“The quality of bands is much higher than it used to be… There’s something going on here that we cannot describe”: Why is Australia turning out some of the most amazing prog metal guitarists on the planet?

With Australian progressive metal in a rich vein of form, we ask some of the key players behind its success about the big questions. What defines the Aussie brand of prog metal? Why is the country so fertile when it comes to creating unique guitar-driven music?

Australia, despite its geographic isolation, has a rich lineage of standout progressive metal bands, each with their own outlook on guitar playing and songwriting. “Our metal history has always bucked trends simultaneous to different developments,” Caligula’s Horse guitarist Sam Vallen explains.

“You’ve always found a really rebellious push against the grain. The main population centers are so far apart that they have very little influence on one another. We may as well be a bunch of islands.”

Read into the history of any famous scene, and there’s always an element of environmental symbiosis, where bands feed off one another. That’s not the case Down Under. “What we’re writing tends to be a product of us banging our heads against the wall,” Vallen adds. “You get a bunch of bands that aren’t imitating each other – because they can’t.”

So how does that isolation influence the country’s guitarists’ approach to playing? One commonality – and one in line with global trends – is a movement towards extended-range guitars and alternate tuning.

“Our transition to seven-string happened organically over a couple of albums,” says Voyager’s Simone Dow. “I remember Alex [Canion, bass] had a riff for The Meaning of I, which he wrote it in a B tuning on a six string acoustic. When we went to track that song, we desperately needed a seven-string. I’m not going to bloody restring my guitar with a 56 on the bottom, on a nut that’s built for a 46!”

Now they’ve embraced the extended range. “We want our parts to sound like one guitar,” she says. “A lot of the time, if we're going for extended chords, Scott [Kay] might go further up the neck, then I’d go on the low end. You just get this massive wall of sound.”

“Sometimes a riff in a lower tuning just sounds better,” Voyager’s co-guitarist Kay adds. “I don't like the idea that all we need is an extra half-step and everything will sound good. But I do think there’s something about that extra fourth or fifth that really does expand the sonic landscape of the instrument.”

Reliqa – recently signed to Nuclear Blast Records – are one of the brightest young bands on the scene. Guitarist Brandon Lloyd admits to being a tuning addict: “I have the tendency to switch tunings every time I write a new song. I wanna keep it fresh.”

However, his approach as a lone guitarist is a little different, even if he’s vying for the same ends. “I don’t want to sacrifice the song for a studio version,” he says. “We’ll use a lot of layers like shimmery leads, and we’ll record a second rhythm track which we have in the backing live. Without that second guitar you lose a lot of dynamics when I’m playing leads, and we want a dense wall of sound. 

“Sometimes we’ll reinforce a riff on synths. We don’t have a lot of layers, but we have enough to represent what we’re trying to put across without feeling limited.”  

The live approach to tones taken by Voyager and Reliqa are very different, however. Voyager have moved to Helix floor modellers, with Kay and Dow actually using the same tones, save for minor EQ differences.

“I think the guitar and how you play it changes your tone more than anything,” Kay says. “The individuality of the player and the instrument will always come through.” 

He plays a Mayonnes Duvell, while Dow has been touting a Music Man Kaizen for a number of years. “They’re very different guitars,” Kay says. “Having the same tones keeps that one variable the same. The fact that we approach playing quite differently gives enough variance to the output.

“When you’re hard panning your guitars left and right, I think there needs to be some similarity. You can’t have Pantera in one ear and Opeth in the other. Simone’s a much lighter player in the right hand and heavier in the left and I’m the complete opposite. That produces a significant tonal difference.”

He continues: “I think there can be a little bit of elitism about tone. You're never going to make a Fender Telecaster going through a Vox AC30 Sound like a PRS through a Dual Rectifier.

“Obviously, the gear matters and you want to pick something that’s appropriate for you. But in terms of injecting your own personality, you can pretty much pick up anything and make it sound like you.”

Meanwhile, Reliqa’s Lloyd is a kid in a candy store when it comes to tone. “I don’t want to be limited to the tones we can use during a set, and my Quad Cortex has been great for that,” he says.

He plays Aristides guitars – “They’re so inspiring, I’ll pick one up to jam and I’ve got half a song” – and to accommodate his tuning addiction, he abuses the QC’s transpose feature. It allows him to quickly navigate between his 11 different tunings (drop-A, -A#, -B, -C, -D, -F, -F#, -G and double drop-C, -D, and -F).

Crucially, he doesn’t find it weird that the string tension never fluctuates. “I’m so busy throwing myself around on stage that I don’t really care or notice how tight or loose the string gauges may feel with the pitch shift,” he explains. “If it sounds good in my ears, I’m happy!

“But until recently, I hadn’t taken into account how much playing live impacts my songwriting. I’ve found myself changing my sound based on what sort of licks I enjoy playing, as opposed to what I enjoy listening to.

“It’s a lot of trial and error, figuring out what works in the context of the band. Our character has evolved very quickly. We’re all pushing ourselves and each other to further our skills and write challenging music.” 

Asked why Australia’s prog metal scene is thriving right now, Lloyd’s answer is short but proud: “The quality of bands is much higher than it used to be. Self-production has gotten so much better, so it’s easy to get stuff going. But there’s absolutely something going on here that we cannot describe.” 

Kay’s answer, on the other hand, is a little more considered. “With our low population, low density and large country, you really do need to lean on each other even more than then maybe in other countries,” he argues.

“We encourage bands to live up to their full potential. We took Caligula’s Horse on a tour back in 2014 and now they’re doing really well, and that’s sick. A scene is only a scene when everyone’s working together.”

“We know how hard it is to make it,” Sam Vallen says. “The moment you see another Australian band do it, you have huge respect for them having gotten over those hurdles.”

On tour, Simone Dow has seen how a rare glimpse of close proximity can inspire. “In the early days, we went on tour with Dead Letter Circus and sleepmakeswaves,” she recalls, “and when we came back we suddenly had guitar parts with shimmery clean delays and all this post-rock type stuff.”

That sense of musical patchworking has, in recent years, widened the pool of Australian bands either touting a progressive label or embracing its experimentalism. 

Scott Kay laughs: “We’re not nerds anymore – it’s cool to play prog now! The borrowing of other styles can revitalise the genre. A lot of Australian metalcore bands, like Future Static and Wind Waker, are taking on a lot of progressive elements.”  

It’s a change Vallen has noted too. Citing metalcore as Australia’s most successful heavy music export, he says that leaning towards progressive tropes is helping elevate the Australian scene. He believes Reliqa are a prime example of that cross-pollination.

“They do this amazing job of having a metalcore foundational line, but are happy to draw from other styles that may not seem coherent with metalcore,” he says. “They’re incorporating really interesting hip-hop elements and avant garde ideas into their music – but it doesn't feel like a bunch of ideas just jammed together.”

It’s an openness to throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks that helps make the band such a unique, energizing prospect – one that typifies Australia’s trend-bucking vigor. 

“We’ve always been aware of one another and appreciative of the plurality of the music,” Vallen states. “There’s less of an imperative to sound like what progressive metal sounds like. And it never ceases to blow my mind just how diverse our scene is.”

• Caligula’s Horse released Charcoal Grace in January. Voyager launched Fearless In Love last year. Reliqa deliver debut album Secrets Of The Future on May 31 and it’s available to preorder now.