This album from Canadian band Versa, A Voyage / A Destination, is their third (and first for a decade) but the first I have heard, and I suspect I’m not alone in being new to them. Approaching the album with…
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Back in late 2020, Solstice joyously re-emerged onto the music scene with their most uplifting album, Sia, just at the time the World needed a tonic from the ravages and lockdowns of Covid-19. When I reviewed that album, there were…
View More Solstice – Light Up
It’s been an emotional few weeks, and the new album due from Grice, Polarchoral, is the right vessel to draw together those emotions. This is closer to the norms of The Pineapple Thief or Porcupine Tree, both of whose recent…
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The biggest take-away for me from the Portals Festival in May was Poly-Math. Their half-hour set was an object listen in how to play an eviscerating set of complex and edgy instrumental music whilst keeping it engaging and entertaining. The…
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It is the time of Halloween, a time for Ghosts, Ghouls, Wizards and Witches, a perfect time for Magenta to release their rather different and ambitious new album, The White Witch – A Symphonic Trilogy. Magenta unveil a retelling and…
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Galahad are back, and they really have produced the goods on The Last Great Adventurer. It was about halfway through the scintillating Blood, Skin and Bone, as Stuart Nicholson sings passionately about what unites us all as human beings, and…
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When this Latino alien-jazz-prog band burst onto the scene with their debut album De-Loused In The Comatorium back in 2003, synapses at the more receptive end of the alt-rock universe went “Ping!” and “KApow!!” and “ZZZZAAAPppp!” in a manner unseen…
View More The Mars Volta – The Mars Volta
Framed in the simplicity of a black and white cover, eight gnarled, contorted faces reach out to seize your imagination; gaping mouths silently scream outpourings of unfathomable emotions, inexpressible anguish, frustrations beyond the limits of endurance, indescribable despairs, merciless torments,…
View More Imaginary Kings – Monsters Lament
Return of The Lydia is the third album from The Tirith and it’s another entertaining collection of guitar-led, heavy prog rock tracks and powerful, melodic, hard rock and psychedelic influences, with an intriguing ’70s retro character – but presented with…
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Nashville-based progressive rock band Evership complete their ambitious The Uncrowned King project with a flourish, Act 2 bringing their pomp/prog-rock sound to the concluding half of an allegorical journey in search of truth and enlightenment. Musically and lyrically diverse, it’s…
View More Evership – The Uncrowned King: Act 2