Sommaire pour Issue 157 de Prog

Jonas Reingold, one of the most distinguished of prog bassists, has been joined by impressive roster of guests as he returns on March 7 with Transmutation, his sixth solo album under the Karmakanic banner. Available on CD, vinyl and streaming services, the album is released on Reingold Records. Alongside guitarist Steve Hackett, Reingold is augmented by drummers Simon Phillips (Toto, The Who), Nick D’Virgilio, (Big Big Train, Spock’s Beard) and Craig Blundell (Steven Wilson, Frost*), as well as singer John Mitchell and Randy McStine on lead guitar. Says Reingold, “I have to pinch my arm thinking who’s actually on the album. All heroes of mine and I’m truly humbled and thankful that they have given me a part of their talent to shape this album. It’s truly a joint venture.…

British proggers Circu5 are set to return with their second album, Clockwork Tulpa, via ST Productions on March 7. Coming eight years after the release of their eponymous debut, the new record is their first release as a full band with founder member, guitarist and singer Steve Tilling recruiting Tin Spirits frontman Mark Kilminster on bass and backing vocal duties with drummer Lee Moulding completing the line-up. “With Mark and Lee in the band, Circu5 can now establish its own unique identity,” says Tilling. “I’m very excited about where we can take the band next.” Thematically, Clockwork Tulpa’s 10 songs continue the story of Grady, whose life has been moulded by the shadowy CIRCU5 organisation. “It’s not just storytelling,” he says. “It’s a reflection on how people navigate the trauma…

“WE’VE ALWAYS BEEN fiercely independent and that’s one thing we did carry over from the punk scene.” Surprising words from a prog band, perhaps, but Third Quadrant had a different beginning, as drummer Chris Hare explains. The northwest-based band retain the DIY aesthetic that informed a lot of the music that came out of teenage bedrooms in the late 1970s and early 1980s, whether it was punk, metal or indeed progressive rock. They formed more than 40 years ago, releasing three well-received albums between 1981 and 1988 that unfortunately didn’t solicit the same attention as Marillion, IQ, Pallas or Pendragon. However, the band’s influences were somewhat different to those of their contemporaries, as keyboardist and vocalist Chris Dunn explains. “Although I was into Pink Floyd, Yes, and Genesis; Chris Hare…

Fittingly for an album with such ambitious scope, The Overview will be accompanied by a full-length video mirroring its two tracks. It’s being created by visual artist and regular Wilson collaborator Miles Skarin, whose previous work with the singer includes the memorable, deepfake-inspired video for Self from The Future Bites and promos from Porcupine Tree’s Closure/Continuation album. “He said, ‘It’s going to be two pieces of music, mainly focused around the perspective of the human race in comparison this crazy cosmic scale which we find ourselves in,’” says Skarin, who first encountered Wilson’s music in 2021. “We wanted something that really showed that.” “There’s a lot of crazy visual effects in there, a lot of new techniques.” At the time of going to press, Prog had seen the 23-minute animated…

“You can’t have it being too much on the ears, you know, you need moments like Yes had with the ‘I get up, I get down’ section on Close To The Edge.” Musical genres can gradually fade away, as the more prominent protagonists age gracefully and commence thoughts of retirement. Prog rock isn’t exempt from that potentially worrying atrophy, but fortunately there’s an ongoing resurgence led by younger artists who are providing a necessary reinvigoration to the scene. Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks is one example of an established artist working with unknown, but extremely capable, musicians, and Neal Morse’s new recording, collaborating with a team billed as The Resonance, has also adopted a similarly ambitious approach. Morse is renowned for possessing a level of creativity that dwarfs other…

