CLAIRVOYANT

In my opinion the new album from The Contortionist is very far from being progressive rock. It has some odd twist and turns and the song structures are more adventurous than your average pop or heavy rock song. But in terms of melodies, creativity in the instrumentation and the overall commercial and polished mainstream sound it resembles nu metal and post rock more than progressive rock. All the while the songs does some interesting things with time signatures, very often the vocal parts parts come off as pretty plain and straight forward, and a lot of the rhythm guitar feels generic. Like many other bands of today they incorporate progressive elements around what basically are pop songs. The musicianship is very good throughout the record, and the vocalist does a good job in contrasting the heavier guitars with a softer and cleaner expression. But, my main issue with this is that I feel that I've heard this so many times before from other bands.

All in all I'd say that this album and band has the potential to break into a big commercial market, but I would never label it progressive rock or progressive metal.