Progressive RockMetal

Self-released · 12 June 2026

“The Game”, five thirty-four, opens on an insinuating funk and then in come Ella Wilhelmina’s soprano sax, clarinet and flute, three instruments from the same guest inside the same track. That is where it becomes clear what kind of record this is: a prog quartet using jazz as working material rather than as a passing quotation.

Casey Lee Williams writes the lyrics and sings everything. Martín de Lima handles keyboards, guitars and orchestrations, Augusto Bussio drums and guitars, and Peter de Reyna bass; all four are additionally credited with sound effects, which here are no decoration, because the synths and distortions mask the endings and make the ten songs overlap. The band formed at Berklee, lives in Boston and reaches its third album three years after “The Fox And The Bird”.

One credit says a good deal about how the band works: the guitar solos on “Top of the Bottom”, four fifty-four, are played by a guest, Eve, even though two of the four members are listed as guitarists. The track ends in a djent coda that takes itself apart.

The seam that doesn’t hold is the one between the sixth and seventh songs. “Call Me Away”, two seventeen, is the album’s only bare moment, acoustic guitar and piano and nothing else, and straight afterwards “The Show” enters with a spoken-word carnival-barker introduction that eats everything the ballad had just built. It’s a sequencing decision, and swapping two songs would have solved it. Mike Midura recorded it with the band, Midura mixed and Alexander Wright mastered: ten tracks, forty-seven minutes, out on 12 June with no label behind it.

Rating: 7.5/10

Text by Guillem Cardós