Album Review: K’mono – Mind Out of Mind

Band: K’mono | Album: Mind Out of Mind | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2023

From: Minneapolis, USA | Label: Ephemerol Night Terrors

For fans of: Yes, Genesis, Wobbler

When I posted my Best of 2022 list, I noted that the central US had an especially strong showing on it, with five of the top 25 hailing from either St. Louis or Minneapolis. One doesn’t normally think of the Midwest as one of the major hotbeds of prog, alongside southern England, Northern Italy, and (more recently) Scandinavia. But the band Kansas (from Topeka) was a major success in the mid-to-late ‘70s, and smaller bands like Zerfas (Indianapolis) and Yezda Urfa (Portage, IN) have since received cult acclaim. Even in the two years I lived in Kansas I found a couple of great local prog bands: Flight/Dirigible Squared and The Last Glacier (both long defunct or disbanded, sadly). So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that a group from Minneapolis has put out another great progressive rock record.

Coming two years after Return to the ‘E’, Mind Out of Mind is this trio’s second full-length album. The eerie, Sergeant Pepper’s-meets-They Live album art is an excellent complement to the music here. It’s flashy and attention-grabbing, but there is a lot of subtle weirdness that gradually unveils itself, too.

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Album Review: Missing Jack & The Kameleons

Band: Missing Jack & The Kameleons | Album: Human Cycle | Genre: Psychedelic rock | Year: 2023

From: Toulouse, France | Label: Six Tonnes de Chair

For fans of: Slift, Hawkwind, Neu!

Bandcamp

Six Tonnes de Chair is a small French record label that specializes in garage rock, often with psychedelic and kraut-y flairs. I’ve covered acts from this label before (Perilymph, WEEED, Slift), and Missing Jack & The Kameleons fit into this general mold quite neatly. Their style draws a lot from late ‘60s garage rock, albeit often sounding a bit cleaner. Krautrock and surf influences are commonplace here, and they’ve got an overall fun feel.

“You Don’t Think” opens up with a buzzy, jumpy, krautrock-tinged riff. Flavors of surf rock are evident, too, especially in the airy backing vocals. There’s a bit too much going on with the drums for this to have a truly motorik beat, but the spirit is there. The rhythm is insistent and infectious, and it really complements the hazy atmosphere.

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Odds & Ends: May 1, 2023

Band: Arkitekture | Album: Rationalis Impetus | Genre: Progressive rock | Bandcamp

Arkitekture is a South Korean progressive rock band that plays a lush variety of progressive rock augmented by strings, winds, and reeds. Jazz, classical, and chamber music influences are prominent across this instrumental album. The individual tracks are well-constructed and full of powerful, emotive playing. If you’re looking for something grand and dramatic, this one is for you.

Score: 88/100

Band: Entropia | Album: Total | Genre: Progressive metal, Black metal | Bandcamp

Entropia’s new album is full of icy, biting riffs. The guitar passages are intricately layered and full of irregular rhythms. They’re often repeated in a krautrock-like way as minor changes accumulate. Though they’re hardly the focus, I love the way keyboards are deployed on this album; they add drama and depth whenever they’re included. The 15-minute title track includes some nice flavors of post-metal here and there. This is a really exciting record, and if you’re into acts like Oranssi Pazuzu or Inter Arma, I would especially strongly recommend this release.

Score: 90/100

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Album Review: Jethro Tull – RökFlöte

Band: Jethro Tull | Album: RökFlöte | Genre: Progressive rock, Hard rock | Year: 2023

From: Luton, UK | Label: InsideOut Music

Bandcamp

A little over a year after their unimpressive return on The Zealot Gene, Jethro Tull is back with another record, RökFlöte. For this record, Ian Anderson stated he drew inspiration from Norse mythology, and the word “Ragnarök” is where he got the idea for this album’s title. Each of the twelve songs on this album is based off a character or concept from Norse mythology.

Going into this, I did my best to keep an open mind. Yes, I’d found The Zealot Gene unnecessary, disappointing, and soulless; but Tull has bounced back from bad records before! Minstrel in the Gallery followed the unfocused hodgepodge of WarChild, and Roots to Branches came after the tepid blues rock of Catfish Rising (and their middling ‘80s hard rock). Martin Barre continues to be absent from the band, so I tried to calibrate my expectations for the guitarwork accordingly.

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Odds & Ends: April 3, 2023

Band: Enslaved | Album: Heimdal | Genre: Progressive metal | Bandcamp

If nothing else, Enslaved is a very consistent band. They’ve got a sound they stick to pretty well, and they release albums reasonably often. However, this can also lead to a number of their albums bleeding together into a vague mush of proggy, blackish metal. Heimdal is certainly better than Utgard, but it still doesn’t do much to stand out in their discography. Maybe it’ll grow on me; Enslaved’s best albums have always taken a few listens to sink in. But as it stands, after a couple listens, this is a perfectly fine–though inessential–release.

