As a lifelong fan of progressive rock, I always enjoy when a band pushes the envelope and tries new things. This album, in fact, wasn’t even the one that was going to be reviewed this week, and then this popped up and changed things entirely. This Frost* album is something very different. For starters, and really for non-hardcore fans (as in enthusiasts, not the horrible genre of music now labeled as “hardcore”) the band Frost* is a British prog supergroup made up of guys from a whole bunch of prog rock/metal bands including IQ and Arena. I actually wrote a review for IQ’s most recent album, The Road of Bones, back in 2014. As it happens in the prog rock world, band members can come and go and find their rightful place in another band and realize it made more sense this way.

Not to start any fires, but for instance, Mike Portnoy seems happier in his post-Dream Theater career performing with bands like Flying Colors, The Winery Dogs, Adrenaline Mob, and others. Meeting him after an Adrenaline Mob show a few years ago, he told me a couple things – one, the method of how he dyes his beard (another story for another time), and two, that he really enjoys being able to float from band to band and “explore the music world” – his words – in a way that he couldn’t quite do with DT. Sure, Portnoy played with Transatlantic, Neal Morse, and OSI to name a few while he was a part of Dream Theater, but he hasn’t been locked down in these insane tour schedules since leaving. No, Portnoy isn’t a member of Frost* and doesn’t have anything to do with the band whatsoever, but the reference is more because Frost* has had a rotating lineup during its existence and even featured Nick D’Virgilio (of Spock’s Beard fame, among other things) for a little while. The original point I was trying to make before digressing was that sometimes bands can come together unexpectedly, break up, reunite with a few different members, and then do very intriguing things with music. I have two tracks to share with you from the album, and neither are the track I would like to go into the most, so I’ll just have to trust you to get your hands on the song and go from there.

This music video was actually released today, so it’s good timing. This album, like their others before this one, is especially good at blending some genres that don’t belong together. Sure, there’s a place for pop-style music in progressive rock, to create hooks and singles that the band can make a music video for and say “hey, we’re accessible” and then dive into a fourteen minute three part voyage. The first track on this album is actually called First Day, and it’s a 90 second intro that doesn’t totally transition well into this track, but it’s close. When listening to this album in its entirety, it may be better to turn on the transition button on your audio player. Players like VLC and Winamp have it, where there’s a ~2 second spot at the end of one track and the beginning of the next where the player melds the tracks together. It could do with that, because some of the transitions between tracks are jarring. As far as singles go, Numbers is a good track. It is complicated in the right places without dissuading the listener or making them roll their eyes. It’s fun, light, and enjoyable. You may find yourself getting a strong Spock’s Beard vibe from this track, because I sure did. The next track, however, is anything but simple.

One of the main highlighted tracks on this album is Towerblock, which embraces a term that I have created solely for this review. It may already be a real thing, but if it is, I have never heard of it and never read it anywhere, so it is completely original to me. That term is Prog-step. That’s weird, right? The combination of prog and dub step? Who would put those together? This song starts off differently than the rest, and I had a strange feeling about it. It comes into vocals that were recorded into a machine that sounds a lot like one of those old tape recorder and microphone devices we had as kids. It falls into whispered vocals by Jem, and a faint bassline and keyboard drifts along with the vocals, along with some electronic drum sounds. 90 seconds in, that’s all gone. No more traditional proggy intro. We drop. I mean that as in the actual phrase of “let the beat drop.” We get uhns, we get tsss, we get wubs, and we get a lot of wacky keyboard. The bassline is frantically trying to keep up with the song about two minutes in, as if Nate was listening to the recorded electronic stuff in the studio and the producer said “now try to follow along with it as best you can!” I’m still not entirely sure what to make of this track, and I’ve listened to it at least five times to try to break it down, but nope. One thing I applaud more than anything is the diversity of this album. This track shines as an example of a prog rock band trying new things. Some prog rock critics complain that it’s becoming all formulaic, but that’s where neo-prog comes in. There are a few neo-prog bands coming back again after their popularity in the 80’s like Marillion, who are still going strong.

To sum up the concept of neo-progressive rock, because I’m throwing a lot of strange terms at you, neo-prog is a lot more concentrated and tends to be more produced (as in planned out to a T and not as much jamming until something sounds right). It doesn’t tend to be as flashy and solo-y as the regular prog rock genre, and at least in my thorough listening experience tends to feature the keyboard as the main or at least one of the main instruments. Some critics say that the music isn’t quite as imaginative as the old prog bands, or that bands in the genre try to imitate the sounds from the past and can’t quite get them right. Neo-prog bands tend to be heavy on concept albums, as storytelling is an important aspect of the music, but that could also be said about prog rock/metal as well. At the very least, there’s a fairly clear theme in most neo-prog albums. In this case, Falling Satellites feels like its theme is the end. It remains to be seen whether this is the final album of Frost*, as they have had a complicated history filled with breakups and reformations, and who knows if they’ll stick around after this tour.

This second track feels like something out of the Flying Colors playbook, with soaring vocals, mesmerizing drums, and a keyboard that carries you through the song. The vocals even somewhat sound like Casey McPherson’s for this track. This is more like a “traditional” prog rock track than some of the others, but that makes it no less interesting. As far as tracks go, I wish I could post others, but these will have to do. I admit, I started writing this review well before I knew the songs that the band released so I did not know what you would be in store for until after the first paragraph. They will not give you the whole picture of this album, unlike some other albums reviewed this year. This album prides itself on the diversity of music, ranging from poppy songs to proggy songs to everything in between. They even wrap the album up with a nice piano track, called Last Day (yeah, the first track was First Day, if you remember).

The last track I want to talk about is The Raging Against The Dying Of The Light Blues in 7/8, which is arguably their most ambitious track on the album other than Towerblock. It really embraces the prog acts of old. The guitar is heavily featured here, louder than many other tracks, and I can hear a couple major influences on the track but I cannot put my finger on them. The riffs sound familiar, as does the megaphone effect at the beginning of the track. Like I have mentioned before, this band blurs the lines of genre, and that allows them to use techniques that traditional prog bands don’t always delve into. Their use of the electronic effects work out well for them and do not take away from the surrounding music. The keyboard holds the album together. The album is not quite a soundscape, but it seems to strive to become one.

Overall, this album impressed me. I don’t want to get into what album of theirs was the best, because someone always loses in that argument, but I will say that I am impressed with their versatility in this album. They do a good job trying to stave off sounds from the old days and try to push forward. I admire a band that pushes the music forward, and even if it doesn’t always work, at least they’re trying. I hope that I don’t have to use the term prog-step ever again, but who knows. This album deserves 13 Ratings Units out of 15, because it was intriguing and expansive. As diverse as the album was, the tracks by and large were able to fit together well. If I had one word to describe this album, it would be Cool. It was a cool album. I hope they stick around and make more music. The prog community could use it.

Oh, if you’re wondering why they have an asterisk in their name, it’s because Frost as a band name turned out to be quite popular.