Odds & Ends: December 4, 2025

Artist: William Covert | Album: Dream Vessel | Genre: Post-rock, Drone | Bandcamp

Drone is a genre that I largely dislike but do occasionally dabble in. When I run across a drone artist that I do enjoy, it’s usually because they’ve melded those influences with something else. With Neptunian Maximalism, they married drone with heavy, experimental metal. And with William Covert, he has blended it with post-rock and avant-garde jazz. Textures are wide and airy, but it’s not just aimless ambience. Drumming helps give this record a sense of direction, and there are clear structures and throughlines in the individual compositions. The music is spooky, spacy, and artful.

Score: 73/100

Band: Cratophane | Album: Exode | Genre: Progressive rock, Post-metal | Bandcamp

Cratophane’s sophomore album sees this self-described “angular rock” band take a lot of stoner and doom metal influences into their music. There are still jagged riffs and irregular rhythms aplenty, but the band also slows down significantly for extended periods of time. Magma’s influence looms large here, but so does that of bands like Pelican. This is a dark, moody, and semi-psychedelic record that goes to some interesting places. As with many instrumental records, I feel a number of the songs are longer than they need to be, but it’s not too bad.

Score: 76/100

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Best of 2024: Top 50 Prog Albums Part 1: 50-26

It’s time for The Elite Extremophile’s Top 50 Prog Albums of 2024! This is the first half of the list, and you can find the second half here.

As a reminder, the music on this list covers December 2023 to November 2024. I spend much of December compiling and editing this list, so I push releases from that month into the following year’s list.

This is also a one-man operation, in regard to reviewing. (Many thanks to my proofreaders/editors, Kelci and Dan.) I’m sure there’s plenty of great music out there I simply didn’t get to. I’ve also got my own biases against certain styles and trends.

2024 wound up being an alright year for the sort of stuff I cover here. It felt like it started off somewhat slow, but in the end, it wasn’t too challenging for me to find 50 records worthy of being highlighted.

Now, onto the list!

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Odds & Ends: December 23, 2024

Band: Aeon Nexus | Album: Positive Disintegration | Genre: Progressive metal | Bandcamp

Aeon Nexus’s debut EP is a fun, to-the-point bit of progressive death(-ish) metal. Their vocalist displays impressive range, belting out powerful clean vocals and coarse gutturals. This reminds me of certain early prog-death bands, like Atheist, Cynic, or Death, as well as a more recent crop of artists who strive to evoke this sound. Piano adds a lot of textural depth and richness, which really helps this band stand out from their peers.

Score: 80/100

Band: Ærkenbrand | Album: Hedenfarne æventyr | Genre: Avant-prog, Noise rock | Bandcamp

The newest release from this Danish act is a warbling, wobbling melange of influences drawn from across the spectrum of forward-thinking rock music. Squealing saxophones and mad, buzzing guitars cultivate uneasy moods that can shift on a dime. One moment, there’s a maelstrom of reeds and clattering drums, and the next, things have moved in a more spaced-out and contemplative direction. The closing “Alting Sammen” features some nice electronic touches, too.

Score: 82/100

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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

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Album Review: Present – This Is NOT the End

Band: Present | Album: This Is NOT the End | Genre: Avant-prog, RIO | Year: 2024

From: Brussels, Belgium | Label: Cuneiform Records

For fans of: Univers Zero, 5uu’s, Magma

Bandcamp

Rock in Opposition (usually shortened to RIO) is a movement I’ve referred to a few times, but I’ve never really delved into it too deeply. Narrowly speaking, it refers to a specific group of five (initially, later expanded to eight) experimental rock bands who toured and played together in 1978 and 1979. These oddball bands (including Univers Zero, Henry Cow, and Samla Mammas Manna) were opposed to the music industry’s “refusal” to promote them. This stance, to me, comes off as a bit petty and self-centered. These bands played weird, aggressively un-commercial music. At a certain point, one needs to be realistic about their target audience. A major label isn’t going to promote an album like Hérésie. More broadly speaking, though, RIO now refers to the bands which are stylistically descended from these initial bands. I’ve used that label to refer to acts like PoiL, Cratophane, and Ahleuchatistas.

Though not a member of the eight “official” RIO bands, Present appeared not long after. It was founded in 1979 by Roger Trigaux, a founding member of Univers Zero, which is a band I respect more than I enjoy (and that sentiment can largely be applied to the original RIO movement as a whole). They’re often minimal and moody and influenced by chamber music. I can appreciate it on a certain artistic level, but I don’t really like it that much.

This Is NOT the End was my first exposure to Present, and I like it a lot. It has a lot less of the chamber music-influenced stuff I associate with Univers Zero, but it has plenty of exciting, experimental, and overall-weird passages. This release is the band’s first since 2009, but it is, despite its title, the band’s final release. Trigaux, the band’s driving force, passed away in March of 2021, in the midst of recording.