It’s been 30 years since Stuart Braithwaite, Dominic Aitchison and Martin Bulloch formed a band in Glasgow. In 1995, nobody could have had any inkling that a group playing mostly instrumental post-rock would make it to the top of the UK charts (with As The Love Continues in February 2021). Mogwai’s success is as surprising as it is heartwarming, and proof that independently-minded artists can sometimes prosper by sticking to their musical principles. Mogwai have had a good run from almost the beginning, charting from the off with 1997’s Mogwai Young Team, while their homespun label Rock Action has proved durable, these days boasting an ever-expanding roster that includes Kathryn Joseph, Arab Strap and Bdrmm. So, how does Braithwaite feel about the fact that Mogwai are still here and seemingly…

In 2001, Bill Bruford’s Earthworks released an album called The Sound Of Surprise, and it’s fair to say the drummer has delivered more than his fair share of surprises across a career that’s now in its seventh decade and has included some of the most significant groups in progressive rock along the way. Yet the biggest eye-raising moment for many was his retirement from live playing, which he announced to coincide with the publication of his autobiography, Bill Bruford: The Autobiography. Yes, King Crimson, Earthworks, And More, in 2009. He decided to follow a path into academia, and after several years of hard work he received a PhD from the University of Surrey in 2016, and in 2018 his treatise on creativity in the context of popular music instrumental performance,…

Drama and bombast as long-lost Germans re-emerge from the wilderness. Sixteen years have slipped by since Everon’s last album, 2008’s North. Shells sees the reunification of the line-up that recorded that album, namely vocalist Oliver Philipps, bass player Schymy, guitarist Ulli Hoever and drummer Christian ‘Moschus’ Moos. Sadly, Moos passed away having completed eight of the tracks here, so Jason Gianni, who has recorded with Neal Morse and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, finished the remainder of the album. “They’ve lost none of their passion or power.” Musically, Shells sees Everon pick up right where they left off. Opener No Embrace sets the mood, combining catchy melodies with sweeping grandiosity. The production is bright and very modern, with a mix that pushes everything right to the front. It’s an unapologetically assertive sound and…

Polish prog metallers loosen up on fourth live album of their 23-year career. When resilient Riverside released their eighth studio album ID.Entity in 2023, it served not just to demonstrate their ongoing ability to make their songs stride and soar, but as proof that they were survivors. The death of guitarist Piotr Grudziński in 2016 had naturally unsettled them, but the river has kept on flowing, with two albums since and Maciej Meller now a full member. Vocalist/bassist Mariusz Duda has simultaneously worked through some feelings, notably concerning lockdown-compounded claustrophobia, on his electronica-based solo records and Lunatic Soul project. They’ve let go of a degree of preciousness. Live ID makes sense as a kind of catharsis; a celebration – however dark the music’s themes – that the Polish band are…

The weird, wonderful world of perverse polymath pair. When Godley & Creme premièred their 1977 debut concept album Consequences to their record company at a church in Amsterdam, several of the sales team fell asleep before the halfway mark. At just shy of two hours, that baffling, indulgent folly remains one of the most impenetrable records created by people who were nominally pop stars, having bossed much of the decade as half of the inventive yet usually accessible 10cc. “It’s almost as if they were erratic, wilful geniuses.” The duo’s decision to bet the farm on this peculiar passion project was ridiculed as they emerged blinking from 18 months in the studio to find Britain had gone punk, and the last thing it wanted was what Kevin Godley later described…

CHOOSE YOUR PACKAGE PRINT £19.97 every 6 months PLUS DIGITAL ACCESS DIGITAL ONLY £15.98 every 6 months REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE NEW! Digital access to 70+ issues when you subscribe to print!** FIVE PRINT ISSUES delivered to your door for only £19.97! SAVE MONEY on the shop price YOU’RE IN CONTROL – manage your subscription online via our dedicated self-service site SUBSCRIBE ONLINE www.magazinesdirect.com/PRG/DJ29E OR CALL US 0330 333 1113 and quote DJ29E Terms and conditions: Offer closes May 16, 2025. Price is guaranteed for the first six months, please allow up to six weeks for the delivery of your first subscription issue (up to eight weeks overseas). The full subscription rate is for six months (five issues) and includes postage and packaging. Pay £19.97 for six months (five issues), *saving 50% on the…

