Table of contents for Issue 113 in Prog

“At the end of the take you get marked out of 10 by Robert.” King Crimson are to clarify the history of their most important year with upcoming box set Complete 1969 Recordings. The foundation of the 26-disc set is their debut album, In The Court Of The Crimson King, which appears in multiple mixes including a 2020 Dolby Atmos version by Steven Wilson. Along with every live recording known to exist from that year are all the studio sessions too – and David Singleton, who mixed those tapes, says it’s the perfect way to set the record straight about Robert Fripp’s outfit. “The history of King Crimson has been perceived incorrectly,” he says, noting that at one point they’d been told there were no live recordings anywhere in the…

Marillion keyboardist Mark Kelly will release his solo band’s debut album on November 29, with the intention of taking his own name off the project as it develops. “The band is called Marathon and the album’s called Mark Kelly’s Marathon,” he says. “I’m hoping the band will become well-enough known that we won’t have to use ‘Mark Kelly’ in the future.” The line-up was formed mainly via friends and features vocalist Oliver M Smith, guitarists Pete Wood and John Cordy, bassist and nephew Conal Kelly, and drummer Henry Rogers. The only complete stranger was Cordy after Marillion guitarist Steve Rothery recommended him. “I said to Steve one day, ‘Do you know anybody who could play guitar for me?’ thinking he’d go, ‘I’ll do something for you,’ helping out a mate.…

Lifesigns – who recently recruited former Flower Kings drummer Zoltan Csörsz to replace the long-serving Martin ‘Frosty’ Beedle – are currently recording their third album, to be called Altitude. Vocalist/keyboardist John Young is usually occupied as part of Bonnie Tyler’s band, but as a result of Covid-19, Lifesigns have been able to accelerate the recording of Altitude, albeit working remotely in separate studios. “Musicians are quite good at juggling and we find other strings to our bows,” Young says. “It’s not all doom and gloom! It was almost as if we were given the time by the gods to make a new album. We were already planning to make it in 2020, but it probably wouldn’t have come out until 2021 because of everyone’s other commitments. All of us have…

There must be countless people who, in the mid-1990s, embarked on a fruitless search through the nation’s bookshops for James Woodbourne’s Haunted Dancehall, the novel that supposedly inspired the album of that name by The Sabres Of Paradise. The emphasis is on “supposedly” because the book, like the Illuminati or the Zionist conspiracy to control the world’s wealth and media, simply doesn’t exist. The tantalising prose chronicled the nocturnal adventures of our protagonist, one Nicky McGuire, deep in the underbelly of a London recognisable to anyone whose long nights have been characterised by altered states of consciousness. However, the book was a trick of the imagination by the album’s creators, upon which they hung the concept for a fictional soundtrack. Of course, the notion of soundtracks to films that existed…

It’s tempting to look for parallels between the Biblical conversion of St Paul the Apostle on the road to Damascus and Neal Morse’s decision, two decades ago, to leave Spock’s Beard in the wake of his own spiritual awakening. Beginning with 2003’s Testimony, Morse has used his music as a vehicle to express his faith and with Sola Gratia he turns his attention to the story of Paul. For anyone who’s a little rusty on their Bible scripture, Paul was a Pharisee who persecuted the early Christians until he experienced a vision, after which he devoted his life to spreading the new faith. He’s a key figure in the New Testament, in which 14 of the 27 books are attributed to Paul. In keeping with Morse’s previous concept albums, such…

“Bruce is actually the easiest person to work with in the world because whatever I suggest, he’s pretty much up for trying it. He’s got a very open mentality.”Gavin Harrison If any band has got off lightly from the carnage wreaked on the music scene by Covid-19, it’s surely The Pineapple Thief. Their new album Versions Of The Truth was finished shortly after coming off a successful first tour of North America, before lockdown came into force, and while other bands ended up unable to share a rehearsal room or studio, let alone stage, this band’s MO of remote songwriting collaboration didn’t require any adjustment. “We’ve been really lucky,” admits Yeovil-based singer-guitarist Bruce Soord. “The process has always been me and Gav [Harrison, London-based drummer] sharing ideas online, so we…

“I began playing the flute when I was 12 years old, and it was my father who suggested I should listen to Jethro Tull. I immediately loved the way that Ian Anderson played the flute and their song structures. When I was 15 I bought my first CD and it was Thick As A Brick. That remains my favourite Tull album, although I love almost all of them. I still remember lying in bed reading the story of the album on the liner notes, and being totally fascinated. “Live, Blood Ceremony have covered A New Day Yesterday [from the album Stand Up], and this goes down really well with our audiences. The number of times I’ve introduced it as being a song by one of my favourite bands, and when…

