It has long been a favorite trope of music reviewers to begin an album review by presenting a list of comparisons to other artists or albums. This reviewer has resorted to that a time or two as well, but when an album and an artist such as this one comes along, that move becomes a … Continue reading
For many a season, progressive metal bands sprouted and attempted to take root under the penumbral gloom of Dream Theater, with band after band mimicking DT’s approach: Long form songs, extended instrumental passages, technical expertise, shifting time signatures and sometimes uninspired vocal lines. The Dream Theater approach seems to have perhaps shifted to a back-seat … Continue reading
A good deal of ink has already been spilt over Steven Wilson’s new album, To The Bone. In blogs, online magazines and social media forums, a fair amount of alternating hand-wringing and canonization has been going on. Some have voiced despair that Wilson has, in some manner, jumped the shark, and abandoned the trajectory of … Continue reading
Welcome to the latest installment of the Album Reclamation Project at Proglodytes! Again, we will revisit a maligned Album of the Past and discuss whether it’s really as bad as all that. As a reminder, we will be utilizing the soon to be copyrighted Official Proglodyte Dumpster Fire Scale. Many of the previous albums we … Continue reading
Big Big Train does things in threes, apparently. In September 2012, the band released English Electric Part One, followed six months later by English Electric Part Two. These two albums were then combined, shuffled and joined by four new tracks six months later in English Electric, Full Power. This makes for two and a half … Continue reading
I found it rather lamentable that Rikard Sjöblom left Beardfish (concurrent with the demise of the band) in the wake of their having released what I felt was their strongest album, 2015’s +4626-Comfortzone. And while I am a fan of the band Sjöblom joined, it still felt like the result was the prog world losing … Continue reading
If life were just, John Wesley would be more famous. I’m not talking about the theologian, who is overshadowed by his brother Charles, just because Chuck wrote some hymns – I’m talking about John Wesley, the guitarist, vocalist, and song writer who is best known for being the sideman guitarist/vocalist for Porcupine Tree’s biggest tours. … Continue reading
As a regular reader of music reviews, I sometimes grow concerned that we who write them are sometimes too loose with our praise, too effusive in our speech. In a world where every new album is an artist’s ‘best yet’ and every new single is a “modern prog masterpiece”, praise begins to lose its value. … Continue reading
Album Reclamation Project This is the first in a new series from Proglodytes! Wherein we will revisit a maligned Album of the Past and discuss whether it’s really as bad as all that. For this feature, we will be introducing a new system of measuring albums. Instead of gold stars, we will be rating on … Continue reading
Big Big Train was founded around 1990 and existed primarily as the studio project of Greg Spawton and Andy Pool until 2009, at which point they largely stabilized a band lineup (‘stabilize’ being a relative term). Starting with their sixth album, The Underfall Yard, they began to enjoy some acclaim in the progressive rock community. … Continue reading