Where’s home? I live in Bologna, Italy. What’s your earliest prog memory? When I was a child, my older brother listened to records by the likes of Yes, Genesis, ELP and Pink Floyd. This music – which at the time was simply called ‘pop’ – filled the whole house and created a kind of soundtrack of our daily lives. I must have absorbed it, because it re-emerged when I started making music myself. What was your first prog album? The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway by Genesis. I bought it in Paris when I was 16 or so and it was a great purchase! It’s a masterpiece that I have listened to dozens and dozens of times over the years. And the most recent? Time Voyager by Barock Project. An…

Jethro Tull will release their 24th album, Curious Ruminant, on March 7 via InsideOutMusic. Their third in the three years, since Ian Anderson relaunched the band with 2022’s The Zealot Gene, finds the frontman in a more contemplative lyrical mode than usual. “Curious Ruminant could refer to a ruminant in the sense of it being an animal, like a cow or a deer or a sheep, but in this case it’s applied to humans thinking something through, ruminating on it,” says Anderson. “And it’s ‘curious’ in the investigative sense, of wanting to find out about something and think about it, rather than curious as in‘weird’.” Anderson began writing the album shortly after finishing work on 2023’s RökFlöte. Where that album was inspired by Norse mythology, the follow-up dispenses with any…

As they return with their second album, Stygian Wavz, on March 14 via Kscope, Envy Of None bassist Andy Curran has credited a process of evolution that has seen the supergroup – which also features Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, singer Maiah Wayne and guitarist and keyboardist Alfio Annibalini – move from being a remotely-based project to working in the studio together through to entertaining ideas of actually playing live. In fact, he says they could now be called a band. “You can use the b-word,” laughs Curran from his base in Toronto. He credits Lifeson as being the driving force for the creation of a new album after the recording of 2023’s That Was Then EP. “The most vocal person was Alex Lifeson going, ‘Come on, guys – let’s do…

“I couldn’t really see my name looking cool in a metal logo,” confesses Charlie Griffiths. For his second album, Gods Of Pangaea, Griffiths has adopted the monicker Tiktaalika, taken from the title of his 2022 solo debut. “This is very much a follow-up, so I wanted to make it clear it’s part of that lineage,” he says. “I had Dan Goldsworthy, who did the first album cover, do this one, and that’s his thing – old school, 90s-style death metal artwork. Putting my name in there became too cumbersome.” Alongside the album title, tracks like Mesozoic Mantras and Lost Continent reveal Griffiths’ long-standing enthusiasm for pre-history. “When you’re a kid, you love dinosaurs. At some point you forget how cool they are,” he says. “It connects back to that childlike…

DEVIALET ASTRA Hi-fi amplifiers are generally thought of as rather uninteresting objects, performing basic functions without drawing too much attention to themselves. French audio brand Devialet, however, have no truck with this kind of attitude. The exterior casing of this amp matches the finesse of the audio engineering within; inspired by Art Deco, it’s designed in partnership with the Opéra National de Paris and decorated with 23-carat gold leaf that’s hand-applied by master gilders at Les Ateliers Gohard. Yours for $27,000 (£21,269). Sorry, could you not put your mug of tea on it? Thanks.  www.devialet.com BEHRINGER WAVE It’s been four years since Behringer trailed the imminent arrival of the Wave, a simulation (some might say knock-off) of the PPG Wave 2.2, a German-built synth from the mid-1980s that was beloved…

A SPECTACULAR COLLISION of contrasting worlds, Langt, Langt Vekk (‘Far, Far Away’) sees psychedelic drone rockers Kanaan team with sometimes trad, sometimes trippy folk act Ævestaden on their joint debut LP. “At first it was like a joke,” says Kenneth Lien, one of Ævestaden’s three multi-instrumentalists. “What if these very different bands joined forces?” As Kanaan guitarist Ask Vatn Strøm is the brother of Eir Vatn Strøm, lyre and Mellotron player with Ævestaden, there was a connection already, plus the two Norwegian trios were mutual fans. “We’ve seen Ævestaden play live a lot, and we love their albums,” confirms Kanaan’s drummer and vocalist Ingvald Vassbø. “We’d wanted to work with them for a while.” Chatting from their respective homes in Oslo, Lien and Vassbø paint a vivid picture of the…

