Flummox’s new single “Southern Progress” from their upcoming album, set for release in spring 2025, is an intense, chaotic collision of styles, blending everything from prog, doom, thrash, and speed metal to mathcore, with a pinch of blackened death metal, and even some of that wild, eccentric Mr. Bungle energy.
It’s like a rock and roll beast that took a wrong turn into mathematical chaos and found itself in a whirlwind of metal genres.
Out today, October 11, the song has been described as a jaw-dropping mission statement, smashing together every chaotic element the band does best and cranking the volume.
According to bassist and lead singer Alyson Blake Dellinger, the track delves into personal growth and reflects the band’s own progress, both musically and spiritually. “Southern Progress” encapsulates the band’s entire new album, showcasing the way they shift genres with intensity but also subtlety where it counts.
Guitarist Max Mobarry calls the song “bombastic,” describing it as “four solid minutes that represent how far we’ve come as a band.”
It’s both a rock-star critique and self-reflection, with Dellinger pointing out how the track challenges the tropes of musical self-representation, while remaining an unapologetically queer and autobiographical piece.
Flummox’s forthcoming album digs deeper into the themes introduced by “Southern Progress,” addressing the band members’ religiously oppressed upbringings, the police state, capitalism, and trauma.
Dellinger speaks openly about how creating music allows the band to confront and work through their personal struggles, saying, “Making an album is cheaper than therapy!”
The band’s chemistry is also clear, with Mobarry sharing how they’ve road-tested these songs live before recording. “Our audiences have seen us perform all of these songs, and there are all these bootlegs out there. People are really excited to hear the studio versions.”
Flummox’s journey is visualized through the album art, crafted by Paige Weatherwax. Featuring a tornado tearing through a Southern landscape as a rattlesnake is defeated by an opossum, Dellinger explains that these Southern symbols represent renewal and rebirth, not a glorification of the past but a nod to the South rising with a new vision. The opossum, now a symbol of the band, is described as their version of IRON MAIDEN’s Eddie—resilient, persistent, and fierce.
“Southern Progress” is an anthem of survival and transformation, wrapped up in a storm of progressive, genre-fluid metal that’s equal parts brutal and thought-provoking.
