Still Life Moving Fast

Relatively removed from the increasingly fertile U.K. djent scene, but retaining flashes of its palm-muted fury, the debut long player from the London-based progressive metal unit formerly known as Empress wears its influences well, offering up an evocative, brutal, wily, and occasionally wistful set of post-hardcore-, art-rock-, and ambient pop-fueled confections that fall somewhere between the cracks of a road well-traveled by bands like Mastodon, Elbow, Isis, Protest the Hero, Tesseract, Pelican, and Opeth. Vocalist and guitarist Oliver Loring makes his entrance as a solid, if largely predictable screamer before switching to a measured yet powerful clean style that includes a sonorous falsetto, and the band's rhythm section eschews the breakdown-laden gymnastics of metalcore for a more hammer-of-the-gods approach that colors much of the material, even at its most divergent, with a smoky, classic rock patina that suggests a steady diet of Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, Rush, King Crimson, and