Metal act Imonolith bring some heavy hitters to the table, but struggle to create consistently interesting material across Progressions.
This quartet comes preloaded with an array of big names, which naturally begets high expectations. Given the experience the members have, Imonolith should be competent, and they unquestionably are. However, the question throughout the album becomes: “where is this going?” The somewhat-ironically named Progressions began as a five-song EP that morphed into a ten-track album, complete with three demos. The most impressive song of the whole bunch, however, is a cover.
You’re on your own now,
We won’t save you.
Your rescue squad,
Is too exhausted.
That a Björk song proves the best composition of the album should not come as a surprise. However, the performance across the board on “Army of Me” sounds quite convincing. Vocalist Jon Howard sounds as good as anything he’s worked on since Arkea. The arrangement features electronics tastefully tossed in to fill out the sound. Ryan Van Poederooyen turns in a showing reminiscent of his work on Addicted. These same sensibilities apply to the next track, “The Lesson”, but it doesn’t quite hold things together with the same level of grace.
Seen through the eyes of what we knew,
It seemed the past was brighter then.
Old sentiment seeks something new,
The struggle keeps it all within.
Perhaps the most apparent instance of hubris on the album, this track demonstrates a fair bit of potential. The clean, tight introduction gives way to classic groove-metal guitar leads. There’s driving rhythm to the song, and the sung chorus soars above the instrumentation just as expected. A bit too much just as expected, actually. It’s almost paint-by-numbers metal, and you know exactly what’s coming before you hear it. Accordingly, when the tender, soft-spoken introduction to the title track comes on, you already know that at about the first minute, the distortion gets turned up, but so too do the acoustic guitars driving the track. The only surprise here is the glitch-laden (though perhaps overproduced) bridge at about the 3-minute mark, which precedes – you guessed it – a guitar solo. While these moments of intrigue pop up at certain intervals, the banality of the rest undercuts them.
Feel free to skip the last few demos with no remorse. They contribute to Progression‘s larger problem in a lack of memorability. We know the band members are plenty talented, so we should – and I do – expect something more unique and compelling out of them. Instead, we get a couple great tracks to paper over a series of solid but not worth mentioning ones. Maybe it would have made a better EP.
6.5/10
Progressions comes out self-released on Friday, May 20. You can order it here.