This Week's Featured Album: Karnivool - Themata

Many bands have attempted to mix alternative rock and progressive rock, but they often fail due to a lack of instrumental prowess or songwriting ability. Karnivool bucks this trend by offering everything that listeners love about both alternative and progressive rock, with modern vocal melody styles, a great focus on varied song structures, strong alternative-style vocals, and plenty of fantastic instrumentation. In fact, for the album above, the guitarist used the B-F#-B-G-B-E tuning, which definitely gives the album a unique sound.

Themata, this debut album, is a fantastic introduction to the band's style and offers plenty of great songs, including the opener "Cote," the aggressive instrumental "Scarabs," and the slower closing track "Change, Part 1." In all, this Australian band offers a lot to love for a variety of listeners, and it's a wonder that I only learned about the band about a month ago. So, discover the band for yourself using those samples over on the right.