Intronaut: "Milk Leg"

I was excited to get an email last night stating that my Century Media rep had activated new content on my digital promo account, and that the material in question was from the vaunted Intronaut, one of the few bands that I've ever reviewed to the tune of a perfect score. Ahhh, goddammit, it was a single track upload of this one damn song.

Looks like I'll be waiting God knows how many more weeks for a full album promo, because Habitual Levitations doesn't come out until March 19, and since most leaks seem to come from people in the music journo game that means we all suffer. That's as close as you'll ever get to an anti-piracy rant from me, though... people that get their albums for free shouldn't be telling other people that they're not spending enough money supporting their favorite bands.

Meshuggah: "Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion"

Meshuggah are the Tool of extreme metal. They may not be as accessible to the average modern rock radio junkie, but they come from a similar ethos of mixing moody, progressive riffs with deliberately off-putting, fragmented time signatures. Hopefully the guys in 'shuggah don't decide that they need their own analog to A Perfect Circle to vent their more mainstream (read: sellout) predilections.

By the way, this video sucks. Just listen to the tune and shut the fuck up.

Vildhjarta: "Benblåst"

Måsstaden, the debut album from Swedish prog metal merchants Vildhjarta, has got to be one of the more hotly anticipated releases of late 2011.  Vildhjarta are loosely influenced by and often compared to countrymen Meshuggah, but a quick listen to "Benblåst" shows a little more going on in the experimental realm.  At just over three minutes, roughly 1/3 of which is an atmospheric intro, this serves as little more than a teaser of what's to come when the album hits on 11/29.

TesseracT: "Eden"

I admit when it comes to prog (as opposed to technical death metal) I'm not always on the ball, at the top of my game.  I just started hearing about TesseracT maybe a year ago because Rob from Metal Injection is always talking about them.  I don't quite like this the way I like the new Opeth but for a band that apparently used to play Meshuggah-style djent this is pretty impressive artistic growth.  I suppose.  This cut is off their first album and I can't be bothered to dig for old demos, so I'm kind of guessing that their early djent stuff sucked.  Most of it does.  Fuck I'm cranky.

Opeth: "I Feel the Dark"

Yep.  I really think Heritage is going to be the album to get me back on board the Opeth horse-and-carriage.  I don't go so far as to call their more recent albums "selling out", but there has definitely been that sort of phoned in quality of a talented band with chops galore just going through the motions, much the same glaring indifference as Opeth BFF's Dream Theater have toiled under for a decade.  Between this song and previous leak "The Devil's Orchard" I'm definitely down with the virtually metal-free 70s prog sound I'm hearing.

Mastodon: "Spectrelight"

At the risk of gorilla pimping this band's recent output, here's another ridiculously promising new track from Mastodon's upcoming The Hunter.  For those keeping score, this is the third officially released song from that 13 track album, so by the time September 26th rolls around you should definitely have decided you need it in your life by that point.  Like I said last time around, I'm pretty stoked to hear the more stripped down, balls out rock material coming out of the band, as opposed to the bloated, progressive sound they've been fucking with in recent years.  Tell me why I'm wrong in the comments, otherwise I'll take your silence as tacit consent.

Opeth: "The Devil's Orchard"

I had mixed feelings about Opeth's last album, Watershed, digging the musicianship but questioning elements of the songwriting.  It was one of those albums that, opening track "Coil" aside, I didn't find many things egregiously at fault with, but at the same time I appreciated more as an object than as a feeling, organic collection of music.

THIS has me a bit more stoked.  One of the things I liked most about Watershed was the cover of "Bridge of Sighs" on the deluxe edition, and this upcoming single off of September's Heritage is all the more promising in that it hints at a full blown redirect into 70s prog.  That's something I can get on board with.

Mastodon: "Black Tongue"

As much as I love when a band edges away from mainstream acceptance and tries something more experimental, more progressive, I have to say I only really appreciated Mastodon's previous effort, Crack the Skye, from more of a cerebral perspective... I never fully embraced it as a repeat listening experience.

Which is why I'm pretty thrilled to hear this new track from their forthcoming The Hunter.  Having proven they can get ponderous with the best of them, it appears Mastodon is finally getting back to their roots a bit, as evinced by both "Black Tongue" (below) and the recent Adult Swim outtake "Deathbound".