Progressive Metal Reviews
Although I have a somewhat conflicted relationship with the progressive metal genre, the bands that tackle the style well tend to do so exceptionally well. If you like your time signatures odd and often changing, your song structures unpredictable, your chords and harmonies sophisticated, and your songs long, make sure to check up on Kevy Metal’s progressive metal reviews from time to time. You can find all my progressive metal Album of the Week reviews right here.
However, I did not start properly tagging my reviews until a couple of years in. If you are looking for something that doesn’t show up, it might still be there. I recommend using the search bar at the bottom of the page if you are looking for something specific.
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Album of the Week 23-2018: Onmyo-za – Hado Myoo
Heavy, dark, but without forsaking their trademark streamlined melodicism. How they do it is a mystery to me, but Onmyo-za manages to upgrade the formula of their already impressive latter day sound on ‘Hado Myoo’ without the help of a potentially alienating stylistic shift. Despite its fairly heavy use of…
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Album of the Week 14-2018: Skyclad – A Burnt Offering For The Bone Idol
Before folk metal became synonymous with heavy drinking songs – that being either heavy songs for drinking or songs for heavy drinking – Skyclad managed to blend folk and heavy metal in an intelligent and reasonably complex manner. For the British band, the folk influences were there to enhance the…
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Album of the Week 12-2018: Bittencourt Project – Brainworms I
With Angra’s music being as varied as it is, what more could guitarist and chief songwriter Rafael Bittencourt want to express? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Debut album ‘Brainworms I’ of his own Bittencourt Project is full of music that, while not completely sounding out of place amongst…
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Album of the Week 08-2018: Rhapsody – Symphony Of Enchanted Lands
For everyone involved in the making of the album, ‘Symphony Of Enchanted Lands’ is the pinnacle of their abilities. It was not just a compositional triumph for all the musicians involved, it also established Sascha Paeth and Miro as the go-to producers for symphonic metal. Rhapsody did not invent the…
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Album of the Week 07-2018: Angra – Ømni
Change does not appear to affect Angra. They survived a massive schism around the turn of the century and now Dave Mustaine has hijacked longtime guitarist Kiko Loureiro for Megadeth, they still manage to put together another great album. Most of the current line-up already proved that the (largely) Brazilian…
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Album of the Week 06-2018: Onmyo-za – Chimimoryo
Out of all Onmyo-za albums, ‘Chimimoryo’ is proabably the one with the broadest appeal. That does not mean it isn’t metal. Quite the contrary. The riff work on the album is still as rooted in traditional heavy metal as it always has been, but the polish of the production and…
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Album of the Week 05-2018: Onmyo-za – Kongo Kyubi
Due to its polished, almost glossy production and the relatively mellow nature of its songs, ‘Kongo Kyubi’ initially was one of my least favorite Onmyo-za albums. After letting the album – and, presumably, myself – mature for a while, my appreciation for the album increased rapidly. It is quite unique…
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Album of the Week 02-2018: Eternity’s End – The Fire Within
Everything Christian Muenzner touches turns to gold, or so it seems. Obscura was one of the very few modern technical death metal bands I loved, Alkaloid was one of the most unique progressive metal bands in recent years and ‘The Fire Within’, the debut album from his progressive power metal…
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Album of the Week 01-2018: Iron Maiden – Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
‘Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son’ was the final album Iron Maiden made with its classic line-up and in a sense, the album takes them as far as that line-up logically could go. It is quite progressive by late eighties metal standards, the synth experiments that were only partially successful…
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