Score: 74/100

Band: Fistfights with Wolves | Album: The Sheep That Eats The Wolf | Genre: RIO, Zeuhl, Progressive rock | Bandcamp

This short release has some good ideas on it, but the problem is there aren’t quite enough of them to justify the 28-minute runtime. This band is clearly heavily influenced by Magma, especially in their vocal arrangements, but they feel like a bit of a one-trick pony. None of the songs stood out that much, and the 12-part mini-suite “RMFP” is scattershot and unfocused. The opening “Skeletons” is pretty good, so maybe this should have just been a single with one other tightened-up song.

Score: 61/100

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Album Review: GEZAN with Million Wish Collective – 「あのち」

Band: GEZAN with Million Wish Collective | Album: 「あのち」| Genre: Art punk, Experimental Rock | Year: 2023

From: Tokyo, Japan | Label: 13th Records

For fans of: Squid, Frank Zappa, black midi

Bandcamp

Japan often gets stereotyped as having a lot of bizarre media. We’ve all seen those clips of insane Japanese game shows. I’ve never been to Japan, so I can’t personally vouch for the country, but I’ve got a feeling that’s an unfair, unrepresentative slice of their media landscape. I’ve heard enough dull Japanese jazz-rock to be confident they’ve got their own anodyne TV shows. However, sometimes that reputation for weirdness is warranted. Those insane game shows do exist, after all. And musically, it was Japan that revitalized zeuhl in the 1990s. The latest release from GEZAN falls firmly into that tradition of strangeness.

「あのち」(“Anochi”) is a striking record. It’s distinctive in its sound, and I somewhat struggled when thinking up artists for the “For fans of” section of the header. This album contains a dizzying blend of punk, prog, jazz, art rock and more. It touches on an impressive number of genres while also maintaining a sense of purpose about itself.

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Album Review: Witch Ripper – The Flight After The Fall

Band: Witch Ripper | Album: The Flight after the Fall | Genre: Sludge metal, Progressive metal | Year: 2023

From: Seattle, USA | Label: Magnetic Eye Records

For fans of: Mastodon, Baroness, Gojira, Inter Arma

Bandcamp

Witch Ripper is one of my favorite local acts from the Seattle scene. They play a heavy, sludgy variety of metal, but it’s shot through with complex melodies and artful subtleties. I’ve seen them live a few times, and they always put on a fantastic show. So if you’re in the Pacific Northwest and you get a chance to see them, I’d strongly recommend the experience.

Despite being around since 2012, the band didn’t put out its first full-length release until 2018. Homestead is a solid album with some great moments. It’s more sludge-with-prog-elements than vice-versa, but it still holds its own. Their new album, The Flight after the Fall, has more explicitly progressive leanings.

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Album Review: Plank – Future of the Sea

Band: Plank | Album: Future of the Sea | Genre: Progressive rock, Math rock | Year: 2023

From: Todmorden, UK | Label: Golden Lion Sounds

For fans of: The Physics House Band, Kylver

Bandcamp

After nearly a decade of silence, British math/progressive rock band Plank (alternately stylized as Plank! on Spotify) returns with a new record. Their last release was 2014’s Hivemind, an insect-themed album with some absolutely killer tracks on it. “Grasshoppers from Mars” demonstrated the band’s ability to be flashy yet catchy and melodic, and “Khepri” was a beautiful example of how to execute a build-up.

Their new release, Future of the Sea follows in a similar sonic palette. This instrumental record is built around weird, complicated riffs, where both crunchy guitar and glimmering synths get their chance to shine.

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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.

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Album Review: Zopp – Dominion

Band: Zopp | Album: Dominion | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2023

From: Nottingham, UK | Label: Flat Circle Records

For fans of: Soft Machine, Diagonal, Caravan

Bandcamp

I’ve discussed the Canterbury sound on this site a number of times. Its heyday–like much of progressive rock–was back in the early 1970s, but even then it was somewhat niche. Despite that, there are a few acts still keeping this sound alive, and Zopp is one of the best ones.

Zopp’s 2020 self-titled debut wound up being one of my top albums for the year, though I never reviewed it before my year-end best-of list. It wasn’t some late-in-the-year surprise for me; I just never got around to covering it. But I don’t want to have that be the case again. The two pre-release singles for Dominion had both been great, so I went into this record with pretty high hopes. On their Bandcamp, the band describes this album as being closer to Yes or Marillion than any Canterbury act, but I have to disagree. If I’m looking for good comparisons, I’m still going to cite Soft Machine, Gong, and (especially) Caravan.

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