PROGRESSIVE METAL
Dom Lawson buckles up for a delve into the darker, heavier side.
There is rarely a shortage of good thrash metal, but the genre’s progressive wing has been a little reluctant to show and tell in recent years. Jester Majesty have other ideas. Infinite Measure, Finite Existence (Xtreem Music) is a stunning debut, full of ferocious riffing and machine-gun kick drums, but also possessed of refined and lyrical prog undercurrents. Fans of Mekong Delta, Witherfall and Coroner will delight at the muscular complexity on offer in songs like Human Vs Machine and Married To The Masterplan, but the Italians’ dense, suffocating sound is balanced out by vocalist Alessandro Gargivolo’s gift for melodrama and menace.