John Lees is one of the cornerstones of 1970s progressive music. And yet he’s consistently underrated. A quiet, unassuming person, the guitarist/vocalist seemed to be rather embarrassed when given the Visionary award at the 2018 Progressive Music Awards. But despite that, his impact is undeniable. He co-founded Barclay James Harvest in 1966, alongside Woolly Wolstenholme (keyboards, vocals), Les Holroyd (bass, vocals) and Mel Pritchard (drums). They created some of the most enduring music of the 70s with a succession of highly rated albums. In the process, the band became huge stars across Europe, especially Germany. In the 80s, following Wolstenholme’s departure, they streamlined their sound to fit in with the new decade’s demands, and carried on successfully recording and touring until they broke up in 1998. Since then, Lees has…

Galahad guitarist calls on musical friends for latest solo album. Written while the current Covid pandemic was raging all around, lockdown was still something people adhered to and while we imagined there might be some end in sight, there’s little wonder then that Lee Abraham’s latest solo record has the feel of a man throwing musical ideas at a wall to see what works in a world where all bets are suddenly off. Recorded in seclusion with remotely recorded vocals from five different singers, it’s a patchwork of ideas and styles that sometimes sound like unrealised sketches, though there are some real moments of standout splendid isolation, but this is more Abraham and friends flexing their song writing muscles to greater and lesser degrees. Like the rest of the population,…

Wilson retreats again to allow Aviv Geffen control. An appreciation of Blackfield increasingly depends upon one’s view of Aviv Geffen. Formed by Geffen and Steven Wilson in 2001, the project produced spectacular results for two albums. Wilson then took a step back and allowed Geffen to guide a further pair of records, before renewing full commitment to 2017’s Blackfield V. Album number six sees the Israeli returning to the driver’s seat, with Wilson content to supply vocals and rhythm guitar to three songs. Geffen has two goals: to emphasise the positive aspects of his war-torn homeland and to sugar that same pill with the most commercial music possible. So to characterise For The Music as ‘progressive’ would be a pretty long stretch. Its delivery is super-smooth, cloaking the fact that…

The first, and sadly final, meeting of two remarkable minds. When Judy Dyble met David Longdon in the foyer of King’s Place, London, in August 2015, she knew next-to-nothing about his band. Big Big Train were playing some rare live shows and, on the recommendation of this writer, Dyble had hopped on a train, post-that year’s Cropredy Convention, and found herself – along with a venue-full of Passengers – swept away by what she heard and saw. “I’d love to sing with that band!” she enthused, and, after the show, she briefly met vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Longdon and bassist Greg Spawton before her return trip home. Longdon was a little starstruck by the woman from Fairport Convention who he’d read of as a teen; he asked for a photo with her and…

LA collective tap into vintage prog vibes. Guitarist Sepand Samzadeh and keyboardist Oscar Fuentes reunite with Billy Sherwood for their third album. Yes man Sherwood sings lead vocals on four tracks, and plays bass and drums, but the biggest musical influence has to be Lambera Genesis. Sherwood not only has a tone and timbre similar to Peter Gabriel, but shares his phrasing, too. Samzadeh and Fuentes say they set out to make an album that sounds like a band, rather than any sort of studio tour de force, and this results in a slightly rockier sound. Many of the album’s most vigorous moments come when Samzadeh and Fuentes flex a little and show off their chops. Durga McBroom, who has toured with Pink Floyd, sings lead on the ballad Witness…

Multi-faceted musical fun from Galahad offshoot. Amazing what a pandemic can do. Galahad’s Dean Baker and Stu Nicholson suddenly realised they had a lot of songs ready with no vehicle to release them. What did they do? Reactivated Galahad Electric Company, whose last album was Deconstructing Ghosts… in 1999. With Nicholson providing all the vocals and Baker playing all the instruments, this belated follow-up is an album of two halves. The first consists of Suite 2020, a run of five conceptually linked tracks dealing with the current situation, complete with spoken word segments. The other five tracks are unconnected, and include a poem from 19th century Dorset dialect poet William Barnes called My Orcha’d In Linden Lea, with Nicholson adopting a suitable burr. 1976 is a nostalgic trip to that…

Second album from Mexican psychgaze duo is both enchanting and edgy. It’s no surprise that a country as big as Mexico has had its fair share of progressive/avant rock groups, and joining Lorelle Meets The Obsolete and Exploded View comes ‘psychedelic shoegaze’ duo Mint Field. Sentimiento Mundial sees the pair consolidating their core style of simple guitar arpeggios, sighing female vox and spare drumwork, while hinting at other directions. Dreamy and delicate songs suddenly bursting into passages of harsh distortion. It’s like drifting half-asleep while constantly being on the verge of a nightmare. Natural epitomises their sound: lulling and spacey, shoegaze (mostly) without the noise, and recalls 90s indie experimentalists such as Pram and Movietone, plus early Sonic Youth. The title track has the edgy lo-fi vibe of the last…

