Insect Hotel Park are a post-rock/progressive metal solo project from Joseph Potts of Brighton, U.K.
This project recently put out an album called 24 Hour Fruit Shop, and it’s currently streaming on their Bandcamp page. If you think 24 Hour Fruit Shop evokes some bizarre and visceral imagery, then you’ll be tickled by the song titles like “Leafy Haven for Crawley Friends, “’Unholy Bond With That Goat,’” and “Ancient Fish Surprises Scientists With Long Life, Slow Growth.”
There’s certainly some elements of progressive metal and technical death metal in this album. However, one thing that this album isn’t that metal usually is is dark. Opening track—the aforementioned “Leafy Haven for Crawley Friends”—has some of that post-rock mellow formlessness. But it also gets into some really complicated guitar solos and other really impressive technical elements.
In some ways, it feels more like jazz than rock at its core. “Full Beard Combover, School Leaver Photo” has a really interesting electronic beat that’s complimented by the intense and technical musicianship in the other instruments. It’s actually a rather dizzying display of talent. The closer, called “Stout Then Gout,” gets into some more traditional metal sounds with some growling vocals, but it also plays against some disaffected, sung vocals. So, while there’s a lot of metal elements on this album, they’re being used in really unusual and interesting ways.
This is a fairly new artist, so there’s no social media to speak of, but Potts seems to be affiliated with a group called Ensemble 1 who sometimes post about Insect Hotel Park, and they can be found on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
