You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

The Erkonauts’ singer Ales Campanelli (formally of Sybreed) rehearsed so hard he claims he “coughed a little blood now and then”. Thankfully, their grafting shows from start to finish. I Shall Forgive is an engaging, well-produced prog metal record offering shimmering melodies, tumbling hooks, resonant bass grooves and a nod to the more commercial facets of Mastodon. Their debut, I Did Something Bad, was a sterling effort but here they’ve uncorked their full potential. Opener Little Mary pinpoints their artistic growth, kicking off with a cheeky bass twiddle before smashing into a thick mass of snarling gravel and quickfire proggy riffs. Elsewhere, tracks stay on the not-too-zany side of the genre by fixing accessible hooks and air punching choruses to their prog bedrock. Produced by Drop from Samael, technically this is a tight record, but Ales’s bloody larynx captures a sense of pounding rawness.

With over 10 years’ experience writing for Metal Hammer and Prog, Holly has reviewed and interviewed a wealth of progressively-inclined noise mongers from around the world. A fearless voyager to the far sides of metal Holly loves nothing more than to check out London’s gig scene, from power to folk and a lot in between. When she’s not rocking out Holly enjoys being a mum to her daughter Violet and working as a high-flying marketer in the Big Smoke.

The Erkonauts - I Shall Forgive album review

Switzerland’s prog metallers cough up the goods