Back in 2019, L’Ombra’s debut EP took the top spot on my inaugural Top EPs list. Their music was relatively accessible, but it still featured plenty of artsy, inventive playing and arrangements. One of the things I liked most about it was how it used language. The five songs were in Italian, French, and English. The Italian and French songs had influences that drew from the classic eras of Italian and French progressive rock.
Five years later, they’ve come back with their debut full-length album, Soli. It stays in a similar overall vein as their self-titled EP, but the obvious linguistic-musical dynamics are less pronounced here. The Italian bits aren’t as reminiscent of classic Italian prog, and the French bits don’t necessarily feel all that French. The overall tenor is jazzy and rather relaxed, and it winds up being pretty solid.
Slift is back after a four-year gap with their new album, Ilion. The band has stated that Ilion can be thought of as a direct sequel to Ummon, their 2020 release. There is a lot of sonic continuity between the two records. Both prominently feature bludgeoning doom metal riffs, crossed with krautrock-like repetition, and interstellar aesthetics. Much like Ummon, Ilion is a challenging listen. It’s a nearly-unrelenting onslaught of heavy riffs that cascade effortlessly from your speakers. I saw Slift when they came to Seattle last year, and if they come again, I’m going to go once more. They put on a great show, and I’m sure these cuts will be great additions to their live set.
In many ways, Ilion takes what Ummon did and cranks it up even further. Ummon saw Slift shift from spacey garage rock to a more metallic sound, and that progression has continued here. Not only are doom metal influences present, but post-metal, too. Ummon runs 72 minutes across 11 songs, but Ilion pumps that to 79 minutes across only eight songs (only two of which are under nine minutes, and none of which are below five).
Band: Everything Oscillating | Album:The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are | Genre: Progressive rock | Bandcamp
Everything Oscillating is an instrumental act that focuses on flashy, technical shredding. Two of the three members are the guitarist and bassist for the Seattle-based band Moon Letters, whom I’ve covered a couple times. EO does a great job threading the needle of balancing flashy instrumental antics and engaging songwriting. The best moments here call to mind classic bombastic ‘90s and early ‘00s prog bands like Liquid Tension Experiment and Transatlantic, with a bit more of a classic heavy metal influence. Jazz and Latin flavors are included naturally, and the (abbreviated) instrumental cover of “Achilles’ Last Stand” is done well, too. (I feel like I could write a short essay on my love for the original version of that song, and EO absolutely does it justice here. It’s right up there with “Carouselambra”, “In the Light”, and “The Rain Song” among my favorite Led Zeppelin cuts. (I know, shocker, my favorite Zeppelin songs are all among the band’s longest.))
Score: 79/100
Artist: Peter Gabriel | Album:i/o | Genre: Art pop | Bandcamp
Peter Gabriel’s first new album in 20 years is enjoyable. It’s decent, fairly arty pop with some good melodies and interesting ideas. His vocal performance is strong, and the production is clean, crisp, and professional. Compositionally, though, it doesn’t stand out. Post-rock flavors weave themselves into Gabriel’s usual somewhat-spacey writing style. It’s competent but not particularly memorable. i/o comes in two different mixes: the so-called “bright-side” and “dark-side” mixes. These two mixes are not meaningfully different. Yes, if you listen to each song’s bright and dark version, you can tell them apart, but the differences between the two are insubstantial, surface-level, and borderline-gimmicky. Publications (especially prog-focused ones) that included this on their best-of 2023 lists make me question if they just reflexively put every release from major ‘70s players on their year-end lists, regardless of quality. (In fact, I know several included Yes’s abysmal The Quest on their 2021 lists, so I suppose they do.) If you want some keyboard-forward art-pop to put on in the background, i/o will work, but this album doesn’t leave a lasting impression.
Welcome to the first half of The Elite Extremophile’s Top 50 Prog Albums of 2023. This article covers spots 50-26, and the top 25 will follow soon!
As a reminder: the label of “2023” is not entirely accurate. The music featured here covers December 2022 through November 2023. Trying to find new music in the month of December is a fool’s errand, as much of my time during that month is occupied with writing and editing this list.
As I always say, I’m sure there are some excellent albums not included on my list. This site is a one-man operation (in relation to reviewing, that is; my editors, Kelci and Dan, have been tremendously helpful), and I simply cannot listen to everything that gets released. I also have my personal biases against some rather popular trends in prog. (*cough* djent *cough*)
2023 wound up being an excellent year for the type of music I enjoy. While it wasn’t necessarily difficult to whittle the list down to fifty entries, some of the albums that failed to make the cut for this year’s list probably could place as high as the low thirties in weaker years. (Such acts include Loma Baja, The Ocean, Legendry, and Lil Yachty.) I contemplated expanding the list, but this already takes up a ton of my time as it is. So, let’s get to it!
Welcome to the fifth annual installment of The Elite Extremophile’s Top Prog Releases. 2023 was an exceptional year for prog and prog-adjacent genres, and I was left with a glut of good music that wasn’t going to make my year-end lists. Even in less-stellar years, there are often records that I’m overall unimpressed with, which just so happen to have a great song or two on them. Thus, from a desire to not give such releases the short shrift, I’ve decided to highlight ten Cool Songs from this year.
This segment is meant to show off great tracks that otherwise do not appear on my year-end lists. If a release makes my best EPs or best albums list, it is disqualified from appearing in this particular segment.
CHROMB!’s appropriately-titled fifth album, Cinq, is a solid return to what I love about them. I wasn’t nuts about their 2020 release, Le livre des merveilles. One of their trademark characteristics is their frenetic, madcap energy, but that release saw them try to trim back those elements of their sound. Cinq has that irrepressible oddness and liveliness I love, but it’s been distilled into shorter, more focused compositions. As much as I love their sprawling 2016 release, 1000, sometimes you just want 33 minutes of to-the-point avant-prog.
Score: 78/100
Band: Howling Giant | Album:Glass Future | Genre: Heavy psych, Progressive rock | Bandcamp
Though nothing here matches the scope or scale of their 2020 epic, “Masamune”, Glass Future provides plenty of solid music. Hints of the band’s stoner roots can be heard in their riffs, but the arrangements are lush, thoughtful, and complex. Organ adds a powerful richness to the sound, and the vocal performances are strong. Melodies are catchy, yet inventive and unique. The songs on this album are all relatively short, but they don’t feel rushed.
Band: Antisoph | Album:non satis | Genre: Progressive metal | Bandcamp
This German band’s latest release is a pretty neat 3-song EP. The riffs are inventive, weird, and abstract, and the vocal performance is pretty strong as well. I like the bits of jazz and post-metal influence they included in this release. The one downside is that not all of these songs needed to exceed seven minutes.
Score: 72/100
Band: The Flood | Album:Tail of the Whale | Genre: Progressive rock | Bandcamp
I like this album a lot; probably more than most folks, and for pretty specific-to-me reasons. The music here is solid, even tossing aside my own specific fondness. It’s often slow-moving, lush, and impassioned. Jazz and classical touches are incorporated quite nicely. The vocals are a bit weak though, and I could see them grating on some people. But that’s honestly part of the reason why I like this album. When I was first really getting into progressive rock, I did it primarily through a number of now-long-dead-or-defunct Blogspot sites with links to Mediafire or Rapidshare. And The Flood reminds me a lot of the bands I discovered through those sites: rich, symphonic prog from mainland Europe with slightly-rough production and a vocalist with a noticeable accent. (For a few examples of bands like this, check out Prof. Wolfff, P2O5, Womega, or Phylter.) It’s a very specific sort of nostalgia from my high school and college years that I don’t expect many to relate to. But this is my site, and you’re here to read my opinion.
Band: Agusa | Album:Prima Materia | Genre: Progressive rock, Psychedelic rock | Bandcamp
The newest release from this (mostly) instrumental Swedish act sees them push in a more overtly psychedelic direction. In the opening track, blues flavors are prominent alongside jazzy flourishes. “Under bar himmel” has a dreamier feel to it; it strongly channels Camel’s gentlest moments. This cut features a great slow build, and it’s probably my favorite on the album. “Ur askan” is bouncy and organ-forward, and the closing “Så ock på jorden” has some fun, funky wah-wahed guitar that complements the band’s usual Camel-isms quite well. Parts of this album can run a bit long, but it’s overall another solid release from this band. If you like Camel or some of the jazzier classic prog acts, you’ll probably like this one a lot.
Bands like Bear Ghost always split my opinion. On the one hand, there is no denying that they’re fantastic musicians who write unique, creative music full of twists and surprises. On the other hand, there’s an overwhelming atmosphere of camp, corniness, and self-aware goofiness. I don’t need my prog to be as dour as King Crimson, but I’m not looking for something with its tongue always and invariably in-cheek. In that way, they remind me a lot of Devin Townsend, an artist for whom I have similarly mixed feelings. Despite their technical prowess, a lot of this material comes off as purposelessly weird-for-weirdness’s-sake. (The vocals are also just way too over-enunciated, and that gets under my skin. It reminds me of children’s music at times.) So, I would say, if you like the overt silliness of acts like Cheeto’s Magazine, or Devin Townsend’s cartoonier music (such as Z2), you’ll probably like this a lot. But if you’re like me, and you tend to be more annoyed than enthused by kitchen-sink weirdness, you might want to skip it.
PoiL is back for a second round of collaboration with Japanese musician Junko Ueda. I thought their last album–PoiL Ueda, from March of this year–would simply be a quirky, one-off thing. I was certainly hoping for more, as my one real gripe about PoiL Ueda was that, at only 31 minutes, it felt kind of short. I really liked the madcap fusion of PoiL’s avant-garde RIO stylings with Ueda’s singular vocal style and sharply-plucked biwa.
Yoshitsune picks up where PoiL Ueda ended, both lyrically and musically. Taking place after the naval battle described on their last album in “Dan-no-Ura”, this album tells the story of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, a military commander forced into exile.
The Elite Extremophile 