Grave Digger - Symbol of Eternity (2022)

Country: Germany
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 26 Aug 2022
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A couple of years ago, I reviewed Grave Digger's twentieth album, Fields of Blood, which served as a double celebration, because it was also their fortieth anniversary as a band. That suggests a two years per album schedule and they're maintaining that here because the twenty-first has shown up right on time. The best and worst things to say about it are the same: it's, well, another one.

I like Grave Digger, though my era with them was in the mid-eighties when they were a rough part of the German scene with their sound rooted in speed metal. Many fans see their heyday as being in the early noughties with their shift to power metal and epic concept albums like Rheingold. It's as fair to say that this album looks back to both those eras as it would be to say that it ignores the late eighties commercial era spent as Digger or Hawaii. They know what they want to play ongoing and they're rich in back catalogue to fall back on. The question is whether the new material stands up against the old and I can see mixed feelings on that.

I miss the speed and the rough edges, though the former shows up at points of emphasis, like the beginning of King of the Kings, and the latter shows up unexpectedly on the anomalous title track which does a lot of things I wouldn't have expected. There's a lot more of the power metal, with its slicker production and more overt hooks, and my comparison last time out to Sabaton is still valid, though there's plenty of Blind Guardian this time too. There's also some admirable variety but it's generally there to underline how this could have been much more than it is.

That title track is one example, because it starts out slow and doomy, Chris Boltendahl's vocals an exercise in roughness playing out over delicate guitar picking for an odd contrast. A rousing power metal bridge leads to a plodding but melodic chorus and the song would have been better had the evolution continued but instead it just runs through the cycle again. Saladin feels like a breath of fresh air after it, being a brief middle eastern intro to Nights of Jerusalem, but the song proper is not up to the intro, as a decent but undistinguished power metal song.

And most of what populates this album are decent but undistinguished power metal songs. I can't say that I didn't enjoy them, because I did—they're inherently likeable, enough that I almost sang along with a bunch on my first listen—but I also can't say that I didn't forget them as soon as they gave way to the next. In my book, that puts them a solid notch above filler material but only one, a notch down from truly being recommended.

What ranks above that level? I'd throw out King of the Kings, with its urgent speed metal opening, but it's the exact same urgent speed metal opening as Battle Cry two songs earlier. I don't believe the two songs are related, so why they should launch with the same riff, I have no idea. It feels off. So maybe it's only Grace of God, because that's easily the best and most successfully unusual track on offer, as memorable as everything else isn't.

It's another power metal song, of course, but this one benefits from strong orchestration and the mindset that the intro doesn't have to just be an intro. It's a delicate affair, vaguely mediaeval in feel, and it returns at points when the song drops into quieter sections. Some return to that neat mediaeval guitarwork, while others drop into unusual vocal sections. Some feel choral, some more theatrical but they all do much the same thing in subtly different ways, transformed only by their backing or the lack of it. All of them work well and I kept coming back to this song, even if it has no speed metal to be found anywhere in it. I almost felt bad that I didn't go back to King of the Kings in the same way.

And so, while some fans may be mourning how far this falls short of their choice of heyday, but I'm just seeing it as a disappointing follow-up to Fields of Blood. It's an easy album to like but it's not a release to remember.

The Dead Daisies - Radiance (2022)

Country: Australia
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Sep 2022
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It's only been a year since the previous Dead Daisies album, Holy Ground, but they're back already with a new one, which is their sixth. I had an odd reaction to that one, because nothing popped on the first listen but everything popped on the second. That's not a typical reaction for me, where it plays that black and white, but this album wasn't far different. Once again, most of these songs, as capable as they obviously were, left me dry on a first listen, only to pop nicely on a second. If there was a difference, it was that a couple of songs grabbed me a little quicker.

They waited a while though. It was Kiss the Sun, which kicks off the second half, that made me pay attention first. I think that's because it has a real mood to it. It looks and swirls and feels like it's a lot bigger than it is, as if there are a dozen musicians behind Glenn Hughes, who gets plenty to do and clearly has a blast doing it. He's a highlight throughout the album, as we all expect him to be, but he doesn't showboat to steal the spotlight. In particularly, the guitar of Doug Aldrich is strong throughout too and both of them seem to enjoy pushing each other just a little bit further.

