Leprous have returned three years after their last release. I’ve been pretty blunt in my disappointment with Aphelion, Pitfalls, and Malina. (Malina came out before I started this site, but I’ve mentioned it.) They went from being an inventive, dynamic metal act with some creative songwriting to a rather bland art-rock act that leaned way too heavily on sudden quiet-loud contrasts. Bilateral is one of my favorite albums of all time, so the last decade or so has been rather disappointing.
Vocalist and primary songwriter Einar Solberg said he wanted to strip away the orchestral elements that have been prominent on their last few records for this release, and that experiment largely pays dividends. Melodies of Atonement is Leprous’s best album since The Congregation, though I wouldn’t quite call this “good” as a whole. They’re on the right path, however!
Hailing from Milwaukee, this classical-influenced ensemble plays a spacey, morose variety of post-rock. Violin and piano weave evocative textures, and the individual passages range from fluid and mournful to jittery and technical. Guitar is minimized overall on this release, but when it shows up, either as a lead instrument or as support, the tones utilized are always a perfect complement to the atmosphere. I often find post-rock to be aimless, but this album does a great job at maintaining focus. The rich orchestration does an amazing job of adding emotional weight to everything as well. The closing drone track isn’t even that bad, though it definitely didn’t need to be 8 minutes long.
Gender Studies is a Ukrainian band that plays a garage-y, jazz-inflected variety of progressive rock. The six songs on this LP demonstrate intelligent and creative writing, catchy melodies, and diverse influences. Slavic folk crops up here and there amid Return to Forever-style jazz-rock and harder-rocking passages.
Hail Spirit Noir is a Greek experimental metal act hailing from the Macedonian city of Thessaloniki. I have briefly touched on Greece’s relative influence within the metal scene before, and I have covered Hail Spirit Noir once before, as well. HSN is one of my favorite contemporary metal bands, and they are responsible for two of my favorite albums of the 2010s: their 2012 debut, Pneuma, and their 2016 third album, Mayhem in Blue. 2020’s Eden in Reverse was a solid release, too, though their last album–2021’s Mannequins–was a weird, one-off synthwave project. And I’m really not a fan of synthwave.
Fossil Gardens, the band’s sixth full-length release, sees HSN get back to their core sound. I once saw someone describe their music as “blackened psychedelic folk,” and while I don’t necessarily agree with that description, they were admittedly onto something. This band’s sound is undoubtedly and undeniably metallic, but influences from psychedelic rock pervade their music more than any metal band this side of Sigh.
This Russian quartet plays a smart, artsy variety of folk rock. They blend their own Slavic roots with jazz, modern classical, indie rock, and other bits and pieces from around the globe. The instrumentation is often intricate and full of unexpected twists. They build lush and varied textures, and they’re able to blend strong pop sensibilities with a spirit of adventurousness and experimentation.
Score: 81/100
Band: Agusa | Album:Noir | Genre: Progressive rock, Space rock | Bandcamp
I liked this release a lot more than I expected to. Agusa is a band I like–each of their last two albums have made my year-end Top 50 lists, after all–but one of my gripes is that they can be a bit noodly and long-winded. This album is a soundtrack for a film, so I was particularly cautious. Would the scattershot nature of soundtracks hamstring this work? Instead, this is a delightfully varied yet purposeful and coherent release. Folk, jazz, and space rock elements are incorporated naturally, alongside Agusa’s usual prog stylings. This album is also more consistently lighthearted than much of their other work, which is a nice change of pace. The shorter runtimes for these tracks also behoove the band, as they’re able to put forward fun ideas and meditate on them for a bit without needing to build some huge suite. Things do sag and slow down a bit near the album’s end, but it’s far from a fatal flaw in this case.
One of my primary motivations for starting this site was highlighting small-time bands that are easy to overlook. One such act is Ulls. Ulls (Catalan for “eyes”) is a one-man project based out of Barcelona that plays a somewhat heavy, eerie, organ-fueled variety of prog. The music often leans heavily on atmosphere, evoking certain acts who have scored films, like Goblin or early Pink Floyd.
Their 2019 LP, Anoia s’apodera (“Boredom sets in”) was one of my favorites of that year. However, it was released in December 2019, and I didn’t discover it until a few months into 2020. Thus, all it got on this site was a brief Odds & Ends entry. That is a big reason why my year-end best-of lists now cover December-to-November. When I got the alert from the Bandcamp app that Ulls was releasing a new record, titled Cripta nau (“Ship crypt”), I was quick to pre-order it.
