My word, Canberrans Taliesin don’t rest on their laurels on this debut album of theirs. Eight years in the making, apparently, thanks to an unimaginable run of bad luck that included self-defecating computers, studio fires and, of course, savage government-sponsored lockdowns, Faceless is the sort of smorgasbord that prog metal fans are going to soil themselves over. Happily.

The band have used that time productively, shoehorning the maximum amount of idea-driven brilliance into a comparatively small amount of time; the quintet possess that happy knack – they can self edit – that so many bands operating in this area sadly don’t even realise exists, with the result being songs that pack so much into short duration times that you’d swear you’d been listening to them for twice as long – all hail the new kings of value-for-money-prog…

I don’t mean to be flippant – there quite literally isn’t a moment wasted here as the band flit from Van Halenish melody (Climbing) all the way through to woozy, Floydian reverie (epic closer Widower’s Daughter), stopping at post-grunge crunch (Not Coming Home) and, perhaps most pertinent of all, the solidly metallic modern prog of names like Hex A.D.. It’s all here – and it’s all very good indeed.

Vocalist Dave Howe is a cornerstone of all this – the band simply couldn’t cover this much ground musically if Howe wasn’t up to it vocally – and the constantly inventive guitars of Richard Moseley and Reuben Durham percolate endless riff-based permutations to keep the listener engaged at all times.

Repeated exposure to Faceless will reveal the album to be almost completely bereft of any weak point whatsoever, and if this album catches a wave in the world’s metal media it’s easy to see Taliesin going on to bigger and better things in the prog metal arena. Let’s hope the next one doesn’t take quite so long to make it into the public’s consciousness…

Faceless releases on April 15th.