“Math rock” band Angine de Poitrine seems to be everywhere now: the Saguenay, Québec duo won two prestigious Polaris prizes on Sept. 22, and recently appeared on the United States-based Tonight Show and other international venues. The Polaris Prize honours important Canadian music and is adjudicated by over 200 critics and curators. Angine de Poitrine won both the album and song prizes. The latter is jointly awarded by Polaris and the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada.The band became a viral sensation in early 2026 and has been performing sold-out shows around the globe. A significant part of the attention they have garnered is due to their outlandish stage presence and self-described status as an “anonymous art project” — guitarist “Khn” and drummer “Klek” wear polka-dotted outfits and giant papier mâché heads in the guise of being alien rock stars. Read more: Dada: how 1916 art movement reacting to world war is inspiring improvisation artists today But the band’s music, which features microtonal melodies, dense, elaborately constructed textures and wonky, complex rhythms, has also captured the attention of a legion of music fans. Just as the duo has dominated social media and the summer concert circuit, iconic Canadian progressive rock power trio Rush has been on a much-hyped, epic global reunion tour, marking almost 50 years in the music industry. Does their popularity suggest, improbably, that we are witnessing a progressive rock renaissance? Emergence of ‘prog rock’In the late 1960s, shaped by developments in psychedelic rock especially, progressive rock (or “prog”) emerged as a rejection of commercial pop and blues-based rock music, borrowing from other musical traditions — art music, jazz, non-western music — and focusing on technical virtuosity, long-format songs, experimentation, quasi-symphonic textures and classical forms. Prog’s popularity declined precipitously in the mid ‘70s, and the genre — with its legendary excesses, including self-indulgent soloing, abstruse lyrics and pompous conceits — was eclipsed by the advent of punk. Rush played a key role in the development of prog. Forming in Toronto in 1968 and releasing its first album in 1974, Rush blended heavy blues-based rock in the vein of Led Zeppelin, The Who and Cream with the richer palette offered by seminal British prog groups. The progressive aspects of Rush’s music have included atmospheric guitar textures, virtuosic melodic bass lines, technically demanding drum parts and the use of irregular meter (which instead of the usual multiples of four, sees the music grouped into “irregular” units of five or seven, for example). In the 1980s, this gave way to a more radio-friendly approach, leading to a succession of very successful, chart-topping Rush songs throughout the decade. Angine on the prog rock spectrumWhile Rush emerged from this “classic” prog era, Angine de Poitrine occupies a different part of the prog rock spectrum. The band’s music is typically described as math rock, a sub-genre of prog that originated in the early 1990s. Writer Jeff Gomez has traced its history in his recent monograph Math Rock, going back through free jazz, progressive rock and thrash metal. While there is no universal agreement on the meaning or value of the label “math rock,” it’s safe to say that it consists primarily of instrumental rock music that features virtuosic, highly precise playing and significant rhythmic and metrical complexity. The music not only makes use of irregular meter and phrases of irregular length — common in classic prog — but can also be polymetric, with simultaneous musical lines being counted in different time groupings. Angine de Poitrine perform at the Polaris Prize on Sept. 22, 2026. Layered, looped music partsIn the case of Angine de Poitrine, the band’s guitarist plays a double-necked instrument that includes a bass guitar. Guitar and bass parts are performed in real time and looped. That is, the parts are recorded digitally as Khn plays them, and then they repeat in continuous circuits. Loop is layered on top of loop; the loops are different lengths, and are counted in different time groupings. The math of this music has to do with how the loops progress cyclically and eventually line up. The effect is kaleidoscopic, in that multiple melodic lines complete for the ear’s attention, and shift in and out of phase with each other, creating a succession of new relationships. It requires some elaborate choreography. The loop station and a cluster of volume pedals, which bring loops in and out of the mix, sit on the floor and are controlled by the guitarist’s feet. The drummer plays steadily against the polymetric guitar and bass parts, at times in tension with the guitar parts and then locked in when the parts align, creating some decidedly funky grooves. The new Rush?Is Angine de Poitrine really “the new Rush,” as some fans have claimed on social media? Can we compare these two bands and, if so, what can we say about the state of “progressive” music? While on tour, the members of Rush sang the praises of Angine de Poitrine, sensing some affinities between the duo and their own esthetic tradition. And the complexity of both Rush and Angine appeals directly to other musicians, who respect the challenges of composing this kind of music, and co-ordinating parts in live performance. But Rush’s prog rock pedigree is now also overwritten by a strong nostalgia element and by a legacy of radio-friendly songs that have become unchallenged fixtures in the classic rock firmament. Angine de Poitrine is undeniably impressive, and they are certainly exciting to hear and see live, but the costumes, “alien rock star” conceit and absence of singing could suggest a short shelf life. Building complex musical textures is no longer novel, with looping technology entering its third decade, and with math rock bands — like the San Francisco post-rock duo Giraffes? Giraffes! — making similar quirky, loop-driven music since the early 2000s. Ongoing boom of less commercial musicPerhaps, then, we didn’t exactly see a prog rock renaissance in 2026. But in some ways, prog never really went away. Not only have bands like Rush carried on (for almost 50 years, alongside other still-active prog dinosaurs like Styx and Yes), but the prog rock impulse towards music that is less commercial, with more elaborate, long-format songwriting, has evolved. It can still be heard in the music of recent prog groups like Dream Theatre, Porcupine Tree, Big Big Train and Wobbler, but also in the music of more mainstream acts like Radiohead, Tool and Primus. Thanks to social media and streaming, commercial radio no longer dictates the forms of music production. The success of bands like Angine de Poitrine at least show that rock music can challenge our ears and doesn’t need to be dumbed down or Tik Tok-ified to find a huge and appreciative audience.Alexander Carpenter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.