Tour spectacular boiled down to its musical essence. Considering it was a tour whose main message was “just love and peace”, according to Roger Waters, the Us + Them shows across 2017-2018 weren’t greeted with universal goodwill. But while old Rog is determined to keep poking the political hornets’ nest that is the Israel-Palestine question, he’s still making the most of that high-profile tour, launching a concert film in cinemas last year and now releasing it on DVD and Blu-ray at the same time as this live album drops on CD, vinyl and download. If you’d rather keep politics out of it (as a Roger Waters fan? Good luck with that), the constant barrages of provocative slogans and images ranging from Black Lives Matter protests to dying refugees, are a…

Space rock legends blow the doors of perception clean off again. Ozric Tentacles’ blissful blend of astral acid rock, kaleidoscopic ambience and nourishing, righteous dub frequencies has never been more welcome. Maintaining the streak of form that began with 2015’s Technicians Of The Sacred, chief Ozric Ed Wynne has conjured another immersive and uplifting brain-bath here. The formula hasn’t changed a great deal over the years, but Humboldt Currant and the wobbly funk of Blooperdome feel brighter and more exquisite than ever before. As easy as it is to chuckle at Wynne’s unwavering hippie values, the truth is that Space For The Earth is both incredibly soothing and wildly, gleefully energising. Popscape is a succinct reminder that Ozric Tentacles are more than capable of rocking out, their leader’s soaring solos…

Conceptual brilliance from this uniquely-gifted Swede. Recorded over seven days on a huge pipe organ inside Gothenburg’s Örgryte New Church, All Thoughts Fly is Anna von Hausswolff’s first instrumental album. It’s no less intense than anything she’s done before, despite being shorn of her vaulting vocals. Here she’s all about mood and nuance, the natural properties of the organ allowing for subtle and unexpected changes in tone and pitch. The album is a sonic impression of Sacro Bosco, a 16th century sculpture garden in Lazio, commissioned by an Italian duke as an expression of grief after the death of his wife. Von Hausswolff uses it as a metaphor for the limitless power of the imagination, and creates a soundscape full of rich motifs and trembling frequencies. Theatre Of Nature takes…

Where’s home? Gävle in Sweden, very near to where I grew up. Your earliest prog memory? I had a great substitute teacher when I was 15 called Andreas Hedström, who lent me albums by King Crimson, Gentle Giant and Genesis. A whole new world opened up for me, thanks to him. He died way too young and I miss him. What was the first prog album you bought? Selling England By The Pound by Genesis, from Petter & Lottas, a family-run used record store here in Gävle. And what was the last? I bought a bunch of albums at a record fair recently, and one of them was National Health by National Health. Your first prog gig? My cool teacher Andreas had a prog band called Mats Klyka (it basically…

Only a year after releasing their last album, The Flower Kings are back with Islands. The double-disc, 21-track, 92-minute release will arrive on October 30 via InsideOut after the band put their coronavirus downtime to good use. Echoing the pervading atmosphere of lockdown, which left the chance of playing live out of their near future, the new music touches on the theme of isolation, with the movements interconnecting to form one large suite. “I think we have crossed a lot of borders here,” guitarist and vocalist Roine Stolt says. “We’ve had lots of fun – and we didn’t give a rat’s ass about what kind of style we played, or if it was commercial, as long as we liked it.” With the group’s members spread across the world, the patchwork…

Folk prog rockers Solstice, who celebrate their 40th anniversary this year, release sixth studio album Sia (pronounced “See-er”) via their new label GEP at the end of October. It features new vocalist Jess Holland, who replaces Emma Brown. “Me and Jenny Newman, our fiddle player, have known her for ages,” guitarist Andy Glass explains. “We play in a dance band that visits all the folk festivals, and Jess is the bass player. I was writing some stuff, Jess sang on it, and it kind of turned into a Solstice album. She’s really brought so much energy to the band.” Signing with GEP is like coming full circle, since label boss Mike Holmes supported Solstice at the London Marquee 40 years ago as a member of IQ. “Mike totally understands what…

Fates Warning will release their 13th studio album through Metal Blade Records on November 6. Entitled Long Day Good Night, the band cherrypicked sounds from across their 35-year career to populate the record. “This is the most diverse album we’ve ever done,” says vocalist Ray Alder. “But not because we’re stepping away from our usual sound. This album has elements of everything we’ve done over our past 12 records – that variety makes it really exciting.” Writing for the follow-up to 2016’s Theories Of Flight began in mid 2019 after a tour with Queensrÿche, with Alder and guitarist Jim Matheos once more forming the core songwriting partnership. “Jim was very adamant about a few certain songs being on the album,” the vocalist says. “But then there were others which came…

