January 2024 - Featured Release - The Infinite Edition

A new month, a new year. Where does the time go? Let's make 2024 a great year and we'll start off the year with the surprisingly good debut album from Nospūn called Opus.

https://metal.academy/releases/47364

As usual, I plan to completely commit my entire January (well, at least after I've gotten through the feature releases that interest me) to exploring the more popular 2023 releases in the lead-up to the Metal Academy Awards in early February so I'll definitely be checking this one out.

This is an extremely solid progressive metal record that's deserving of the praise it seems to be receiving right now. There's no question that it's a clear example of Haken & particularly "Metropolis II: Scenes From A Memory"-era Dream Theater worship but it's all done extremely well & it's hard to be too critical given the expansive instrumentation & accomplished compositional work on display. The vocals sound similar to Devin Townsend at times but may not be compelling enough for Nospun to reach the top echelon of the progressive metal hierarchy. Still... "Opus" will no doubt make for an extremely consistent & highly rewarding listen for any proghead worth their salt. I'll be surprised if it doesn't feature in the end of year award discussions for The Infinite.

4/5

This is a debut record of a very traditional progressive metal slab and takes a lot of its influence from giants like Dream Theater and more recently Haken. And Nospūn are really good at paying homage to their idols within progressive metal. The album is incredibly well performed, the song compositions/structures are given a lot of detail as to not make any of the tracks here (including the fifteen minute "Within the Realm of Possibility") feel extended for their own sake, and the production is top notch. I can hear each instrument with the utmost clarity, including the bass, and some of the tracks even have a decent melodic hook to anchor them down, including "The Death of Simpson" and "Back, Yet Forward".

But the record is marred by two major faults. The first is quite obvious: Nospūn do not really have much of an identity of their own at the moment. I am willing to be a little bit more forgiving in this regard since this is the bands debut album, and it's disingenuous of me to expect the band to rock the progressive metal world, in the same way that Black Sabbath did back in the 1970s. However, the other big issue has to do with this god awful synthesizer that persists throughout the entire record. When it isn't there, or not at the forefront of the track, Opus can sound really good, but "Dance With Me!" and "4D Printing" sound brutal as the keyboards rival even the most nasally pop-punk vocalists with their irritation.

It's a solid debut, but I hope that Nospūn will take notes for a follow-up and carve their own identity within the world of progressive metal. Otherwise, they are likely to flounder just like so many others before them.

3.5/5