Psychotic Waltz - The God-Shaped Void (2020)^{Release ID: 17179}

It has become seemingly more difficult every year to take progressive metal seriously. It seems as if every year, another group releases an album that is simply Dream Theater lite, is arbitrarily tossed into the "progressive metal" category and most people eat it up. I thought the term "progressive metal" was coined for a genre that wasn't normative or derivative; it was forward thinking.

So why are we stuck talking about Psychotic Waltz and their new album, The God-Shaped Void? This album is entirely dependent on nostalgia of other progressive metal records in order to maintain relevancy. Except that's not entirely true, Psychotic Waltz have apparently been around since the mid 1980s and The God-Shaped Void is their first studio release in almost twenty years. This isn't original or memorable outside of a couple of decent hooks on "The Fallen" and "Sisters of the Dawn".

It certainly isn't saved by production, which has the bass playing so softly that any momentum that this band is going for is muted, and not just because of the slow tempo choices. "While the Spiders Spin" is probably the only decent sounding instrumental, since it primarily employs alternate lead guitars and the bass is forced into pulling it own weight. The rest of the album is chugging guitar riffs that double the bass, rendering the low end mostly useless. Percussion is adequate and these vocals are very drawn out and tired. The implementation of flute during the second half is commendable, but the performance is weak. I understand why, but it would have sounded much better if someone knew how to mix properly.

I guess that this album has enough decent moments on it to make it slightly above average, but even then, I feel like I'm being generous.

Despite forming in 1985 and releasing their first album in 1990 I have never heard of Psychotic Waltz before listening to this, their fifth proper full-length and first since reforming in 2010. Now I'm no big prog metal nerd, but I actually enjoyed this more than I expected to. Sure it's a little more clean-sounding than a lot of metal I listen to, but the songs are quite engaging and are certainly well-performed. I quite often take against prog metal because of it's occasional tendency towards ego-stroking with band members striving to outdo each other in an ever more technical and sterile circle jerk. Happily this has none of those tendencies with the band all pulling in the same direction and presenting a coherent album of songs rather than performances.

Now this is never going to be a go-to album for me, but I found more than enough to like here and some of it is actually quite catchy (Pull the String for example). I would have no qualms recommending it to any prog fans out there who want to listen to some actual songs and not be drowned in technical wizardry.