Dream Theater are back with their iconic line-up and a brand-new album to boot. We have a limited-edition package comprising three different formats of Parasomnia to give away to one lucky reader – turn to p88 of this issue to read our review of it. James LaBrie, John Petrucci, John Myung and Jordan Rudess have reunited with drummer Mike Portnoy for the first time in the studio since 2009’s Black Clouds & Silver Linings and the results are spectacular. Listen for yourself on the limited deluxe two-CD plus Blu-ray Artbook, which includes a disc of instrumental versions, Dolby Amos, 5.1 and hi-resolution mixes plus animated visualisers for each song and a 68-page booklet. InsideOutMusic have also added the two-LP clear gatefold vinyl and an ultra-rare blue marbled vinyl edition to…

Although best known as singer for UK proggers Kaprekar’s Constant, Dorie Jackson is also a solo artist. Her new album, Stupid Says Run, the follow-up to The Courting Ground, is filled with close harmonies and careful orchestral arrangements. Across 12 tracks, it demonstrates the confidence and maturity she’s developed over the course of her career. Blending folk, rock and prog influences with inspiration from folklore, myth and everyday life, the album is a brilliant accumulation of sound and storytelling that’s been created with support from Kaprekar’s members Mike Westergaard, Mark Walker, Nick Jefferson and Al Nicholson. Jackson’s father, former Van der Graaf Generator saxophonist David Jackson, also features on the album and multi-instrumentalist Toby Shaer makes a guest appearance. Outside of her work with Kaprekar’s Constant, Jackson has performed backing…

“People who like more progressive, more conceptual rock music, they’re much more open-minded than they perhaps they even might give themselves credit for sometimes.” There’s a phenomenon that affects astronauts when they travel into space and look back at the Earth. It’s called The Overview Effect. “It’s reportedly a cognitive shift that occurs that’s to do with perspective and how they feel about their lives,” says Steven Wilson, a man who hasn’t been into space yet but has thought about The Overview Effect a lot over the last couple of years. “A mental perspective – quite literally having an overview of where we fit in time and space, or some inkling of it, and understanding in a split second of just how insignificant we are.” The Overview Effect affects different…

“My regret was not leaving the band; the regret is that it took so long to reunite. Now that we’re back together, it feels so natural, so good and so right. I just wish it had happened sooner.” For over a decade, the chances of drummer Mike Portnoy returning to the band he co-founded back in 1985 appeared to be remote. But with a gradual warming of relations between members, and Portnoy working on Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci’s second solo album, there seemed to be an unstoppable momentum and inevitability about his return to the band in late 2023. The timing was perfect, with Dream Theater celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. “It’s interesting you brought up the word ‘inevitable’ because I’ve used that word myself a few times…

In the early 90s, progressive rock was beginning to sprout a few green shoots of recovery. Sustained by its own global community of die-hard fans and musicians, it was firmly off the mainstream radar, and many of those who successfully contributed to its rebirth were operating alone, unknowingly anticipating the arrival of the internet to make everything a lot easier. In Norway, which already had a rich tradition of prog bands, a very young Jacob-Holm Lupo was beginning to explore his own love of adventurous rock music. Now known as the man behind White Willow and a host of other notable projects, he started his life as a prog musician with no expectations whatsoever. “We were not aware of any kind of global prog scene at all, actually,” he says…

Poor old Mike Mangini. The supremely gifted drummer provided the engine in the Dream Theater chassis for 13 years, powering through a string of never less-than-interesting albums and one Grammy award. Yet, all it took was the announcement in 2023 that founding drummer Mike Portnoy was returning to the fold for the band’s fanbase to lose their collective mind and Mangini found himself bundled hastily out the door. For his part, he’s said all the right things, his departure free of public rancour. It seems that even he knows some bands have a definitive line-up that every fan wants to see and for Dream Theater this is it. In some ways it could be seen as a step backwards. The band tried some new moves on the four albums released…

