On the early Symphony X records the bass was not holding the floor. Thomas Miller wrote a second melody under Romeo and Pinnella and left it there. Jacopo Vigezzi sat with him Oct 5 for Prog Rock Journal. The live bass story this week is not a new signature model. It is the guy who treated four strings like a lead.

He swapped basses and amps on almost every Symphony X record. Still sounded like himself. A lot of the tone, he said, is from his fingers. Started because of Gene Simmons's character, then Geddy Lee, Stanley Clarke, Billy Sheehan tapping, odd meter and counterpoint from Rush, UK, Kansas, Yes. Met Romeo in New Jersey in 1986. First session: Miller sounded like Sheehan, Romeo like Yngwie. Left after Twilight In Olympus around 1999 for personal reasons.

Self-titled debut as Thomas Miller's Lazarus Effect, Sensory, Oct 30. Forty-nine minutes. He wrote it. Romeo on guitar, Pinnella on keys, Eric Rachel mixing the first six Symphony X records again, Hollywood How Portney on vocals after a 2017 session that stuck. Ken Golden signed him. They met in 1998 while Miller was still in the band. Art by Rodrigo Gudiña.

When Darkness Falls is the straight one. Harmonic minor, written in about an hour. Closer To The Sun is the progressive one: mythological lyrics, Middle Eastern tonalities, aggressive guitar and bass rhythms, then acoustic guitar and violin as the setup, not the decoration. Closer is the five-part Sailing To Utopia.

Most bass features this year want a clinic. Miller sat down, talked about fingers, and put a whole record on that.

Interview: https://progrockjournal.com/exclusive-interview-thomas-millers-lazarus-effect-the-return-of-a-progressive-metal-icon/

Closer To The Sun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSghP_QFJ0k

Dark Ages spent five records telling one story at a time. Teumman was a two-part Assyrian rock opera. Between Us was a fable with no named characters. Sixth album, Blind Faith, Andromeda Relix, Nov 6. First time they let the songs split.

Keyboardist Angela Busato said the quiet part. Without a single overarching theme, each track found its own room. Seven songs. Faith as a subject, not a plot. Yourself, other people, the work, the idea that anything changes.

Opener Time to Be Kings is the intimate one. The Fire We Hold and Sunset still go prog. Good to Say Goodbye and Distant Suns walk in a straight line. The suite is still there, The Lighthouse (Blind Faith), because dropping the concept is not the same as dropping the long form. First single Road to Insanity is 5:44, video by Giovaschi, the modern one.

Verona. Simone Calciolari on guitar since the late 80s. Saturnalia 1991, then twenty years, then the rest. Carlo Busato drums, Roberto Roverselli vocals (decade this year), Alberto Caria bass. Recorded at Mago Studio in Avio with Maurizio "Tachy" Fracchetti, sixth member since 2010. Cover by Le Nevralgie Costanti. Booklet by Busato.

Prog metal in 2026 still treats the concept album as the default setting. A Verona band that lived in that format just walked out of it and left the lighthouse standing.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCihbROBo14

Announcement: https://mhf-mag.com/dark-ages-announce-new-album-blind-faith/

Kjetil Nordhus sat with Din Intunerec on Sep 25 at Quantic in Bucharest, Green Carnation’s first Romanian date after a 2021 booking that never happened. The interview ran Oct 3. A Dark Poem is finished. The closer is the part most bands would fake with a sample library.

Stein Roger Sordal writes most of the lyrics. When they committed to a trilogy, he brought Rimbaud’s Ophélie. Shakespeare’s drowned girl, rewritten by a 16-year-old in 1870. Nordhus said the poem stayed with them while they wrote. They wanted to give it a thank you and a voice. The last piece of the entire trilogy reads it out loud.

Part III, The Messiah Complex, landed Sep 4 on Season of Mist. Four tracks, 38 minutes. Unconditional Artificial Chemistry, the title cut, Broken Souls, Common Enemies, then A Dark Poem - Orchestral Suite at 16:47. Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra and Opera Choir. Nordhus has been clear about the leap: not hiring the orchestra. Refusing to use it as an advanced keyboard behind ten layers of guitars and synths. They wrote a classical piece that comments on themes from Parts I and II. The suite is performed by the orchestra. The band is not on that tape.

