it was not my thing at all, although i ended up drunk enough that i bought two of their records. i was, however, able to hear enough independent thinking to conclude it was worth keeping an eye on them from a distance.
i actually legitimately liked a great deal of the record after that. toning down the metal a little actually brought out some pretty solid songwriting, in a quirky and often pattonesque sort of way. their follow-up to that record did not impress me at all.
and, now they're back in town, so i have to check this out...
i don't know enough about metal to know if it's metal or not, although my first impression is that it isn't what i'd classify it as. but, this isn't prog, either. progressive rock implies something....progressive. forward-thinking. creative. abstract. novel. it's about out-of-the-box thinking. there's none of that here.
i'd say it sounds like what mcr would sound like if gerard way hired a bunch of session musicians. i mean that in two ways. first, it's fundamentally pop music. second, there's not the slightest bit of immediacy or grit or passion in the playing - it sounds like session musicians reading notes off of a page. it's just dry & formulaic & timid. dead, really. this is and always has been the primary criticism of technical rock music: that it sounds like it was played by a soundcard, or, if it's really good, like it was done by robots. combining the worst aspects of technical rock with sappy pop structures is maybe putting them in the contemporary space that in the past was occupied by bands like foreigner and journey.
that is, what this is is what you call corporate rock.
in his defense though, he did pull me out of the pit a second away from me losing my teeth. i'm an experienced punk pit dweller, but punks tend to keep their elbows down and i almost got knocked due to not expecting the elbows.