Magnum - On The 13th Day (2012)

 

The 16th album from this band from Great Britain.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

One guest added woodwinds on one track.

The band returned with this one hour long album.

The band continued with their blend of AOR and pomp rock. This album have more AOR than pomp rock, though. There is also some good old style heavy metal here too. 

It seems like the band had now found a new audience plus that they were getting their old fans back into their fold. 

The music is mid-tempo with some catchy tunes. The vocals is very good throughout and there are some good harmonies here.

The result is a pretty pleasing album. There is no really outstanding tracks here. This album is still a pretty good album and one to check out.

2.5 points 

 

Steam Theory - Helios Rider (2012)

 

The second album from this band from USA.

The band was a one-man-band with Jason Denkevitz on bass and guitars.

Three guests added drums and keyboards.

This one hour long album continues on from their 2010 debut album Enduring Delirium. That was a decent enough album that I reviewed earlier this fall.

The music here is instrumental heavy prog. 

It is mostly driven by electric guitars, Jason Denkevitz's favoured instrument. 

The music is mid-tempo and melodic. It has a few interesting pieces too. The pieces of music is well constructed.

Most of the music is pedestrian and not particularly interesting. The result is a decent enough album which does not bring anything new to the scene.

2 points 

 

Stud - Stud (1971)

 

The debut album from this band from Great Britain.

The band was a trio with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars and vocals.

This band released two albums between 1971 and 1972 on the legendary Deram label. The band were a kind of a supergroup with members from Animals, Family and Taste. 

The music on this forty minutes long album is a blend of blues, hard rock and even avant-garde rock.

The album is starting pretty gently with some melodic blues before it enters hard rock territory. 

There is a weird avant-garde drum solo and some other avant-garde stuff halfway through this album before the music makes a retreat into hard blues again.

That makes this album pretty weird. Not to say.... progressive.

The vocals is good and the band does a good job. The sound is also good.

That makes this a decent enough album and one to check out if 1970s rock is your thing. A review of their second album September will follow later this winter.

2 points 

 

Satan - Satan (1973)

 

The one and only album from this band from France.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, organ, moog, keyboards and vocals.

This band is not to be confused with the British heavy metal band of the same name. 

This album was recorded in 1973 and then forgotten until the obscure-albums label Monster Melodies Records released it in 2016. I have gone with the year 1973 as the music is very much early to mid 1970s prog rock.

To be more precise, the music on this thirty-five minutes long album is French symphonic prog, complete with French vocals.

References are Mona Lisa and Ange.

The music is mid-tempo and very much in the 1970s symphonic prog tradition. A tradition that this band probably helped to establish.

The songs are long and complex. They are mid-tempo with some very good musicianship and great vocals. There are some narrations and pastoral pieces here too. The moog sound is great. 

This album is obscure, but still a hidden gem. It is an album that takes the breath away from a symphonic prog fan and a borderline great album. Well, it is a great album and one of the best ever French symphonic prog albums.

4 points 

 

 

Endroom. The - Second Sight (2025)

 

The second album from this band from Norway.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, harmonica, elecronics, male and female vocals.

This is the follow up album to their 2013 self-titled debut album. A decent enough album that I reviewed back in February 2024 for # 3 of this blog.

In that review, I described that album as a blend of old symphonic prog, folk rock and americana. That is also a description who largely fits the three quarters of an hour long Second Sights too. Add some heavy prog too and you get the picture.

It is not a coincidence that large parts of this album remind me of the legendary Norwegian band Thule as their bass player also does the bass on Second Sight and may have added some Thule magic to this album too. Or maybe because both bands originally come from the same place, Honningsvaag, just a few miles from North Cape, the most northern piece of rock in Europe. 

It is debatable if this is progressive rock or not. The music is any case retro 1970s rock with some pretty good male and female vocals. 

The music is melodic, muscular, mid-tempo and sometimes pretty hard. There are some good details scattered around this album too.

The result is a good album who should appeal to everyone into Thule, retro-hard rock and the 1970s rock scene and sound. Check out this album.

3 points

  

 

 

 

Hypnotic Floor - The Friendly Moss Forest Creatures Lived Happily In Perpetual Twilight (2025)

 

The third album from this band from Austria.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, mandolin, keyboards, synths and vocals.

Two guests added violin and female vocals on a couple of tracks.

The band returned again after a four years album break with this forty minutes long album.

The music here is a blend of psych rock, heavy prog and some folk rock and desert rock. That is a heady mix, indeed. 

The music is catchy, mid-tempo, quirky, intricate and slightly jazzy. There is a hippie flower power ambience running throughout this album.

The sound is both organic and great. The vocals is good. The band does a good job too. 