“I’m a real prog rock fan. Growing up, me and my friends were into a lot of good rock bands, like Deep Purple and Zeppelin, but we also loved Yes and Genesis. Back in the day, Australian radio was great. There was no real format and they’d play anything, and that’s how you’d discover a lot of music. You’d only get three dollars [£1.50] to buy a record with your pocket money so you’d work it out with your mates who would buy what record and then you’d go round with a tape machine and record it. “Foxtrot was one of the first albums I heard from Genesis and when I heard the live version of Get ‘Em Out By Friday I really appreciated their musicianship. But The Lamb Lies…

In his 33 years as a lighting roadie, Nigel ‘Skippy’ Monk has seen many changes but nothing like the change forced upon the live music industry by the novel coronavirus. “What’s better today is that there’s more training, whereas we just fell into [crew work],” he reflects, having started himself by using his role as a quantity surveyor to jump into vans and help out at gigs. “Although that doesn’t mean common sense is any better! Watching the amount of hours people work is more of a priority now.” That all seems somewhat irrelevant when there’s almost no work to be had, with almost every gig house in the world shut, every tour postponed and the real threat of many venues never reopening. That’s why Monk adapted the idea of…

Music Theories Recordings is home to the expressive and expansive, the bold and the complex, and features a catalogue of some of the most exciting artists in progressive music. From the technical keyboard wizardry of Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater) to the chart-topping and award-winning soaring melodies of Von Hertzen Brothers, from one of the brightest hopes in prog, the genredefying Danish quartet VOLA to Australian progressive metallers Teramaze and a supergroup of mesmerising skill, Flying Colors, the talent on display here is incredible. Music Theories encompasses the beauty of melody with the sheer desire to explore musical boundaries, and none are more explorative and grandiose than Ayreon – Dutch mastermind Arjen Lucassen ventures from complex sci-fi sagas to 19th-century gothic ghost stories. His project always assembles a colossal cast of…

“I didn’t realise how progressive I was until I got in a band that didn’t have any rules,” says Casey McPherson, frontman of Flying Colors, the supergroup featuring Neal Morse, Steve Morse, Dave LaRue and Mike Portnoy. “I was coming from a place where you should write a three-and-a-half-minute song max, get to your chorus in 54 seconds, everything needs to be a hook. There are a lot of parameters on pop music and very few parameters on prog other than be as creative as you can, and there is no length of song that is too long.” Their new release, Third Stage: Live in London, out now via Music Theories, captures the band at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire on the final night of their 2019 tour. Now fully immersed…

“Most people my age are starting to think about retirement,” Andy Tillison muses. “Having decided to be a progressive rock musician, I will probably have to work for the rest of my life. There’s no pension, so we just keep going.” Speaking as his band The Tangent gear up for the release of Auto Reconnaissance, their 11th album, Tillison’s observations shouldn’t be interpreted as a complaint. Aside from being an optimist generally, he’s swift to point out that by virtue of living in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales in northern England, he and his partner Sally have been considerably less affected than most by the challenges of coronavirus and lockdown. “We’re miles from anywhere, in one of the highest villages in Britain on top of a moor, 1,300 feet…

prog.reviews@futurenet.com And so this is it. The end. Last orders on a career that has finished where it began more than 40 years ago, in the heart of Lothian, having circled the globe a hundred times over, taking in all the boozy highs and red-eyed lows life has to offer. The old warrior-poet is draining his glass one final time, proud of everything he’s achieved but aching-boned and world-weary. He’s almost done with this, almost ready to retire to his garden and write books and screenplays. Almost, but not quite. It’s been five years since Fish announced that his next album – this one – would be his last. At times it looked like he’d never even make it this far. The catalogue of woes which have plagued the big…

A joyful antidote to the bleakness of Covid. Your tour gets pulled in the midst of a pandemic and there’s no work in sight, what’s Plan B? For Steve Hackett Band bassist Jonas Reingold, drummer Craig Blundell and saxophonist Rob Townsend the answer is to remotely record an instrumental album over four short months. The title and means of creation may suggest an album that speaks of loneliness, separation and dislocation, but nothing could be further from the truth. The heavily jazz, funk and blues oriented tunes here are full of warmth, joy and playfulness. Distancing conjures up the world of 70s TV themes, while Some Skunk Blues, featuring singer-songwriter James Taylor, channels the likes of the Brecker Brothers at their head-nodding, toe-tapping best. The guest list – including Hackett,…

Cosmic soundscapes and inspirational sentiments from Phil’s son. Drummer/vocalist Simon Collins’ belated fourth solo album, Becoming Human, picks up where 2008’s U-Catastrophe left off, fusing synth-laden hodgepodges of pop, rock, industrial, and electronica with life-affirming songwriting. Collins also prioritises hopeful radio-friendly hooks on the title track, This Is The Time, and No Love, while So Real and 40 Years incorporate danceable beats and carefree acoustic guitar strums, respectively. There’s a greater emphasis on digital backdrops and atmospheric lulls as well: in particular, closer Dead Ends mixes piano, strings and programmed percussion to evoke the densely layered poignancy of Lonely Robot and modern Anathema. Intentional or not, the plaintive I Will Be Waiting even conjures his dad’s old showcase Afterglow. Not every tune is equally memorable (The Universe Inside Of Me…

