FEATHERS & FLESH
(Entertainment One, 2016)
Avatar are not your garden-variety death metal band – there’s a strong whiff of prog to what they do as well. Ever since the Gothenburg quintet shattered the glass ceiling of the heavy music underground with their fourth album, 2012’s Black Waltz, their niche has been in imbuing the obligatory roars and riffs with twanging country guitars, electronica and an uncanny ‘jester’ aesthetic.
Reviewing that album on its release for Metal Hammer, Prog’s very own deputy editor Natasha Scharf remarked on how singer Johannes Eckerström’s flamboyance evoked the presence of one Devin Townsend. She even called the nine-minute-long closer Use Your Tongue – which plummets from harmonica solos to crashing metal chords – a “quirky, progressive finale that’s pure genius”.
That overt weirdness was…
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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 137