Album Review: Ulls – Cripta nau

Band: Ulls | Album: Cripta nau | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Barcelona, Spain | Label: Independent

For fans of: Pink Floyd, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, The Mars Volta

One of my primary motivations for starting this site was highlighting small-time bands that are easy to overlook. One such act is Ulls. Ulls (Catalan for “eyes”) is a one-man project based out of Barcelona that plays a somewhat heavy, eerie, organ-fueled variety of prog. The music often leans heavily on atmosphere, evoking certain acts who have scored films, like Goblin or early Pink Floyd.

Their 2019 LP, Anoia s’apodera (“Boredom sets in”) was one of my favorites of that year. However, it was released in December 2019, and I didn’t discover it until a few months into 2020. Thus, all it got on this site was a brief Odds & Ends entry. That is a big reason why my year-end best-of lists now cover December-to-November. When I got the alert from the Bandcamp app that Ulls was releasing a new record, titled Cripta nau (“Ship crypt”), I was quick to pre-order it.

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Album Review: Half Empty Glasshouse – The Exit Is Over There!

Band: Half Empty Glasshouse | Album: The Exit Is Over There! | Genre: Avant-prog | Year: 2024

From: Auckland, New Zealand | Label: Uncharted Sounds

For fans of: black midi, Arcturus, 5uu’s

Bandcamp

I swear I cover more than just avant-prog. Please ignore the fact that this is the fourth consecutive full-length review I’ve posted of an avant-prog act. 2024 is shaping up to be kind of a slow year in most of the other pico-genres I cover, but the crazy stuff is having a decent one. But you know what I don’t cover that often? New Zealanders!

Half Empty Glasshouse is a New Zealandic avant-prog and experimental metal band that takes the classical influences of bands like Eunuchs and integrates it even more. The Exit Is Over There! is their second full-length release, and it’s a concept album about public backlash to experimental music throughout history. The twisted, disgusted and disgusting faces on the album’s cover are a perfect complement to this theme.

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Album Review: Perfect – Monkey Jockey Man and the Safari Tick Sugar

Band: Perfect | Album: Monkey Jockey Man and the Safari Tick Sugar | Genre: Avant-prog | Year: 2024

From: Akron, USA | Label: Independent

For fans of: black midi, The Mars Volta, Yes

Bandcamp

People make fun of Ohio a lot (especially online), but it’s not without its contributions. They gave us Devo and, uh, chili on spaghetti and…multiple mediocre presidents. But Perfect! Now there’s something Ohio can hold its head high about! Perfect is an Akron-based quintet that plays a daring, experimental variety of jazz-inflected rock. Monkey Jockey Man and the Safari Tick Sugar is their sophomore album. Since their debut, they’ve ditched brass instruments in favor of some intriguing noise influences, and the results are quite strong.

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Album Review: Eunuchs – Harbour Century

Band: Eunuchs | Album: Harbour Century | Genre: Avant-prog | Year: 2024

From: Sydney, Australia | Label: Independent

For fans of: black midi, Squid, Frank Zappa

Bandcamp

Eunuchs are an Australian quartet who employ a whole host of assisting musicians to construct dense, symphonic soundscapes. At the heart of things, they are a rock band, but traditional rock instrumentation is often minimized or buried beneath dense layers of strings, woodwinds, and reeds. Bubbling up amidst all that is a chaotic, angry energy that provides for unique contrasting effects.

In many ways, these Aussies remind me of black midi, the foremost band in the current avant-prog scene (insofar as there even is such a scene). These guys lean even harder into non-traditional instrumentation, though. Large swathes of this album push the very definition of “rock.”

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Album Review: Present – This Is NOT the End

Band: Present | Album: This Is NOT the End | Genre: Avant-prog, RIO | Year: 2024

From: Brussels, Belgium | Label: Cuneiform Records

For fans of: Univers Zero, 5uu’s, Magma

Bandcamp

Rock in Opposition (usually shortened to RIO) is a movement I’ve referred to a few times, but I’ve never really delved into it too deeply. Narrowly speaking, it refers to a specific group of five (initially, later expanded to eight) experimental rock bands who toured and played together in 1978 and 1979. These oddball bands (including Univers Zero, Henry Cow, and Samla Mammas Manna) were opposed to the music industry’s “refusal” to promote them. This stance, to me, comes off as a bit petty and self-centered. These bands played weird, aggressively un-commercial music. At a certain point, one needs to be realistic about their target audience. A major label isn’t going to promote an album like Hérésie. More broadly speaking, though, RIO now refers to the bands which are stylistically descended from these initial bands. I’ve used that label to refer to acts like PoiL, Cratophane, and Ahleuchatistas.

Though not a member of the eight “official” RIO bands, Present appeared not long after. It was founded in 1979 by Roger Trigaux, a founding member of Univers Zero, which is a band I respect more than I enjoy (and that sentiment can largely be applied to the original RIO movement as a whole). They’re often minimal and moody and influenced by chamber music. I can appreciate it on a certain artistic level, but I don’t really like it that much.

