Prog on a Monday is wild – your weekend’s over, you’re working again, and you’ll take just about anything to carry you throughout the day. High-concept and lush progressive music is just about the best you could ask for. Portugal’s Icosandria get that and as such challenge themselves to produce multifaceted music that churns the brain as well as the heart taking influences from post-metal, post-rock, black metal, and shoegaze and imbuing it with a progressive spirit to bind it all together.
Their debut album A Scarlet Lunar Glow is set to rustle 2024 this April 7 with the help of Black Lava Records, but more immediate is the latest single which you can hear now. It’s called “A Scarlet Lunar Glow Pt. I”, the first of two eponymous songs that capture the soul of the LP and promises a robust listen when it drops. Let’s check it out:
It’s quite easy to get jaded with progressively-styled music like this, but Icosandria is immensely effective at building their own niche just like the obelisks that flank the cover art of their upcoming album. “A Scarlet Lunar Glow Pt. I” is a song with real movement to it, a grace that flows from a caustic harshness to spatial wonder in a matter of minutes with a healthy middle ground of profound melody and driving rhythms. The vocals especially really ground the track and prove to be one of the most impressive elements of the track which is saying something as each instrument and element seems tailored to wrest from raw emotion from you, maybe even some chills up your spines as the end did for me.
On the album, the band expands:
‘A Scarlet Lunar Glow, Icosandria‘s inaugural opus, unfolds its melodic tapestry as the ethereal sequel to their EP odyssey. Within its lyrical constellations, the album gracefully orbits the conceptual nexus of cosmic horror a symbolic vessel navigating the turbulent seas of individual perspectives, entwined with the tendrils of depression and anxiety. Like a celestial ballet, the songs become metaphors, tracing the delicate trajectory of coming of age amid the enigmatic symphony of existence in this world. Each note resonates as a luminous constellation, casting shadows that echo the profound and poetic exploration of the human condition.’
This along with the previously released single, “Black Hxle 1999“, show an appealing amount of diversity that can be found on A Scarlet Lunar Glow, an album that careens from the massive and heavy to the delicate and serene with no trouble. It’s out on April 7 so we shan’t have to wait terribly long to see what treats and calamities alike await on this debut.
You can preorder the CD or digital version of A Scarlet Lunar Glow via Black Lava Records‘ Bandcamp page. You can also follow Icosandria on Facebook or Instagram.
