Review Summary: Insurgent comes out of the gate with great performances across the board, catchy vocal melodies, and an overall compact songwriting style.
Even though prog metal has a reputation of being superfluously overcomplicated and musically overbearing, there is a strong subsection of the scene that focuses strictly on a melodic approach to the genre. Ironically, people who do not like prog metal very often complain that this songwriting focus on short and catchy songs is something that is absent in the genre. However, I think the most recent decade had its fair share of artists in this batch of ultra-melodic, often, djent-leaning prog metal. Some of the bands I think of immediately are Soen, Leprous, Haken, TesseracT, etc., and I would consider Insurgent to be partly influenced by this category of artists. Sentient is their debut EP from August of last year and it deserves a momentary inclusion in the prog spotlight.
The first thing that stands out on the album after the groovy down-tuned riffs are the polished, downright gorgeous female vocals. These are very skillfully performed by Katie Teitge who you can tell is an experienced vocalist. Her vocals deliver most of the great melodic hooks that Insurgent offers and is what the majority of the listeners will leave remembering. The combination of short catchy songs with female vocals, and djent-inspired guitar riffs remind me of Destiny Potato, but this is pretty different than Destiny Potato, it is more like what Evanescence would sound like if they were less depressing and were inspired by progressive alt-metal instead of alt-rock/nu-metal.
It is very hard choosing a favorite song out of the bunch in this EP mainly because they are all fairly consistent in quality. All follow a similar formula, built on catchy vocal hooks with one or two good riffs. Essentially all of the other instruments sound like they are written around the vocal lines rather than ever having their own time in the spotlight but they provide great rhythm and flavor to the songs nonetheless. One thing that I want to note is that the riffs in this album are indeed metal enough to get the band into Metal-Archives which is beyond surprising to me. I’m not complaining of course; we take the wins we can get as a community but MA usually avoids this kind of music like the plague.
To touch on what I believe is the band’s biggest weakness is that, while they are good at the formula that they have, they do not stray far from it in the slightest. I do get that this is an EP, so I can forgive the lack of progressive songwriting this time but in the future, I would like to see some longer and more experimental song structures. It would be cool to hear more moments where the other instrumentalists can have their time to shine with some strong builds, breakdowns, solos, or other experimental performances. This is a major aspect that does separate some of the bands I mentioned above from Insurgent. It would also be nice to get some more vocal variety with some grows or harsh screams but I think I might be asking for too much; like a spoiled kid sitting on a mall Santa’s lap.
Overall, for what they have, this is certainly a piece of art to be proud of. They have all of the relevant skills on how to craft an enjoyable auditory experience. I am not only including the performances, or the melodic songwriting, but also the technical aspects of sound engineering in this album. And I think that this band can only improve on everything from here, so I’m very optimistic for what the future holds for Insurgent. If any of this piques your interest, do check out this 22 minute EP.
