Album Review: Porcupine Tree – Closure/Continuation

Band: Porcupine Tree | Album:Closure/Continuation | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2022

From: Hemel Hempstead, UK | Label: Music for Nations

After years of waffling back and forth over whether or not he’d ever revive the band, Steven Wilson has brought Porcupine Tree back to life. While Porcupine Tree remained in limbo, Wilson remained in regular contact with both drummer Gavin Harrison and keyboardist Richard Barbieri. However, Wilson lost touch with bassist Colin Edwin, so he does not appear on this album. Instead, Wilson handles all the bass parts himself.

The title for this album is quite fitting. I honestly doubt Porcupine Tree are going to record another album together. Wilson’s increasingly poppy solo career belies that heavy progressive rock probably isn’t what he wants to focus on now. And Harrison has stated that his style of drumming is very physically demanding, and he’s unsure how much longer he can continue playing this style of music. The band’s ambiguous position following The Incident left pretty much everyone unsatisfied, so this album feels like a way for Wilson to close the book on Porcupine Tree on his own terms.

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Odds & Ends: July 11, 2022

Band: Artificial Brain | Album:Artificial Brain | Genre: Technical death metal, progressive death metal | Bandcamp

I remember there being a lot of hype around this band’s last album–2017’s Infrared Horizon–but it just never quite clicked with me. Their new self-titled album, though, is great. The riffs are blistering, dizzying, and mind-bendingly dissonant. The songs are well-built and feature some wonderful hairpin turns. Amid the mucky morass of gurgling vocals and growling guitars, lead guitar lines are often surprisingly melodic.

Score: 78/100

Band: Bess of Bedlam | Album: Dance until the Crimes End | Genre: Psychedelic folk, Canterbury sound | Bandcamp

This album varies between idyllic folk with psychedelic tinges and some Canterbury-leaning prog-pop. There’s a lot of good music here, but unfortunately, there’s also a fair amount of unspectacular indie-folk-pop. The weak moments are never bad, per se–just dull. And it’s usually quickly counteracted with a good song. If you’re looking for something arty but light, this isn’t a bad option.

Score: 68/100

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Album Review: Ben Craven – Monsters from the Id

Artist: Ben Craven | Album:Monsters from the Id | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2022

From: Brisbane, Australia | Label: Desert Comb Music

For fans of: Yes, Pink Floyd

Bandcamp

Yes casts a very long shadow over progressive rock. Their influence isn’t just obvious in the music, but also in the visuals frequently deployed on album covers. Roger Dean-style artwork has become a cliche of the genre, and I have developed something of an apprehension about acts that use this visual style. I’ve harped on about acts that just uncreatively wallow in the mid-70s, and flashy album covers do not make up for bland, uninspired music. Thankfully, this is not one of those albums.

Monsters of the Id is the fifth full-length release from Australian multi-instrumentalist Ben Craven. It follows in the long prog tradition of albums made up of just two long songs. (Though for all the obvious Yes-isms on this album, that band never released a record with fewer than three songs.)

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Odds & Ends: June 14, 2022

Band: Athak | Album:ATHAK XI – Dihmin Ïszhe | Genre: Zeuhl, Jazz-fusion | Bandcamp

This Hong Kong-based act plays a variety of music very heavily inspired Magma. This zeuhl is relatively dark, and its most evocative of Üdü Ẁüdü.It’s fine overall–well played, with some interesting motifs. However, Athak does nothing to differentiate themselves from Magma. A lot of this simply sounds like a rough draft of a Magma record.

Score: 68/100

Band: Epitaphe | Album: II | Genre: Black metal, Progressive metal, Post-metal | Bandcamp

The second full-length album from this French act consists of three massive epics bookended by a pair of brief, gentle pieces. The first two of the epics are enjoyable, if somewhat typical, prog-black metal. There are lots of twisting riffs and thundering guitars, and it is very good. There’s just not much that makes it stand out. The third epic, though, leans more into death-doom, which simply isn’t that common of a genre.

Score: 74/100

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Album Review: Moura – Axexan, espreitan

Band: Moura | Album: Axexan, espreitan | Genre: Progressive rock, Galician folk | Year: 2022

From: A Coruña, Spain | Label: Spinda Records

For fans of: Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Traffic

Bandcamp

Moura’s self-titled debut album was my album of the year for 2020. It was an exceptional release which blended dark psychedelia, progressive song structures, and the folk music of Galicia (the bit of Spain that dangles over Portugal; not to be confused with Eastern European Galicia). Two years later, the band has returned with another outing that blends those aforementioned influences, as well as some new inclusions.

Axexan, espreitan (Eng. Lurking, Peeking) is a strong successor to Moura while also having its own unique character. The songs are terser on this album; both records are roughly the same length, but this has twice as many individual tracks as their debut. The folk influences are prominent, and that helps Moura stand out in the current progressive rock landscape.

