PROGRESSIVE METAL
DOM LAWSON buckles up for a delve into the darker, heavier side.
If progressive metal were a competitive sport, First Fragment would be firm favourites to batter the opposition into submission. The Canadians’ second album Gloire Éternelle (Unique Leader) blends the blurred-finger showmanship of neoclassical metal with the hyper-speed brutality of technical death, with lashings of syrupy fretless bass and an irresistible sense of jazz-influenced fluidity thrown in for extra bewilderment points. At times, the sheer ferocity and velocity of songs like Solus and Ataraxie is laugh-out-loud funny, and yet never less than absurdly exciting. These boys can definitely play.
Similarly gifted, Los Angeles instrumental duo The Blue Prison have created an enthralling techmetal odyssey for their self-titled debut album (theblueprison.bandcamp.com). Two parts juddering djent riff-fest to three parts cosmic prog metal exploration, songs like the fiendishly catchy Kaleidoscope herald the arrival of an ingenious new creative force.
Saxophones have become a staple of oddball underground metal in recent times, but seldom has the sound of brass been as unsettling as it is on Gold Spire’s selftitled debut album (Chaos). The Swedes’ noirish take on sludgy, avant-garde metal makes no bones about its debt to prog’s darker outer limits, and despite a relentlessly grim atmosphere, there is much colour and character to be found within feverish sprawls like Husk Of God and Headless Snake. That keening, jazz-gone-wrong sax is the clincher, though.
Romanian legends Negura Bunget have made a habit of producing jaw-dropping works of otherworldly greatness, but even by their own uniquely strange standards, Zau (Lupus Lounge) is a wild trip. From billowing, slow-motion clouds of grainy ambience on 15-minute opener Brad, to finale Toaca Din Cer’s truly mind-bending blend of symphonic pomp, vicious brutality and arcane, ritualistic percussion, these veteran enigmas are paying posthumous tribute to drummer Gabriel ‘Negru’ Mafa (who passed away in 2017) in the most fervently creative way possible.
Shape Of Despair’s new album is perhaps not recommended for anyone who suffers a post-New Year mood slump, but for those who like to bask in the majesty of funeral doom metal at its most richly progressive, Return To The Void (Season Of Mist) is a sumptuous reminder that the Helsinki sextet are the genre’s greatest exponents of all. Seven years on from the extraordinary Monotony Fields, the band’s sound is still an ornate and overpowering slowmotion apocalypse, with glacial, ghostly vocal melodies and thick waves of cavernous reverb. Emotionally gruelling but deeply satisfying in the way that only truly heart-wrenching music can be, this is yet another crestfallen classic to add to a peerless catalogue.