The overall quality here is very good and this is one of the better albums of the year. 

Check out this and their first two albums too. This is a band who deserve a heck of a lot more attention.

3.5 points   

  

Mysteria Noctis - Vespro (2025)

 

The third album from this band from Italy.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

I have not been particularly impressed by their first two albums. Their debut album was a black metal album and their second album was a goth rock/metal album. 

The one hour long Vespro continues in the same vein as the previous album Vulnera from 2020. That means more goth metal and goth rock.

The music is mid-tempo with some sporadic faster pieces of music inbetween. 

The vocals are both male and female. They are thankfully all in Italian as the English vocals on Vulnera were excruciatingly painful. 

The guitar sound is again not particularly pleasing. But it is still an improvement from the previous album.

The result is a decent enough album which will interest those into goth metal and goth rock. 

2 points 

Zen Orchestra - Zen Orchestra (2025)

 

The debut album from this band from Great Britain.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

Three guests added bass and guitars.

The band were formed on the ashes of Walking On Ice who were active some decades ago and released an album back in 1994. An album I have yet to review and I will get onto that this winter.

Zen Orchestra is therefore formed by some experienced musicians. Tragically, their bassist Stewart Milne passed away during the recording and Alberto Rigoni stepped in and helped the band to complete this album.

This fifty minutes long album can best be described as a classic British neo-prog album.

The music is both muscular and bold. There are a lot of multilayered guitars here. The usual Genesis and Yes influences are here too.

The vocals are good and the band does a good job. There are no outstanding tracks here. Nevertheless, this is a good album and one to check out if classic neo-prog is your thing.

3 points 

 

Starlight Brigade - Into The Light (2014)

 

The second album from this band from Sweden.

The band was a project lead by Anders Nilsson who did some guitars and keyboards.

He had help from around a dozen guests who provided drums, bass, guitars, saxophones and vocals.

I reviewed their 2013 debut album Under The Velvet Sky last month and gave it a decent album rating.

Their music is a blend of pomp rock and pomp pop. There is a lot of mainstream rock in their music too. That is the case on their debut album as well as on this fifty minutes long album, the follow up album.

The music is mid-tempo to slow, slick and pretty poppy. There is a lot of pretty good male and female vocals here. There are some guitar solos here too.

The music is pretty pedestrian without any really interesting details. This is by no means a progressive rock album.

The result is still a decent album which may be of interest to those who like pomp pop.

2 points 

 

Solstafir - Berdreyminn (2017)

 

The sixth album from this band from Iceland.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

The band returned again after a three years long album break with this one hour long album.

Their music is pretty weird. The band too is pretty weird, come to think of it. The music is most definate rooted in the barren Icelandic nature and landscape.   

The music here is a blend of post-metal and art-rock. There is even a ballad here and that ballad is very good.

The vocals is both weird and good. They are perfect for their weird music. A more classic rock vocal would have been wrong in their music. 

The music is mostly mid-tempo too with some faster and some slower songs. 

The result is another good album from this band. A band as weird as Iceland itself. Yes, visiting Iceland is on my bucket list. And Solstafir and Sigur Ros will be the soundtrack to that visit.

3 points 

Solum - Avlägsenheten (2024)

 

The second album from this one-man-band from Sweden.

Christian Fredrikson did the drums, percussion, bass, guitars and synths on this album.

He got some help from some guests who added drums, percussion and piano.

I reviewed the 2021 debut album Encountering Murk last month and that was a decent enough album.

The music on this three quarters of an hour long album is instrumental heavy prog.

The music is heavy, bold and soaring majestic. There is indeed some symphonic prog influences throughout this album. 

The music is mainly performed with electric guitars. There riffs, harmonies and multi-layered guitars here. 

The music is also pretty melodic.

The music is a bit run-of-the-mill as there is not much in the way of interesting and exciting music here. The music is not bad. It is just a bit average and workmanlike. This is a decent album but nothing more than that.

2 points 

 

Skyed Pillars - Cloud Opus (2013)

 

The second album from this one-man-band from Germany.

Christian P. Bassett did the bass, guitars and electronics on this album.

He hasreleased two name-your-price Bandcamp albums under this name. My review of his decent enough debut album was posted last month in this blog.

The music on this fifty minutes long album is a blend of instrumental post-rock and space rock.

The music is mid-tempo and pretty pedestrian. The music is based on chugging post-rock like guitars. There are some sporadic variations in the music. Some outbreaks of Sigur Ros like colourful post-rock harmonies. 

Most of the music is straight forward and not particular interesting. 

This is barely a decent album which may be a worthy download if post-rock is your thing.

