Welcome to Prog's all-new Tracks Of The Week. The premise is simple - we've collated a batch of new releases by bands falling under the progressive umbrella, and collated them together in one post for you - makes it so much easier than having to dip in and out of various individual posts, doesn't it?
The idea is to watch the videos (or listen if it's a stream), enjoy (or not) and also to vote for your favourite i n the voting form at the bottom of this post. Couldn't be easier could it?
We'll be bringing you Prog's Tracks Of The Week, as the title implies, each week. Next week we'll update you with this week's winner, and present a host of new prog music for you to enjoy.
Take a bow from last week Freedom To Glide, who returned to active duty with a heartrending new video for The Chronicle Of Stolen Souls from their upcoming album of the same name, which won last week's TOTW. Honourable mentions for Amanda Lehmann's lovely seasonal ditty An Old Christmas Day and to Devin Townsend for Heartbreaker.
Threshold - Haunted
UK prog rockers Threshold released their latest album Dividing Lines last Friday and also dropped this lyric video for Haunted, the emphatic opening rack for the new record, written by vocalist Glynn Morgan. In keeping with the new album's darker themes, it's both a thought-provoking video and yet an uplifting and anthemic track, packing the required punch to open any self-respecting album.
Ayreon - Dawn Of A Million Souls
As one might expect, Arejn Lucaseen isn't messing around with this striking new video for Dawn of A Million Souls, from the newly remixed and remastered reissue of Universal Migrator, Pt. I & 2, which will be released through Mascot Records on November 18. The albums were originally released simultaneously in 2000 as Universal Migrator Pt 1: The Dream Sequencer and Universal Migrator Pt 2: Flight Of The Migrator. The track features performances from Symphony X's Russell Allen and Michael Romeo.
Nightwish - Last Ride Of The Day
The Finnish symphonic prog metallers have dipped back into their last year's An Evening With Nightwish In A Virtual World online stream for their latest video for Last Ride Of The Day, originally taken from 2011's fantasy-themed Imaginaerum album. Snger Floor Jansen has recently undergone successful surgery for breast cancer, and boldly takes to the Wembley Arena stage this evening, joining her bandmates on their current European tour dates!
The Hayley Griffiths Band - MELANIE
Hayley Griffiths has been busy. The UK singer is releasing two new albums in January, the Celtic-themed Far From Here, on which she worked with former Pallas keyboard player Mike Stobbie, and MELANIE, the more straghtfoward prog rock album with her Hayley Griffiths Band. As the title implies, MELANIE is the powerful title track from the second of these albums, which are both released on January 23.
Jonas Lindberg & The Other Side - The Good Don't Last
There was no doubting Lindberg's prog credentials when he unleashed the title track of last year's Miles From Nowhere album, a 25-minute epic featuring Roine Stolt on guitar. Now, while the band are busy working on the follow-up, they've also recorded a cover of Spock's Beard's The Good Don't Last, originally featured on the 1998 album The Kindness Of Strangers. "It was fun to make a cover version out of a song that I love and have listened to so many times," says Lindberg. "It was also a challenge to make it sound different and like our own version, since I knew the song inside and out already."
Hedvig Mollestad - Maternity Suite
"Maternity Suite is that grandiose prog-suite rising from megalomaniac ideas when I first started working on this music," says Hedvig Mollestad. She's not wring either as you can find out below. This nine-minute work out is taken from the hefty double album Maternity Beat, which is released on November 18 and sees the Norwegian guitarist working with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra (who have previously worked with the likes of Chick Corea). Away from her work with the Hedvig Mollestad Trio, Mollestad delves further into jazz and prog territory with spectacular results.
Jenny Hval - Buffy
Norwegian art rocker Jenny Hval released her latest album, Classic Objects, earlier this year, but the plaintive Buffy is a standalone track, which began with Hval improvising at her keybaoards. “Somehow I improvised some lyrics that referred to Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” says Hval, “probably just because I have watched it many times. “Buffy is not a song about a slayer, a superhero, or feminist icon. If anything, it’s a song about hope."
Moundrag - The Creation
Moundrag are a French heavy psych/prog duo featuring brothers Colin and Camille Goellaen Duvivier, who have just released their debut album Hic Sunt Moundrages from which comes this keyboard-drenched prog rock track that reminds us very much of Atomic Rooster at full flight.
SKÁLD - Troll Kalla Mik
French Nordic folk collective SKÁLD have come up with a suitable atmospheric offering for their song Troll Kalla Mik, which translates as 'They call me the troll' (of course!), full of tribal rhythms and much cavorting around in forests. The song is taken from the band's thirds fulll-length album Huldufolk ('the hidden people'), which will be released through Decca Records in France on January 20 and is sung entirely in Old Norse.
White Walls - Darkness, Let The Air Flow
Darkness, Let The Air Flow is the latest single from Romanian prog metal quartet White Walls and the new video has been directed by Luca Nicolaescu from StaySharp Film, starring Nicoleta Lefter and Sofia Nicolaescu. The song is about the life of a feral child, while video director Nicolaescu says, "The video refers to the myth of the Norns, and it is an allegorical representation of the thread of fate spinning irreversibly in one direction only, no matter how much we would wish to change its course."
