Kingcrimsonprog Prong’s 2016 album X No Absolutes is a real stunner. The band entered a new golden period of high quality and high productivity with 2012’s Carved Into Stone. Since then they’ve released 4 studio albums, one covers album, and one semi-live album. You could imagine with that high an output maybe the albums would sound rushed, but quite the opposite, this is arguably the strongest period of their career to date.

Among the best of this renaissance period is X No Absolutes, which is their tenth full length studio album (hence the X!). Prong show no weakness or slowing down with age. This album is pretty damn bad ass. The album follows the musical direction of the past few albums; Pantera & Early Machine Head-esque ’90s sounding Groove Metal mixed with brief hints of Thrash, a weird arty Killing Joke tinge at times, the best parts of Nu Metal used in moderation and all that is wrapped up in Tommy Victor’s New York bark.

The first track, lead single and modern day concert mainstay, ‘Ultimate Authority’ is an absolute winner, starting the album off strong with its faster pace and memorable chorus. All the first four songs are great. Groovy, punchy and memorable. Varied, but tied together perfectly by the vocal and production style. If you want to know if this album (or band) is for you, check out those first four tracks, they are red hot.

The title track comes next, branching out into more melodic material, which then defines the middle of the album. ‘Do Nothing’ actually reminds me a bit of Papa Roach only with more Fear Factory style drums, if you can imagine that. Think Digimortal meets Love Hate Tragedy.

After the middle experimental section of the album, it gears back up into more metallic territory, with ragers like ‘Universal Law’ and ‘In Spite Of Hindrances’ being particular highlights.

If you are into the likes of Pantera, Machine Head, Fear Factory, Pissing Razors, ’90s era Sepultura and actually Five Finger Death Punch as well now that I think of it, I think you would really enjoy this album. Its got a real good mix of styles but lives in that very crunchy, bouncy, memorable world more often than not and is another fine example of Prong’s modern day upswing. If you haven’t checked them out since Cleansing, maybe take a look back in the Prong camp nowadays, they’re as good if not better than ever!

UMUR "No Absolutes" is the 12th full-length studio album by US, New York based groove metal act Prong. The album was released through SPV/Steamhammer in February 2016. With Danzig having laid relatively low for some years (lead vocalist/guitarist Tommy Victor has recorded and toured with Danzig for now many years), band founder and only remaining original member Tommy Victor, bassist Jason Christopher, and drummer Arturo "Art" Cruz, have had a bit more time to concentrate on Prong in recent years, which has resulted in Prong releasing both "Ruining Lives" in 2014 and "Songs from the Black Hole" in 2015. With "No Absolutes" that constitutes a pretty steady release cycle with only one year between the three albums, and while "Songs from the Black Hole" is not an album featuring original material but instead a covers album, it´s still more and more unusual these days to release an album every year.

Stylistically this is Prong as we know them. Sharp groove metal riffs and rythms, Killing Joke influenced atmospheric parts, and Tommy Victor´s raw bark in front (and occasional clean vocals). The music on "No Absolutes" is sligthly more hard edged than the case has been on the last couple of releases though, and Prong even occasionally venture into thrash metal territory on tracks like "Sense of Ease" and "Cut and Dry". It´s a bit out of their comfort zone, and it´s not what they do best, but it´s pretty good for the variation of the album, that they branch out a bit. It´s the meaty, sharp, and groovy guitar riffs and hookladen shouting choruses which are the main focus of the band´s music though, and that works almost to perfection on "No Absolutes". They´ve scaled back a bit on the atmospheric parts, and while those parts are great for the variation of Prong´s music, Prong are best when they deliver their hard edged grooves with bite and aggression. That´s their natural environment, and that´s where they shine the most. The album is not devoid of melodic hooks though and a track like "With Dignity" is so catchy it´s close to mainstream territory.

"No Absolutes" features a very well sounding production. It´s raw, it incredibly powerful, but at the same time both clear and detailed. A perfect match for the material featured on the album. So "No Absolutes" is overall a high quality release by Prong and to my ears one of their better releases in recent years. There are still some pretty standard quality material featured on the 13 track, 44:11 minutes long album too though, which could have been more memorable, and therefore it´s not a 100% perfect release, but a 3.5 star (70%) rating is fully deserved (and maybe even slightly too low).

Time Signature Still snapping necks...

Genre: groove / crossover thrash

Prong's "Cleansing" album from 1994 is probably their most well-known release and arguably among the seminal releases within the groove metal genre. Sadly, despite this status, the band - like so many other metal bands in the 90s - got fucked over by their label (Epic Records, I believe) and broke up in 1996. They kinda reformed and operated on and off in 2000 and ultimately returned in full force in 2007, having consistently released full-length albums since then. 2016 sees the release of "X - No Absolutes".

Like the previous full-length "Ruining Lives" (I'm ignoring the collection of cover songs that is "Songs from the Black Hole), this album offers up a blend of groove metal tracks, such as the opener 'Ultimate Authority' and thrash metal songs, such as 'Sense of Ease' and 'Cut and Dry'. The album strikes me as more diverse than you might expect with 'Ultimate Authority' and 'Soul Sickness' being in the vein of "Cleansing" and 'Belief System' being crushingly heavy and reminds me of metalcore breakdowns before the metalcore bands lost their imagination and all started sounding the same (in other words, it sounds like goo metalcore breakdowns). 'Sense of Ease', 'Cut and Dry', and 'In Spite of Hindrances' are uptempo thrashers with the former being more of a crossover thrash affair. 'Worth Pursuing' is more of a midtempo thrasher as is 'Without Words' although the latter is considerably melodic. In fact, there are some surprisingly melodic tracks on the album, such as 'With Dignity', 'Do Nothing' and the title track.

As always, the tracks on the album are rock solid, and sense of diversity makes for an enjoyable listen. Prong definitely will not let their fans down with this album.