle McNeill, a guitarist for the power metal band Seven Sisters. There are certainly throughlines between these two acts, but Phantom Spell takes a decidedly 1970s-influenced path in their music. Things are highly melodic, with solos aplenty and dramatic vocals throughout.

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Album Review: WEEED’s final three releases

Band: WEEED | Albums: Green Roses Vol. II, Mushroom, WEEED | Genre: Psychedelic rock, Psychedelic folk, Krautrock | Year: 2025

From: Portland, USA | Label: Photon Records

For fans of: King Gizzard, Mondo Drag, Weedpecker

Bandcamp (Green Roses Vol. II) | Bandcamp (Mushroom) | Bandcamp (WEEED)

WEEED, a favorite local band of mine, recently decided to call it quits. I’d featured them on this site at least three times before, with two of those reviews being quite positive. Originally based on Bainbridge Island, I saw them play in and around Seattle a number of times, and they always put on a killer show, blending smart psych rock with improvisational freak-outs. They relocated to Portland a few years ago, and they’d been largely quiet since the pandemic.

In announcing their dissolution, they also announced a farewell show (which I sadly missed, due to a scheduling conflict) and a trio of records they’d been sitting on. I’m going to take this opportunity to cover these three releases as a send-off to this band. This won’t be quite as in-depth as my full-length reviews, but it will cover more than a typical Odds & Ends.

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Album Review: Tropical Fuck Storm – Fairyland Codex

Band: Tropical Fuck Storm | Album: Fairyland Codex | Genre: Art punk, Experimental rock | Year: 2025

From: Melbourne, Australia | Label: Fire Records

For fans of: Squid, black midi, Cardiacs, Fuzz

Bandcamp

Tropical Fuck Storm is an Australian quartet that has been around since 2017, but I ran across them only recently. Their style is a little tough to define, but I think the genre tags I used above are pretty accurate. Maybe I could have tossed in “noise rock,” but I think that gets the point across. While not particularly “proggy” in the sense that they don’t ape the sounds of the 1970s or perform extended suites, their style is innovative and forward-thinking. They’re a genuine breath of fresh air in the rock world.

Fairyland Codex is the band’s fourth full-length release, and it might just be their best yet. The sound palette is diverse yet unified, and the band is able to weave in earworm melodies amidst supremely chaotic passages.

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