Courageous followed it up well, achieving much the same effect, albeit not to the same degree. An impressively simple Sabbath-esque riff impressed on Cascade too, so that was three in a row on a first listen. The rest waited for the second and, once again, they all play in a way that remind of an array of influences without any song actually sounding like it could be by anyone else. That begins with the opener, Face Your Fear, which is half AC/DC and half Bad Company, the first half being the music for the most part and the second half being the vocals.

There's more AC/DC in Hypnotize Yourself, but not as much and not for as long. Hughes channels a soulful David Coverdale style for the verses before going back to AC/DC for the chorus, but there's a nineties feel to it too, as if some famous band from that decade were covering the Aussies, even if I couldn't tell you which one. Shine On has a heavier take on the same vibe. The fundamental riff shifts from AC/DC to Metallica, commercial era, though Hughes remains himself and doesn't take on either of those styles. That slightly grungy back end remains throughout as a backdrop.

If Hughes is channelling an influence, maybe there's some Chris Cornell there, but I'm stretching a little now. Hughes seems to have been around forever, even if he didn't join the Dead Daisies until 2019, replacing John Corabi—not a line-up change I ever expected to acknowledge—and he has an enviable back catalogue to trawl through. After all, he'd knocked out a couple of Trapeze albums a few years before joining Deep Purple in 1974, the first of them a year before I was even born and I can't be described as a spring chicken in my second half century.

What's telling here is that he still feels fresh. He's a little further down in the mix than I'd expect, which means that it can feel like he's surrounded by four walls of sound. He often seems happy for that during the verses of a song, only to elevate himself into a more overt chorus with emphasis. I love that he still has such passion for music that he's still evolving his sound. I wonder if he sees his efforts with the Dead Daisies as a way to look forward musically as a counter to the way he's able to look backward with Black Country Communion. I realise that's an overly simplified take but it's not an unfair one.

And all this talk of Hughes means that I'm not talking about Doug Aldrich, which is unfair because he's actually the highlight for me across a swathe of this album. It's Aldrich who sets the tone on a song and he delivers some serious solos. The best one early is on Hypnotize Yourself but he's even better on Kiss the Sun and Courageous, the latter of which sneaks past the former to be my choice for the highlight of the album, perhaps with Cascade behind it and maybe Shine On or Not Human after that. He's hardly a new fish either, with decades of work with bands like Dio and Whitesnake going back to Bad Moon Rising and Lion. He's stronger here than I remember him last time out, but I've been a fan for a long time.

I should mention the other members of the band, given that David Lowy is the Dead Daisies' only founder member and the driving force behind them. He's on rhythm guitar as always, while Brian Tichy is back on drums, oddly on his third stint in a band that's only been around for a decade. This is his first album back and only his second with the band after Make Some Noise in 2016. They seem very tight but then this band has maintained a revolving door of a line-up throughout their time. I wonder if that's partly why they can keep knocking out albums and for them to keep sounding this good.

Megadeth - The Sick, the Dying... and the Dead! (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 2 Sep 2022
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Ah, Megadeth. I have a kind of a love/hate relationship with them and I have had for a long time. I came along too late to witness the birth of thrash metal, but only just. I found Metallica when Ride the Lightning came out, which was a second album and the same went for Slayer and Anthrax; the debuts were already out and I joined the fray when their follow-ups were released. However, I was able to buy Megadeth's debut when it came out, making them the last of the Big Four for me. It's fair to say that it was a memorable purchase, though, as I'd ordered it from my local W. H. Smith's, a British newsagent chain, with a gift voucher I'd got for Christmas, to the horror of the old lady at the counter. Remember that cover? I bet she does.

I played that first album incessantly and I appreciated the next couple as well. Eventually, I drifted away from them, though, in a way I never did with their peers, even Metallica when they abdicated from their thrash throne with the Black Album. I came to think of Megadeth not as a band but as a combination of snarling vocals and memorable riffs, half important reference point in the growth of the metal genre and half catchy WWE entrance theme. Intellectually, I know that they're a heck of a lot more than the killer first minute of Symphony of Destruction but that became the label I'd stick on all their music in my head.

