Mattergy for Progressive Metal
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Progressive Music Lounges
Forum Name: Suggest New Bands and Artists
Forum Description: Suggest, create polls, and classify new bands you would like included on Prog Archives
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=129292
Printed Date: August 04 2025 at 23:42
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Topic: Mattergy for Progressive Metal
Posted By: black_diamond
Subject: Mattergy for Progressive Metal
Date Posted: July 08 2022 at 06:40
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Mattergy started out in 2016 as the project of Aigars Aress Māls (Enhet) and Ivars Kalniņš (Bruit Monkey, The Mascaron). Andris Buikis, a well-known Latvian drummer joined the band shortly after, and then Tobias Sarra, a British avant-garde/folk musician joined as lead vocalist in 2017 while he was living in Riga. Back then the band was playing with Stanislavs Yudins as bassist, a popular double bassist on the Latvian jazz/improvisation scene. Stanislavs left the band and was replaced by Ilvars Vitolins, who now also makes the visual art for the band’s releases. We’ve been working hard over the years on composition, recording and production, building a strong local following around our sound. We’re now focusing on live shows and taking our music to a wider international audience. Our sound fits mainly into the ‘prog metal’ landscape, with heavy, jaunty guitar-led riffs (7 and 8 string so it gets pretty beefy), melodic vocal lines and synth overlays. We often make long tracks with multiple sections and unusual structures, but there’s definitely some underlying ‘pop’ influenced anthemic principles. The songs are usually big, heavy-hitters, sometimes frantically fast-paced, but we also have moments of extreme spaciousness (as with the start of Wide Awake) and even some power ballads (Lightborn, Delight). Each of us has a different background, so we’re bringing together lots of different experiences to this space. One thing that makes the band special (we believe), is our eclectic mix of musical influences. Aigars and Ivars are very influenced by metal, especially prog - bands like Dream Theatre, Karnivool, Periphery, Sikth, Meshuggah, Tesseract, Caligula’s Horse, Haken, Leprous. Andris comes from a jazz background, and is influenced by Genesis, Dave Weckl band and Simon Phillips. Ilvars is mainly influenced by jazz, fusion, latin, artists like Jaco Pastorius, Anthony Jackson, Tom Kennedy and Brian Bromberg. Tobias is inspired by art-pop, experimental improvisation, folk/traditional sounds and everything in-between - Matana Roberts, Blake Mills, Tori Kudo, Yves Jarvis, Sam Amidon, Jake Xerxes Russel, Sóley, Michael Hurley, Busdriver, Milo, Amanda Palmer, Arthur Russell, Claire Rousay, Tigran Hamasyan, Sibusile Xaba, Scroobius Pip, Kae Tempest. Discography and samples at https://mattergy.bandcamp.com/album/primordial-wrath https://www.facebook.com/mattergy/ https://twitter.com/mattergyband YouTube https://www.youtube.com/Mattergy |
Replies:
Posted By: Gordy
Date Posted: July 09 2022 at 00:20
| They've http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=12149" rel="nofollow - been here for about three months now. |
Posted By: nick_h_nz
Date Posted: July 09 2022 at 01:35
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I have the Primordial Wrath album only because the band was already submitted to PA for evaluation. As Bilal says, the band have already been submitted, and are already in the archives. I’m not sure that Mattergy’s album will make any AOTY list I might make, but it is a very enjoyable album, which has really grown on me. I never disliked the album, and it always felt to me that it would be a “grower”. https://mattergy.bandcamp.com/" rel="nofollow - https://mattergy.bandcamp.com/ FWIW here is my voting statement for the PM team:
------------- https://tinyurl.com/nickhnz-tpa" rel="nofollow - Reviewer for The Progressive Aspect |
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