Holy Lamb - Minefield Promenade (2024)

The sixth album from this band from Latvia. 

 
Holy Lamb is a quintet band with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, kokle, keyboards and vocals. 

A handful of guests added trumpet, saxophone, piccolo, flute and vocals.

I reviewed their fifth album Gyrosophy (2015) exactly eight years ago for # 1 of this blog. I have also reviewed most of their other albums in the same edition of this blog. I gave all those albums a good rating as I really like their albums.

The band's music was back then a mix of symphonic prog and neo-prog.   

That too is the case on Minefield Promenade. The album title may reflect the insecure situation Latvia now finds themselves in with their neighbours Russia, a country who has already invaded and mined another neighbour... Ukraine.

The music on this three quarters of an hour long album is pretty hard. It is also symphonic too. The band has moved a bit towards progressive metal, the Dream Theater territory.

The music still retains the neo-prog and symphonic prog hallmarks and identities. 

The music is still pretty melodic despite of its complexity and epic heaviness. 

The vocals is good and the guitarists does a great job with severeral great guitar solos. Not all music here is good. But on balance, this is a good album and one well worth checking out.

3 points