How justified is that? Well, here's their sixteenth studio album in yet another try to shift them to a different bucket in my head. It's generous at fifty-five minutes, with a couple of bonus tracks on the deluxe edition to take it past the hour mark. Dave Mustaine doesn't mumble on it the way my son keeps telling he does at gigs nowadays, when he goes to see their support bands, even though he does seem to narrate as much of this album as he sings it. Whole sections of Dogs of Chernobyl, Sacrifice and others fit that bill and it's not hard to imagine it becoming mumbling on stage, even if not all of it on the album is him. He's not keen on converting me back to the fold.

The guitars are much more likely to do that. The worst riffing here is capable and there are plenty of excellent riffs to get stuck in our heads. The first one that stood out as a highlight for me was on Life in Hell but Night Stalkers is even better. While I'm not convinced there isn't a set of homages in the lyrics, given how many iconic songs by other bands are namechecked, it's ostensibly about a bunch of fighter pilots at war and the buzzsaw guitar appropriately mimics those planes diving out of the sky. Even lesser songs like, say, Junkie, are elevated by simple but strong riffs and excellent guitar solos. Better ones, such as Mission to Mars and Célebutante, simply start out better and so are elevated higher.

Mustaine is a good part of that, of course, and I've long appreciated him more as a guitarist than a vocalist, but the second guitarist here is Kiko Loureiro who dovetails with him wonderfully. He's been with Megadeth since 2015 but was with Angra before that, a superb power metal band from Brazil. Given that drummer Dirk Verbeuren is a Belgian best known for Swedish melodeath outfit Soilwork, that makes Megadeth pretty international nowadays. Apparently James LoMenzo is on bass again nowadays, having previously left in 2010, but that's not him on this album, because it's Testament's Steve DiGiorgio on bass throughout.

Oddly, such a different line-up to those I remember doesn't really help change them in my mind. I enjoyed the majority of this album, with the downside being that it's too long and could have well benefitted from ditching a couple of the more obviously filler tracks, but I found that enjoyed it in the same way I always do. The strong aspects are the guitars, which are excellent throughout, and the catchiness of some of the songs. My list of favourite songs is identical to my list of the catchiest songs on offer. I'd call out Killing Time and Soldier On! here except that Célebutante arrives right after them and seems like a breath of fresh air every time.

Where that leaves me is an album that underwhelmed but which features a long list of highlights, a contradiction that's at the heart of Megadeth for me. The better songs only improve with every repeat listen but the lesser songs only vanish further. I believe this would have felt much stronger at forty minutes, keeping early gems like Life in Hell and Night Stalkers, but ripping out the lesser material that starts with Dogs of Chernobyl, a bloated track that seriously drags the album down, far enough that it doesn't pick up until Killing Time, at which point everything should be kept. The last few songs are so great that Célebutante feels like a shot of adrenaline that Mission to Mars and, to a lesser degree, We'll Be Back live up to.

And so this is a 7/10 from me, but it's really an 8/10 album that occasionally makes me think about 9/10, especially as it's wrapping up, that happens to be wrapped around a 5/10 album. That means that Megadeth are still able to seriously deliver the speed and power but they're not firing on all cylinders. They need to find enough distance from their material to ditch the baggage and blister.

Mauser - Más Fuerte Que la Muerte (2022)

Country: Peru
Style: Hard and Heavy
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 18 Oct 2022
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I'm liking a lot of what I'm hearing come out of Peru nowadays, because it's consistently good and because it arrives in greater quantities than it does from other South American countries except for Brazil and Argentina, both of which are far larger. What's more, I'm not discerning any overtly Peruvian sound, so these bands tend to surprise by how different they are from each other, as they do from Finland and Greece too.

Mauser are merely the latest Peruvian band to show up on my radar, but they sound very good to me. They hail from Miraflores, which is a district of the capital Lima, and they're on the hard rock side of the boundary with heavy metal, even though they do cross it. This is an all important third album for them, following a self-titled debut in 2014 and a follow up, El fin, in 2019, which I believe means The End and thankfully wasn't.

