EAST OF THE WALL The Apologist, East of the Wall’s latest sprawl of hardened prog-metal, covers a lot of ground. It’s true, prog can get quite tedious quite fast: though the tracks are technically masterful, there’s often the question of when songcraft stops and showing off starts. Yet this New Jersey band strikes a decent balance between throaty metal aggression and jazzy guitar noodlings. Think a less obtuse Mars Volta, or maybe a pissed-off, schizoid version of The Weather Report. (Corbie Hill)

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