Of all genres of music, especially metal, "progressive" is a genre tag that, over time, has constantly expanded its grey area for interpretation. While it's now commonly assumed to be a genre where technically proficient musicians play concept-albums while encompassing sporadic tempo shifts, progressive music can be better thought of as more of a pushing of boundaries. By incorporating unfamiliar elements or creating a new combination of pre-existing ones, this expanding of horizons is the bedrock of what it means to be progressive as a band. Now, the whole concept of progressive music as a philosophy versus a rigidly defined musical genre is a rabbit-hole of a conversation that would best be served as the central focus of its own series of articles, but it's these kinds of thoughts that traversed through my mind as I listened to Dreadnought's second album,
Bridging Realms. Making my
year-end list for 2015, the album harnessed the power of soft female vocals, black metal shrieks, blast beat drumming, pianos, saxophones, and everything that could be thought of being in that vast in-between. Denver's experimental foursome now returns with
A Wake in Sacred Waves, an album that dials in their craft, takes their sound to new monumental heights, and, ultimately, will be the album that establishes them as a progressive metal force.
