Mike Mangini – Invisible Sings
The legendary drummer’s restrained solo debut is a solid rock-metal record that never overdoes the drumming fireworks.
Radar de Novetats Discogràfiques
John Lönnmyr – Aftonland
A Swedish keyboardist’s instrumental love letter to classic seventies prog, from Canterbury textures to Opeth-adjacent moments.
Odd Crew – Dark Matters Part II
The Bulgarian veterans, unchanged since 1998, deliver a consistent, dark, sixth record with an unusually intimate closer.
Hania Rani – Ghosts
A 66-minute record with real gems, especially in its second half, but stretched well past the point of diminishing returns.
D’Virgilio, Morse & Jennings – Sophomore
Three prog heavyweights team up again for a sugary, onomatopoeia-heavy record that only really clicks on its rockier tracks.
Myele Manzanza – Crisis & Opportunity, Vol. 4
The New Zealand drummer closes his four-volume series with a classically instrumented, deeply impressionistic jazz record.
Glass Hammer – Arise
A reshuffled line-up sends this concept album into deliberately lo-fi space-rock territory, anchored by the album’s real star: the bass.
Big Bang – Causas naturales
A Badalona rock band’s fifth album deserves more attention than it gets — a solid, varied record with nothing to envy its foreign peers.
Peter Gabriel – i/o
21 years on, Gabriel’s dual-mix comeback record has flashes of brilliance but mostly recycles a formula that technology has hollowed out.
Saturna – The Reset
The Barcelona band’s cleanest, most impeccably produced record yet, without losing the retro hard-rock edge that defines them.
TodoMal – A Greater Good
A Spanish duo’s smooth, sophisticated take on epic doom — reviewed without saying the word “epic” too many times.
Helga – Wrapped in Mist
A Swedish-in-York debut swinging between complex, Indukti-esque prog and softer folk detours — uneven but promising.
Verneri Pohjola – Monkey Mind
A hard-to-classify, demanding ninth record from the Finnish trumpeter, closing with a genuinely disturbing final track.
Polkadot Cadaver – Echoes Across The Hellscape
The former members of Dog Fashion Disco deliver a wild, genre-hopping record that is equal parts hilarious and unsettling.
Moon Safari – Himlabacken Vol. 2
Sweden’s sweetest AOR sextet returns after a decade with a record that is wonderful in its first half and saccharine overkill in its second.
Kuervos del Sur – De la luz
A Chilean band fuses rock with Andean roots music — charango, quena and triple metre — into what they call “rock de raíz”.
Art Against Agony – Sound of Inevitability
94 minutes of masked, pseudonymous jazz-metal from Stuttgart — demanding, sprawling, and technically flawless.
Small Strides – The Ground Beneath Our Feet
A refined, distinguished German debut with real promise, though two tracks could have been left off entirely.
The Haas Company – Galactic Tide Vol. 1
A jazz-rock debut bankrolled by a Texan ex-executive and stacked with elite session guitarists, Andy Timmons especially.
Wake Arkane – Awakenings
A theatrical concept album blending guttural death metal with classical harmonies and hospital-drama narration.
Marco Minnemann – Their Colors Fade
A drummer’s album loaded with stellar guests, but held back by the same drummer’s constant urge to steal the spotlight.
Rabea Massaad – Grinding Gears, Vol. 4
A multi-instrumentalist guitar virtuoso proves progressive rock doesn’t need long songs — short, punchy tracks packed with technique.
Santacreu – Cançons d’amor, dol i enyorança
A grief-soaked doom-tinged debut from a local band whose quality has nothing to envy internationally known acts.
Neal Morse – The Restoration – Joseph, Part Two
A warning for die-hard fans only: Morse’s second Joseph instalment recycles every trademark of his 30-year catalogue.
Mary Halvorson – Cloudward (2024)
A record of strong bookends and a less remarkable middle stretch from one of avant-garde jazz’s most respected guitarists.
Gardenhead – Gardenhead (2024)
A striking Finnish debut blending Tool-esque odd meters with unusually strong melodic songwriting.
Caligula’s Horse – Charcoal Grace (2024)
The Australian band’s sixth album is technically flawless but compositionally repetitive, with a genuinely bloated closing suite.
Slift – Ilion (2024)
This Toulouse trio fuses psychedelia, punk and prog into one of 2024’s most demanding, rewarding albums.
Saxon – Hell, Fire and Damnation
Metal veterans Saxon stay true to classic heavy metal form, with songs ranging from Marco Polo to the Battle of Hastings.
Sekba – Enjambre
Madrid instrumental band Sekba return with a rhythmically dense post-rock record that could use more melodic anchoring.
The Pineapple Thief – It Leads to This
Bruce Soord and Gavin Harrison deliver a polished, consistently excellent record from one of prog’s most respected working bands.
Kristoffer Gildenlöw – Empty
A consistently melancholic solo record from the former Pain of Salvation bassist — beautiful within its narrow emotional range.
Steve Hackett – The Circus and the Nightwhale
His thirty-second album is uneven in production but shows Hackett still capable of real guitar magic, especially on “Enter the Ring”.
The Chronicles of Father Robin – The Songs and Tales of Airoea – Book III
Norwegian musicians from Wobbler and Jordsjø close their 30-year Airoea trilogy with a warm, retro slice of classic progressive rock.
Big Big Train – The Likes of Us
A new line-up with Alberto Bravin and Oskar Holldorff keeps the classic Big Big Train sound intact — beautifully made, if sometimes short on spark.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – Of the Last Human Being
After 17 years of silence, the Californian collective returns with a dark, Dadaist experimental-rock record full of dramatic invention.
Regna – Cinema
Eight years after their debut EP, Regna return with a mature symphonic-rock album crowned by the 20-minute suite “Accolade”.
Ihsahn – Ihsahn
The Norwegian composer offers a full eleven-track album paired with its own orchestral version, an arrangement exercise more than a reinterpretation.
Whom Gods Destroy – Insanium
Derek Sherinian and Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal’s new supergroup debuts with polished, correct progressive metal — impeccable execution in search of its own personality.
For All We Know – By Design o By Disaster
Ruud Jolie’s intermittent project returns after seven years, with Kristoffer Gildenlöw and Léo Margarit — an accessible, friendly entry point into progressive rock.