I like their sound best when it's at its heaviest, which means a sort of early Dio sound, if you recall the stormers that he tended to start his albums with, songs like Stand Up and Shout and We Rock that were his most metal. That often happens early in songs here, including the title track, Voces and Llevas Dentro. Not all of them remain that heavy, which is fine because Mauser shift between genres well, but they do the urgent parts even better. What's odd is that vocalist Alex Rojas, who's clearly been listening to Dio for a long time, doesn't imitate him too often, though there are parts where it's unmistakable, especially in his sustains and in his phrasing at the end of Hey!, which is a combination of Dio and Chris Cornell.

Hey! is a great example to throw in here, because it fits seamlessly within Mauser's general sound but takes it in another new direction. This is a looser, bluesier song from the outset and it includes a stellar guitar solo from César Gonzáles that's hinted at in the opening. It's Gonzáles who may be most responsible for the variety here, because what tone his guitar has on a particular track is the most important element of flavour. Much of his influence seems to be from the eighties and I have no doubt that he's a Vivian Campbell fan, but there's plenty of nineties here too, as the grungier and groovier aspects of the title track suggest.

In fact, those two styles merge there, when the atmosphere of Cruces, the intro to both that song and the album as a whole, shifts into song proper. Initially, it's that Campbellian sound, playful and elegant. Then the title track kicks in almost like a melodic thrash song, as if Campbell had handed over to Alex Skolnick. And then, just to keep us on the hop, it shifts into groove metal, albeit firmly on the hard rock side of the fence, so making us think grunge. It's a very nineties sound built on an eighties base with some nods back to the seventies too.

While I automatically respond to those urgent songs, I think my favourite here is Explotaré, which is hard to define too, because it adds prog into the mix. It's initially accessible hard rock, the firm confident vocals of Alex Rojas leading the way but also in conversation with Gonzáles's guitar. But, right before the first minute is up, it drops tantalisingly into acoustic mode, only to power back up in a Nirvana-esque transition. The same thing happens again a minute later and then further into the song at greater length, because the acoustic side takes us home instead of transitioning back up again. It segues well into the piano and rain of Hey! too.

In other words, there's a lot here and the particular ways by which it's mixed sound like they might be unique to Mauser. To me, that's an automatic recommendation. I like bands who sound only like themselves, even if I can spot obvious influences here and there. Mauser kept me on the hop and I liked that a lot. Now I should track down their first two albums.

Stratovarius - Survive (2022)

Country: Finland
Style: Power Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 21 Sep 2022
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It's been seven years since Stratovarius put out an album and that's a long time for them, given an interminable habit of line-up changes every five or ten minutes. However, they're as stable as they have ever been, the new fish right now being drummer Rolf Pilve who joined in 2012, meaning that they've gone a decade without a change for only the second time. Anything further would be new territory for them.

The flipside to that admirable consistency is that they've never gone more than four years without a new album until now but it's been seven since 2015's Eternal. It appears that the gap has worked for them though, because this is their highest charting album in both Switzerland and Japan and Switzerland and it topped the Finnish charts, as only three of their fifteen prior albums managed.

The opening title track left me in two minds. I loved how it kicked in hard with machine gun guitar riffs, an approach that sounds great on a few songs here—especially on the intro to Broken—, but didn't like how tinny it all sounded in a section that pauses most of the instrumentation for effect stopped, as if the producer threw a perfectly good song through a filter to make it sound edgy and contemporary. I wasn't as fussed when that filter applied to the vocals of Timo Kotipelto, even if it didn't seem necessary, but it affected the drums of Rolf Pilve and that's harder to accept.

That introduction to a new album left me paying extra close attention to see what else they might do that didn't work for me and the good news is that there really isn't anything else. Survive has a drive to it and a good hook and that mindset, rather than the tinny filter, is what pervades most of the album. Demand picks up the mantle with a good riff and an upbeat feel and we're in motion. I can't say the filter isn't there, especially on the vocals, but it's obvious from moments when songs pause the instrumentation for half a line of lyrics that it's turned down once we get past the title track. Mostly.

