When Indianapolis-based progressive metal project Pentrilox announced "Apotheosis: The New Frontier", I genuinely didn't expect to be handed a literal digital antidepressant. But here we are. Operating entirely out of their in-house production studio, this independent outfit utterly rejects the exhausted, dystopian sci-fi tropes we've all been choking on lately. Instead, they’ve engineered a massive, heavy sonic blueprint for celestial optimism. https://open.spotify.com/album/1lXMirFmYCFLZ8CJ8LJGfi?si=oXWz-hzbSV-i2MNymOiwDA The physical force of...

There is something frantically urgent about the way Michellar delivers "LOVE PEACE WAR- acoustic remix". After a staggering forty-year silence, a gap wide enough to fit entire lifetimes into this San Francisco songwriter broke the seal in 2023 and hasn’t stopped since. This track, inspired by the invasion of Ukraine, captures that specific, dusty nostalgia of Haight-Ashbury, seemingly channelling the ghosts of 1960s protest...