Mindwork are the Czech Republic’s most highbrow metal artist. Their country’s famous Obscene Extreme festival has never booked them, but they’ve appeared at the legendary Brutal Assault on four occasions. Scream Blast Repeat described their 2021 comeback EP as ‘late night metal music for a candle-lit room and an evening with a Hegel book.’ This time they have a concept for their third album: an exploration of Alzheimer’s disease from the earliest stages of decline to the end of lucidity.
Soothing guitar strokes introduce the opening title track with a succession of China splashes and hammer-on techniques before the crunch of the electric guitar takes over. The focus on building tension with staccato stabs and additional layers of melody is welcome and sets the scene for the story to unfold. You can already appreciate the symbolism of the guitar distortion as a metaphor for the parts of the mind that stop functioning efficiently.
Mindwork’s version of death metal revolves around the growled vocals, but the textures of this music are pure prog. Listen to the groove of the drummer in ‘The Great Deception of Mind’ as he lands the “one” away from the point you most expect it. The guitars are happy to lead when needed, sometimes building arpeggiated shapes with the tight control of palm-muting, yet Martin Plachý’s expressive saxophone feels like a natural extension of the song’s mood and aesthetic. The only reservation here is the lack of malevolence. Death metal is supposed to be fierce and ugly, and this is neither. Martin Schuster’s harsh vocals lack the bite of a John Tardy or David Vincent. On the other hand, Mindwork’s expansive prog death experiment is more imaginative than seventy percent of the artists out there.
Technical metal is a junior sibling to jazz fusion, but it gets closer to its sophistication each year. It’s not the fiendish speed of Archspire here, but the spacious intelligence of Caligula’s Horse and Tesseract. Multiple listens should be appealing rather than boring. ‘A Moment of Clarity’ is not a cover of the Death song from 1998, but they remake Talk Talk’s ‘The Party’s Over’ as its successor at track five. And this is the synth-pop era of 1982 before the reclusive English band invented post-rock later in that decade. You can see why Schuster chose it: his voice has the same nasal Bryan Ferry pitch as Mark Hollis, and maybe he should use it more often. The lyrics are also perfect for the concept of this LP. “Take a look at the kids / I’ve been losing track / This crime of being uncertain of your love / Is all I’m guilty of.”
It’s easy to forget about the shredding capabilities of the guitar work from Mindwork. They remind us of this in ‘Solitary Man’, which mixes ringing arpeggios with aggressive picking rhythms. There’s no obvious structure, nor would it make sense to impose a verse-chorus format when the subject of the record is the anxiety of an incongruous mind. ‘Mess from Now On’ continues with this unease. It starts like a hallucination that the protagonist is conscious of and cannot control. The deliberate clash of notes within the intervals produces a terror that only an electric guitar can create. Fortunately, the fretless bass shapes offer an alternative mediation if your ears start to bleed. Likewise, Schuster’s John Lennon-esque voice comes from nowhere when your brain wants to impose order on the complexities of the guitar and drums. The order arrives in the form of a dreamy saxophone solo led by clean guitar progressions, but this is not an orthodox resolution. Instead, they ramp things up and dive into a hurricane of tremolo picking and guttural expressions. Its brilliance should become clear after three listens.
The melancholy strum of the closing track, ‘Stars’, is a wise way to end Adrift and reveals once more that Mindwork have many dimensions to their sound. Understanding these elements and aligning them with a clear mind is the challenge and a subtle triumph for the concept of this record.
Kirk Houghton
Verdict
Release Date: 27/08/2026
Record Label: Self-released
Standout tracks: The Great Deception of Mind; Solitary Man; Mess from Now On
Suggested Further Listening: Alchemist – Spiritech (1997), Alarum – Eventuality… (2004), Cynic – Kindly Bent to Free Us (2014)