Album Review: Opeth – The Last Will and Testament

Band: Opeth | Album: The Last Will and Testament | Genre: Progressive metal, Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Stockholm, Sweden | Label: Reigning Phoenix

Apple Music

Opeth is a band that really needs no introduction, so I’ll try to keep this brief. They’re one of the giants of progressive metal with some of the best albums ever in that genre. Their run from 1996-2008 is nigh unimpeachable.

But ever since Mikael Åkerfeldt decided to move the band away from metal with their 2011 record Heritage, I’ve been less taken with their music. None of the albums since then have been bad, but they’ve all just kinda lacked that ineffable spark that makes a truly great record. It’s been a lot of decent, fairly heavy retro-prog, but Opeth doesn’t really stand out from the field in that particular style. There’s even a difference between their recent stretch of records and 2003’s Damnation, their first foray into non-metal. Damnation feels much more like classic Opeth than, say, Sorceress. Damnation’s contemplative folkiness suits Mikael’s voice and songwriting better than his recent attempts at drawing from acts like Uriah Heep and Jethro Tull (or at least Tull’s heavier stuff).

The Last Will and Testament, Opeth’s fourteenth full-length album, sees the band return to something closer to their classic mid-aughts sound, making this their strongest release in a while. The album tells the story of a wealthy family and their sordid secrets in the form of the reading of the recently-passed patriarch’s will. Seven of the eight songs on this record are titled “§1-7”.

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Album Review: Beardfish – Songs for Beating Hearts

Band: Beardfish | Album: Songs for Beating Hearts | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Gävle, Sweden | Label: InsideOut Music

For fans of: Big Big Train, Spock’s Beard

Bandcamp

Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, Beardfish were one of the most notable bands to come out of the burgeoning Scandinavian prog scene. Their music was melodic and usually pretty fun. Quirky vignettes easily mixed with more contemplative pieces, and they always incorporated a wide variety of influences. Sleeping in Traffic: Part 2 is one of the best prog albums of the 2000s, and it highlights all their strengths. They disbanded in 2016, and vocalist Rikard Sjöblom set out on a solo career.

Nine years after their last album, the cumbersomely-titled and somewhat uneven +4626-Comfortzone, Beardfish have reunited and recorded a new album. For as diverse as their records could be, Beardfish has a recognizable sound, and they largely stick to it.

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Album Review: Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks – True

Band: Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks | Album: True | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Accrington, UK | Label: Frontiers Records

For fans of: Yes (duh)

Apple Music

Yes is a band I’ve written about a lot. My Yes Deep Dive was the first one I wrote for this site (and I’ve lately been contemplating rewriting parts of it, since my style of doing Deep Dives has shifted over the years). After I published that, they put out two more albums: the crap-tastic The Quest and the pretty-decent Mirror to the Sky.

This post initially began life as an Odds & Ends blurb, but I found myself with more to say than I expected. It also took me a while to get to this record because I honestly kept kinda forgetting about it. It’s not on Bandcamp, and I have a very strong preference for finding music through that platform.

Jon Anderson, Yes’s founding vocalist, hasn’t been in the band since 2008. Yes had scheduled a tour, and Anderson suffered a severe asthma attack shortly before it was to start. Under doctor’s orders to not sing for at least six months, the rest of Yes gave him the boot and replaced him with Benoit David (who was then replaced with current vocalist – and my whipping boy for all of modern Yes’s ills – Jon Davison).

The four Jon Anderson-less albums Yes has since released have varied from terrible to decent, but most of them have a certain dullness and sterility to them. I diagnosed Anderson’s absence from the band as a potential reason for Yes’s recent lousiness, as he was always one of the band’s primary songwriters. He’s also a much more dynamic and expressive vocalist than Davison. While I’m not overly-familiar with Anderson’s solo works, I know he’s put out some very solid music on his own. His solo debut, Olias of Sunhillow, is a favorite of mine.

