Formless, a fairly recent band out of Connecticut in the New England area just put out their 3 song 2010 demo for free! It’s a pretty awesome tidbit of sounds, basing itself around wanky technical death and throwing in some neat prog nuances.
View their page here.
Download their demo here. (It’s free man.)
View guitarist Annie Grunwald YouTube here.
-MW
Instrumental progressive metal solo project Cloudkicker has set the release date of his upcoming album Beacons for September 17th. If you aren’t jizzing your pants already, you need to. Because Ben Sharp, the genius behind Cloudkicker, is, well, a genius. Check out this small snippet right hurr:
Beacons is Cloudkicker’s 5th overall release and 2nd full-length. If you’d like to download his music (it’s all free!) you can do so from here by clicking on the album covers to the right.
Get excited.
-MK
Instrumental progressive metal band The 25th Hour just announced on Facebook that they’re working on new music and that we should be “anxious and surprised.” Whether it’ll be an EP, full-length or just a new song or two, I don’t know, but I am anxious. Though I wonder if it’s a little too early to be working on new music considering Monsters, their debut, came out in June. Nevertheless, I’m stoked.
You can listen to their music on Myspace. And check out Alkahest’s Monsters review here. Then if you’re awesome enough to support this awesome band, you can spend your awesome money and buy it from awesome Amazon like I did. Awesome.
-MK
I was just introduced to this band from Boston, and I immediately became a fan after hearing their technical and melodic style of progressive metal. On top of having great music, the band is being awesome and offering their EP, The Infinite Batman as a free download that you can get by visiting their myspace page. I’m all for this kind of self-promotion, especially when the music is as awesome as it is in this case.
Canvas Solaris
Irradiance
01. Adaptive Optics
02. Conveyance Of Flux
03. The Horizons Feast On Stars
04. Glacier
05. Accelerated Testing Phase
06. Threads Of Dead Space
07. Soliton (Emergence From Dispersion)
08. Vapor Chasm
09. Null Proximity
It’s a shame that Statesboro, Georgia’s Canvas Solaris aren’t more well known. They’ve been together since 1999, and with 6 great releases now under their belts they deserve to get noticed a lot more than they do. I’ve been a fan of the band for some time and all the material they’ve put out in the past has been good, but with Irradiance, the band has easily surpassed all of my expectations with an album that is truly remarkable. View Full Article »
Formerly know as The Syncope Threshold, this group from Upland, CA changed their name to I, Omega back in January of this past year. They play a progressive and technical brand of metal in the same vein as I Am Abomination, Protest The Hero, and Corellia, although they can sometimes have more of a punky feel to their music. They released one album under their old name last year, titled Tale Of The Complex Circuit and I think it’s a pretty nice piece of work. I’ll go ahead and say that some people will probably hate this band because of the vocals; they may take some getting used to but I’ve grown to enjoy the vocals of front man Joseph Garcia. Anyways, if you enjoy listening to any of the bands I mentioned above then be sure to check I, Omega out on myspace. Also, here is one of my favorite tracks from Tale Of The Complex Circuit:
(The quality of this video is kind of crappy but it’s better on the actual album)
-PM
The drummer in my band recently discovered this group from California, and although they are unsigned, their music is so great that I couldn’t help but share them with you guys. If you like Scale The Summit or An Endless Sporadic, then you’ll probably dig this. I personally like CHON‘s music better than that of both those bands, and that’s saying a lot. They play really happy sounding instrumental metal, and it’s all very tight and technical with some catchy stuff thrown in too.
You can check the band out on their myspace or better yet, head over to their purevolume page where you can download all of their music for free! What’s better than legally free happy music?
-PM
The deathcore scene seems to be evolving into something more more progressive. Some call it Sumeriancore, named after the label who signs these progressive metalcore/deathcore artists such as The Faceless, Born of Osiris, and Veil of Maya, among others. I’m taking a liking to the term Progcore, myself. Whatever you want to call it, its presence is growing. Young, talented musicians are trying something different and it’s sounding good.
Speak of the Devil are one of these bands. On the musical spectrum, it would seem that their closest relatives seem to be Born of Osiris and Between the Buried and Me. Speak Of The Devil have this hard/soft duality that this type of progressive music has. The heavy sections feature powerful aggressive screaming and crushing riffs that are cut up with synth melodies and guitar lines. When SOTD thinks the listener has had enough, they take a step back for a second to treat us with some spacey atmosphere and clean singing, found in tracks “Monkey See, Monkey Doomsday” and “Formaldehyde and Seek.” There’s also the very slight tendency to go into a proggy and experimental game of wank every now and then, but nothing as far out there as BTBAM. With Speak of the Devil, there’s a considerable amount of progressive flux, but they don’t stray too far from the course.
The band has a penchant for naming their songs with clever puns and portmanteaux, a la Norma Jean. To me, this is pretty cheesy and gives off the impression that they don’t take themselves too seriously, which is kind of bittersweet. And upon further inspection, one of the members has the role of “lighting/lifecoach.” My first thought I found this pretty confusing, but I saw this high quality video of pro-shot footage.
Eh, I’ll just give it to him. The light show is pretty impressive. But I’ll just assume that by “lifecoach,” they mean “the guy who supplies the weed.”
All joking aside, the music is damn good. The heavy parts are satisfying, the proggy parts are enthralling, and the clean parts are kinda soothing. I highly recommend giving SOTD a listen if you’re a fan of any of the bands I name dropped above. And how can you afford not to? The music is free.
1. My Name Is Fire
2. Formaldehyde & Seek
3. Napalm Reader
4. Monkey See, Monkey Doomsday
Enjoy the free music. If you like it, make sure to add Speak of the Devil on myspace.
4/5 | B
- JR
The album’s been out forever it seems, but as being the best metal album that has came out so far this year, then I feel obligated to review it, but I’m gonna make it fast.
There’s no denying it, Mastodon‘s musical direction has changed for this album. I believe it’s for the best. Crack the Skye is Mastodon’s opus, a progressive rock masterpiece. The album isn’t as heavy or as fast as their past albums, but that isn’t bad at all when the musicianship and songwriting is this grand.
Just like a prog album should, the album feels like one large cohesive piece and the songs flow logically throughout. Each songs take on that 
similar tone, feeling, and atmosphere. The album has a slower and more psychedelic feel to it than you would expect from a Mastodon record. Right from the get-go, we know this album is wonderfully different. Harsh vocals are few and far between. Well written vocal melodies and harmonies (?!) make this album shine like a gem. The choruses to some of these songs are tastefully catchy and make the album very memorable.
The riffs are crushing, powerful, and catchy all in one. The soaring vocal melodies are often accompanied by kickass guitar licks, as in the chorus of Divinations and the fast section in The Czar, the latter being my favorite moment in the album. Nothing gets me pumped up more than that part. I feel like I can take on the world, but I digress. The solos are exactly how they should be. No solo sounds out of place or forced. Each song progresses naturally into it’s own being.
I could go on and on, but I’ll let the album speak for itself. This album may take a while to get used to for old school Mastodon fans. I’ve heard in some circles that this is a grower. To me, this is a classic record that needs to be heard by everyone who is into progressive or heavy music. This album is perfect, timeless, and fucking amazing!
5/5!- JR
