Atlas Cube - The Rift

Atlas Cube is a German instrumental trio that recently followed me on here. They didn’t ask me to check their stuff out, but I noticed when I saw their page that they had a few projects out, the most recent of them being this EP, The Rift, a quick, 18-minute prog session in a similar vein to bands like Scale the Summit or Polyphia. The EP is only 5 tracks in total, and 3 of them are 2-minute buffer tracks to space out the 2 larger songs on here, my favorite of which being the mood-shifting “Nimbus Nomad”, which transitions to and from sweet, meditative prog rock licks to more sinister minor scale guitar passages. The album is characterized, though, more generally by the tasty pull-off motifs and subtle psychedelia of the tempered instrumental intricacy, and it has certainly served as a good break from the sonic extreme I spend so much time in. Like a lot of metalheads, I do love plenty of prog rock, and this is right up that ally I like to go down to lounge a little bit and just enjoy the unadultered talents of group of skilled instrumentalists. Again, the band did not ask me to say this or anything, I just checked them out and figured what I heard was worth recommending.

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