THE BLACK FOREST

On The Black Forest Agents of Mercy play a somewhat different style of progressive rock to Roine Stolt's other major prog project, the Flower Kings. Whereas the Kings tend to play a very lush and multifaceted style of retro-prog which hits on the approaches of a dizzying variety of different bands from the 1970s, here the Agents play an interesting mashup of the classic Genesis style with heavier, harder-edged, guitar-focused stuff similar to the heavy style of neo-prog pioneered by Arena on Contagion. The end result is rather pleasing but, as with a lot of the Flower Kings stuff, can tend towards excess reliance on technical showing off and can lack sincerity at points. Pleasant, but it doesn't have me running off to consult their back catalogue.