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Proghma-C: Bar-do travel

12/02/10 || Euthanatos

What a strange name. What a strange band. Bad? No, not bad! How about that? Proghma-C is a very, very strange band, and yet I find them quite appealing. The first thing I was reminded of was the Southern scene of Mastodon and Baroness, because of the dirty, downtuned guitars with breakdown riffs. Then, I was reminded of Tool because of the vocals. Can you picture it? Yeah, I’d have a hard time too, if I wasn’t listening to it. So that’s it, in a nutshell: Baroness with Tool vocals. Move along, folks, show’s over.

Oh, you want me to say some more? If you insist. Proghma-C is a band from Poland, of all places, so yes, Poland does not live solely on brutal death metal. Proghma-C is quite hard to pin down genre-wise, because they seem to be all over the place, but fortunately it’s cohesive enough so that we can listen to it without cringing. It’s very experimental, progressive even. There’s a little bit of Cynic in the more ethereal parts, but the guitars, as I’ve said, are dirty as fuck, almost Meshuggah-like.

Most songs would quite aptly be called “epic”, as most go on for a while, giving enough time for your to dive into the atmosphere and let your soul linger in astral projection… or something like that. I don’t know, I don’t do drugs, really. Not my thing. I’m sure there’s a great transcendental message in here. Somewhere. Quite sure.

“FO”, for instance, reminds me of Pain of Salvation (and also shows how bad the vocalist’s English actually is). Opener “Kana” is completely Tool, this guy sounds just like Maynard. Can be a bad thing if you don’t care for Maynard, but I happily swing from his nuts. Piotr Gibner shows a more varied side on “Spiralling to Another”, where Tool meets Pelican meets Neurosis. This band is sick like that.

For an independent release from Poland, this album is really well-produced, particularly the vocals and drums, but I can’t say I like the guitars. Not the production, just the sound chosen to portray them. Maybe it’s the fact that the riffs are so repetitive, sounding like Sepultura’s “Roots” sound, which is an album I hate, incidentally.

The most WHOA moment in “Bar-do Travel” has to be the cover for Björk’s “Army of Me”. I’m actually a big Björk fan and I have nothing against covers, I actually love it when a band covers something entirely different from their repertoire (this does NOT mean you can do it, 30 seconds from Mars. Fuck you and your pretty boy Hollywood singer.). This version is quite appropriate, I like the crazy effects and the vocals, the guitars are finally more decent. Good show all-around.

This, for a debut, is quite an accomplishment for these gentlemen. I was pleased to be surprised by something completely different, and we sure as fuck don’t get those much. So congratulations for Proghma-C for releasing this and hopefully in the future they’ll sound even better.

I bet this is the kind of stuff the rebellious Na’Vi listen to on Pandora. Fuck, I hated Avatar, what a god damn waste of time that was.

The cover: Couple of ravens. Can’t go wrong with ravens.

7,5

Information
Released: 2010
Label: Independent
Website: Proghma-C MySpace
Band
Piotr ‘BOB’ Gibner: vocals
Paweł ‘SMAGA’ Smakulski: guitars, synth
Michał ‘VASKI’ Górecki: bass
Łukasz ‘KUMAN’ Kumański: drums

Tracklist
01. Kana
02. FO
03. Spiralling to Another
04. Spitted Out
05. Spitted Out (Out)
06. So Be-live
07. I Can’t Illuminate Without You
08. Naan
09. Army of Me

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