Singer-songwriter returns with her darkest, most satisfying work to date. The myths and legends of ancient Greece have long proved to be fertile ground for those harvesting it for inspiration, from Rush to Seven Impale. But so, too, has the literature of the time, albeit on a smaller scale, and drawing from that tradition comes The Distaff, the fourth studio album from Spanish-born, Edinburgh-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Amaya López-Carromero, aka Maud The Moth. “A sonic journey that rises and falls with a sense of drama.” Partly inspired by the ancient Greek poet Erinna, whose celebrated work The Distaff lamented the loss of her friend’s individuality and eventual death as a result of marriage and the expectations of patriarchal demands, López-Carromero also flavours the album with aspects of her own…

Another classy affair from the Iamthemorning pianist. A lot has happened in pianist and composer Gleb Kolyadin’s life since his last solo album, 2022’s The Outland. In early 2024, while playing as a touring musician with dissident Russian rock group Bi-2, he was jailed along with several of his bandmates, allegedly for performing without a work permit, though Bi-2’s anti-war activism suggested Moscow may have had a hand in it. There were threats of deportation back to Russia for Kolyadin, who moved to the UK in 2022, though this was averted thanks in a large part to a petition organised by his Iamthemorning bandmate Marjana Semkina and the resultant global news coverage. “A rich tapestry of instrumental wonder.” From adversity has come beauty, it seems. His fourth solo album, Mobula…

VENUE WELLS FARGO CENTER, PHILADELPHIA, PA, USA DATE 22/12/2024 Known for their equally exhilarating and touching fusion of seasonally-themed narratives, neoclassical prog metal and elaborate imagery, Savatage offshoot Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s live sets have been an essential part of the US Christmas season for 25 years. Tonight’s show is no exception, as the band honour 2004’s The Lost Christmas Eve record (alongside miscellaneous classics) with all the endearing songwriting, virtuosic playing, topnotch singing and mind-blowing visuals fans expect. It’s an extremely immersive and profound journey whose spectacular sights and sounds excel at warming attendees’ hearts. After kicking things off with Savatage’s Welcome and their own Moonlight And Madness, TSO’s vast array of male and female musicians and vocalists – including Symphony X frontman Russell Allen – launch into a captivating, if…

Instrumental prog trio Sometime In February, led by Between The Buried And Me live guitarist Tristan Auman, have announced their second album, Where Mountains Hide. It will come out on March 21 and be their debut release on InsideOutMusic, home of Yes, Dream Theater, Devin Townsend and other prog greats. “It’s the premier label for progressive music,” Auman says of his band’s new home. “It has a lot of the modern guys – Caligula’s Horse, Haken and Leprous – and some of the godfathers, too. It’s pretty crazy to be on a roster like that. It doesn’t make sense, honestly, to be scrolling and seeing your name mixed in with all that. I hope to become worthy of that.” Where Mountains Hide follows the US trio’s self-released debut album, There…

Iamthemorning pianist Gleb Kolyadin will release his fourth solo LP, Mobula, on February 28 via Kscope and hopes its “dreamy” soundscapes can provide escapism from a gloomy world. “People usually love to know what this music about and most of the time I don’t have any answers,” he says with a laugh. “My writing is very subconscious: I don’t have specific pictures in my mind, but there is something very dreamy about this music, and it has an escapist style. It’s not based on reality, I want to let the listener create their own fictional world.” For the record’s genesis, he dived into a dizzying collection of “500 song drafts,” plucking from them simpler songs, “to make it easier on the listener,” and contrast its “very proggy” predecessor, 2022’s The Outland.…