This Is NOT the End was my first exposure to Present, and I like it a lot. It has a lot less of the chamber music-influenced stuff I associate with Univers Zero, but it has plenty of exciting, experimental, and overall-weird passages. This release is the band’s first since 2009, but it is, despite its title, the band’s final release. Trigaux, the band’s driving force, passed away in March of 2021, in the midst of recording.

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Album Review: Chief Bromden – In/tense Logic

Band: Chief Bromden | Album: In/tense Logic | Genre: Art rock, Post-punk | Year: 2024

From: Czechia | Label: Full Moon Forum

For fans of: Atsuko Chiba, The Mars Volta, RX Bandits

Bandcamp

Chief Bromden is a Czech post-punk act that integrates a lot of progressive rock into their music. They’ve got inventive, unorthodox structures, and their instrumental passages are exciting and masterfully played. I liked their debut album Slunovrat a lot, so I was excited to hear their follow-up. In/tense Logic comes about four years after their debut (and two years after their Noise Forever EP, which I simply just never got around to).

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Album Review: Dvne – Voidkind

Band: Dvne | Album: Voidkind | Genre: Progressive metal | Year: 2024

From: Edinburgh, UK | Label: Metal Blade

For fans of: The Ocean, metallic Porcupine Tree, Inter Arma

Bandcamp

Dvne (presumably pronounced like “dune,” though Google Translate also tells me it’s Bosnian for “days ago”) is a Scottish quintet, and they’re one of the more talked-about bands on the parts of the Internet where I spend my time. Voidkind is their third full-length album, coming three years after their last release. Dvne is a band I’ve listened to and contemplated covering before, but for whatever reason Etemen Ænka, their 2021 album, just didn’t quite catch my fancy. (2021 was also an exceptionally good year for the type of music I like, so they had some stiff competition for my attention. 2024, in contrast, is shaping up to be a slower year for me.)

Disregarding my above disparaging of the current year, Voidkind is a legitimately good album. Dvne’s sludge metal roots have gone in a more atmospheric, post-metal-type direction. Normally, I’d be a bit wary about that–unless it’s preceding the word “punk,” the prefix “post-” is often an indicator there’s a higher risk I’ll be a bit bored–but the songwriting is smart, and the playing is crushing and dynamic.

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Album Review: Stuart Wicke – Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Artist: Stuart Wicke | Album: Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Louisville, USA | Label: Independent

For fans of: Blue Öyster Cult, Pink Floyd, The Decemberists’ proggier stuff

Bandcamp

Poetry isn’t really my thing, and that is borne out in my usual disinterest in lyrics. Obviously, though, poetry and lyrics speak strongly to some folks, and one of those folks is Kentuckian singer-songwriter Stuart Wicke. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is Wicke’s eighth full-length release, coming just four months after his last effort. Consisting of just two long songs, each of them draws their lyrics from poetry.

Opening the album is “Song on the End of the World”, a three-part, 15-minute epic. Part two draws its inspiration from the poem of the same by Czesław Miłosz, and parts one and three are based on “America: A Prophecy” by poet William Blake.

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Album Review: Perilymph – Progressions Imaginaires

Band: Perilymph | Album: Progressions Imaginaires | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Berlin, Germany | Label: Six Tonnes de Chair

For fans of: Patrick Moraz, Phideaux, early Pink Floyd

Bandcamp

Arriving three years after their last effort, Perilymph’s fourth album, Progressions Imaginaires, is this group’s newest output. I’ve covered this band a couple times in the past, and I’ve always enjoyed their work. They have always done a great job at contrasting spare, acoustic passages with big, warm retro synth tones.

Perilymph’s past work has often straddled the always-fuzzy line between psych and prog. That has a lot to do with the way that they evoke the instrumental tones of the late 1960s, when psych and prog were both in their infancies and it was all a big mushy blob of forward-thinking rock music. This album, though, sees the band pushing in a more clearly progressive direction. The tones and textures are as lush and psychedelic as ever, but the songwriting is more dynamic, mature, and inventive.

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Album Review: Job for a Cowboy – Moon Healer

Band: Job for a Cowboy | Album: Moon Healer | Genre: Technical death metal, Progressive metal | Year: 2024

From: Glendale, USA | Label: Metal Blade

For fans of: The Faceless, early Opeth, Gorguts

Bandcamp

When Job for a Cowboy first came onto the scene in the late ‘00s, I remember them being derided as just another deathcore band with a stupid name. I listened to some of their early work, and I agreed with that assessment. I don’t like deathcore, and their name is dumb. Seriously, it sounds like a lousy innuendo from a bro-country song. There are some bands I haven taken too long to give a shot because of how much I dislike their name (for example, Between the Buried and Me, And So I Watch You from Afar; pretty much any band whose name is a full clause), but JfaC is a band where my distaste for their name was backed up by a distaste for their music.

In the ensuing decade-and-a-half, though, they’ve taken a considerably more technical and progressive turn. When I saw Moon Healer rather high up on the 2024 chart on Rate Your Music, I was baffled. Aren’t these guys just some shitty deathcore band? I thought. My curiosity was piqued, so I gave Moon Healer a listen. I’m glad I did.

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