Album Review: Motorpsycho – Motorpsycho

Band: Motorpsycho | Album: Motorpsycho | Genre: Psychedelic rock, Progressive rock | Year: 2025

From: Trondheim, Norway | Label: Det Nordenfjeldske Grammofonselskab

For fans of: Amplifier, Gong, Dungen, Slift

Motorpsycho is one of the most prolific bands in the modern prog scene. They’re not quite King Gizzard, but they’re not terribly far off, either. Including a handful of collaborations, their 2025 self-titled is their 28th full-length release. They’ve demonstrated a lot of range, both across their career and on individual records. Their 1991 debut is primarily a stoner metal album, for example. I wasn’t introduced to Motorpsycho until their sprawling 2017 album The Tower.

Motorpsycho sees the now-duo take an approach somewhat similar to The Tower. This is a long record with a few songs where the band really stretches out. Textures are rich, dreamy, and psychedelic, but flashes of heavier stuff crop up every now and again.

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Album Review: Steven Wilson – The Overview

Artist: Steven Wilson | Album: The Overview | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2025

From: Hertfordshire, UK | Label: Fiction Records

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Steven Wilson has described his new album, The Overview, as a return to longer-form writing. I’m not sure “return” is necessarily applicable here. Even To the Bone and The Future Bites had one song apiece that pushed 10 minutes. Though I suppose if he’s talking more specifically about songs long enough to cover one whole side of an LP, it has been a while. The last one of such length was “Raider II” off Grace for Drowning in 2011. And this is the first album to feature two such massive songs since The Sky Moves Sideways (though disc one of The Incident is billed as one hour-long song cycle).

This is also the first Steven Wilson solo album in a while I’ve gone into with good hopes. He has explicitly cited Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd as influences he channeled here, as well as stating that the concept of The Overview is well-suited to progressive rock. (The concept behind this album is “the overview effect,” where astronauts viewing the Earth from above often report overwhelming emotion and a strong connection with all of humanity.)

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Album Review: Jethro Tull – Curious Ruminant

Band: Jethro Tull | Album: Curious Ruminant | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2025

From: Luton, UK | Label: InsideOut Music

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Oh boy! Jethro Tull is back with a new album. I gave their last two releases middling-to-lukewarm coverage, so I didn’t exactly have very high hopes for Curious Ruminant. Overall, though, I was pleasantly surprised. They leaned hard into folk music, and the album is mostly a success. It’s not going to be a contender for my album of the year, but if you’re looking for some decent, proggy folk rock, this is a good choice.

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Album Review: Dominic Sanderson – Blazing Revelations

Artist: Dominic Sanderson | Album: Blazing Revelations | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2025

From: Liverpool, UK | Label: Independent

For fans of: Van der Graaf Generator, King Crimson

Bandcamp

Dominic Sanderson’s 2023 debut LP, Impermanence, was one of my favorite albums of 2023. It was dark and moody, with sharp contrasts between delicate and bombastic passages. He drew a lot both from classic acts like King Crimson and more modern bands like Porcupine Tree. The song titles are a bit on the melodramatic side, but the music is strong.

Two years later, he’s back with his sophomore release, Blazing Revelations. Sanderson, covering guitar and vocals, is backed by four additional musicians, including a dedicated wind instrumentalist. The music maintains its dark edge, but he is much more clearly drawing directly from Van der Graaf Generator than on his previous release.

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Album Review: Dream Theater – Parasomnia

Band: Dream Theater | Album: Parasomnia | Genre: Progressive metal | Year: 2025

From: Boston, USA | Label: Inside Out Music

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Three-and-a-half years is a relatively long gap between Dream Theater albums. In fact, this is the longest it’s ever taken them to put out a new album. However, this record also saw some rare churn (or maybe un-churn) in the band’s lineup. Mike Portnoy is back behind the drums after a 15-year absence.

For my money, though, I don’t notice much of a difference. I wasn’t nuts about a lot of Dream Theater’s work with Mike Mangini, but Portnoy has his share of spotty records with the band, too. The music here is pretty typical of the band. They write big, majestic melodies, and they also engage in astounding amounts of instrumental wankery. C’mon. It’s a Dream Theater album. If you’re reading this, you probably know what you’re getting into.