The catch is that, while it's all generally perky power metal that's delivered with emphasis and an ear for hook-laden choruses, making it very easy to dig the delivery, especially Matias Kupiainen's guitarwork and often the interplay between his guitar and the bass or keyboards, it doesn't really surprise at any point. The song that stood out for me on a first listen and a second was Glory Days, eight into the album, and even then not because it did something different or unusual but simply because it does the same job as everything else but notably better.

What that means is that, if you like one song then you'll like all of them but, if you don't like that first sample then nothing else is going to convince you. I liked it but I didn't love it. I gravitated to the instrumental sections, where Kupiainen dominates and Jens Johansson makes himself known on keyboards, because these are quintesential power metal with an edge of symphonic metal and I love that sound. However, during the verses and choruses, it often felt like this was pop music at a serious clip and a serious volume. Maybe that's a different filter: take a pop song and apply the symphonic metal filter.

There are only two songs that try something different, both of which start out notably calmly. The first is Breakaway, which takes a full third of its four and a half minute running time to bulk up. It's really a power ballad but an exquisite one. Kotipelto delivers that first third beautifully against a backdrop mostly of orchestration and the point where it heavies up is handled perfectly. The other is the closer, Voice of Thunder, because this is the album's epic at over eleven minutes. To provide a perspective there, only two of the ten others makes it past five.

What surprised me here is how Voice of Thunder ended up playing to me as just another track. It's usually the epics that stand out for me in symphonic metal or even power metal because they're a chance for the band to truly let a piece of music breathe, without boundaries. This one firmly hints at that early on, with a soft introductory vocal set against acoustic guitar and the crackle of a fire and a storm. It beckons us in effectively and the riff that heavies things up is an excellent one. Two minutes in, this was one of my favourites here. By four, it's still decent but no longer special. Once again, Kupiainen elevates it midway with another strong solo, but he can't keep it up there. It's a good song but it's not the favourite that it promised to be.

And with only Glory Days filling that category, I think this has to be an enjoyable 6/10 but nothing higher. I wanted more from a band who have been away from the studio for the longest time in an impressive career that's almost at the four decade mark. Let's hope that they find their way back to the studio soon and knock out something that resonates more deeply. And without the filter of tinniness.

Chez Kane - Powerzone (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Melodic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 21 Oct 2022
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I liked Chez Kane's self-titled debut album last year, albeit not quite as much as its single, Too Late for Love, which was a melodic rock gem right out of the late eighties. This follow-up is even better, more like the single multiplied by ten to flesh out fifty minutes. It does all the things that the first album did but more consistently. There's a little bit more variety, but variety isn't the target here. That's to doubledown on the Chez Kane formula but make it bouncier and catchier and, well, more.

And everything is bouncy and catchy. I Just Want You is a strong bouncy and catchy opener, that's exactly what you think it ought to be, plus a great opportunity for Chez to demonstrate her breath control. (The Things We Do) When We're Young in Love is even bouncier and catchier. And so we go for a while. Sure, Rock You Up is a little poppier, especially early on, feeling like a sing-along party anthem, but it's definitely bouncy and catchy. Sure, Children of Tomorrow starts out a little softer with pop keyboards but it's bouncy and catchy and it builds well with a bagpipe sort of drone. Sure, the title track ups the tempo again. But none of these are huge variants on the formula.

What matters is that the formula works emphatically well here and it keeps on working through a solid array of ten tracks. Well, let's say nine because the closer, Guilty of Love, becomes something more again. It's a tenth solid track for four minutes, which includes a decent guitar solo by Danny Rexon, the lead singer of Swedish glam rock band Crazy Lixx, who once more provides almost all of the instrumentation here—Jesse Molloy handles saxophone, as he did last time too. But, from the four minute mark, it's pretty much all guitar for the entire second half of a song that runs neatly past eight minutes. It's a great Chez Kane song. Then it's a great Danny Rexon song. It's my clear highlight this time out.

In between, there's really not a lot to say. If you're into melodic rock with a strong female voice, a barrage of effortless hooks and an urgent tempo that constantly drives everything forward, then I'd be pretty sure this is right up your alley. Check out any one of these songs on YouTube, if you're unsure, but it really doesn't matter which. I'd suggest I Just Want You or maybe Love Gone Wild, a song with melodies and phrasing reminiscent of Femme Fatale's Waiting for the Big One, but with a less husky voice. Chez is more Pat Benatar than Lorraine Lewis, if you think of All Fired Up more than Love is a Battlefield. And there wasn't a saxophonist in Femme Fatale to add another texture.

