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I confess that I’ve never heard Olhava before, though they seem to have quite the back catalogue. I was taken by the artwork for Memorial, the dark forest with the warm windowpane peering from the shadows. The album released on February 27th and I think it’s beautiful.
The band plays blackgaze, a blend of ambient darkness, black metal, and post-rock. And that’s exactly what you’ll hear on this record. Some of the tracks are pure ambience, textured and gorgeous. Some tracks have a driving black metal sound with distant harsh vox that are somehow quite soothing. Some tracks lean more into a crescendo-laden style. The overall effect of the album is cinematic and yet very personal, even with the one hour and eighteen-minute runtime.
It’s difficult to parse into favorites. I personally love the ambient parts of the album most, so the “Ageless River” tracks I find to be incredibly touching and beautiful. I’d listen to an entire album of them. I also think the 20-minute “When the Ashes Grow Cold” is searing and magnificent as it visits ambience and heaviness in turn. The title track is spellbinding in its own way, more cinematic and illustrious. Maybe my favorite overall is “The River Wakes” with its fuzzy atmosphere and post-rock structure. The whole album is truly like a river of emotion, and though I think it could have been a little shorter, it is a great record nonetheless.
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By now, you know about Johan Niemann, bassist extraordinaire for Evergrey, and his solo albums. They are diverse. They are varied. No two are the same and he visits various genres and tones. He recently released Celestial Traveller, and I think this might be one of my favorites thus far.
The music here is floating and spacious. I want to call it darkwave, but it’s not quite that. It’s more bass-driven, but those bass lines are warm and soothing. The music hovers along those lines with electronica and synth sweeping us away to heavenly bodies and the cosmic void. You’ll hear the odd bit of guitar here and there (especially the gorgeous solo on “Antennae”) but the music is mostly keyboards against the beautifully dark heartbeat of the universe.
I love all ten tracks, and they make for a gushing, hypnotic journey. I honestly have a hard time picking favorites, but I’ll say “Veil Nebula” for its steady bass and squirrely melodies, “Messier 57” and “Messier 80” for their Far Eastern motifs that sound terrific in this spacious atmosphere, “Antennae” for the aforementioned guitar solo, and “Arp 273” for its colorful and vibrant cinematic feelings. The closer honestly leaves me feeling very emotional. Give this beautiful album a try.
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Vik is a Hungarian guitarist, and I believe At The Shore is his first EP. Now, I get all sorts of bedroom projects and many of them sound the same. This one is spunky, calming, and carefully put together. It’s different.
He plays instrumental progressive rock with delicate fingerwork, subtle keyboard melodies, and some electronic additions. This EP only has four tracks, but all of them are different, though they are all rhythmic and grow on you with each listen. The EP doesn’t necessarily feel like being at the beach. I think it’s more of a metaphor since the record feels ponderous and introspective.
I like all four tracks. “Vorticity” is lively with sharper guitar edges. I love the hypnotic rhythm especially as subtle melodies combine with it. “The Weight of the Horizon” is more thoughtful, like pondering the depths of nature and the future. “Luminous Particles” goes even deeper, being an electronic piece that grows, builds a beat, then blends with a guitar work into something truly special. This EP was released in 2025, but this would have been on my favorite tracks feature for last year. The final track is ambient and hazy. It feels like travelling into mist and memories. I really like the entire EP and would love to hear a full album from Vik.
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The PROG Mind 