Norwegian prog metallers release the album of their career. There’s no doubt about it, Norway’s Enslaved have been edging ever closer to this moment for more than a few years. Certainly since 2010’s Axioma Ethica Odini, the prog metallers’ sound has been getting ever more experimental, more overtly prog and less obviously black metal. That path has reached a current apotheosis with Utgard. In honesty, one can only marvel at where Enslaved might go from here. A masterful work from start to finish. Yes, in places Utgard is still a strikingly heavy behemoth of a record – these five Norwegians know how to pack the kind of aural punch that would deck Mike Tyson with ease. And true, bass player Grutle Kjellson’s occasional vocal bark, while enunciated wonderfully, might still…

Nordic noir from Norwegian art-proggers. Tid Och Rum, meaning time and space, is the second album from Uppsala’s Döda Havet, offering a thrilling mix of grungy guitars, prog chops, psych and art rock. The Swedes excel at dramatic sweeping shifts in dynamics and have mastered the art of the slow burn, demonstrated in 7000 Dagar, which begins with just the voice of frontman Staffan Stensland Vinrot and an accompanying guitar, holding back the full band so that it’s all the more cathartic when they do kick in. There’s a pronounced streak of melancholy running through the album – for example, Hjärnspöket is about struggling with feelings of loneliness. The track waxes and wanes without losing its brooding mood. Although Radiohead’s The Bends is frequently regarded as a touchstone Vinrot’s impassioned…

Acoustic maestro hits resounding new notes. The magic this Leeds-based experimentalist conjures from a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar has bewitched fret-fetishists for many years. But on record, when he can’t be seen hand-weaving his rich tapestries of rhythm and fingerpicking, Jon Gomm relies more on traditional songcraft. Luckily he’s no slouch on this front either. On albums by outstanding instrumentalists there’s sometimes an audible battle between their desire to challenge themselves as players and impress their peers, and the need to write captivating tunes. Here, the simple beauty of topline melodies on The Ghost Inside You and Deep Sea Fishes succeed in tandem with labyrinthine guitar textures. The spacey electronica of the enveloping Butterfly Hurricane certainly helps, as do the synth washes that warm the yearning lament of Song For A…

Dream Theater man shows his range on belated second solo album John Petrucci doesn’t release solo albums on a regular basis. In fact, it’s been 15 years since his debut album, Suspended Animation. So, one would hope that Terminal Velocity would be an event full of virtuosity and creative momentum. Guess what? Thankfully, it is. Petrucci has reunited with bassist Dave LaRue, who appeared on Suspended Animation. But what really captures the listener’s imagination is that the drummer here is none other than his former bandmate Mike Portnoy. It’s the first time the pair have played together since 2010, when the drummer quit Dream Theater. The collaboration has prompted inevitable speculation about where this mini reunion might eventually lead. However, that really shouldn’t be allowed to overshadow what Petrucci has…

Thick Stygian themes with occasional sweetness. This ambitious and evocative debut from the Dutch psych-rockers was born partly out of tragedy – four members of the band were also in The Devil’s Blood before the untimely death of guitarist Selim Lemouchi, the brother of Molassess vocalist Farida Lemouchi, in 2014. The years have clearly allowed much reflection and healing, to the point where the surviving musicians felt emboldened to take up the music making mantle again. From the darkly epic strains of the opening title track, there’s a raw power at work here, with Lemouchi’s voice sometimes reminiscent of the lower range of Grace Slick or Sonja Kristina. There are varied reflections on existence, albeit with concepts of stagnation and death never far away, epitomised by Corpse Of Mind, a…

Post-metal palaeontologists hit a new creative peak. If anyone still needs to check The Ocean’s prog credentials, their eighth album includes a 13-minute track (Jurassic/Cretaceous) that explores the end of Earth’s Mesozoic era, when an asteroid hit the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico and wiped out the dinosaurs and almost all life on the planet. The song itself is every bit as vast in scope as one would hope, but also markedly different in tone and execution from the dark, brutal material on this album’s predecessor, Phanerozoic I. The German band – here billed as The Ocean Collective – have always been an instinctively exploratory crew, but this album is by far their most daring, diverse and immersive work to date. From opener Triassic’s percussive bass grind to the hazy, cinematic…

No let up over two live discs of prog and metal thunder Caught on the horns of power metal and prog rock, Redemption sound like a band who are always playing with a powerful fan blowing in their faces, ready for either love or war. If vocalist Tom S Englund hasn’t got his head thrown back for at least two-thirds of these songs, then Redemption aren’t half the band this writer thinks they think they are. For those who might have missed it, Redemption are a ruddy hybrid of Manowar and the less interesting parts of Dream Theater. People love them though, as this sprawling double disc testifies. Or are simply overwhelmed by their relentless barrage of pinched guitar chords, endless washes of keyboard, double bass, drums and the inexorable…

