The Best Progressive Metal Album - Metal Storm Awards 2024

Caligula's Horse - Charcoal Grace

Caligula's Horse pulled out all the stops on the prog front with Charcoal Grace, an album bookended by 10-minute epics and centered around a four-part title track. However, despite all this ambition, the Australians have not overlooked the essentials, as the album is imbued with all the touching melodicism and metallic punch that the band have built their reputation upon. Beautiful melody, powerful riffs, soaring solos, and tender vocals make Charcoal Grace a quintessential example of the band's formidable talents.

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Chapel Of Disease - Echoes Of Light

How do you top something that is already perfect? Coming six years after ...And As We Have Seen The Storm, We Have Embraced The Eye, which caught everyone by surprise, Echoes Of Light is a diverse, progressive, and beautiful album that takes the non-death metal elements of its predecessor and further expands them to the point that Chapel Of Disease have nothing much to do with death metal any more. This album transcends music genres and, just like its cover art suggests, it introduces rays of light through the darkness, while rocking the hell out of this darkness.

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Devin Townsend - PowerNerd

Somebody's let Devy into the coffee again, and now he's powering up nerds everywhere. This album represents an explicit effort by the Candid Canadian to stop overthinking his creative process, and while that is a theme that surfaces throughout, that doesn't mean by any stretch that this album is half-assed: Devin Townsend is a man who doesn't do things by halves (although he is sometimes known to do things by asses). PowerNerd is as eclectic a mix as ever, and it's always extremely big and loud. Sometimes he's zooming around at lightning speed, wearing his underwear on the outside and petting every cat in sight; sometimes he's screaming his deepest insecurities into a void at the edge of the world; sometimes he's retreating into a vulnerable ambience. Wherever the album takes him, Devin's impeccable vocal performances, overwhelming production, freewheeling humor, and earnest self-discovery are constants: reliable trademarks, but no impediments to variety. PowerNerd is another unique gem in a diamond-encrusted discography.

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Dvne - Voidkind

Dvne set themselves an extremely high bar to match with 2021's Etemen Ænka, but through further musical ambition, they have risen to the challenge on Voidkind. The mesmerising dual guitars dancing and interweaving are spectacular, as are the highly varied and wonderfully fitting drum parts from Dudley Tait. There's also an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the endless supply of excellent sludge- and stoner-tinged prog riffs, and the band's post-metal inclinations are explored even further this time around in several of the album's softer and more atmospheric passages; however, this is an album with hair on its chest, from the roaring vocals to some of the higher-intensity surges. Dvne are absolute masters of their craft, and Voidkind is no exception to this.

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Dysrhythmia - Coffin Of Conviction

The first thing to know about Dysrhythmia is that this is an instrumental trio. Everyone knows vocals are the best indicator of genre; lacking that, the riffing follows, and the riffing on Coffin Of Conviction is not something that one would describe as heavy, but rather colorful. Not exactly in a playful or jovial way, more one in which the grooves are twisted, but they do exist as genuine grooves, maybe even pleasantly melodic. Coffin Of Conviction is more Don Caballero-style math rock spiced with King Crimson avant-jazz-prog than a complete assault on the senses, both in the density of notes and in the density of the production. Sure, it's not without its metalness, as we've already placed it on the border, but a lot of it more akin to the noodliest of Cynic's moments.

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Homecoming - Those We Knew

The delicious combination of stoner, sludge, post-metal, and grunge within a progressive metal framework on this album allows one to draw comparisons to various outstanding bands, including the likes of Elder, Baroness, Mastodon, and Alice In Chains, but Homecoming are impossible to pigeonhole on Those We Knew. At different moments, the album offers desert fuzz, serene psychedelia, gnarly heaviness, post-metallic expansiveness, and lush tranquillity, all of which is fed through complex progressive songwriting that will keep listeners on their toes until the very last notes of the record.

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Leprous - Melodies Of Atonement

Not that Leprous have anything to atone for - their explorations of art rock and electronic pop have been beautiful - but it is nice to hear the hard stuff sneaking back in. Smooth and delicate, conspiratorial and passionate, Melodies Of Atonement lets metal creep back into Leprous's soulful prog and churns it until it explodes, stomping back into some heavy tones and grooves that Leprous had leaned away from recently. Even its excesses are still in controlled bursts of round, soft tones and perfectly measured staccato riffs, and with Einar Solberg's gorgeous voice leading the parade, Melodies Of Atonement is one of the most soothing and mellifluous albums of 2024.

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Múr - M​ú​r

What's this?! A debut from an Icelandic band that isn't black metal?! Múr break their national stereotype by being neither black metal, nor atmospheric post-rock, nor quirky art pop. Yes, there are lineup connections to Forsmán, and a lot of similarities in sound to the likes of Sólstafir, but even within the recognizable sound that Múr have created on their debut, there are various strands of it running through each of the songs, some leaning more towards the "sustained" prog of Devin Townsend, some towards the more aggressive prog metal of Meshuggah, some towards the post-metal sound of Cult Of Luna, plus a bunch of other progressive and electronica nuances, and somehow all of these work cohesively on M​ú​r.

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Opeth - The Last Will And Testament

It's an album that made waves due to the return of growls on the part of Mikael Åkerfeldt, but The Last Will And Testament is not a return to the classic prog-death Opeth; instead, the album continues the retro-prog journey that the band have been on since Heritage (even bringing in prog rock royalty like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull as a guest), while bringing back a hint of the dark atmosphere from their earlier albums... and also some growls. The shift in tone makes The Last Will And Testament stand out within the 'dad prog' era of albums from the band, but it also represents further refinement in the approach of one of prog's modern giants.

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Sunburst - Manifesto

Is Kamelot not prog enough for your tastes? Try Sunburst! Yes, it is a bit reductive to tie Sunburst only to the fact that their vocalists sound a lot like Roy Khan, as much as it is a very instant and obvious impression; the instrumental palette also feels closest to Symphony X-meets-Nevermore, with the slight bombast of the former and the occasional gruffness of the latter. Manifesto is less of a flowery cascade of sweeping notes and more riffing that's simultaneously groovy and intricate, with just enough muscle, resulting in a kind of power metal that's grounded.

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