Hteththemeth - Telluric Inharmonies Year: 2025
Score: 75
Style or Subgenre: Experimental/Post Metal
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 98th
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A mostly brilliant album! At most points, avant garde/post metal proggers Hteththemeth (no, I'm not going to try to pronounce their name) prove themselves to be more than capable of moving the genre forward without losing what makes it great. This modern album is all over the place in multiple ways, but the most obvious is the breadth of languages delivering sung lyrics and spoken word, including as a minimum, English, Italian, and I'm guessing Romanian. The only things holding me back from really going gaga over this album are that there is too much of that spoken word for my taste, and it does seem to get a little to pretentious at time (but hey, it's prog right?) If you reach a point where you're starting to think there's nothing new under the musical sun, give this 2025 release a spin.
Magic Pie - Maestro Year: 2025
Score: 90
Style or Subgenre: Symphonic Prog, Heavy Prog
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 6th
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Lots putting this 2025 release at the Heavy Prog end side of Symphonic Prog. The reverent references are there across multiple prog genres, but I'm not going to mention because, no matter what you might hear in there, this music deserves to be heard on its own terms. It is catchy. It is groovy. It is epic. It is brilliant. The compositions, the musicianship, the delivery, the grandiosity! This is everything a modern prog album should be, and then some.
The opening Opus Imperfectus Pt.1 - The missing chord is an 18 minute super-epic full of heavy, crunchy guitars, synth effects, foot tapping grooves, biting folk-melody vocals, ever changing moods, and a rhythm section constantly displaying their skill and versatility.
The following By the Smokers Pole is a ballad that turns eerie before going all over the top power ballad, and again, there is melody to spare. It's a little deliberate in its attempt to pull the heartstrings, but it does it all so well, there's no point in complaining.
Name It To Tame It is a scorching rocker with a quirky bridge throwing some serious edginess in the midst of all all that flaming hot blues metal.
Kiddo... is a brief acoustic interlude that acts as an intro to the following Somebody Else's Wannabe. As the title hints, this is a treatise against modern media, but it does so with a killer groove that propels the satirical and sneering lyrics.
The penultimate Everyday Hero carries the groove into a different lyrical realm swimming in toe tapping arena-friendly presentation punctuated with theatrical flair.
After all that groovyness and satirical commentary, the group bookend the album with Opus Imperfectus Pt.2 - Maestro, which is not as epic as the opener, but closes the story well with soaring, supermelodic guitar solos over ever swelling symphonic chords before ceding to a clever keyboard fade.
This is a journey, and a fantastic one at that, sure to stir major excitement in any proghead, young or old.
Festa Mobile - Diario di Viaggio Della Festa Mobile Year: 2025
Score: 90
Style or Subgenre: Rock Progressivo Italiano
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 14th
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Don't let the not-so-festive album cover fool you, there is glorious music contained within. One of the more obscure of RPI's one-off albums from their golden age (1973 in this case), Festa Mobile's only LP is a symphonic RPI lover's dream come true. Symphonic in scope and attitude, but rock and roll all the way, with all the classical influences one would expect from a classic RPI album, this thing tickled my ear from start to finish. My only complaint is that that period was far too short, with this thing clocking in at a scant 32 minutes. I want more!. When a prog group finds a funky groove and cruises along with harpsichord... yeah, I dig. There's also some very tasty guitar work on this album. Yet another Italian obscurity will be fighting for time in my very crowded rotation, and it will win.
Cosmic Cathedral - Deep Water Year: 2025
Score: 70
Style or Subgenre: Neo Prog
My Rank in Year as of this listen: not in top 100
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As if the indefatigable Neal Morse didn't have enough projects in his life, here comes yet another in 2025, Cosmic Cathedral. Actually, this is a supergroup with the highly revered Phil Keaggy on guitar, highly sought out session man Bryon House on bass and Chester Thompson (Zappa, Genesis, Weather Report) on drums. Make no mistake though, this is a Morse project through and through. For me, that turned out to be both good and bad. On the good side, I tend to love Morse's musical approach and style, and there's no mistaking his musical vibe as the dominant force on this music. On the not so good side, Morse abandons any pretense of his pseudo spiritual songwriting here and goes full on with the contemporary Christian messaging. Indeed, it was hard not to think myself standing in some SoCal megachurch with all the pretty young faithful, arms raised and fingers extending to the heavens, swaying in union. The real problem though is that after a teaser of a progressive opening, the middle of the album is dominated by watered down contemporary Christian pop, so I don't even have the expected great music to hold my interest when the lyrics lose me. The exception to this is Keaggy's guitar, which has more than a few glorious moments. I hate to say it, but I'm much more familiar with his acoustic work and really wasn't expecting such tasty passages. The album does tease us with a hint of prog as the title cut, a 28 minute, nine part epic begins. But in addition to it also falling into contemporary Christian tropes and unimaginative music, the whole thing lacks the cohesion as, say Morse's side long suites that populate his Transatlantic albums. Indeed, I did like the instrumental passages, but that was about it.
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