Heavy-prog masters celebrate 20 years with a rare rock morsels set. Listening back to Mastodon’s 2002 debut album, Remission, it would be highly feasible for the then shouty, frantic, sludgy four-piece to have collapsed under the weight of their own manic heaviosity early on in their career. Could they keep up the bug-eyed inventiveness and skull-crushing bludgeon of March Of The Fire Ants, or evolve it? Well, yes, they did. And 20 years on from their formation in Atlanta, Georgia, and after seven albums, one Grammy and zero line-up changes, here we are with a celebratory rarities, B-sides and live tracks compilation replacing a standard best-of (and stop-gapping a new album, proffered for 2021). Circle Of Cysquatch pushed heavy music over every boundary. Medium Rarities launches with Fallen Torches, recorded…

Synth-pomp monolith receives the Wilson treatment. Although its immortal title track battled fruitlessly to topple Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face from the top of the UK singles chart, famously stalling at No.2 for an enervating three weeks, Ultravox’s fourth album thoroughly deserves to be viewed as one of the great creative pop triumphs of the early 80s. Originally led by the charismatic, lethally cheekboned John Foxx, the band’s first three albums had drawn in fans of artful and forward-thinking rock. But it was Foxx’s departure and the subsequent arrival of frontman Midge Ure prior to Vienna that turned them into bona fide pop stars Vienna is an extremely inventive and peculiar record. With hindsight, Vienna is an extremely inventive and peculiar record. Ultravox would swiftly become one of the great…

Norwegian quintet Wobbler launch new album Dwellers of the Deep on October 23 via Karisma. The group mine the best of 70s prog – fans of Yes and Gentle Giant will feel at home – but they make it their own, with a keen focus on experimentation. Although the record only has four tracks, it includes the 13-minute By The Banks and 19-minute finale Merry Macabre. Vocalist Andreas Prestmo says the band explored the “ongoing struggle between juxtaposed forces within the psyche.” He explains: “Even though it’s complex and full of contrasts, the natural flow and coherent feel of the songs are at the core of it all. We have matured as songwriters.” The addition of violin and female vocals are two surprises in store. “The album is somewhat unfamiliar…

Steve Hackett Band members Jonas Reingold, Craig Blundell and Rob Townsend found their touring plans summarily curtailed by the coronavirus, but they’ve put the time to maximum creative use and release 10-track instrumental album Isolation on September 25, calling themselves The Backstage. “In the Hackett Band, Steve is our boss, creating the setlists, planning the schedule and also paying us!” Reingold says. “We just have to show up on time and play. With The Backstage we wear a thousand hats – video director, engineer, songwriting, marketing, distribution and, every now and then, musician!” Guests include Hackett himself, their keyboardist cohort Roger King, guitarist Roine Stolt, drummer Pat Mastelotto and many more. “We have 19 guests and I had to pick up my jaw from the floor 19 times,” Reingold admits.…

Swedish composer Anna von Hausswolff will release solo instrumental album All Thoughts Fly on September 25, composed and played on one instrument, the pipe organ. It arrives via Southern Lord. Ahead of its release, von Hausswolff launched lead track Sacro Bosco (Sacred Grove), named after a 16th-century garden in Italy that contains grotesque mythological sculptures and buildings, and is said to have been built by a grieving widower in memory of his soulmate. “The compositions on the album are all about Sacro Bosco,” she says. “You can look at all the songs as small abstract paintings depicting the park.” She recorded the album in January in a church in Gothenburg, Sweden. “My fascination for the pipe organ began in 2011 when my friend Hans Bäcklund introduced me to them,” she…

“MAKING THIS ALBUM was very painful at times – but with everything in life you need to have pain, friction, darkness, in order to move on and come out the other side. We had to make this album: it was a necessity.” As Molassess’ singer Farida Lemouchi reveals, the journey the band have made to release their debut, Through The Hollow, has been one paved by grief, chaos, letting go and starting anew. You can feel their catharsis pulsing through the album – an all-consuming sonic journey with kaleidoscopic echoes of 60s psych à la Jefferson Airplane mixed with lush, exploratory prog and otherworldly, trance-inducing sounds that are as rich and dense as their band name, all led by Lemouchi’s powerful vocals. Molassess began as a commissioned project for the…

