A DREAM IN STATIC

I was drawn to this when I saw a Moscow(?) Studio Symphonic Orchestra listed in the credits. As is the case with how prog stuff from my country reaches Western audiences I am oblivious how this came to be, but the idea of an American band using an apparently Russian orchestra in the current geopolitical environment seemed cute.

Anyway, Earthside are mostly instrumental, combining heavy riffs with dreamy and dramatic atmospherics ("cinematic", is how they call themselves). But they do this not in a monotonous, depressive or minimalistic way, but in a rather dynamic, heavy and densely layered way. being more than half traditional prog metal and less than half post-rock. They also neatly incorporate an orchestra into some songs and rougher edges in others. The band doesn't have a proper vocalist, and in the few of the vocal tracks use guests from other bands. The best tracks are instrumental, as they show the true colours of the band, while the vocal ones are too tailored to guest vocalists' own bands (A Dream in Static, for example, draws heavily both from metal and synth pop, like TesseracT).