End Of Abyss have released Escape To A New Empire, their debut album, today through Inverse Records.
The singles came first and kept coming. The last of them closed a campaign that had been running long enough for the band to have an audience before they had a record, which is the modern way round and still an odd one for progressive metal, a genre that asks to be heard in album lengths.
What arrives is a concept record with symphonic arrangements over the progressive metal, and the label description leans on the storytelling rather than on the playing. That is a choice: in this genre the easy pitch is technique, and choosing narrative instead suggests the band would rather be judged on the whole thing than on a solo.
Inverse Records are the Finnish label that picks bands up at exactly this point, which is how a debut gets a release day at all rather than a quiet upload.