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Progressive Rock CD Reviews

The Wild Beyond The Wild Beyond Review by Gary Hill This has a lot in common with jam band music. It also seems related to stoner metal, shoegaze and more. Yet, I’d consider it progressive rock overall. It’s modern progressive rock for sure, and in some ways it’s progressive just because of its blending of sounds. No matter the genre labeling, though, this thing rocks. It is powerful and effective and just such a great set. This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2015 Volume 2 at lulu.com/strangesound.

Track by Track Review

Fire's Body This screams out with a hard edged, fast paced jam that’s got a cool groove to it. It moves out from there to some more melodic music. This is part space rock, part jam band and part AOR prog. There are definitely some serious hard edged mainstream rock sections to this thing. A mellower movement around the three and a half minute mark is great. It moves out to a psychedelic rock meets jam band section after that movement. It works through a number of shifts and changes as it continues to move forward, getting very hard rocking at times.

Just One Drop This comes in hard rocking, but much more mainstream prog in some ways. That section holds it for the first vocal movement. Then they take it out into some psychedelic prog from there. A fast paced movement that has a lot of fusion in the mix, twists it this way and that. That eventually works out to more mainstream hard rock.

Reflex Driver This screamer is far less proggy than much of the rest. It’s more of a psychedelic rock meets alternative jam. It’s high energy and very substantial, though. It does work out to more of a jam meets space section later, though. That movement brings it more into progressive rock territory.

Wake Up Although this is a scorching hard rocker, it does have some elements of AOR prog in the mix. It’s also very psychedelic. There is definitely a lot of space rock in this. Yet, it also quite literally screams.

Opening At over twenty three minutes in length, this is definitely the epic of the piece. It starts with throat singing and moves forward gradually from there. This grows gradually outward in a noisy kind of psychedelic rock meets trippy prog jam. There is almost a noisy drone sound to this. Somehow it feels a bit like crazed jazz, too. It changes incrementally as it works its way forward. Various melodies threaten to rise up but never do. Eventually, after the twenty minute mark, it works out to mellower sounds to take it eventually to a fuzz laden bit of space near the end. Some guitar soloing that makes me think a bit of Jimi Hendrix is heard as this is taken to its conclusion. This definitely makes me think of Neil Young’s Arc album quite a bit.

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Metal/Prog Metal

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Progressive Rock

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