Odds & Ends: December 11, 2025

Band: Ábrete Gandul | Album: Suciedad Contemporánea | Genre: Progressive rock | Listen

This instrumental release heavily incorporates jazz and classical elements into its compositions. Reed and wind instruments can be found among the many slinking themes present here. Things swell and retreat fluidly, and there are a lot of great tonal and textural choices. While I enjoy it overall, this isn’t the most distinctive record. It’s solid, jazzy instrumental prog, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Score: 74/100

Band: An Abstract Illusion | Album: The Sleeping City | Genre: Progressive metal | Bandcamp

An Abstract Illusion’s latest record is a noticeable step down from their last release, 2022’s excellent Woe. The Sleeping City isn’t a bad record, by any means, but it’s unimpressive. The biggest problem for me on this record is the production. Everything is very clean and clear in a way that robs the band’s death metal of its impact. The clean parts of this record also come off as overly glossy and sterile, with many of the synth tones sounding out of place. There are still good ideas in the compositions, but the sound of the album itself is lacking.

Score: 68/100

Continue reading →

Odds & Ends: June 2, 2025

Band: Ancient Death | Album: Ego Dissolution | Genre: Progressive metal, Death metal | Bandcamp

Ego Dissolution is an exciting record that deftly weaves progressive and cosmic elements into a solid death metal base. This album is somewhat comparable to Blood Incantation’s recent work, minus the overt Floydianisms. There are pummeling, stormy riffs and gut-rattling bass and drums, but the occasional pared-back moment (like on “Breathe”) really helps this album shine.

Score: 83/100

Band: Cosmic Cathedral | Album: Deep Water | Genre: Progressive rock | Bandcamp

The latest Neal Morse project certainly sounds like a Neal Morse project. And as usual, where Neal is the creative lead on a project, he has one question for you: “Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior: Jesus Christ?”

The music is fine. Do you like early Spock’s Beard? Do you like Transatlantic? Do you have enough lactase in your system to handle the staggering amount of cheese here? Then you’re probably going to enjoy this, especially if you like (or at least don’t mind) the overt religiosity. There are some genuinely fun passages, and for all my quibbles, Morse is a very talented arranger. He’s got his signature sound, and he’s good at varying it enough between releases to (mostly) stay interesting on a musical level.

That said, this does suffer from some ills endemic to his other works. First and foremost is the album’s length. Deep Water is 71 minutes long, and it is absolutely not deserving of that length. The most obvious culprits here are the 13-minute opener and the 9-part, 38-minute title track. There’s simply an immense amount of bloat and music that doesn’t really lead to or add anything.

Secondly, it’s Jesus. Like, I get it, Neal. You found God. Now find something else to write about. Or at least be less obvious about it. If I, an avowed lyric-zone-outer, am noticing how thoroughly you’re beating a dead horse, try shifting topics. Or at least pick some obscure Bible stories. There’s a lot of material there.

Score: 70/100

Continue reading →

Album Review: Kuunatic – Wheels of Ömon

Band: Kuunatic | Album: Wheels of Ömon | Genre: Avant-garde psychedelic tribal folk zeuhl? | Year: 2025

From: Tokyo, Japan | Label: Glitterbeat

For fans of: Kikagaku Moyo, Magma, Osamu Kitajima

Bandcamp

Kuunatic’s sound is pretty difficult to describe, and that’s a big part of why I love them. I lumped all those genre descriptors above into a big chimera rather than split them up more granularly for a reason. The elements are noticeable but impossible to truly pick apart or isolate. At its base, this is a drums-bass-keys trio where all three members sing, but they also include a multitude of traditional Japanese folk instruments, including the sho, sasara, and ryuteki.

Much as Magma’s music is largely about and set on Kobaïa, Kuunatic’s is about their own mythic world, Kuurandia. (They go into great detail about the story of both this album and their 2021 debut, Gate of Klüna, in this article, as well as on the Bandcamp page for this release.) The music is fittingly odd, experimental, and ritualistic for such heady concepts.

Continue reading →

Best of 2024: Top Prog EPs

Welcome back to The Elite Extremophile’s Best of 2024 week. Today, I’ll be presenting my Top EPs of 2024. The criteria for this list is always kind of squishy. The number of entries varies year-to-year, and I take an “I’ll know it when I see it” attitude when it comes to differentiating EPs and LPs. This year, I’ve got six strong short releases to highlight. (And as a reminder, these year-end lists cover music released between December 2023 and November 2024.)

