For their first shows on home soil in over 12 months Ne Obliviscaris are bringing with them a stellar support group, headed by Brisbane's Caligula's Horse and rounded out by three international heavyweights in Allegaeon, Beyond Creation and Rivers of Nihil. It is a travelling extravaganza dubbed The Painted Progression tour and one which clean vocalist and violinist for Ne Obliviscaris, Tim Charles, struggles to contain his enthusiasm about.


"We're all kind of related but different", he laughed. "Caligula's Horse are obviously one of Australia's best progressive rock metal bands. Their last album 'In Contact' was just phenomenal and I guess they're a little more on the melodic side than some of the other bands. Allegaeon have a new album coming out in April which I've been lucky enough to get an advance copy of and I think it's the best thing they've ever done. Those guys are a really fantastic live band, really technical but with lots of melody as well and super tight live. Beyond Creation - some of our Australian fans will already know them if they came and saw our tour back in 2014 - are again a phenomenal live band; super technical but melodic in their own way and a great bunch of guys as well - as are all of the bands on the bill - and Rivers of Nihil put out one of the most surprising albums of last year. It was a real progressive wonder of an album with these sweeping saxophone solos and all this sort of stuff and we really felt they were a perfect fit for us in the way that the approach being heavy but also progressive and extreme at the same time. They do it differently to us but in a way that we felt was really compatible with what we're doing. Every band is a little bit different but they all kind of fit together".


When Ne Obliviscaris first burst onto the Melbourne music scene in 2003 it is fair to say they were a breath of fresh air on a scene that was starting to choke up with progressive music. They refused to follow a set blueprint and instead set about forging their name in their own image, albeit it one which drew influence from some of the heavyweights of the time.


"Back then there was some pretty significant things happening in the metal world that impacted me", Charles recalled. "It was probably not too long before that that I discovered Opeth through their Blackwater Park album and Enslaved came out with an album and Dream Theatre had not long before come out with Scenes From A Memory. All of these albums were my favourite records at that time so when we were starting this band I never wanted to sound like anybody but the idea that you could be an extreme and really heavy metal band but at the same time be melodic and have beautiful elements to your music was something that I had kind of recently discovered and been inspired by. Some of those bands like Opeth and Enslaved that were doing that opened our horizons to the fact of let's not have any barriers when we write music. Let's just write music and if we think it's good it doesn't matter what genre it is. If it's metal or acoustic or prog or classical or jazz let's not care. Let's just try to write good music and not give a fuck what anyone thinks we should sound like and that's how we came up with our sound because I don't think anyone sounds like we do, and all we did was just try to be ourselves. We just tried to get rid of the barriers and let each member be themselves in the band. We're all quite different musicians and everyone has that opportunity in our band to have that creative voice and that shines through in the music I think".


With their debut album 'Portal of I' in 2012 Ne Obliviscaris created a masterpiece that not only resonated with the fans but also had mainstream media singing their praises. It was one of the first times music of this nature had reached the ears of the mainstream and be met with appraisal and was a significant moment in Australian progressive...