We’re back with a brand new Tracks Of The Week! This week we’ve got six more new and diverse slices of progressively inclined music for you to enjoy.
Dutch proggers Lesoir came out on top in a very tight race last week with the thought-provoking Is It Nothing? with US proggers Pattern-Seeking Animals in second place and with Arthur Brown’s effusive Bursting The Bubble in third.
The premise is simple – we’ve collated a batch of new releases by bands falling under the progressive umbrella, and collated them together in one post for you – it makes it so much easier than having to dip in and out of various individual posts, doesn’t it?
The idea is to watch the videos (or listen if it’s a stream), enjoy (or not) and also to vote for your favourite in the voting form at the bottom of this post. Couldn’t be easier, could it? We’ll be bringing you Tracks Of The Week, as the title implies, each week. Next week, we’ll update you with this week’s winner and present a host of new prog music for you to enjoy.
If you’re a band and you want to be featured in Prog‘s Tracks Of The Week, send your video (as a YouTube link) or track embed, band photo (please, don’t forget the photo!) and biog with quotes to us here.
GREEN CARNATION – THE MESSIAH COMPLEX
Norwegian prog rockers Green Carnation complete their epic A Dark Poem trilogy with the release of Part III: The Messiah Complex through Season Of Mist on September 4. It’s been a colossal piece of work that has, by and large, made prog fans see the band in a new light. Ahead of the release of the third part of their triptych, they share new single and the album’s title track.
“The Messiah Complex is a standout song in the trilogy,” Nordhus says. “The vibe to this song is quite unique for us, but it doesn’t take long to recognise that it is still very much a Green Carnation song. Bjørn’s guitar work lifts the song up, together with Jonathan’s drumming and, of course, Stein Roger’s bass and vocals during the bridge.”
“The title track from Part III of A Dark Poem is about our need to find external excuses for our behaviour,” bassist and primary lyricist Stein Roger Sordal says. “This is nothing new, but with our uncritical way of working with our increasingly digital world, we seem unable to cope with the consequences of our actions.”
TEMIC – CEASED TO BE
International prog metal quintet Temic have announced they will release their second studio album, Ceiba, through Season Of Mist on October 2. The band have also shared a video for their new single, Ceased To Be, and have announced some live shows across Europe in October with Kingcrow, although disappointingly there’s no UK show as of yet!
“Ceased To Be is told from the perspective of someone who’s dying, while surrounded by their loved ones,” the band says. “Death is not feared nor resisted. Rather, it is observed as a sacred rite of passage. Ceiba is a concept album about loss in all its various forms. While more progressive than our first album, the songs are driven by honesty and emotions.”
DIKAJEE – GUNPOWDER
Multi-instrumentalist Dikajee has announced her return with a brand new album, The Frame, which will be out on 6th November. She’s also shared the first single, Gunpowder, which features guest appearances from Jethro Tull keyboardist Jonathan Noyce and Snarky Puppy’s Varijashree Venugopal, while Within Temptation drummer Vikram Shankar, Guillaume Bernard from Klone and German Vergara from Aisles all appear on the album.
“The Gunpowder video is a story of overcoming the limits of the mind and body,” says Olga Karpova. “The Blind will see, the Child will light the fires and the Ghost will have a face again. This is the life of a human”
KAVUS TORABI – WATER INTO WINE
Gong and Utopia Strong frontman Kavus Torabi will release his new solo album, October By Name, on October 2 through his Believer’s Roast label. If the first single to be taken from the album is anything to go by, it’s going to be a splendid listen. Water Into Wine is a delightfully summery slice of psychedelia that evokes memories of Syd Barrett and Julian Cope at their finest and leaves the listener with a huge grin plastered across their face.
“Perhaps there is no free will, and we’re all just playing out the consequences of our genes, insecurities and childhood damage,” Torabi reflects on the fundamentals of the song. “But I have to believe change is possible because, honestly, what’s the point in anything if it isn’t?”
KING GIZZARD & THE WIZARD LIZARD – ALIEN METAL
Fans of Aussie psych pranksters King Gizzard will be well aware of the band’s fondness for genre-hopping, although more staid proggers may be less enthralled. The news that their upcoming twenty-eighth album, Alien Metal, due to be released later in the summer on p(doom) records, has been inspired by the band’s ‘rave shows’ from last year. If you’re a fan of Pure Reason Revolution’s Hammer And Anvil album or no-man’s Love You To Bits, then chances are you’ll love this too. If not, maybe it’s not for you…
“It completely rewired my brain,” says Gizzard’s Stu Mackenzie, having discovered the possibilities of the Eurorack synthesiser format on the recommendation of fellow band member and self-confessed ‘techno head of the group’ Joey Walker. “I was like, ‘I’m going to forget everything I know about music and relearn it all from scratch’.”
CASTLE MOUNTAIN MOON – A LAYMAN’S GUIDE TO UNOBTAINIUM
German prog duo Castle Mountain Moon have announced that they will release their second album, A Layman’s Guide To Unobtainium, on September 4. The album explores maps—those that guide us, those that mislead us, and those that ultimately point toward things that can never truly be possessed. The pair have been joined on the new album by drummer Garry Wassong, and have shared a lyric video for the title track.
“We wrote about something that, by definition, only exists when you don’t have it,” explains Dirk Krause, one half of the pairing of the software engineers turned musicians. “Still, we chase it—so somebody had to write a manual in layman’s terms and hide it in the music, right before our eyes.”
