siLLy puPPy It’s been five decades since progressive rock hit the scene and forever changed the limitations of what was considered rock music and while King Crimson may have popularized the style after bands like Pink Floyd and Soft Machine got the ball rolling, the genre didn’t waste any time splitting into myriad directions. One of my favorite early contributors was the UK’s High Tide which took the progressive rock heft of early bands like KC and added heavier doses of early hard rock but more importantly was the first true band to add the violin as a major component of a heavy rock sound. While formerly classical string instruments such as the violin, cello and viola have become instrumental in many forms of prog ever since, in the metal universe they are still a bit obscure.

Bands like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Poland’s Ankh have been a few bands that have mixed the heavier elements of punk and metal with the classical fusion of violin sounds but one more that i’ve only become familiar with recently is APOKATASTASIA which originated in Zug, Switzerland in 1998 founded by Mark Hofstetter (guitar), Matthias Kürsteiner (guitar), Dario Hofstetter (drums) and David Reitz (violin, cello) and later joined by Markus Bach (bass, 2003-present). While not prolific this all-instrumental band has released this debut EP titled WAITING FOUR which came out in 2003 and the full-length “Shedding” which followed two years later. While technically starting out as a mere demo, WAITING FOUR has been considered a true release outright as it’s half hour playing time and excellent production value constitute a really excellent listening experience that provides four tracks not found anywhere else.

This band really delivers the prog goods with King Crimson inspired atonality and meandering complexity that fuses heavy metal guitar riffs and bombast out of the Opeth playbook along with varying softer passages that mix clean guitar sounds with the violin and cello. While the band’s sound comes off initially as a classically infused metal hybrid, it becomes obvious that the world of jazz was a major inspiration in crafting an interesting procession of jazzy prog metal with classical underpinnings. With rich uses of time signature changes, modal complexities and clever mixes of tones and timbres, APOKATASTASIA delivers a nice gloomy mournful mix of feisty prog metal bombast and more lugubrious softer prog rock.

What i love about APOKATASTASIA is that it is the closest thing to High Tide’s classic “Sea Shanties” without really sounding anything like that classic prog release. This is all instrumental for one thing and the composiitons are much more dynamic and varied than that band and also can remind a bit of another band of the same era - East of Eden however this is true metal territory here and when this band puts on its metal hat this is some seriously bombastic guitar driven prog metal that forges some intricate instrumental interplay in a completely different league with an excellent production job that brings this into the modern era. An extremely strong debut album that shouldn’t be missed simply because this falls under the banner of a demo on most databases. This is vibrant prog rock infused metal with a bite and one that has gotten under my skin rather quickly.