Want Some Good Modern Progressive Metal? Listen to Oni’s New Track “Barn Burner”.

I can’t help but think that the modern progressive metal era peaked sometime between 2007-2010, and these days, at least in terms of inspiration and originality, it seems to be going the way of the dodo. Obviously, that’s all just personal opinion, and you can feel free to disagree, but most prog metal I hear now sounds like rehashes of the same old material. That being said, every once in a while something comes along that offers a ray of hope within the genre. Oni’s upcoming album Ironshore might just be that ray.

The previous single, “Eternal Recurrence,”  was decent enough, but their new track, “Barn Burner” is fantastic. Unlike their previous single, “Barn Burner” is distilled down to its roots, featuring relatively simplistic riff structures, but I think that lends towards the track’s overall success. It still plays with time signatures and features polyrhythmic experiments, but its four-minute runtime doesn’t feel diluted and makes perfect sense from start to finish. Sure, the clean vocals got on my nerves a bit, but for the most part, I’ve learned to overlook the whine.

If you dig what you hear, then head on over to the Oni’s website and pre-order Ironshore. It’s set for release on November 25th (Yes, that is Black Friday) via Metal Blade.