50 Best Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Albums Of 2017

Today, Indianapolis’s The Contortionist stand as one of America’s most beloved progressive rock bands, which comes as a huge surprise given their unassuming origins.

Back in 2010, the future prog darlings made their first dent in the metal world with Exoplanet, a pseudo-experimental deathcore album that did well among fans of Whitechapel or Suicide Silence, but not with many others. Fast-forward seven years, and the band is one totally transformed, possessing a new singer, a new bassist, a new pianist and, of course, a new album, Clairvoyant.

A patient and atmospheric disc, it fits right in with a modern scene that’s spelling success for similarly gorgeous rock acts like TesseracT and Skyharbor. Cuts like “Absolve”, “Return to Earth” and the massive “Monochrome: Pensive” spend a great deal of their running time as soothing, guitar- and key-fuelled movements, often building to riotous, sometimes electronic conclusions, while the title track is a much more deliberate, taut rollercoaster of a song.

But no matter what approach Clairvoyant is taking, its production (courtesy of the master that is Jamie King) creates a soothing echo chamber of a record, multiple layers reverberating in the most gorgeous of ways. As a result, the album is heavy yet beautiful simultaneously, giving it an edge that will allow The Contortionist to continue to attract more and more outsiders into their intriguing web of progressions and technicality.