Be Prog! My Friend 2026 @ Carpa & Picnic - Poble Espanyol

Flytjendur

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  The Dear Hunter

  The Dear Hunter (formed in 2005) is an American progressive rock band, formed by Casey Crescenzo, hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.

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  Soen

  SOEN emerged from the shadows of Sweden’s progressive metal scene, not with a whisper but with an uncompromising clarity and resolve. Born from the vision of drummer Martin Lopez, previously known for his tenure with the iconic Opeth, and the introspective voice of vocalist Joel Ekelöf, SOEN swiftly carved out a unique identity, their debut album Cognitive (2012) immediately establishing them as a formidable presence.

  Their sound is complex yet deeply human, woven together by intricate rhythms, nuanced melodies, and a lyrical depth that demands introspection. The band’s lineup soon solidified, anchored by the versatile multi-instrumentalist Lars Enok Åhlund, guitarist Cody Lee Ford, and the steadfast rhythms of bassist Stefan Stenberg. Over the years, former members such as guitarist Kim Platbarzdis, guitarist Marcus Jidell, and bassist Zlatoyar have also left indelible marks, contributing significantly to the band’s sound and evolution.

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  The Ocean

  The Ocean have long been known for their extensive, awe-inspiring album packaging, and their 10th album is no let-down: the Phanerozoic box set included an engraved slate rock plate next to vinyl records and/or CDs of both albums, and even authentic pre-historic fossils: a trilobite from the Palaeozoic, an ammonite from the Mesozoic and a petrified fish skeleton from the Cenozoic era. The band sourced these fossils over the period of several months with the help of a geological institute in Munich, and getting the quantities needed to fulfil 1,000 box set preorders was a great challenge: hundreds of Moroccan trilobites, 450 million (!) years of age, had to be sourced from global trade fairs.
  
  Released into a world in turmoil, Phanerozoic II will provide fans of adventurous and fearless music with all the sonic and philosophical sustenance they have come to expect from this most intuitively progressive German/Swiss/Swedish musicians collective. Despite the current pausing of all live performances, The Ocean will be twitching in the starting blocks when the madness of the global pandemic has passed; primed and ready to take their new music out on the road, where it will doubtless mutate and grow into ever more extraordinary shapes. The band have always been professional escape artists from the modern world, playing in a many far-flung locations as possible, and Staps insists that The Ocean will roll on for the foreseeable future, as mighty and inexorable as time itself.
  
  http://www.myspace.com/theoceancollective
  http://www.theoceancollective.com
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  Agent Fresco

  “AGENT FRESCO HAS NEVER BEEN ABOUT EMBRACING COMFORT ZONES. IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT PUSHING OUR OWN EMOTIONAL AND MUSICAL BOUNDARIES.”

  – ARNÓR DAN ARNARSON

  Sometimes, you can feel where a band is from. Agent Fresco are as untamed, graceful, momentous, dangerous and unpredictable as the land they come from. Agent Fresco are from Iceland – a country almost impossible not to be influenced by. “Living in a country that has summers of non-stop light and winters of almost complete darkness is bound to have an impact on your state of mind,” says vocalist, composer and frontman Arnór Dan Arnarson. So that’s settled.

  Agent Fresco’s music is a reflection of this ever-changing landscape, with its overwhelming sense of freedom and vastness. This is a progressive Art Rock band that needs to be experienced from a few steps back to be grasped in its entirety, like a bold work of art. In the last couple of years, their iridescent, propulsive, arty and highly addictive music made the highly esteemed Reykjavik band – comprised of Arnór Dan, Þórarinn Guðnason, Hrafnkell Örn Guðjónsson and Vignir Rafn Hilmarsson – become the favourite of a music-loving nation and an act sparking international interest. Or, to use the words of MTV’s own Halley Bondy: “By and large one of the best bands to come out of Iceland”. And this in a country with a higher band per capita ratio than most others!

  All it took was one album. A Long Time Listening, released in 2010, caused disbelieving faces, breathless wonder and bottomless enthusiasm for a passionate musical display like this. Prog Rock, Avantgarde, Metal or Alternative? Jazz, Post Rock or even Djent? The critics raved, vying with each other in a futile attempt to label these tunes from Iceland. “An amazing album by the best rock band in the country today,” was the verdict of the country’s most important national newspaper, Morgunblaðið. Even by the wide-open standards of Icelandic music Agent Fresco’s interpretation of the rock genre is unusually soulful and multi-layered, with a quicksilver rhythmic pulse and mother-of-pearl harmonies reflecting every mood colour imaginable. “There’s an incredible amount of artistic freedom in this band,” Arnór Dan states and Þórarinn adds: “The moment we stop pushing boundaries we can call it quits. I truly hope that never happens.” For Agent Fresco, the challenge is of utmost importance. The challenge to surpass oneself, to go places, to enter new territories. This is only possible by maintaining integrity, says Arnór Dan: “I truly feel like we’re creating something unique and honest while we challenge ourselves on a professional and personal level.”

  An especially profound challenge lay in the concept of the first album. A Long Time Listening was centered around his father’s death. “It made me realize how monumental music can be,” he says. “It not only gave me the chance to deal with the loss of my father, it also gave me the possibility to honour his name in the best way possible.” It’s true, every single listener will experience this album in a different way, will get something else out of it. Arnór Dan is not the guy to tell straightforward stories. “I find that creating layers of imagery within the song helps the listener experience the song more uniquely and leads them to a more personal interpretation. Writing lyrics in a direct manner just never fascinated me.”