RELIQA MIGHT APPEAR to have come out of nowhere, but their origins can be traced back to 2013 when the members were high-school mates jamming covers. Within a few years, they had started writing their own material and released their debut EP, Afterlight, in early 2018. Their first full-length album, Eventide, came a few months later, and soon the band were turning heads with their bold style. Drummer Shannon Griesberg is only too happy to give uninitiated Prog readers his perspective on where the Reliqa sound sits on prog spectrum. “Ooh, where to start?” he says with a laugh. “We like to call ourselves alternative metal, or slightly progressive metal, with a few little twists in there. We have the instrumentation of Evanescence, Breaking Benjamin, Avenged Sevenfold; and we also…

OKAY, RELAX. CRYPTEX are not a death metal act. They’re a hard rock group with progressive/art tendencies from Germany that just happens to be signed to a heavy metal label (SPV). Reviewers often call them progressive metal but as a band whose records have featured didgeridoo, cajón and glockenspiel, Cryptex don’t have a great deal of time for categorisation. “The only problem with the term ‘progressive metal’ is that it suggests us to be this soloing band like Dream Theater and the like, but we aren’t,” explains guitarist André Mertens. “In that way the label can be a bit annoying. In the end Cryptex is just a name. So folks, listen to the music and think outside the box or risk missing some grand and beautifully designed music.” Since their…

On the evening of August 25, 2017, America braced as Hurricane Harvey made US landfall in Texas. The storm had spent several days intensifying over the Caribbean Sea, and by the time it reached the state coastline at 11pm, it had whipped itself up into a Category 4 behemoth with wind speeds of 130mph, the first hurricane to make landfall since Wilma 12 years before. Oceans Of Slumber, who were recording their third album, 2018’s The Banished Heart, in Houston, watched in horror as the storm ravaged their home city, leaving mass destruction and flooding in its wake. “[Our] house took on four feet of water,” remembers vocalist Cammie Gilbert of the home she had shared with drummer and partner, Dobber Beverley. “It made things very difficult regarding the recording…

Touring, fatherhood, more touring and near-catastrophic vocal problems; it felt like anything and everything was standing in the way of Protest The Hero completing work on their latest studio album, Palimpsest. In the wake of their serialised release Pacific Myth, its arguably misfiring predecessor, the band were determined to come back with a bang. None of their four virtuosic members, however, could have foreseen the bumps along the road that would stutter their progress time and time again. Life had given them lemons and they just had to suck them up. “It feels like we’ve been sitting on this record for what feels like forever, so we’re just excited to finally be able vomit it out into this world,” laughs a typically high-spirited Rody Walker, the band’s vocal tour de…

Epic music from a widescreen imagination, with added Dr Who. If Arjen Lucassen made films, they’d undoubtedly be wall-to-wall blockbusters with a sci-fi/fantasy edge – full of drama, excitement, cliff-hangers, a confusing cast of larger than life characters and huge set pieces. The somewhat portentous scripts would nonetheless pull on heart strings and contain great one-liners. There would undoubtedly be sequels. And quite probably prequels. You can almost hear the glint in narrator Tom Baker’s eye. Transitus isn’t a movie (although one suspects that Ayreon’s mastermind has considered the possibility) but another grand journey deep into the Ayreon universe he created almost 25 years ago and has been frequently revisiting since. Departing from his regular explorations of far-flung galaxies or the mysteries of human inner space, Lucassen explores a gothic…

Former Ride and Oasis man gets his psych/kraut/prog groove on. Most probably, the mere mention of the fact that Andy Bell was guitarist for indie shoegazers Ride and later both Oasis and Liam Gallagher’s Beady Eye will have some reading this hit the dismiss button immediately. That’s if they even get this far in the review. The big clue however as to why this is being reviewed in Prog Magazine is in Bell’s statement that: “The album is not about songwriting. There aren’t many verses or choruses, because this album is about sounds, a listening experience.” That’s because The View From Halfway Down, Bell’s debut solo effort, is a delightful ride through 60s psych; see: the tripped out opener Love Comes In Waves, weird and wonderful krautrock experiments on Indica…

Brit collective snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The departure of co-vocalist/guitarist Daniel Änghede on the day Crippled Black Phoenix started recording their seventh album could have been a problem. Instead, CBP mastermind Justin Greaves and remaining singer Belinda Kordic called in favours from a range of friends and acquaintances to save the day. Ellengæst is a triumph of defiance in the face of adversity. Anathema’s Vincent Cavanagh broods solemnly on opening track House Of Fools, which shapeshifts from piano-led atmospherics to billowing crescendos, before stepping back to let Kordic take point on the post-punky Lost. Ex-Wardruna man Gaahl whispers his way through In The Night, while Swedish maverick Jonathan Hultén pitches in on nocturnal 11-minute blowout The Invisible Past, the album’s musical and emotional high point (the same…