“I see myself like a director of a movie,” smiles Wolfgang Flür as he considers the roll call of collaborators who join him on his new album, Times, which is released via Cherry Red on March 28. “Directors know which crew they want to work with and I know exactly what I want from my collaborators. It’s good that we can communicate on the same level musically and as humans.” Times finds the former Kraftwerk member joined once again by the artists and musicians that he inspired back in the 70s and 80s. These include New Order bassist Peter Hook, techno pioneers Juan Atkins and U96, and Yello’s Boris Blank. Also joining him is former Daft Punk member Thomas Bangalter, who inspired two tracks on the album. “Thomas wrote to me…

(Food Records, 1993) With "the battling Gallagher brothers” (according to every tabloid newspaper in the land) set to dominate the news headlines this summer when the Oasis reunion rolls on with the inexorable precision of a military exercise to take up residence in the stadiums and enormodomes across the world, a pause is called for to consider a time before their entrance and the codification of Britpop to when their future chart rivals, Blur were grappling with the concept of Englishness in the face of grunge’s domination and their own potential demise. Chastened by indifference to their gruelling and disastrous 44-date tour of the USA in the spring of 1992, the domestic failure of standalone single Popscene to set the charts alight and the very real prospect of being dropped…

HENGE AREN’T LIKE other bands. Henge are from outer space. A disparate band of space-travelling eccentrics, they’ve been steadily making their alien presence felt with music that combines mischievous, Cardiacs-like electro-punk with mind-expanding space rock grandeur and the frantic textures of 90s rave. Their new album Journey To Voltus B is destined to have a near-apocalyptic impact, at least among the terminally open-minded. As Henge’s leader Zpor explains, this strange band of interplanetary brothers have come to Earth to save humanity. “We received a distress signal through the astral realm, from a human now known to us as Grok,” he says. “He told us about the situation on Earth, that there was an epidemic of seriousness and humans needed our help. He guided us to a safe landing on your…

KÁRI HARALDSSON SPENDS his daytime soundtracking Icelandic films and TV shows. At night, he turns to his categorise-it-if-you-dare passion project, Múr. Grounded by the emotionally driven ambient textures that define his scores, his band use extreme dynamic changes as pawns for their Machiavellian storytelling. Icy electronic soundscapes play off Opeth-tinted melancholia, jazz and post-rock off Meshuggah-minded technical brutality, each change meticulously crafted. But, despite freely experimenting with such heavy sounds, Múr shirk away from the metal band tag. “I write from the approach of atmosphere and mood first,” says keyboardist/vocalist Haraldsson. “Metal is a tool to enhance the emotions and make it hit harder. It’s great for emotional intensity. Before this band, I’d never written heavy music before.” In a sense, this is metal music for those otherwise averse to…

Andy Partridge was in the bath when he listened to The Overview from start to finish for the first time.“My laptop was on the toilet, lid down, obviously,” he says. “I lay there, toying with my loofah, so to speak, and I thought, ‘Jesus, this is gigantic-sounding.’” The former XTC man deserves a little of the credit. He was enlisted by Steven Wilson – a devotee of Partridge’s old band – to write lyrics for Objects: Meanwhile, one of the sequences in the first of the album’s two tracks, which contrasts fleeting human dramas taking place on the streets of an English town – from splitting grocery bags to the aftermath of a break-up or bereavement – with things much, much bigger. “I thought, ‘Jesus, this is gigantic-sounding.’” “He said,…

Turning 50 last May was more than just an age thing for Matt Berry. His half-century milestone also happened to coincide with the end of his successful run in TV comedy-horror What We Do In The Shadows. Berry had been a central part of the series, playing pansexual vampire Laszlo Cravensworth, for more than five years. “I turned 50 on the last day that I filmed anything for that show,” he tells Prog. “So, that was a significant day for me. I hadn’t done it consciously, but everything I’d been writing from the year before was all geared around that. When I look back, it’s all pointing in that direction. I think certain things happen to you that force you to progress.” This subconscious reassessment of life and work fed…

