The last few months have been quite low key in the progressive world, atleast for me. I follow only a few of the decently known bands, and most of them have been either touring or writing new stuff, so I was stuck listening to some older tunes, and waiting impatiently for the new releases.
I must admit, I love the way modern metal seems to be imbibing new ideas to sound different. It's not all about the heaviest riffs, deepest growls or the fastest solos anymore. People are accepting more ambient influences, soothing high range vocals, and odd time signatures but with simple grooves. And the new in-thing - Jazz additions!
Tesseract have just released the 3rd trailer for their latest album - Altered State. The 3 trailers released have quite a bit to say. Trailer 1 sounds a bit like their earlier release, Nocturne. With the slow riffs and multi layered vocals (which might be hard to pull off live). The second trailer wasn't too much to my liking, it sounded more like they were just extending their old music with Ashe bringing out more emotion than he needed to. But the 3rd trailer blew me away! Tesseract riffs + multi layered mixing + Sax? Complete credits to Chris Barretto (former Periphery, The Haarp Machine) for that beatiful jazz touch to modern metal. Of course, there's also the much awaited Altered State live session similar to that of Concealing Fate to make this more appealing than it already is.
Another important release of 2013 - Ghost, by the quickly rising Anup Sastry, or Anus Pastry, as his beloved fans call him. Here I was thinking that Anup is just one of the most technically sane drummers of today's prog era, having played for Skyharbor, Jeff Loomis and Intervals. But this album shows Anup in his Beast form, with tight grooves as usual, and also some razor sharp riffs and quality mixing. And to make this twice as appealing, Anup Sastry is offering this album in its entirety for a "Name your own price" download on Bandcamp! And yes, free counts as a price, but it wouldn't hurt to spare some cash if you can, especially since Jeff Loomis and crew were robbed recently of all their musical gear and belongings.
My last band for this update - Skyharbor. Skyharbor have also recently put up, well not a trailer as it's too soon, but a recording of one of their jamming/writing sessions. It's quite amazing to see how their music has been evolving too, so keep some of that hard earned money aside for this release next year. Find more updates at their Facebook page.
2013 looks to be promising, as we also have Dream Theater almost wrapping up their recordings in the studio for their upcoming album. So watch this space for more updates, critique and emotion as some of the best artists of the prog world are on the verge of making 2013 one of the more important years in the progressive history.
2013 looks to be promising, as we also have Dream Theater almost wrapping up their recordings in the studio for their upcoming album. So watch this space for more updates, critique and emotion as some of the best artists of the prog world are on the verge of making 2013 one of the more important years in the progressive history.
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