Songs started in 2018, before Leaves of Yesteryear. Studio was 2024. The Messiah Complex was going to live on Part II. They moved it and made it the title. Same six as Light of Day, Day of Darkness, plus Jonathan Pérez on drums. Tchort, Bjørn Harstad, Endre Kirkesola, Sordal, Nordhus.

Prog metal keeps renting orchestras to sound expensive. Green Carnation hired one, then got out of the way.

Interview: https://dinintunerec.com/2026/10/03/interview-a-dark-poem-trilogy-is-out-kjetil-nordhus-on-the-making-of-the-most-ambitious-work-by-green-carnation/

Title track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2il1kAUtJc

The poster said Humanity's Last Breath and Vildhjarta. Same brain. Buster Odeholm has drummed Vildhjarta since 2014 and writes HLB. Half the room assumed he would just do both sets.

He is not.

Paul Seidel is on the Vildhjarta kit. Munich last Thursday. Paris tonight. London Thursday, already sold out. He left The Ocean at the start of 2025 after eleven years. Spent the summer in his studio learning someone else's thall book. The Ocean reputation was touch and dynamics. Vildhjarta is the opposite grammar: the hit that arrives late on purpose, the lurch, the gap that is the riff.

Odeholm still drums the headline set. Seidel plays the support slot, then sits while the guy who wrote those parts plays a different band. That is the actual drumming story on this run. Not a clinic. A translation job, night after night, with the author in the building.

UK after London: Manchester, Glasgow, Nottingham, Bristol. Then Antwerp and Tilburg. Stockholm closes it October 24.

https://www.paulseidel.com/drumming-for-vildhjarta-european-tour/

Search new progressive metal 2026. The saved playlists still pad with Dream Theater, Plini, TesseracT. The lazy ones just file Schism as a new track. That is not discovery. That is the canon with a date stamp.

The actual new band is from Kolding. KINETIC. David Thing and Christian Filskov Heitmann started it in 2022. René Hougaard sings. Marcus H. Levin is on synth. Rune Görlitz on drums. Sentience EP last year. Liminal is the debut, Eclipse, October 16. 106 minutes.

The calling card is Evolution, 11:12. Levin directed it. Nick Levin shot Africa, Siberut, the Dukono volcano. Blue for origin, red for chaos. David and Marcus kept jumping off a diving board for the underwater shots. When they signed, Levin’s line was that Eclipse did not ask them to be louder, faster, or different.

That is the whole discovery problem. The playlist slot is four minutes. The song is eleven. The record is a Kardashev Scale history told by a narrator named Tony, who on Digital Mind turns out to be stuck looping the rise and fall. Other singles are Dyson and Digital Mind. Beginnings, New Frontiers, Fermi, Type 0.75. Frederik Uglebjerg produced, mixed, and mastered. Cover by Lasse H. Görlitz and Levin.

If you want a new band before the 16th, sit with the eleven minutes. The playlists will still be on Another Day when the album is already out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji6DVO3MorE

https://kineticband.dk/

Most biblical prog concepts pick the hero. Neal Morse picked Terah.

Terah is Abraham's father. He left Ur for Canaan, parked in Haran, died there. Abraham finished the trip. Morse, on River of Light with The Resonance, November 27: Terah is someone who starts a journey with God, then gets tired, and lets sadness and resignation keep him from going all the way. The son completes it.

That is the whole record. There is a two-minute-fifty-three-second track called Haran (The Place Between). The rest stop is the thesis.

They almost made a double album. Started writing October 2025 after the No Hill For A Climber shows, had too many ideas, cut it to one disc because the flow mattered more than the runtime. Morse is on bass this time. Guitarist Andre Madatian and singer Jonny Bisaha brought Rush and 90s rock in, plus time signatures Morse was not sure he could play live. Philip Martin on drums. The Calling runs 10:46. Closer River of Light is 10:38. The singles are Walk On Water and Shine Until Tomorrow, which is Morse being Morse about the hooks.

The usual 2026 concept move is a sci-fi loop or a named tree about loss. This one is older and meaner. The unfinished journey as the subject, not the guy who made it.

2CD with instrumentals. Red smoke 2LP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l04dJ8aCds

https://progreport.com/neal-morse-the-resonance-continue-the-journey-with-river-of-light/