It’s not a controversial statement to suggest that metal can be embarassing. It’s the descendant of rock which focuses most on sheer bombast, which unless it is dealt with quite cautiously, can backfire spectacularly. Combine metal’s potential pitfalls with those of prog, and you end up with a virtual minefield of possible embarassments. A recent addition to the Norwegian prog metal scene, with their first album Aspera are walking this risky route. To figure out whether you’re going to get anything out of Ripples, you’ve to ask yourself – are you serious about prog metal?

This is the entry question, because if you’re not, this is not an album for you. This record is all about the interplay of instruments – drums, guitars and keyboards especially, the latter of which play an unexpectedly major role, at the fingertip of keys man Nickolas Main Henriksen. Fittingly for prog metal, the songs’ structures aren’t immediately apparent, as they’re focused primarily around the instrumental passages, peppered with arguably less important vocal sections.

Less important, and far far worse. And so to a second question – can you forgive (or perhaps even enjoy) dreadful metal-cliché lyrics sung with histrionics? It is through their lyrics that Aspera most obviously display their youth and relative inexperience. As a band of ideas and messages, they’ve simply no voice of their own. Atle Pettersen sings of angels and forgiveness and mirrors and “calmness is my survival” and it’s all utter dross, frankly. I don’t know, maybe it’d sound better in Norwegian, but I’m unconvinced. It’s not a deal-breaker though. Lyrics have never been metal’s focus or speciality, and so if you’re in the market for some new prog metal, and you are used to daft lyrics and vocal melodrama, you’ll be fine here.

When it comes down to it, Ripples is an absolute genre record. It was made for a very specific audience, outside of which it will hold little to no sway. If you’re of a prog metal persuasion, particularly that of Scandinavia, you might well want to give Ripples a listen, at which point you might still find its stop-start structure frustrating. If you’re not a prog metal person – and for some reason are still reading – then Ripples is not going to convert you.