Here have some Mike! Speaking of djent, which isn't a genre, I caught Contortionist on tour with Periphery while in Los Angeles. I vibed hard with the few Exoplanet songs they played but haven't vibed with the rest of their albums, including with Mike. I lean pretty heavily into harsh vocals, though. I should give Language and Clairvoyant another try, its been a minute.
Guitar craft
Many great stories, two guitars (one great, one kinda mid) and too much debt later I realized luthiery A. had a high barrier to entry in the form of machinery and tools and B. wasn't particularly lucrative. I moved back to my home state and pursued an engineering degree, a much better idea.
2025 albums
Don't feel too bad, I added far more than those 25 to my permanent library this year. I had to rebuild (read: re-pirate) my whole collection after a tragic hard drive incident; thankfully I had taken snips of all my genre folders a few months prior plus fiber internet. I also tend to look for artists with a few albums in their discography. I'
Bandcamp
When I have the disposable income (bad year for that) I spend my music budget on concerts/merch/vinyl (snagged Native Construct!) but I definitely respect taking advantage of Bandcamp Fridays. I enjoyed Seventeen Years!
RSS
I haven't kept up with new releases nearly as much as I used to but an RSS feed sounds like an EXCELLENT idea for that. I'm certain there are tons for Linux, just need to look for them. Any additional recommendations for sites to follow besides the 3 you mentioned? I fucks with any combination of prog/black/death and gaze/post-/atmo/math. I prefer my death techy and djent tends to be hit or miss excepting Animals as Leaders.
BTBAM
Honestly Coma Ecliptic through Colors 2 were fine. A few standouts on Automata but nothing super special like the Alaska through Parallax run. I really enjoyed Blue Nowhere, though. The story behind Dustie's departure is kinda tragic, but I'll admit it gave the rest of the band more room to breathe and get weird which I really appreciated.
White Ward
I highly recommend you check out the rest of their LPs. I'm a big fan of atypical instruments in my metal, especially saxophone. Related; if you're unfamiliar with Ihsahn's solo work his first three are fucking excellent with After in my top 5 albums of all time.
What was the context of your project? I'm a mechanical engineer interested in pursuing research into climate change mitigation, although I haven't started looking into it yet.
Last Chance to Reason is on my list of songs to post! I'll always be an Exoplanet stan but was very glad to see Mike and Jordan join.
Scale the Summit was incredibly instrumental (ha, get it) in my growth as a musician as well as my growth as a person. I played guitar in an instrument prog band in high school thanks to them. Upon learning how they met at Musician's Institute in Los Angeles I decided to move from small town Midwest for their Guitar Craft program.
Looking through my 2025 list surprised me. I only added 25 albums to my permanent library and may yet prune a few of those. Apparently Tomarúm's newest ended up in both Black and Prog folders lol.
Thanks for reminding me to evaluate my seeding folder! There's another 25 albums from last year in there that I need to listen through again. Honestly, kinda hard to give a more comprehensive 2025 list until I give those another chance but I can throw a few standouts at you.
I've been on a Ukrainian BM kick thanks to White Ward and a sense of solidarity. Auratom's Kamenari was great, but my favorite find thus far is Labyrinthus Stellarum; HIGHLY recommend checking out their whole discography.
Subterranean Lava Dragon was a Prog standout for sure. BTBAM has maintained Favorite Band status for nearly 15 years at this point (shout out Rock Band for including Prequel to the Sequel) and The Blue Nowhere landed in the top half of their discography pretty quickly.
I'll get back to you once I evaluate more albums!
I've heard of but am largely unfamiliar with RSS feeds; I intended to look into them further but never got around to it. Keeping up with new album releases sounds like the perfect impetus to dive in. Any tips?
I mean we're prog nerds, right? Isn't the poor social skills and/or autism implied?
proggy atmoblack
You're speaking my language
lyrics
I am not a lyrics kinda guy either due to an auditory processing thing. I understand just enough to get the gist of the story but I'm still there for the instrumentals.
Unexpect, Tomarúm, BTBAM, Arch Echo
This guy gets it! I'll take a look at the rest just based off these.
I'll look at my library once I get home and see what I've got for this year. Are you familiar with The Progressive Subway?
My only complaint about the textbook is needing to scale every recipe down to half or even a quarter. While I would love to bake a whole sheet of brownies my roommates and girlfriend already complain about the amount of delicious carbs I throw their way!
Depends on how much effort went into reverse engineering the part, but most likely when tolerancing enters the conversation. Most machine shops aren't able to hit those tolerances and would laugh you out of the shop.
A shop that can hit those tolerances will kick you out of the shop; there's a good chance they already work in aerospace. They have a deeply vested interest in avoiding the accompanying FAA inquiry should it be installed or, Satan forbid, actually flown.
A non-aerospace shop capable of meeting those tolerances would start laughing at the desired price point. Purchasing a suitable blank alone would cost over $1500, much less cover the actual machining.
Aerospace manufacturing is fucking wild and is a rabbit hole worth diving into if you're looking for some of the finest engineering porn humankind has to offer.
Aerospace manufacturing has a paper trail longer than you can imagine. The company selling this part can tell you (well, the FAA) the exact ingot out of the foundry and every single process and every person who has touched it since then.
No machine shop will take this job; the moment this guy is unable to produce a serial number and paperwork from the real manufacturer (likely during preflight if not installation) the FAA will track down the owner of said shop. At best that owner will lose their business and pay a massive fine, at worst spend a good long time in prison.
The FAA doesn't fuck around and for that I am thankful.
The loser of a knife fight bleeds out on the pavement; the winner, the ambulance.