  This was five years ago. Since then, two tours have led Agent Fresco through Europe, taking festivals such as Roskilde and Euroblast by storm. Their reputation for being a rare treat when heard live, an intense monster once unleashed on stage, quickly added to their prestige. “Playing live is a whole other feeling, so different from composing,” comments Þórarinn. “It’s about interpreting your own work – kind of like dancing with yourself.” This didn’t go by unnoticed as the band learned after their stunning gig at Reykjavik’s own Iceland Airwaves. “Seriously, this band is so impressive and the way the entire room sings along to their stunning Eyes Of A Cloud Catcher is a moment that’ll live long in the memory of all here,” an enthused Paul Brannigan of Kerrang Magazine wrote after seeing the band at this prestigious festival.

  But the second album… well, it just wouldn’t come. A classic case of catch-22 for Arnór Dan as he again had plans to exorcise some pretty serious demons with the help of this record. “The emotional trigger for this album was a disgusting encounter with violence that I had three years ago,” he remembers. “Two guys attacked me very late one night and I was left behind with a broken eye socket, a cut to the eyebrow and a concussion. This changed me. I decided to let the anger and angst intensify and I kept them animated throughout the entire writing process to feed off of these raw emotions.”

  That’s why the album is called Destrier. “A destrier (pronounced DES-treer) was a medieval warhorse, born and raised for battle. I found this to be a beautiful, mysterious and muscular companion for the songs and a perfect concept for the album.” But the events of Arnór Dan’s brutal encounter were still so close to him that he couldn’t let them go. “In hindsight, I now realize that it got a bit out of hand in the end. I almost fell victim to my own personal Stockholm Syndrome in dealing with my anger and that is what I wanted to capture in the See Hell music video.” This stunning second single, with its thoughtful, tragic images, leads into the dark world of the second album. “It’s amazing and terrifying how destructive angst and anger can be to your physical health. I constantly lost my voice, had a difficult time sleeping, experienced anxiety attacks and had a very hard time focusing during the last stages of the recording.”

  At long last, the mission Destrier is accomplished, and it outstrips its predecessor almost effortlessly. The 14 new pieces of music are a cornucopia of musical atmopsheres, ideas and textures, an emotional tour de force through lightless chasms, up to the skies, leading from the darkest aspects of human existence to moments of sheer beauty. Suddenly, it is all just too clear why this album took so long: works like these are not to be written between lunch break and dinner. Agent Fresco managed to maintain the musical variety of the debut album, but stretch it even further. “I’ve tried to explore and analyze difficult emotions such has anxiety and anger while Þórarinn experimented with how harmonics and rhythms can be perceived differently by the listener.” Þórarinn’s take on it is this: “There are so many ideas that have not been explored, especially of the rhythmical kind. I’ve also been very fascinated by the harmonic series and its relationship with sound, perception and links to other aspects of music and natural sounds.” This makes Destrier his very own playground of visionary ideas.

  To be precise, Destrier is a journey through every guitar-drivengenre developed before, with influences ranging from classical music to philosophy, from poetry to ancient myth, to create their very own brew of emotionally packed pieces. Rolling Stone described Agent Fresco as “an Icelandic band that somehow veered from blazing alt-guitar rock to Steely Dan-ballad piano figures and Queen stadium-gig hurrahs, often in the same song, to decisive euphoric effect.” The Music Void’s take is this: “a male version of Björk with a band coming from a Rage Against The Machine angle.” Yep, it’s in there too. But far from coming close to the core.

  Destrier is proof that too many cooks do not necessarily spoil the broth. The album is conceived as a work of art, not just a mere collection of songs. “I’ve always found it natural to write and produce a record as a unified work or art,” Arnór Dan shrugs. Agent Fresco’s music is not for mere entertainment purposes, that should be clear by now. Although, to be fair, they wouldn’t mind if you’d use it so. “My music is an extremely powerful outlet for me and I believe that writing lyrics help me evolve emotionally and intellectually as a human being,” says Arnarson. “Being creative and making music simply gives me a purpose.”

  – Björn Springorum

  Agent Fresco are,

  Arnór Dan Arnarson: vocals

  Hrafnkell Örn Guðjónsson: drums / percussion

  Vignir Rafn Hilmarsson: bass / upright bass

  Þórarinn Guðnason: guitar / piano / programming

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  Green Carnation

  No matter what stylistic path they take, Green Carnation have never shied away from grand, gloomy statements. Founded in the early ‘90s by Emperor’s former bassist Tchort, the Norwegians quickly amassed a cult following thanks to one of the most ambitious epics in metal history. Even before going on hiatus during the mid-2000s, the ever-evolving auteurs still flashed a flare for the dramatic by performing their acoustic verses underneath a mountain dam. However, there was one tale — or three, to be exact — that continued to elude them. Until now. With A Dark Poem, Green Carnation have finally finished their masterpiece. The idea for an album trilogy stems from Green Carnation’s earliest yesteryears, but the first part of A Dark Poem cites various passages from across their illustrious cannon. Lead single “In Your Paradise” reaches newfound peaks of heaviness, swept out to sea by sublime riffs and somber symphonic flourishes. While navigated with the band’s familiar mastery, the view from The Shores of Melancholia is far from heavenly. Judgement day appears around every corner, steering them from the title track’s scarlet clouds of war toward Floydian whirlpools drenched in paranoia before being shipwrecked by second wave black metal. On A Dark Poem, Part I: The Shores of Melancholia, Green Carnation set sail on an epic journey into a dark night of the soul.

• Rendezvous Point
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  Einar Solberg

  Heavy, Cinematic, Orchestral. Prog redefined.

  Stella Mortua Out Now:

  tinyurl.com/stellamortua

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  SerapiS Project

  CONCEPTUAL PROGRESSIVE METAL/ROCK from ARG/SP LISTEN TO SERAPIS PROJECT ON SPOTIFY: https://tinyurl.com/SerapiSProjectSpotify
• After Lapse