I hadn’t come across High Spy until a few days ago when a friend suggested I check them out and in particular their latest album Human Geometry. So I duly hunted out their BandCamp page and ordered a CD.
From what I read, High Spy formed in 2006 and Human Geometry is their sixth album. The CD arrived quickly and it’s a cracking listen.
Fresh sounding heavyish progressive rock overall though with other styles thrown in with the crisp guitar work aided and abetted by excellent spiky keys and synths providing both washes of bigging up the background and jutting to the fore with nicely done solos which do not outstay their welcome.
Indeed – the synth work is reminiscent of the likes of say early Ultravox and Gary Numan without sounding dated. Nicely up in the mix all the way through too without being overpowering.
I think a description might be something like say a bit like Rush circa Presto or Test for Echo with some spiky new wave influences and lots of hooks and melodies particularly around the clean vocals. A very pleasurable listen and with a running time of around forty minutes the band back a lot in to the half dozen songs.
Fade is a superb opener. The core riff being simple and mirrored by the guitar and keys/synths. Nicely chunky, atmospheric and catchy whilst heavying it up too.
Second Chance sort of pop-prog it is so full of catchy hooks. Delayed Reaction sees the band stretch out a bit then we have Endgame which is tasty too. Have a listen:
https://youtu.be/hJ5bTDlr4Fo
Watching has an excellent guitar solo with some feeling behind it then Circles and Squares plays out the album in a sweeping near eleven minutes with all sorts going on throughout in a min-masterclass of fresh sounding hard/melodic/progressive rock rolled in to one song.
Whilst describing themselves as a prog band on their web site, here on Human Geometry there’s more rock than prog with the mixture of the chunky crisp guitar and the retro-modern synths working together so well to give such a fresh feel.
Add in the melodic vocal and a hard-working rhythm section (check out the bass lines) and High Spy have an excellent album here. I like it plenty.
No nonsense with the forty minute running time either. No twiddly bits for the sake of it to pad out the time. All the effort goes in to the music and tight song writing leaving nothing behind.
Human Geometry and the band’s other albums available from their BandCamp page here:
https://highspy1.bandcamp.com/album/human-geometry-album-2023
Do check them out.