“I didn’t just walk away from Nightwish. I walked away from everything. I left my home in Finland and got a place in Spain, in order to be cut off from everything so I could figure out what the problem was.” “Prog is not that visible in Finland… but it has a lot of fans!” chuckles Marko Hietala, whose love of all things progressive goes back to a formative experience as a kid in the sub-Arctic Finnish town of Kuopio. “My dad used to be a jazz freak, but he got hooked on Jethro Tull’s acoustic music, and after that he started listening to guitar solos. You know, the more the mainstream becomes more about simple music, the more that people who like complex music will move away from it.…

“We’ve stuck together for a long time, and people often comment that we still have the same line-up, and that it’s crazy. Maybe it is, but we will always be the same line-up. It’s a guarantee that the band’s personality will stay intact.” One of Sweden’s most distinctive modern prog bands, Ritual formed in 1992 and were firmly ahead of the game from the start. Inspired by the prog legends of the 60s and 70s and more modern exponents of the art, such as It Bites and XTC, they steadily evolved into a melodic and endlessly inventive powerhouse, with a curious obsession with Finnish legend Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories and a fervently diverse musical palette. Their first four albums are all magnificent, and the last of them – 2007’s The…

Third album from well-connected, cinematically inclined Norwegians. There’s nothing like a bit of patronage to give a new act a leg up. Oslo-based art-rockers Dim Gray impressed older generations of musicians early in their career, securing a deal with English Electric Recordings and tour supports with label owners Big Big Train, as well as opening for Marillion on several occasions. Keyboard player and vocalist Oskar Holldorff has since joined BBT, but for him and his bandmates (here expanded to a five-piece) their third album justifies such high-profile endorsements. “The drama has been cranked up since their last album.” The drama has been cranked up noticeably since 2022’s Firmament. While that felt like a record dealing with the isolation of the Covid years, Shards seems to have a less inward perspective,…

Ex-Nightwish man returns to proggier waters on second solo album. They may have emerged from the metal scene, but Nightwish have always been a band with a progressive heart. The Finns have explored concepts that swing from the whimsical fantasy of Imaginaerum to the hard science of Endless Forms Most Beautiful, the latter complete with an appearance from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. They’ve done so with a compositional approach to songwriting that incorporates symphonic and folk elements, complex layers of melody and expansive banks of keyboards. “His enduring love remains a mix of prog and vintage metal.” When long-time Nightwish bassist and co-vocalist Marko Hietala released his debut solo album, Pyre Of The Black Heart, in 2019, he referred to it as ‘hard prog’. Now that he’s left the band…

Essential reissues from underrated heroes of the classic progressive era. Camel never quite made it into prog’s top flight, but they remain hugely influential, and no progressive rock collection is complete without Mirage or Moonmadness. Originally available on 2023’s retrospective Air Born box set, these remastered and remixed versions of arguably their best two albums have now been released as standalone items for the discerning consumer. “Bypasses the brain and goes straight for the heart.” Both albums are presented here as two-CD plus Blu-ray boxes, including plenty of unreleased extra tracks, plus new stereo and 5.1 mixes from Stephen W Tayler, who’s surely mounting a serious challenge to Steven Wilson as the hardest working remixer in prog. Tayler has already done exemplary work for the likes of Van der Graaf…

IQ VENUE ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL, LONDON DATE 21/12/2024 It’s encore time at what has been a quite astounding Christmas show from IQ, and in keeping with a long-standing tradition, the band are preparing to bestow one of their 100 Club T-shirts on fan Malcolm Barden, who tonight has racked up the impressive 100th IQ gig milestone. Singer Peter Nicholls finds Barden in the crowd and ushers him stagewards. And we wait to applaud this momentous occasion. And wait. And wait. Just as Prog chuckles to our gig-going buddy that he’s probably been stopped by a jobsworth bouncer, it appears that this is exactly what has happened. Nicholls implores, the crowd boo but, hopelessly failing to read the moment and over-inflating his sense of self-importance, Mr Jobsworth remains unmoved. Eventually bassist Tim…