Welcome to Prog‘s brand new Tracks Of The Week. Six brand new and diverse slices of progressively inclined music for you to enjoy.
A huge ‘well done’ to French progressive rock quintet Oddleaf whose Ethereal Melodies stormed to victory last week. Even more impressive when you consider the band have just released their debut studio album Where Ideal And Denial Collide. Chicago instrumental proggers Outrun The Sunlight were in second place with UK dark proggers Crippled Black Phoneix in third place.
The premise for Tracks Of The Week 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 – 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?
TIBERIUS – TIP OF THE SPEAR
Young Scottish prog metal quintet Tiberius are back with a real rip-snorter of a single in Tip Of The Spear. The band’s brand-new single comes ahead of their second album, Singing For Company, which the band will release on March 21. With its roots in prog metal, Tip Of The Spear shows a mature genre fluidity too – is that echoes of Steven Wilson we hear in the breakdown? – with some real powerhouse vocals from Grant Barclay and fizzing guitar work from Jahan Tabrizi and Chris Foster. Expect big things!
NINE STONES CLOSE – HOLE
International progressive rock band Nine Stones Close, with members from the UK, Ireland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, have just released their latest album, Adventures In Anhedoni, from which comes the reflective Hole. Amazingly it’s the band’s second album release of the year – they dropped Diurnal back in June. Adventures In Anhedonia is a deeply personal album, lyrically reflecting on the mental health and well-being of individuals, based on the personal experiences and traumas of guitarist Adrian Jones.
“It really reflects what’s been happening to me over the past years, the effect it’s had on me, and how I have tried to deal with some of it,” explains Jones.
COULD SEED – VENTS SOLAIRES
French progressive rock quartet Could Seed show their adeptness, shifting into a post-rock vibe for their new single Vents Solaires, which is taken from their recently released album The Drop Crisis, out now through Klonosphere Records/Season Of Mist. The band draw inspiration from US proggers Elder and US post-rockers Caspian, while there are also shades of Icelandic heroes Sigur Rós in their shifting sound too.
“Among all the cathartic burns and sad, tragic albums of post-rock, Could Seed takes the side of bringing a glimmer of hope and happiness into the storms of life,” they say. “Vent Solaires is just such an image, the clip retracing the sum of beautiful memories of a fulfilled and worthwhile life at death’s door. A few minutes to deny, to fear, and finally to understand that it’s time to serenely move on to another stage of the journey.”
KROKOFANT – HARRY DAVIDSON
The jaunty and upbeat Harry Davidson is the first new music to be taken from Norwegian Jazz Rockers Krokofant’s upcoming album 6. And yes, as you guessed it, it is the trio’s sixth album and will be released through Is It Jazz? Records on the January 10. The influence of both Soft Machine and King Crimson is still strong in the band’s music, and if you were wondering about the choice of name, yes, it’s taken from a mythical creature featured in a popular Norwegian children’s song – a cross between an elephant and a crocodile, “a lumbering trumpeting beast with a fearsome array of teeth in its snapping jaws…”
“Harry was composed some years ago, and has been sneaking into our repertoire whenever we performed live as a trio, which was during the period when we mostly performed as a quintet with Ståle Storløkken on keys and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass,” explains the band’s Tom Hasslan. “With its heavy riffs and a catchy sax melody on top “Harry” comes off like a classic Krokofant tune with all the traits from our earlier releases as a trio. It drives into a shreddy/quasi skronki guitar solo, complemented by a deep synth bass and creative groove-based drums.”
DANEFAE – FUGLEKONGEN
Danish prog metal quartet Danefae sound at their most beguiling on new single Fuglekongen, built, as it is, on the haunting melody from Saint-Säens Danse Macabre. The new single is taken from the band’s upcoming second album Trøst (Danish for ‘Solace’), which will be released on January 31.
Trøst doesn’t convey a general thematic thread but contains various stories about being human, specifically from vocalist and lyricist Anne Olesen’s personal perspective.
“Fuglekongen is a theft,” laughs Olesen. “I stole one of the themes from the classical piece Danse Macabre by Saint-Säens. The mystical interweave of death and life gave me the inspiration to write like a conspiracy theorist: About the little Goldcrest as a symbol for our actions being governed by anything else than our free will.”
LAWRENCE ENGLISH – EVEN THE HORIZON KNOWS ITS BOUNDS
Artist, composer and curator Lawrence English might be an unknown quantity to some, but we’re pretty sure more than a few of you will be taken with the gentle atmospheric sound of Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds with its echoes of Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze at their most minimalist and pastoral. “I like to think that sound haunts architecture,” says the Australian-based English, who releases his new album of the same name on January 31, via his own label Room 40 – celebrating 25 years in 2025.
“Place is an evolving, subjective experience of space,” adds English. “Spaces hold the opportunity for place, which we create moment to moment, shaped by our ways of sense-making. Whilst the architectural and material features of space might remain somewhat constant, the people, objects, atmospheres, and encounters that fill them are forever collapsing into memory.”
