NMB
Praise be! Prog’s most devout figure, Neal Morse, gets the gang back together, dials back the sermonising and reaches for the stars on his band’s sparkling first album in five years.
Words: Stephen Lambe
Illustration: Mark Leary
Neal Morse is a busy man. He recently released a high-profile album with his latest progressive rock supergroup, Cosmic Cathedral, and continues various collaborations and solo works. However, L.I.F.T. sees him returning home, in a sense, with his first outing in five years for his eponymous group of collaborators NMB, aka The Neal Morse Band, made up of Eric Gillette (guitar), Bill Hubauer (keyboards), Randy George (bass) and, of course, Mike Portnoy (drums). Although Portnoy is notably back in Dream Theater, the impetus behind the album came from the drummer himself, who suddenly had some free time in the spring of 2025. The band tracked Portnoy’s parts and put the bare bones of the songs down in engineer Jerry Guidroz’s studio, but the rest of the recording was created using file-sharing and constructed at the mixing stage by another longtime Morse collaborator, Rich Mouser.
Morse told Prog in 2025 at the time of the release of the avowedly devout Cosmic Cathedral album that he’s sometimes been accused of being too “on the nose” when his lyrics discuss his Christian beliefs. L.I.F.T. is more ambiguous, in that the only reference to God comes in the lyric, ‘Oh Father of the earth and sky’ in Reaching. It’s clearly about a person’s fall from grace and a return to God, and in that sense isn’t dissimilar to the Cosmic Cathedral suite Deep Water, but with lyrics that are just a touch more open to other interpretations. It’s a simple tale that actually suffers a little from the everyman nature of the protagonist, making it hard to care for his or her plight, and Shame Of My Shame, for instance, aims at a level of profundity it doesn’t quite achieve.
But musically, have Morse and his superb band actually progressed? In a sense, no. Except for Portnoy’s astonishing double bass pedal pyrotechnics and Gillette’s tendency to shred, there’s not much on here that wouldn’t have been on a Spock’s Beard album during Morse’s tenure over a quarter of a century ago. However, his influences –The Beatles, of course, but also classic prog and AOR –have now been refined into a very specific NMB sound. There’s also a familiar structure to this album that, although it doesn’t exactly challenge, does work well, mixing up prog complexity. It includes some astonishingly dexterous instrumental sections, with some typically catchy synth melodies and the ubiquitous emotive ballads.
L.I.F.T.
INSIDEOUTMUSIC
"Bombastic at times, at others delicate, but never less than superbly played."
Morse’s voice has aged a touch over the years, and while he provides the majority of the vocals here, some of the higher register moments are taken by Gillette, with occasional additional flourishes from Hubauer. But it’s instrumentally that this ensemble really shines, with Beginnings providing a breathtaking overture before the terrific, up-tempo single Fully Alive. The brief Gravity’s Grip is one of several terrific instrumentals propelled by Portnoy’s virtuosity, before leading into the metallic Hurt People, giving Gillette a well-constructed solo, while the remarkable instrumental section that closes the track sounds like Genesis on speed, including a section that recalls Lamb Lies Down On Broadway performed at extraordinary velocity. The pace slows briefly with the pensive rock of The Great Withdrawal, which makes great use of Morse’s slightly gruff vocal style, as the protagonist reaches rock bottom.
Contemplation, on the other hand, is a surprising change in tone. Based on a charming Morse piano improvisation, played solo at first, it takes on a baroque, Gentle Giant character when adopted by the whole band. It’s delightful, and over all too soon before the overwrought, somewhat clichéd ballad Shame About My Shame. Reaching thankfully re-introduces a hopeful synth theme and an upbeat path upwards for our hero, via a hint of Yes’s Wurm and the surprising addition of a jaunty string quartet, before the piano-based pop rock of Carry You Again. Full Alive Part 2 brings us full circle. The album could easily end there, but there’s one final, big ballad to come via the 11-minute Love All Along, a familiar Morse closer and the sort of track that reaches a big climax and just keeps going.
This might be one ballad too many for some, but this is Morse’s style. He’s a man who wears his emotions on his sleeve, alongside his faith. The album is at times bombastic, at others delicate, but it’s never less than superbly composed and played, so if you’ve wandered away from Morse’s efforts in the past few years, this might just be the album to tempt you back. The flawed yet ambiguous nature of the lyrical content and remarkable instrumental dexterity, not to mention Morse’s ability with a catchy tune, place this album as one of his finest of the 21st century, warts and all.
ARCHIVE
Glass Minds PIAS
Atmospheric 13th album from big-in-Europe London art-proggers.
Archive fill big venues across continental Europe, but can barely get arrested at home in the UK. Their biggest market is France, though what specifically the French see in this three-decade-old London collective that music fans on this side of the Channel can’t seem to get their heads around isn’t entirely clear.
It’s high time they started getting some love back home.