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Best of 2023: Top 50 Prog Albums Part 1: 50-26

Welcome to the first half of The Elite Extremophile’s Top 50 Prog Albums of 2023. This article covers spots 50-26, and the top 25 will follow soon!

As a reminder: the label of “2023” is not entirely accurate. The music featured here covers December 2022 through November 2023. Trying to find new music in the month of December is a fool’s errand, as much of my time during that month is occupied with writing and editing this list.

As I always say, I’m sure there are some excellent albums not included on my list. This site is a one-man operation (in relation to reviewing, that is; my editors, Kelci and Dan, have been tremendously helpful), and I simply cannot listen to everything that gets released. I also have my personal biases against some rather popular trends in prog. (*cough* djent *cough*)

2023 wound up being an excellent year for the type of music I enjoy. While it wasn’t necessarily difficult to whittle the list down to fifty entries, some of the albums that failed to make the cut for this year’s list probably could place as high as the low thirties in weaker years. (Such acts include Loma Baja, The Ocean, Legendry, and Lil Yachty.) I contemplated expanding the list, but this already takes up a ton of my time as it is. So, let’s get to it!

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Odds & Ends: December 18, 2023

Band: Hashshashin | Album: Śaraṇaṃ | Genre: Post-rock, Afghan folk | Bandcamp

The latest release from this Australian act draws upon the Central Asian folk-meets-progressive metal flavors of their last release and hones them even more. Here, much of the focus is on an Afghan instrument, the rubab. It lends a distinct folky and esoteric character to these three songs. This EP is both meditative and impactful, drawing from Afghan folk traditions and modern progressive and post-rock scenes.

Score: 74/100

Band: Mellow Beast | Album: Reactor | Genre: Space rock, Progressive rock | Bandcamp

Mellow Beast’s third release of the year is their strongest of the bunch. Many of this band’s releases are interconnected and tell the story of the land of Hyperion. As such, this release focuses on the story of a gnome trying to save Hyperion after a great cataclysm. The music is psychedelic and awash in effects-laden guitar lines. There’s a fine line being tread here between tight, focused, melodic passages and a desire to stretch things out and jam. It all works together excellently, and I love the way musical themes are occasionally repeated to give everything a sense of continuity.

Score: 83/100

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Odds & Ends: December 11, 2023

Band: CHROMB! | Album: Cinq | Genre: RIO, Avant-prog | Bandcamp

CHROMB!’s appropriately-titled fifth album, Cinq, is a solid return to what I love about them. I wasn’t nuts about their 2020 release, Le livre des merveilles. One of their trademark characteristics is their frenetic, madcap energy, but that release saw them try to trim back those elements of their sound. Cinq has that irrepressible oddness and liveliness I love, but it’s been distilled into shorter, more focused compositions. As much as I love their sprawling 2016 release, 1000, sometimes you just want 33 minutes of to-the-point avant-prog.

Score: 78/100

Band: Howling Giant | Album: Glass Future | Genre: Heavy psych, Progressive rock | Bandcamp

Though nothing here matches the scope or scale of their 2020 epic, “Masamune”, Glass Future provides plenty of solid music. Hints of the band’s stoner roots can be heard in their riffs, but the arrangements are lush, thoughtful, and complex. Organ adds a powerful richness to the sound, and the vocal performances are strong. Melodies are catchy, yet inventive and unique. The songs on this album are all relatively short, but they don’t feel rushed.

Score: 80/100

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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.

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Odds & Ends: July 3, 2023

Band: Chafouin | Album: Trois, quatre | Genre: Math rock, Progressive rock | Bandcamp

I liked this band’s 2021 album Toufoulcan, so I was excited when I saw they had something new coming out. Where Toufoulcan had a sense of sonic continuity between the tracks, this release feels more like a collection of unrelated (or barely-related) songs. The music itself is good, and none of the songs overstay their welcome. When taken as a whole, though, Trois, quatre feels a bit unfocused.

Score: 74/100

Band: Numidia | Album: South of the Bridge | Genre: Hard rock, Progressive rock | Bandcamp

This album was a huge disappointment. I loved this band’s Middle Eastern-tinged debut record, which expertly blended Near-Eastern flavors with prog and psych in very satisfying ways. Here though, the band has stripped away anything that makes them unique and put out a bland, bluesy hard-ish, vaguely-prog-adjacent record that often reminds me of ‘90s Pink Floyd (and not in a good way). The music isn’t bad, per se, especially if you’re looking for something evocative of certain 1970s blues rock acts, but it’s a major step down from their self-titled, in terms of both creativity and impact.

Score: 52/100

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