Now, let’s get to it!

Continue reading →

Odds & Ends: December 16, 2024

Band: Å | Album: Åtråvärld | Genre: Progressive rock, Folk rock | Bandcamp

The latest release from this Swedish act sounds almost as if late ‘70s Jethro Tull were from Scandinavia. It’s lightly-crunchy progressive folk rock with a healthy dose of flute. The mood here is a little hazier and more psychedelic than anything Tull ever did. Jazz elements are apparent, too, and this whole record has a wonderfully laid-back feel to it. This is very much music for walking through the woods. But, y’know, proggy.

Score: 81/100

Band: amalakamala | Album: LaaMaKaMaaL | Genre: Jazz-fusion, Progressive rock | Bandcamp

This lovely little EP does an incredible job blending the smooth sounds of 1980s Japanese jazz with biting, acidic guitar tones and progressive songwriting. The three songs presented here provide a wonderful mix of sounds and moods, and the closing epic “Traveling Sleepers” is especially emotive and powerful.

Score: 91/100

Continue reading →

Best of 2023: Top 50 Prog Albums Part 2: 25-1

Welcome to part two of The Elite Extremophile’s Top 50 Prog Albums of 2023. Part one can be found here. Now, let’s get back to it!

Continue reading →

Best of 2023: Cool Songs

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.

Without further ado, let’s get to it!

Continue reading →

Album Review: PoiL Ueda – Yoshitsune

Band: PoiL Ueda | Album: Yoshitsune | Genre: Progressive rock, RIO, Japanese folk | Year: 2023

From: Lyon, France & Tokyo Japan | Label: Dur et Doux

For fans of: Osamu Kitajima, Frank Zappa, Mike Oldfield

Bandcamp

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.

Continue reading →

Album Review: PoiL Ueda – Poil Ueda

Band: PoiL Ueda | Album: PoiL Ueda | Genre: Progressive rock, RIO, Japanese folk | Year: 2023

From: Lyon, France & Tokyo, Japan | Label: Dur et Doux

For fans of: Osamu Kitajima, Magma, Frank Zappa, Ni

Bandcamp

After four years, PoiL returns with another daring, angular, madcap album. 2019’s Sus was a fantastic release, and it saw the band both focus its songwriting after the sprawling Brossaklitt and stretch out with a pair of 20-minute suites. On this release, the band has teamed up with biwa player and singer Junko Ueda.

I’m hardly an expert in traditional Japanese music. I knew what a biwa was before writing this review, so I’m probably ahead of most Americans, but not by much. According to Ueda’s website, she specializes in “biwa storytelling” and shomyo, a type of Buddhist chant. My primary source of knowledge of Japanese folk music prior to this was Osamu Kitajima’s seminal Benzaiten, a sublime synthesis of progressive rock and an array of Japonic styles.

Much like Sus, PoiL Ueda is made up of a pair of large suites, each of which typifies one of Ueda’s professed specialities.

Continue reading →

Odds & Ends: December 19, 2022

Band: Call Me Ishmael | Album: Cosmic Travellers | Genre: Progressive folk, English folk | Bandcamp

This is some pretty enjoyable prog-folk, with a very heavy emphasis on the folk part. I’m not an expert in the folk music of the British Isles, but when I think of “English folk music,” something not too far off from this pops into my mind. Mixed into that, though, are smart, inventive structures and melodies. And aside from a rather regrettable synth-brass tone on one track, the tonal choices are pleasant. This album does feature the eight-millionth version of “The Unquiet Grave,” though, and this band doesn’t bring anything new to the table there.

Score: 75/100

Artist: Paul Gunn | Album: The Ludwig Suite | Genre: Progressive rock | Bandcamp

This is a lovely little EP. The music incorporates bits of jazz and classical music, and Gunn has a distinctive voice. I get echoes of acts like Gentle Giant, Bubu, and Magma throughout, and I appreciate that this release doesn’t try to do too much. It’s 15 minutes of thoughtful progressive rock that focuses on a few strong ideas. Most of this release is instrumental, but those cuts maintain a strong sense of purpose while weaving together diverse influences

Score: 81/100

Continue reading →