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Album Review: Knekklectric – Alt blir verre

Band: Knekklectric | Album:Alt blir verre | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2022

From: Bergen, Norway | Label: Apollon Records

For fans of: Once and Future Band, Beardfish, PFM

Bandcamp

I have repeatedly raised the point on this site that Scandinavia (or the Nordic countries, or however you want to define Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland) punch above their weight in the world of rock music. Based on their populations, those five countries (though less so with Denmark) comprise a disproportionately large chunk of my library. Today I’m specifically focusing on the Norwegian act Knekklectric.

Alt blir verre (Eng: Everything Gets Worse) is their first new full-length since 2017. The brand of music they play is fun, clever, and overall relatively sunny, especially when compared to some of their compatriots. Their lyrics are also in a non-standard dialect of Norwegian (the sociolinguistics of Norwegian are quite complicated), so I had to make some slight guesses when translating song titles.

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Odds & Ends: May 16, 2022

Band: Cró! | Album:Buah! | Genre: Progressive rock, Psychedelic rock | Bandcamp

On such a short album, this Spanish quartet manages to cover a huge amount of territory. The title track strongly reminds me of classic Italian acts like PFM or BDMS, and “Coia” is slow-moving and creepy. Other songs touch on alt-rock, funk, and jazzy art-rock. It’s a wonderfully diverse release, and all those different styles are played excellently.

Score: 88/100

Band: Envy of None | Album: Envy of None | Genre: Post-rock | Bandcamp

Envy of None is Alex Lifeson’s new band, and it sounds absolutely nothing like Rush. I went in expecting that, based off the lead single. I knew it was going to be a lot spacier, more atmospheric, and mellower. And while there are a few good songs on the album (“Look Inside”, “Spy House”, “Dog’s Life”), most of this album is a bore. It reminds me of trip-hop–a genre I’m really not crazy about–but without much creativity. Most songs are slow and relatively unvaried. This might be good background music, but I was hoping for dynamism.

Score: 52/100

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Album Review: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Omnium Gatherum

Band: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard | Album:Omnium Gatherum | Genre: Psychedelic rock | Year: 2022

From: Melbourne, Australia | Label: KGLW

Bandcamp

I hesitate to use a label more restrictive than “rock” to describe King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. These astonishingly prolific Aussies have one of the most diverse back catalogs in modern popular music, ranging from garage rock to prog to thrash metal to synthpop to microtonal music and beyond. Their latest release is a dizzying encapsulation of their always-shifting style. The appropriately-titled Omnium Gatherum (a faux-Latin phrase meaning “a collection of many different things”) is a sprawling, 80-minute record that has a bit of everything.

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Album Review: Path of Might – Deep Chrome

Band: Path of Might | Album:Deep Chrome | Genre: Progressive metal, Sludge metal | Year: 2022

From: St. Louis, USA | Label: Encapsulated Records

For fans of: Mastodon, Baroness, Hawkwind, Elder

Bandcamp

Path of Might’s self-titled debut was one of my earliest purchases on Bandcamp. I loved the intelligent song structures and the visceral intensity of their playing. I apparently missed their 2017 sophomore album, but now it’s 2022, and they’ve got a third full-length release for the world.

The overall sound I remember from their debut is still here in this new release. The music is powerful and unrelenting, often evoking early Mastodon. But they have also become more refined. They’ve added keyboards to their music, and that addition has brought new richness.

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Deep Dive: Magma

Hamtaï! Welcome back to Deep Dive, my series where I explore the extended studio discographies of the giants of progressive rock and metal. I’ve got a weird one for you today: Magma, the founders of zeuhl.

For those who don’t feel like reading massive entries in their entirety, I’ve included a TL;DR and ranking of albums at the end of this piece. I’m opting to explore albums chronologically, as opposed to a ranked-list format. The context in which albums were made is important, and this contextual element is often overlooked in many ranked-lists.

Magma has always been a weird band. I’ll delve into what exactly zeuhl is below, but even beyond the structural strangeness of their music, the band’s composition has varied wildly over the years. At the time of writing, Wikipedia lists 12 current members and 22 former members; and Rate Your Music names 11 current members with a staggering 89 former members. Much of this can be attributed to their frequent shifts in sound, ranging from their very wind instrument-heavy first albums, to mid-career funk experiments, to later albums which prominently featured vibraphone. Multiple vocalists have always been a signature element of their sound as well.

Magma has been incredibly consistent across their career, in terms of the quality of their work. Even their worst album isn’t all that bad. I’ll also give a quick shout-out to their live performances. I saw Magma on their 2016 US tour, and that was one of the absolute best live shows I’ve ever seen, only seriously challenged by my experiences seeing Rush and Moonsorrow. This column only covers studio output in any depth, but the live albums Hhaï and Retrospektïẁ (I-III) are some of their best work. I’m a big enough fan that I personally own the 12-disc live box set Köhnzert Zünd.

Before we get going, though, I’m sure those of you unfamiliar with Magma are asking…

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