New music just keeps on coming out! How is one supposed to keep up?? And other trite introductions.

Today I have stuff that’s not THAT new. Albums from Extinction in Progress, Father John Misty, and Luminous Vault. Two of those you haven’t heard of! Don’t even bother.

Extinction in Progress – Shades of Pale
(April 21, 2022)

Extinction in Progress formed in 2011 and spent the next eleven years doing whatever it is that Finnish people do. Eating snow? Avoiding eye contact with one another? At any rate, the extreme sorta-metal band furnished the public with a pretty neat debut album in April.

Speedy technical drums and almost-screamo yelling caused me to think I was listening to a Converge / Dillinger Escape Plan mathcore clone at first, but the progression through the first track alone shows a lot of the record’s stylistic range: soaring minor key melodic passages, subdued guttural gothic soliloquys, female vocal chants and whispers, slow proggy sidebars. Pretty interesting combination, honestly. A complex tapestry!

I’m reminded of the engrossing extreme prog metal of Rivers of Nihil, which I also really liked, but that’s admittedly because of the smooth jazz saxophone solos on tracks like “The Loudest Silence”. Still though, it’s pretty ballsy to bust out the Kenny G shit on your aggressive record of growlin’ and hollerin’. But there’s also some of that luxuriant, contrasting beauty from other instruments! Like…uh…the descending piano arpeggios on the final 10-minute track “Motherland”! That’s some good stuff.

Not once in its perfect length of 44 minutes is there a lull in its vibrancy. And with all the different musical styles and (at least) three distinct vocal types, the ear stays interested. Nothing better than diversity and interesting…ness. I always say.

Early Verdict:

Father John Misty – Chloë and the Next 20th Century
(April 8, 2022)

Josh Tillman goes in a completely different direction with his fifth album and gifts us with a whole load of really boring, straightly presented, mellow ’30s big band and swing jazz tunes. I don’t like it.

I’m not the biggest Father John Misty fan anyway, but I like his sardonic and often bizarre lyrical style, and that hasn’t changed here at all. In fact, pull up the lyrics from any song off of Chloë and the Next 20th Century and you’ll never know that they accompany Sinatra-style crooning lounge jazz or James Taylor-y singery-songwritery twangy country stuff. “When I ask what he wants/His only response/Is a single word less than I need/He watches TV/She reads the I Ching/And I keep my face nearly straight/When he tries to leave“. How about that one? Or maybe “Everything you want/What’s the fun in getting everything you want?/I wouldn’t know, but look, baby, you should try/Forget that lefty shit your mom drilled in your mind“. See? Exciting.

The music is colorful; filled with pretty harmon-muted trumpets, metallophone exotica, slow drum shuffles, plinky and tastefully schmaltzy piano balladry, sweeping string arrangements, baleful and dryly emotional outpourings. Some tracks are somber, vocal-forward, easy-listening country music. A couple of the more energetic tracks don’t really get that close to “energetic” anyway. You won’t even notice.

Perhaps the most engaging track, and my only takeaway, is “Q4”. It bounces and flourishes along with bubbly orchestral decadence. A tune you could actually put on repeat and not lose your fucking mind. It’s the literal centerpiece of the record, smack dab right in the middle.

After that, it’s back to being glazed over again. 51 minutes, and most of it is brain-numbing. HERE, HAVE SOME POSITIVES: Tillman’s voice has never been better, the lyrics are great, the music is gorgeous. It’s one of the biggest oh-wells I’ve ever awarded.

Early Verdict:

Luminous Vault – Animate the Emptiness
(May 20, 2022)

Check out that dripping incandescent rainbow album art! I love colors! Perfect 10 on the art alone. No need to listen to the music, I’ve made my decision.

No? OK. Luminous Vault is an industrial black metal band. They don’t sound like the KMFDM of industrial black metal like Aborym, nor do they sound like the Agoraphobic Nosebleed of industrial black metal like Anaal Nathrakh. They’re more like the Legendary Pink Dots of industrial black metal! OK, this paragraph sucks. Let me start over.

This band is an even merging of industrial electronica and extreme metal. You know what you’re getting into right off the bat with a buzzing synth prelude. It immediately lets any metalheads who take themselves too seriously know that they should bow out right away before they accidentally listen to too much electronic bleeping and blooping and lose their cred. For the rest of us, this is interesting stuff! I’m not a stranger to industrial black metal; it’s probably in my top three of the 900 black metal subgenres! Luminous Vault’s debut, Animate the Emptiness, puts the focus on melancholy clean, traditional guitar riffs and gritty, hoarse vocals while sprinkling in occasional thumping EDM beats and fizzling synth crescendos. Almost all of the percussion is unsynthesized, so there’s a lot of warmth to the sound…as much as raspy black/doom metal can really be.

I’m impressed with the music’s vividness. Maybe it’s the colorful album cover, maybe it’s the inclusion of power metal major chords, maybe it’s the chugging, hook-laden melodic phrases… ultimately, what does it for me is that there’s lack of cheese in spite of all the possible avenues leading to cheesiness. I never feel stupid for listening to this like I would for any ’90s industrial or nu-metal act. Or straight power metal, or prog metal, or melodic death metal, yada yada yada. Never, in 36 minutes, do I feel like something is incredibly lame. That’s quite a feat from a genre dominated by edgelord nerds.

I’ve yammered enough about this album. See you next time.

Early Verdict: