PROGRESSIVE METAL

DOM LAWSON buckles up for a delve into the darker, heavier side.

Obscenely gifted guitarists are ten-a-penny in prog metal, but Christian Muenzer has already proved his unique abilities as a member of technical death metal legends Necrophagist. On Path Of The Hero (self-released), his third outing as a solo instrumentalist, the German scampers through trad metal, jazz rock and several new strains of dizzying, blurred-digit shred, exhibiting a Joe Satriani-like knack for hooks and grooves along the way.

Norway’s Conception are revered among prog metal diehards, particularly for 1995’s magnificent In Your Multitude

album. Twenty-three years after their last studio record, they’re on blistering form throughout State Of Deception (selfreleased), which delivers all the band’s trademarks while edging purposefully into fresh territory. Vocalist Roy Khan has never sounded better than he does on dramatic finale Feather Moves and brooding ballad Anybody Out There.

Swedish power prog mob Paralydium

may not be reinventing the wheel on debut album

Worlds Beyond (Frontiers), but there’s something undeniably fresh and invigorating about the whole thing. With numerous state-of-the-art electronic interjections and plenty of surprises, both melodic and rhythmic, the likes of Synergy and The Source are patently progressive in intent and execution, even if their choruses and hooks are so unremittingly huge that the spectre of cornball Euro metal looms large, too. Either way, these gleaming minisymphonies really do aim for the stars and resistance is probably futile, particularly if you’re a fan of Symphony X or Dream Theater.

Amorphis fans will be well aware that frontman Tomi Joutsen is one of the finest vocalists in metal, progressive or otherwise, so it’s exciting to hear him scale the octaves in a different context. Sinisthra’s The Broad And Beaten Way (Rockshots) features Joutsen centre-stage throughout, his baritone providing an emotional focal point for some sumptuous, deeply melancholic progressive doom. The 13-minute Closely Guarded Distance is particularly astonishing but it’s a wonderfully crafted and fluent record from start to finish.

Insanity abounds in prog metal these days. Orgöne’s mind-bending doubledebut Mos/Fet (Heavy Psych Sounds) could well be the most intensely psychedelic record of the millennium so far, as lopsided doom metal, malicious psychedelia and the mother of all acid-fuelled freak-outs collide… for 79 minutes. It’s terrifying and extraordinary.

Meanwhile, Cryptic Shift are reinventing progressive death metal as wild, hallucinatory, sonic sci-fi on debut

Visitations From Enceladus (Blood Harvest). Brutal and chaotic but endlessly inventive, 26-minute opener

Moonbelt Immolator feels like a new manifesto for doing strange things with guitars, while the remaining, somewhat shorter tracks are all equally dumbfounding; the spirit of Voivod reborn amid the grotesque horrors of 2020. It’s far out, as they say.