The Anchoress’ Davies teams up with ex-Suede guitarist Butler. In Memory Of My Feelings, a collaboration recorded over 15 days across a four-year period, may never have seen the light of day at all. Fortunately, thanks to a chance meeting between Bernard Butler and Needle Mythology label owner Pete Paphides, it has become the first album of new material released on the reissue imprint. Inspired by the records PJ Harvey made with John Parish, In Memory Of My Feelings is a fine example of making music for its own joy, free of expectation or pressure. As The Anchoress, Catherine Anne Davies made one of the standout albums of the last few years with 2016’s Confessions Of A Romance Novelist. Here, shorn of that album’s fastidious production, she’s recast (mainly) as…

Documentary on German industrial designer gets a fitting soundtrack. Dieter Rams summed up his Bauhaus-influenced approach to interior and electrical product design as “Weniger, aber besser” or “Less is better”, so it was no surprise that director Gary Hustwit approached Brian Eno to provide the soundtrack for his documentary Rams, released on vinyl especially for Record Store Day. But while Eno has always loved musical systems, here he pursues a more active role in a series of vignettes that begin dramatically with the heavily treated fuzz guitars of Bright Clouds Of Metal. He explores Rams’ aesthetic more overtly on Design As Reduction with its clean, shiny surfaces of echoed marimbas and synths and adds micro detail on the tiny, twinkling keyboard sounds of Shimmering Future. The lovely, gently swelling For…

Art-rocking Norwegians’ twisted alternative history of humanity. Gazpacho have never really gone in for small talk. They prefer instead to tackle weighty conceptual issues, a tactic that’s sustained them for the best part of 20 years now. 2007’s Night, for instance, viewed the state of humanity from inside a surreal dream palace. The fatalistic Missa Atropos, from 2010, was centred around the mythological Greek deity who wrought death on hapless mortals, while 2014’s Demon detailed a centuries-old quest to uncover the source of all evil, as written by a mysterious tenant in a Prague apartment block. Apocalyptic concept albums have rarely been so eloquent. It’s no surprise that Fireworker is much in the same vein. Here the premise is that humanity has been controlled by an all-powerful entity, living deep…

Folk comes full circle on magical acoustic duo set. Pentangle singer and 60s folk-prog mainstay Jacqui McShee and journeyman guitarist Kevin Dempsey clicked after the latter sat in with McShee at 2018’s New Forest Folk Festival. The pair started their McDem imprint to explore traditional folk and write together, reflected in this sublime set of ballads, standards and originals, with Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy setting its warmly intimate tone. Still recognisable from Pentangle’s 1968 debut single Travelling Song, McShee’s voice has a rich resonance these days, finding a perfect foil in Dempsey’s subtle punctuation and jazzy runs on 1850 ballad Lord Franklin, Irish standard Inisfreeand Greenwich Village favourite, If I Had A Ribbon Bow. That last song gains new poignancy after the recent passing of Judy Dyble, who released…

Stage set from disturbingly dressed prog-horror quintet. Music will always remain front and centre in the world of progressive rock, but it doesn’t hurt to throw a bit of theatre into the mix. So when this five-piece emerged in 2014, clad in plague doctors’ cloaks and sinister masks, it didn’t half up the intrigue. Their love of horror soundtracks was evident in the macabre, chiming chords that punctuated their debut album Blazing World, but it was blended effectively with choppy post-punk, churning shards of metal and juddering time signatures. This recording of a landmark 2015 show (plus a couple of extras), released by Bad Elephant Music as their first for the label, shows they also sound pretty startling without the visuals. Miles And Miles Away sounds like Killing Joke jamming…

The queen of Dutch prog-pop with strings attached. Late in 2019, Anneke van Giersbergen, and her unique voice, came together with the elegant splendour of chamber orchestra Kamerata Zuid for two concerts in the singer’s native Holland. Here, her exquisite soprano finds the perfect backdrop, amid collaborator Ruud Peeters’ dynamic arrangements. It’s a varied setlist, ranging from classical arias to re-imagined versions of past collaborations with Within Temptation and Ayreon, but it’s gorgeous new interpretations of solo material like Mental Jungle, Stay and the touching Circles that cut deepest. The title track is the album’s only brand new composition and it’s stunning: six minutes of bewitching restraint and brooding melodrama, with our heroine audibly exhilarated by the glorious melody she co-wrote with Dutch composer Anthony Fiumara. Meanwhile, her version of…

Five of the best from proto-prog pioneers. Jon Hiseman’s death in 2018 has been partially ameliorated by the welcome rush of archive live releases. These titles spanning 1969 to 1971, ably capture the creative sparks stoking Colosseum’s formidable engine that drove them from one continent to another. A sense of fevered animation comes directly from Hiseman’s restless momentum not only as a drummer but as a canny journeyman who could see and feel which way the wind was blowing and followed. These LPs capture the creative spark stoking Colosseum’s engine. Blessed with an impeccable technique that saw him working among the best and brightest of the early 60s UK jazz scene, such as saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith, who himself had threaded an escape route from jazz purism, he was quick to…