The Band Geeks are a band headed by Richie Castellano, one of the current guitarists of Blue Öyster Cult. Initially evolving out of a podcast headed by Castellano, it featured him and a rotating cast of friends covering various classic rock songs.

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Odds & Ends: November 4, 2024

Band: Arcane Atlas | Album: Constellation Plus | Genre: Progressive rock, Art rock | Bandcamp

Arcane Atlas plays a relatively light and relaxing variety of prog. Expansive atmospheres and lush textures have a calming effect, and there are some really enchanting passages here. ‘90s Rush and ‘90s Yes are the most obvious influences to my ear. This album’s instrumental moments are its best. This duo does a great job at establishing a mood and toying around with drama. Not everything here is a winner (“Sample”, in particular, was a tough listen for me), but this band’s occasional veers into soft rock are forgivable in the end. If you’re looking for something intelligent but soothing, Constellation Plus is a good choice.

Score: 76/100

Band: Bent Knee | Album: Twenty Pills Without Water | Genre: Art rock | Bandcamp

This is a welcome return to form for Bent Knee after their unimpressive last outing. Smart pop hooks are mixed in amidst creative and surprising arrangements. The textures are lush, and the vocals are strong, as usual. Parts of this record can veer into less-distinctive sorta-art-poppy-type stuff every now and then, but overall, Bent Knee does a great job at weaving together accessible and inventive elements.

Score: 79/100

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Album Review: Geordie Greep – The New Sound

Artist: Geordie Greep | Album: The New Sound | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: London, UK | Label: Rough Trade

For fans of: black midi (duh), Frank Zappa, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

Bandcamp

Geordie Greep is the vocalist and guitarist for the recently-disbanded avant-prog band black midi. That act made quite a name for themselves over their last two albums, Cavalcade and Hellfire, both of which I like a lot. Their dissolution was sudden and seemed to catch everyone by surprise, but Geordie–whose unique voice and jumpy, angular guitar were key elements of their sound–has come out with his solo debut

The New Sound is a sprawling double-album that largely carries black midi’s flame. Some of his former band’s songs featured the occasional tropicalia influence, but that element is much more prominent here. Avant-garde tendencies are toned down, and jazziness is cranked up. Much of this record was recorded in Brazil with local musicians, so that likely further solidified Greep’s clear underlying love for this style of music.

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Album Review: Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere

Band: Blood Incantation | Album: Absolute Elsewhere | Genre: Progressive death metal, Space rock | Year: 2024

From: Denver, USA | Label: Century Media

For fans of: Wills Dissolve, Cynic, Morbid Angel, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream

Bandcamp

Blood Incantation has been a bit all over the place on their last few releases. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. 2019’s Hidden History of the Human Race is both brutal and intelligent. It features nasty, complex riffs alongside brief interludes of Floydian atmospherics. Their last two releases, though, have seen them go in a much more explicitly astral direction. 2022’s Timewave Zero was fully electronic and honestly not really my jam. If you’re more into Tangerine Dream than I am, it might be for you. Then last year, they released the EP Luminescent Bridge. One of the two songs on it was a fantastic synthesis of their usual death metal alongside more cosmic space rock and classic prog. The title track, though, is simply too ambient for my taste.

Their new LP, Absolute Elsewhere, sees the band expand upon the ideas put forth in “Obliquity of the Ecliptic”, off Luminescent Bridge. Death metal and intergalactic progressive rock both feature prominently, and the band strikes a great balance. (Though, like so many other metal bands that decide to incorporate non-metal elements into their music, they go on about “leaving the notion of genre behind” on their Bandcamp page. And I’m just not nuts about that sort of framing. Blood Incantation didn’t leave “genre” behind. They’re just playing two genres on this album, instead of one.)

Like their last EP and the ambient LP before it, this record consists of just two long compositions: “The Stargate” and “The Message”. Each of these pieces is split up into three parts, called “tablets.”