Band: April 1830 | Album:The Adventures of Space Pig | Genre: Progressive rock | Bandcamp
This Philadelphian band claims to write songs about “pig failure,” and that alone grabbed my attention enough to give this record a spin. (For what it’s worth, the vocals are relatively low in the mix and somewhat willowy, so actual themes of pig failure can be hard to discern.) The music is energetic, often drawing from pop and punk. Certain passages remind me of Cardiacs, if Cardiacs were a very synth-forward, female-fronted band. It’s fun and inventive, and I had a good time listening to this.
Custard Flux’s fifth full length album is their first fully-electric endeavor. They’ve ditched their (mostly) acoustic schtick, and it has resulted in a pretty good release. The band tightened up their songwriting after 2022’s bloated-as-hell Phosphorus, and that renewed focus is appreciated. The music here is catchy and punchy, and the swirling, psychedelic textures are enjoyable. Hints of alternative rock crop up on occasion, too.
As I mentioned in a recent review, I’ve been on something of an avant-prog kick, almost by accident. In the last month or so, the most exceptionally and intentionally weird things have leapt out the most to me. In turn, this oversaturation of weirdness is starting to cause a bit of avant-burnout on my end. I feel like I need a palate cleanser. So, instead of scouring through Bandcamp in the hopes of finding something new and wonderful to cover, I’ve dipped back into my (very) occasional series, Lesser-Known Gems. As far as potential candidates for this series go, T2’s debut album, It’ll All Work Out in Boomland, is probably the best-known that I’ll cover. I recently compiled a list of around forty potential LKG subjects, and this album has, by far, the most reviews and ratings on Rate Your Music of anything on that list.
It’ll All Work Out in Boomland may be the framing device I’ll use for this column, but you can almost think of this as a mini-Deep Dive (Shallow Dive?). Boomland will be the primary focus, but I’ll also write to some extent about the archival release, T.2., and their three albums they put out in the 1990s.
T2 was founded in 1970 and led by drummer-vocalist Pete Dunton. Dunton had been a member of a few psychedelic bands prior to this, including Please, Neon Pearl, and Gun (another future LKG candidate). Joining Dunton in T2 were Neon Pearl bassist Bernie Jinks and guitarist-keyboardist Keith Cross (who was only 17 at the time), whom Jinks knew from another band he was in, Bulldog Breed.
This trio captured lightning in a bottle on what was for many years their only release. They took the hard-charging, blues-influenced hard rock of acts like Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience and blended it with forward-thinking jazz, folk, and experimental flavors. This is one of those pieces of music where human language feels especially inadequate for describing it, but I’ll do my best. Seriously, just go listen to this.
I swear I cover more than just avant-prog. Please ignore the fact that this is the fourth consecutive full-length review I’ve posted of an avant-prog act. 2024 is shaping up to be kind of a slow year in most of the other pico-genres I cover, but the crazy stuff is having a decent one. But you know what I don’t cover that often? New Zealanders!
Half Empty Glasshouse is a New Zealandic avant-prog and experimental metal band that takes the classical influences of bands like Eunuchs and integrates it even more. The Exit Is Over There! is their second full-length release, and it’s a concept album about public backlash to experimental music throughout history. The twisted, disgusted and disgusting faces on the album’s cover are a perfect complement to this theme.
People make fun of Ohio a lot (especially online), but it’s not without its contributions. They gave us Devo and, uh, chili on spaghetti and…multiple mediocre presidents. But Perfect! Now there’s something Ohio can hold its head high about! Perfect is an Akron-based quintet that plays a daring, experimental variety of jazz-inflected rock. Monkey Jockey Man and the Safari Tick Sugar is their sophomore album. Since their debut, they’ve ditched brass instruments in favor of some intriguing noise influences, and the results are quite strong.
Eunuchs are an Australian quartet who employ a whole host of assisting musicians to construct dense, symphonic soundscapes. At the heart of things, they are a rock band, but traditional rock instrumentation is often minimized or buried beneath dense layers of strings, woodwinds, and reeds. Bubbling up amidst all that is a chaotic, angry energy that provides for unique contrasting effects.
In many ways, these Aussies remind me of black midi, the foremost band in the current avant-prog scene (insofar as there even is such a scene). These guys lean even harder into non-traditional instrumentation, though. Large swathes of this album push the very definition of “rock.”
The Elite Extremophile 