Review by Sonny for Psychotic Waltz - The God-Shaped Void (2020)

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.