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Odds & Ends: October 7, 2024

Band: Chafouin | Album: In C | Genre: Minimalism, Krautrock, Math rock | Bandcamp

For their latest release, Chafouin tackle minimalist composer Terry Riley’s 1968 work, In C. This work has been covered by a number of other rock bands, most notably Acid Mothers Temple. The music has a tense, anxious feel to it, and the ritualistic repetition calls to mind other proggy subgenres, like krautrock and zeuhl. King Crimson’s work on THRAK also bears similarities, with the jagged, hypnotic, interlocking guitar lines.

Score: 79/100

Artist: Clarissa Connelly | Album: World of Work | Genre: Progressive folk, Experimental pop | Bandcamp

Before addressing the music, let me just compliment this album cover. I love that goofy, devious-looking piano. The music on World of Work is piano-forward, and Connelly’s voice is distinctive and emotive. Arrangements are minimal but inventive, and the vocal arrangements are intricate and charming. Things are rather sonically similar song-to-song, so it can kinda bleed together into a bit of a mush by the end of the album. I still like it overall, but a bit more variation would’ve been nice.

Score: 75/100

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Album Review: Cime – The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble

Band: Cime | Album: The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble | Genre: Avant-prog, Art-punk | Year: 2024

From: Aliso Viejo, USA | Label: Independent

For fans of: black midi, At the Drive-In, Frank Zappa

Bandcamp

Monty Cime is the eponymous leader of this album’s titular ensemble. She covers vocals and bass, but beyond her, a huge cast of other musicians pitch in to flesh things out. On the Bandcamp page for this record, a friend of Monty’s describes how she recorded all the demos on a guitar and a cheap keyboard in their closet over the span of several days. It really is impressive knowing that these huge, sprawling, and lush tracks had such humble origins.

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Album Review: Papangu – Lampião Rei

Band: Papangu | Album: Lampião Rei | Genre: Progressive rock, Zeuhl, Jazz-rock | Year: 2024

From: João Pessoa, Brazil | Label: Chumbo Grosso Records

For fans of: Magma, King Crimson, Sigh, Herbie Hancock’s ‘70s stuff

Bandcamp

Papangu are back three years after their absolutely spectacular debut album, Holoceno. Their new album, Lampião Rei, carries on in their unique vein of zeuhl, prog, and metal, but there have been some changes between the records. Holoceno is an unrelenting assault of Magma-tinged sludge metal. It’s an eco-apocalyptic tale, and the music serves to build intense senses of dread and unease. Lampião Rei, in contrast, is quite a bit lighter. Significant chunks of this album are metallic, but the band draws more clearly from jazz and classic prog here.

Part of the reason for this shift in sound (aside from adding new members to the band) is that the subject matter here isn’t quite as grim as on their debut. It tells the story of Lampião, a Brazilian bandit leader and folk hero whose heyday was in the 1920s and 30s. This album doesn’t cover Lampião’s betrayal, capture, and beheading (though the band says they’ll do that on a future release), so there isn’t the same need for Holoceno’s oppressive mood.

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Odds & Ends: September 2, 2024

Band: Burnt Log | Album: Time Is a Heron Waiting for Prey | Genre: Progressive rock, Dream pop | Bandcamp

Burnt Log is a one-man project based out of Scotland. The songs skillfully combine intelligent, progressive song structures with floating, dreamy atmospheres. Melodies are smart but accessible, and there’s a vague sense of nostalgia to much of the music here. Touches of post-punk, new wave, and even post-rock crop up here and there. Some passages are perhaps a bit too dream-poppy for my taste, but this is still an overall solid and interesting release.

Score: 72/100

Band: FILESHAREMAIDEN | Album: Veuve | Genre: Progressive metal, Technical death metal | Bandcamp

The first full-length release from Quebecois death metallers File Share Maiden is a swirling, tangled thicket of finger-twisting riffs, guttural vocals, and even moments of surprising lightness. There are many exciting, fun passages that demonstrate both technical skills and songwriting smarts. However, this band also falls victim to the common excesses of other tech-death acts. Many songs are longer than they need to be, and a number of cuts border on purposelessness. That said, there’s still plenty of great material here.

Score: 70/100

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