And I could rabbit on for longer but there's not much point. Chez was clearly a star in the making a year ago on her solo debut and she's living up to that promise wonderfully. Not only is this a great follow-up, surely one of the melodic rock highlights of the year, but she's being invited onto other albums as a guest, like the debut from Ginevra, a new supergroup on Frontiers featuring Magnus Karlsson and members of H.E.A.T., Eclipse and House of Lords. The future couldn't be brighter for someone who seems to be as humbly down to earth as they come. Now go buy the album.

Lacrimas Profundere - How to Shroud Yourself with Night (2022)

Country: Germany
Style: Gothic Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Aug 2022
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I've been listening to this album, a hopefully lucky thirteenth for a band I enjoyed immensely back at the turn of the century, for a few days now and it's grown on me considerably. My first listen was a little underwhelming but each subsequent run through has improved its stature until I'm having trouble now moving onto the next release in my review queue. However, as much as I enjoy each of the ten individual tracks on offer, their hooks now old friends, this still plays to me as one complete forty minute chunk of doomladen gothic metal rather than a bunch of songs.

Mostly, that's because this is so utterly consistent. Wall of Gloom sets things in motion in style, an agreeably dense mood floating around the pleading vocals of Julian Larre, who had debuted very effectively on 2019's excellent Bleeding the Stars. Those vocals aren't just emotional; they actively reach out to us, involving us in the stories each song has to tell, each of which revolves in some way around the album's theme of being able to step back and disappear, understandable during these troubled times.

The riffs are dark and doomy, but there's a decadent gothic veneer draped over everything. It's all mood and it contributes to the density of this sound, because it isn't just heavy in musical terms, it feels heavy like it's handmade out of polished mahogany and deep velvet that have weight both in the physical sense and in weight of time. They've seen a lot. Much of this comes from the backdrop that hints at storms and fog and other things that can cloak us from the eyes of the world, as only a little creature easily vanished into the grandeur of creation.

That's there on The Vastness of Infinity, where it ought to be, but it's there throughout. That track stands out a little because it returns the album to its core sound after a couple of songs varying it just a little. The first four songs here are all outstanding but do a very similar job in a very similar way, from Wall of Gloom to In a Lengthening Shadow. They're all exactly like what I suggested over my last couple of paragraphs. But The Curtain of White Silence has a different vocal approach and Unseen another. I much prefer the latter to the former and, while it's tough to pick out favourites here, it's safe to say that that's my least favourite.

What The Curtain of White Silence does is take Larre's emotional vocal style and throw it through an emo filter. It's still emotional but it shifts from elegant pleading to unsophisticated whining. It isn't a good shift, though it doesn't clash with the music behind it. Maybe children of the nineties may dig it a lot more than I do. Unseen goes in the other direction, heavying the vocal up to more of a growl, underlining how a lot of this sound is the sort of gothic metal that evolved from doom/death. To Disappear in You has a neat double vocal, mixing the clean with the harsh and allowing both to continue in their way. These work a lot better for me.

And they lead the way to the final couple of tracks, which are up there with the first four. In fact, if I could ever truly separate these songs out to be able to think of them in isolation, I might suggest An Invisible Beginning as my highlight, with Shroud of Night, the kinda sorta title track, not much of a trek behind it. The catch is that I then roll back around to listen through the album again and find how much I dig Wall of Gloom and A Cloak Woven in Stars and suddenly it's all about how well this plays as an album rather than individual songs.

After a dozen listens, I'd call out the first four and the last two songs as the highlights, which is an impressive amount. They're all heavy and dense and emotional, but they also carry strong hooks, similar ones for sure but strong ones nonetheless. They all take me back to my days in Halifax and the rise of Paradise Lost from doom/death pioneers through gothic metal pioneers to heavy icons dabbling in the new wave. There's a lot from a few of those eras here, but combined into a gothic metal style that's much richer than the bleak sound of Paradise Lost's Gothic album. That's where Lacrimas Profundere live and I couldn't be happier.

