This Year’s Shit We Missed from Last Year
It’s that time of year again! That’s right, not much had been released yet, so we looked back at some lauded released that seemed to have eluded us until now. The question we try to answer is, “Do they live up to the hype?” Well, listen and find out!
Rolo Tomasi – Time Will Die and Love Will Bury It (Holy Roar)
Haken – Vektor (Inside Out)
Night Verses – From the Gallery of Sleep (Equal Vision)
Daughters – You Won’t Get What You Want (Ipecac)
Rolo Tomasi – Time Will Die and Love Will Bury It
Haken – Vektor
Night Verses – From the Gallery of Sleep
Daughters – You Won’t Get What You Want
The Sideshow Podcast 
Wow! Pleasantly surprised that you guys reviewed Rolo Tomassi and Haken, as I would consider both of them “Bob” bands.
Haken. Rhymes with bacon. You pronounced it correctly. I just enjoy saying “rhymes with bacon”. I’m a little surprised you had to ask what you’d classify them as, and I don’t think you even mentioned the word “progressive”. They are clearly progressive metal. All those aspects you mentioned about Haken are hallmarks of progressive music, most notably storylines. Those are totally a prog thing. Tommy, 2112, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Thick As A Brick, The Wall, all those are classic concept/story prog rock albums. Add some heavier parts and you have progressive metal, a la Operation Mindcrime, Scenes from a Memory, and Crack The Skye, to name a few. As you may have guessed, Haken is in my wheelhouse. But I didn’t listen to their 2018 release, Vektor – at least not yet. It was released late in the year and I just had other things I wanted to listen to in advance of the year end. I’ll definitely be listening to Vektor at some point in the next couple of months, as I really enjoyed Haken’s previous two albums, The Mountain and Affinity, with the latter coming in at number 12 on my year end list in 2016.
As for Rolo Tomassi, I got into them back in 2012 with the release of their album Astraea. In fact, I don’t expect you to remember this, but waaay back in Episode 98, you reviewed I Wrestled a Bear Once and I wrote in a comment that in terms of that type of band, I preferred Rolo Tomassi. I did in fact buy and listen to “Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It” (you got the title wrong, both in saying it and writing it), and I do like it but it just didn’t sink in enough to make my top 20. I can’t help but compare it to their 2012 album Astraea which I love. I think “Time…” might have *too* much contrast between the atmospherics and the heaviness. Maybe it just has too much of the atmospherics. Plus, “Time…” lacks a killer song on it the way “Illuminare” was on Astraea.
Speaking of atmospherics, I’m totally into atmospheric black metal right now. I’m not quite sure how this happened, but it certainly has to do with the time of year. It just feels right to listen to this type of music at this type of year. Specifically, I’ve discovered Panopticon, Wolves in the Throne Room, and best of the bunch: Ulver’s first album Bergtatt.
Well aren’t we special, getting the album title wrong twice. Well, it’s really me (Brian) since I led that review and wrote the post. Oops!
With Haken, i guess we are used to listening to more modern progressive metal, so while we definitely should have mentioned it – I agree with everything you said – it just didn’t initially come off that way by comparison to the new stuff. I am curious to hear your thoughts on this and how it compares to the old stuff.
Old Rolo is something I plan on checking out soon, especially now that we have both used an IWABO comparisons. And yes, I do not remember you mentioning them, just I like I forgot Nick mentioned them to me early last year.
Enjoy your Atmospheric BM. I think that is something I am just gonna leave alone.
Now that I point it out, I think I know what you mean by the difference between progressive metal and what you call “modern progressive metal”, but if it is what I think you are referring to, I would simply call it djent. Even if bands such as TesseracT have “progressed” beyond the Meshuggah-style djent, they are still a djent band, as they are distinct from a prog band such as Haken.
I meant to say, “now that YOU point it out” (not “now that I point it out”).