One thing is certain and that’s that they defy classification. Founded by Darius Keeler and Danny Griffiths in 1994, the Archive aesthetic has always leaned towards the downtempo, with the grit of real emotion running through it. Over the years, they’ve displayed a tendency to shapeshift with progressive intentions and a penchant for electronic music, a description that could as easily be applied to Radiohead – a group whose sense of adventurousness has hardly done them any harm at home or overseas.
Whatever the reasons, Archive are now on their 13th studio album, and there’s a sense that the English-speaking world is finally catching up with them. On Glass Minds, they survey the contemporary hellscape of the present and react with twitchy, almost paranoiac overtones.
The first three tracks, especially, are drawn out and ominous, though they’re compelling and immersive all the same. Opening instrumental Broken Bits is stealthily unstoppable in its machine-like resolve, while Patterns is close to desolate in its delivery, sung by David Penney, also of BirdPen and We Are Bodies. Penney has been on board since 2004, while Lisa Mottram, who sings the title track, first appeared on Archive’s 2022 return to form A Call To Arms & Angels. Her vocal sits on top of an enchanting musical soundscape that increases in its intensity with each utterance from her smoky, tremolo voice.
The heart quickens on the pacier Look At Us, and When You’re This Down enters the kind of electro-funk territory Steven Wilson was inhabiting on The Future Bites. Heads Are Gonna Roll sees Archive take their listeners to pastures new with a surprise injection of hip hop, courtesy of Essex rapper Jimmy Collins. That penultimate track perhaps presents the first and only moment where creative decisions might warrant questions, though it’s soon forgotten about with the stunning album denouement Where I Am – a song that’s undeniably reminiscent of Radiohead.
Glass Minds feels like an expansive sonic menagerie of raw emotion, a window on a troubled soul, and while Archive do the kinds of numbers reserved for Thom Yorke and co superstars across La Manche, it’s high time they started getting some of that love back home.
JEREMY ALLEN
ANOTHER REALM
Origin DEMOLITION
Retro but entertaining symphonic rock and metal from Stuckfish vocalist’s side-project.
This is the second album from the incongruous pairing of Stuckfish vocalist Phil Stuckey and guitarist Steven Morrison from NWOBHM stalwarts Tysondog. Based loosely on lofty themes of creation and the evolution of life on Earth, Origin is a joyous, warm-hearted tip of the hat to a clear set of influences.
More classic rock and late-80s/early-90s power metal than symphonic prog, it does contain enough synth and organ strains, high concept lyrics and sheer chutzpah to overcome any reservations about its prog purity. There’s much fist-pumping and chanting-along to be done to the likes of Let There Be Light and Sands Of Time – which has both some chest-beating vocal hooks and a fiery yet lyrical guitar solo. There’s drama in the upbeat Crusader and the provocative Whore Of Babylon, and neo-classical/ rock opera of the likes of Trans Siberian Orchestra in Awaken.
Things drop down in intensity for the power ballad If Worlds Collide which would have been a real lighters-in-the air moment in the pre-mobile-phone era. Let down slightly by the very obviously programmed drums, this is nonetheless an album created with obvious enjoyment and affection.
GMM
BLANKET
True Blue ADVENTURE CAT
Lancastrian post-rock quartet’s cinematic fifth album.
In the decade since they formed, Blanket have suffered the customary tribulations of changing labels and self-funding challenges, but their vision has remained consistent. On this follow-up to 2024’s Ceremonia, they continue to sculpt a sound whose focus is on enveloping the listener in a cavernous arena of hypnotic heaviness.
While the Blackpool band’s early inspirations were post-rock linchpins such as Sigur Rós and Caspian, here they veer further into noise rock territory on True Blue. The thundering attack of Hole In My Head is the backdrop for Bobby Pook’s mournful, somnambulant vocals, almost submerged within the noise but offering alluring topline melodies redolent of the gutsier end of the 90s shoegazing scene.
At times metallic influences emerge, such as the pummelling bass drums that accompany the title track’s climax and the screaming vocal edge that crackles above the grunge maelstrom of Summer Skin, but at the same time Blanket are essentially in pursuit of beauty, as expressed in the lovelorn voice swimming within Bind and the dizzy melody fluttering across Leaning On You. Turn off the lights and turn up the volume.
JS
CANDACRAIG
Whisper To The Lightning CANDACRAIG.NET
British duo’s atmospheric reworkings of previously released songs.
W
hisper To The Lightning pulls together nine songs culled from Candacraig’s first two albums, 2022’s Thunder Of Whispers and 2024’s Lit By Lightning. These pieces have been revisited, remixed and, in a few cases, reimagined by Cosmograf’s Robin Armstrong, who has added some extra bass and keyboards here and there.
There are various styles on display, from the full-on rock of Crow Harvest to the creepy Oh Whistle And I’ll Come To You, inspired by the MR James ghost story. There’s even room for Carole King-style balladry with the lovely Autumn In New York. However, the band’s prog credentials are largely displayed on side two of the vinyl release, especially the emotive Last Transmission and powerful closer The End Of The World, while Gliding Pt 2 displays the duo’s folkier leanings.