Toehider - I Have Little to No Memory of These Memories (2022)

Country: Australia
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 9 Sep 2022
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I hate using the word curiosity, because it conjures up ideas of novelty Christmas singles and that is absolutely not what this is. However, it's a curiosity to me because it does everything and that's kind of the point. That does not mean that it's not immersive and fascinating and worthy of many returns, because it is. Even Mike Mills, the one man behind all Toehider music, acknowledges that "it sounds like a sonic journey through the last 50 or so years of prog rock and metal." While I should clarify that this is far more prog rock than it is metal, he's not wrong.

This is a fifth studio album for Toehider in just over a decade, but that doesn't explain how prolific Mills really is. There are also a whole slew of singles and EPs, which include the twelve he released in 2004 alone, a gimmicky approach that makes him a little less prolific than Buckethead but more than most bands. And he's one guy.

To make this album as accessible as possible, he opens with the single version of The Hoarder, one lively three minute chunk of a larger piece. It's busy and upbeat and rather schizophrenic, because Mills covers a heck of a lot of ground in such a brief span. There's Queen here for sure, but there's plenty that's more modern too, including some post-production glitching for effect. Some of it's as light as a single release might suggest but some of it's pretty heavy too and there's an alternative vibe to what we could call the chorus. It takes a little adjusting to but it's a lot of fun.

And then we get the larger piece that it's excised from, which is the title track that runs for a full forty-seven minutes and forty-seven seconds, as if there's some sort of numerological meaning to it. It's a vocal piece, with the drive of the lyrics having to do with the modern take on memory, an abiding need to experience everything through recordings, even if we're there live. Some sections are clearer to catch than others, but I never managed to follow this lyrically. I was too absorbed in the music. And there's plenty of that.

Initially, though, it's only a vocal piece, because it features half a dozen parallel universe versions of Mike Mills harmonising together, sounding like a bizarre hybrid of Yes and Queen. There are an array of high and low pitches, words and vocalisations, eventually operatic grandeur. Then it shifts quickly into music, as immediately frantic as Liquid Tension Experiment would make it. And we will either find ourselves lost in a bad way, like "What the hell is going on here?" or lost in a good way, because we dig that we have no idea what's happening and let it wash over us until we figure out some of it.

And I recognised a lot of styles. There are ELP keyboards early on. There's some Ian Anderson type vocals a little later. There's some Genesis. There's definitely more Yes in the layering a quarter of the way into the song. That's a great period because it shifts into something sassy and funky, only to shift back to Yes again. The sheer variety on offer brings Mr. Bungle to mind, but this rarely has anything else to compare directly with that famously schizophrenic band. There's definitely genre-hopping here, but within the rock and metal spectrums rather than beyond it.

The first and only logical stop is at the sixteen and a half minute mark, where everything ends for a moment and the tone changes completely. My second favourite section is here, because the new sound grows as a swirling synthesiser from which a slow riff gradually materialises. There's Black Sabbath here, of course, and early Sabbath even if Mills's darker voice is closer to Dio than Ozzy, but there are hints of doom metal from much later too.

My favourite section comes later still, around the twenty-six minute mark. It's all bouncy seventies keyboards at this point, with obvious drum programming, but it grows into a sort of maelstrom of heaviness that bursts wide open into riffs. Somehow it finds a way back to keyboards, but they're 8-bit keyboards from the eighties. It's gloriously inventive and it ably highlights how magically Mills can segue from one style into another and back again before going somewhere completely wild in what seems like a completely effortless manner.

Who else is here? There's some Blue Öyster Cult, for sure, in the most commercial section, which is oddly sped up until it finally decides to slow down. However, I feel like I've only scratched a surface of the surface, because there's an astounding amount of depth here. I dig prog rock and I've heard a lot of it, not only from the seventies British standards but from much further afield. However, I'd love to watch a YouTube reaction video to this made by someone who dived into prog in 1970 and is rarely found listening to anything else. I want to know what else is here.

And that's either sold you on this album or driven you completely away from it, depending on your particular tastes. Which is fine. I should add that there are two different endings to this song, one on the CD and the other on the vinyl release. So if you find yourself in the former category, maybe you need to buy this twice.