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Album Review: Hologram Earth – City of Gold

Band: Hologram Earth | Album: City of Gold | Genre: Progressive metal, Post-metal | Year: 2025

From: Amsterdam, Netherlands | Label: Independent

For fans of: The Ocean, Leprous, Meshuggah

Bandcamp

Hologram Earth is a Dutch band that plays an intriguing variety of metal. Much of their music is full of aggressive, technical basslines; but the guitars are often more abstract and impressionistic. The band also utilizes trumpet, trombone, and flugelhorn as effective atmospheric elements. I really liked their 2017 debut album, Black Cell Program, but they hadn’t released anything since a single in 2018. As such, I thought this band had just kinda petered out. Lo and behold, though, they’ve been working on something!

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Album Review: Uulliata Digir – Uulliata Digir

Band: Uulliata Digir | Album: Uulliata Digir | Genre: Avant-garde metal | Year: 2025

From: Poznań, Poland | Label: Independent

For fans of: Neurosis, Ashenspire, Kayo Dot

Bandcamp

My usual means of looking for music does have its blind spots. I typically search by tags on Bandcamp, but if a band doesn’t use a certain tag, I’m not going to run across their material. I try to account for these blind spots by occasionally perusing the charts on Rate Your Music and Prog Archives, but Uulliata Digir is a band I found via the comment section of a Simpsons meme on Facebook.

Uulliata Digir is a Polish sextet based out of Poznań, and their self-titled debut is a strange and striking record. It has a swirling, lurching rhythm, and the atmosphere is often hazy and ritualistic. Upon my first listen, it reminded me a lot of Solar Drone Ceremony. This is far from drone, but that occultic ritualism is a common bond between the two albums. Consisting of two epics, two interludes, and one song of a-bit-more-than-average length, Uulliata Digir brings the listener on an otherworldly journey.

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Album Review: Rainbow Face – Enjoy This Ruin

Band: Rainbow Face | Album: Enjoy This Ruin | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Portland, USA | Label: Independent

For fans of: King Crimson, Cardiacs, late ‘70s Pink Floyd

Bandcamp

Rainbow Face is a Portland, Oregon-based quartet that plays a brand of prog that draws from some of the heavier classic acts. National Diet is an associated band I’ve covered before, and they’re broadly similar in many regards. Enjoy This Ruin is Rainbow Face’s second full-length release, and the seven songs here have a certain auditory roughness to them that I like a lot. The mood here isn’t too cheery (shocking with an album title like this, I know), but they utilize it to make some really solid music.

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Album Review: WIZRD – Elements

Band: WIZRD | Album: Elements | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Oslo, Norway | Label: Karisma Records

For fans of: Beardfish, Zopp, K’mono

Bandcamp

WIZRD is a quartet featuring four veterans of Norway’s jazz scene. The band was formed while the members were at the Jazz Conservatory in Trondheim, and their origins as jazz musicians are evident in their playing. The music on Elements is energetic and fluid, and it’s clear the musicians are skilled at playing off one another. I really liked their 2022 debut, Seasons, and Elements is another strong addition to their discography.

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Album Review: Vylet Pony – Monarch of Monsters

Band: Vylet Pony | Album: Monarch of Monsters | Genre: Alternative rock, Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Portland, USA | Label: Horse Friends Music

For fans of: Meer, Tool, angsty music from 1998-2006

Bandcamp

This record has been generating a lot of buzz lately, and I think it’s only about 60% related to the semi-erotic furry artwork that graces the album cover. And considering Vylet Pony’s origins, such album art makes sense.

Vylet Pony is a one-woman project based out of Portland. She got her start in music in the early 2010s making My Little Pony-themed electronic music. I’ve never seen My Little Pony. I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine show, but it’s one of those things that had (has? Is brony-dom still going? I don’t wanna research it.) one of the most irritating fanbases I’ve ever encountered. I classify it the same way as things like Steven Universe and Doctor Who: shows I’ve heard generally positive things about but with a fandom so annoying, I’m never going to watch any of it.

However, I strive to be a serious music critic on this site, and acts can evolve well beyond their origins. Hell, if you told me back in college that I’d like a Job for a Cowboy record, I would’ve said you were nuts. If someone got their start in music in a niche I found personally grating, I think I can set that aside if they really have put out a great album.

Now, as regular readers of my site know by now, I’m not a lyrics guy. I like the sound of the human voice, but I usually don’t care about the specific words themselves. There are exceptions, and when there are those exceptions, it’s usually a bad sign for the album in question (*cough* Somalgia *cough*). Monarch of Monsters is based on a novella by the artist. I didn’t read it, and I’m not planning to. I’m writing this during Thanksgiving week, and I don’t really have the time to. (I’m also honestly not much of a fiction reader, either.) I wanted to get that out there for full disclosure.

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