2 points 

 

 

Zebulon - Come Day Of Reckoning (2025)

 

The debut album from this band from Norway.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars and vocals.

I am pretty fond of doom metal. Classic doom metal, that is. So I jumped on the chance to review this band's debut album.

This album is forty minutes long album and their record label has described the music as epic doom metal. 

I would call it classic doom metal in the same vein as Solitude Aeturnus. Zebulon's sound and music is more gritty and dirty than Solitude Aeturnus. Ditto for Zebulon's raw vocals.

The music is slow and heavy. The sound is dominated by the walls of guitars. The raw and pretty good vocals is also in the forefront of the mix.

The music is pretty good and the band is talented. This is an acceptable debut album which unfortunate is a bit short of good songs. 

2.5 points 

 

Hypnotic Floor - Odd Conjectures (2021)

 

The second album from this band from Austria.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars and vocals.

I had the joy of reviewing their 2020 debut album Foggy Bog Eyes back in July 2020 in # 2 of this blog. That album was a good krautrock album. 

The band has just released a new album, their third album, and I will post a review next week.

Odd Conjectures is a forty minutes long album. The music is a blend of psych rock and heavy prog. It is a kind of krautrock too as it has a lot of jazz influences too. Canterbury prog springs to mind here.

The music is very quirky, yet also melodic. The music is also playful and has a lot of good vocals and details.

The result is a good album and one to check out if quirky, playful prog is your thing.

3 points 

 

 

Mysteria Noctis - Vulnera (2020)

 

The second album from this band from Italy.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

The band debuted in 2015 with the Higher Dimension, which was largely a black metal album. So I did expect something similar on Vulnera, the follow up album.

I got a big surprise.

The music on this forty minutes long album is goth progressive metal with some goth rock and progressive rock influences too. There are still a couple of minutes of some extreme metal here.

The sound is a bit dissonant and ditto for the guitar sound. The goth rock sound is evident here.

The vocals is pretty bad and the guitars are poor. There are some decent music here. There are also some poor music here. The music here sounds half-baked and the result is this half-decent album. An album which is pretty close to being a turkey.

I hope their new album, to be reviewed soon, is better than this album. 

1.5 points 

 

Fallen Letters - Mindfractures (2025)

 

The debut album from this band from India.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, synths and vocals.

The metal and prog scene in India is an emerging scene and one to keep an eye on. We will hear a lot more from this scene in the upcoming years. 

The band has released four EPs and singles before they finally released this album. 

This fifty minutes long album has a lot of variety. The music range from extreme metal to djent, progressive metal and art-rock. All this crammed into fifty minutes.

Their take on progressive metal are more in the Porcupine Tree vein than in the traditional Dream Theater vein. Modern progressive metal is a good label on their music.

The vocals are good and the band does a good job.

The overall quality is good throughout and this is an album well worth checking out. I hope we will hear a lot more from this band in the future.

3 points 

Man - 2 Ozs Of Plastic With A Hole In The Middle (1969)

 

The second album from this band from Great Britain.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, piano, organ, harmonica and vocals.

This forty minutes long album was their second album that year. Which was not particularly unusual those days.  

Their debut album, Revelation, was a pretty good album and one that gave me an appetite for the rest of their albums. The music there was a blend of psychedelia, blues and some early symphonic prog. 

The band continued down the same route on this, the follow up album. The symphonic prog has largely gone though and the music is a lot harder this time around. There is indeed some hard rock here.

Hard psychedelia is a better label on the music here.

The album opens with a weird twelve minutes long psychedelic track. Then we get some more songs focused harder rock. 

The sound is good and ditto for the vocals. There is a lot of guitar solos here. 

There is no outstanding songs here and the music is not as good as on the debut album. This is still a decent album and one to check out.

2 points 

November - En ny tid är här (1970)

 

The debut album from this band from Sweden.

The band was a trio with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars and vocals.

Two guests added vocals and keyboards.

It is appropriate to start November with the debut album by a band called November. This happened by pure accident and I have been lucky here. The band released three albums before they split up and they will be reviewed in this blog.

The main man in this band passed away earlier this year. The band was also one of Mikael Akerfeldt in Opeth's favourite bands. Hence, the band has renewed attention this year. 

The music on this forty minutes long album is hard rock. References are both Budgie and (early) Deep Purple. 

The music is hard and heavy. There are still some melodies here. The guitars are hard and there are some solos throughout this album. The sound is good and very much acceptable.  

The lyrics are in Swedish. The vocals is pretty good. 

The music is decent enough. This album is more of a historic interest as it is one of the first ever hard rock album from Scandinavia. It is still an enjoyable listen in it's own right. 

2 points