There are albums you admire, albums you enjoy and, very occasionally, albums that reset your personal benchmark for what a genre can achieve.
For years, Opeth’s “Ghost Reveries” has occupied that position for me within progressive metal. It had everything I wanted from the genre: ambition without indulgence, technical ability serving songwriting rather than replacing it, heaviness arriving because the composition demanded it, and enough depth to make repeated listening worthwhile.
I was not expecting an Austrian post-metal band I had never previously placed on that particular pedestal to dislodge it.
Hills Like White Lions’ third full-length “Canary” does exactly that.
The band describe themselves broadly as post-metal, taking influence from “everything post, prog and unconventional”, and that looseness is important. Hills Like White Lions do not sound as though they are constructing songs against somebody’s progressive-metal checklist. Their first two records were already conceptual works, while “Canary” introduces Reinhard Farnberger on synths and vocals alongside Florian Wagner on vocals and guitar, Alexander Augustin on bass and Hannes Lettner on drums. The album was once again produced by Norbert Leitner.
What immediately separates “Canary” from a lot of technically ambitious music is its sheer scale. This album feels enormous.
Not merely loud. Not artificially inflated. Enormous.
The stereo image is extraordinarily wide and carefully layered, creating an immersive, three-dimensional soundstage where instruments appear to occupy their own physical spaces. Guitars extend across the field without becoming smeared together, bass gives the music depth rather than simply doubling the lowest guitar frequencies, and percussion retains definition despite everything happening around it. Synths and atmospheric elements are positioned as part of the environment rather than dumped on top of the band.
This is exactly why good headphones exist.
And those guitar tones. Good grief.
There is weight without mud, brightness without brittleness and enough definition for individual notes to remain articulate when the arrangements become dense. Plenty of progressive records achieve clarity by sacrificing physicality. “Canary” somehow maintains both. There are passages here where the guitars seem almost architectural, building enormous walls around the listener, before the arrangements open up again and allow individual instruments room to breathe.
That sense of patience might be the album’s greatest strength.
The seven-track record begins with “Canary” before moving through “Time Dilation,” “Cosmic Loss,” “Liminal Summer,” “Blown Away,” “And Again” and finally “Iron Lung.”
It is a relatively compact tracklist for progressive music, and there is something refreshing about that. Nothing here suggests musicians desperately extending material to demonstrate how progressive they can be. The compositions are allowed to take the time they require, but they remain purposeful.
That distinction matters enormously.
Progressive music can become the musical equivalent of somebody explaining how clever they are. Hills Like White Lions clearly possess formidable musical ability, but “Canary” never feels like an audition. Technique disappears inside composition. You notice how good the musicians are because the songs work, not because somebody has demanded thirty seconds in which to demonstrate an obscure scale.
The heavier passages are particularly impressive because they never feel inserted to remind us that this remains a metal record. The band themselves describe “Canary” as their heaviest album to date, and for the first time they have incorporated shouted vocals, specifically to represent moments of horror within the album’s story. That restraint is precisely why the aggression works. When heaviness arrives, it has narrative purpose.
This is a concept album set in outer space, using science fiction to explore the challenges of growing up. That could very easily become intolerably pretentious. Instead, the conceptual framework gives the music somewhere to travel without demanding that the listener spend an evening studying supplementary notes before being permitted to enjoy it.
There are also two carefully chosen guest appearances. Pipi Gogerl appears on “Cosmic Loss,” while “Liminal Summer” features David Eklatanz . What is important is that “Canary” never feels dependent on them. They expand an already fully formed palette rather than lending borrowed credibility to it.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me after hearing several recent albums overloaded with collaborations. Here, the guests feel like compositional choices, not marketing decisions.
What makes the entire record extraordinary, however, is the relationship between atmosphere and musicianship.
I am frequently suspicious of “atmospheric” metal because atmosphere is too often an excuse for not writing enough music. Add some reverb, let a synthesiser drone for ninety seconds, call it cinematic and hope nobody notices that very little actually happened.
That is emphatically not what Hills Like White Lions are doing.
The atmosphere on “Canary” emerges from arrangement, dynamics, tone and space. Quiet passages create tension because something has preceded them and something is developing beyond them. Heavy sections feel gigantic because the band have resisted being gigantic continuously. The quieter moments therefore make the louder ones heavier, while the aggression gives the beautiful passages greater emotional significance.
It sounds obvious. It is astonishing how few bands actually manage it.
The production deserves particular recognition because Norbert Leitner appears to understand that progressive music benefits from allowing the listener to explore the recording. On first listen, “Canary” is immediately impressive. On subsequent listens, smaller details begin appearing: layers within guitar passages, movements across the stereo field, textures sitting behind primary melodies and tiny arrangement decisions that were never demanding attention but reward you when you find them.
That is what makes this an album rather than simply seven songs.
The band’s previous record, “Meander,” continued their exploration of dreams and reality and deliberately blurred the distinction between a single continuous piece and a conventional concept album. “Canary” feels like the product of musicians who have taken everything learned from that experimentation and become confident enough not to announce how experimental they are.
There is no frantic need to impress.
There is simply confidence.
And that brings me back to “Ghost Reveries.”
For years, that album represented my benchmark because it demonstrated how progressive metal could be technically exceptional, emotionally compelling, heavy and beautiful without any one component overwhelming another. I do not replace that benchmark casually.
“Canary” has replaced it.
Perhaps time will alter that judgement. Great albums need to survive familiarity as well as first impressions. But right now I cannot identify what I would ask Hills Like White Lions to change. The performances are exceptional, the production is outstanding, the heavier elements belong precisely where they appear, and the progressive construction is advanced without becoming exhausting.
Most importantly, “Canary” feels huge without ever feeling bloated.
This is not progressive metal demonstrating what musicians can do. It is progressive metal demonstrating what all that ability is actually for.
For me, that makes “Canary” the new benchmark.
Rating: 10/10
Release Date: 9th October 2026
Label: Self Release
Writer: Andy
Tracklist:
- Canary
- Time Dilation
- Cosmic Loss feat. Pipi Gogerl
- Liminal Summer feat. David Eklatanz
- Blown Away
- And Again
- Iron Lung
