Capturing mental illness in song is a dicey business. When somebody does it right, you feel like you’re getting to listen to the most poetic case study ever written. When they do it wrong, it’s like being accosted on the street by an actual mental patient who wants to sing you his very favorite tune. Which he just made up.

Suffice it to say that prog- metalers Derev get it right on their new single, “Room 9.” Very right indeed. Harrowing in all the best ways, the song chronicles the inner torment of an inmate in a mental institution who feels as if he’s trapped within his own mind as well—that his thoughts keep racing around and around on an “endless trail” that leads nowhere but back into the thick of an impenetrable maze.

The latest to land alongside their newest EP, Leap of Faith, Canadian prog-metal rockers Derev have unleashed their heaviest track yet; “Turab” – Watch it here on YouTube:

Featuring guest vocalist Adel Saflou, the five-minute hard-hitter includes the Derev members Armando Bablanian, Michel Karakach, and Liam Horrigan, and picks up right where the album’s previous single, “Futile,” left off…

Think: intense guitar riffs, chest-pounding drum beats, and mesmerizingly groovy time changes — all backed by the track’s thought-provoking nature sparked by the trio’s poetic and harrowing lyrical efforts.

Meaning ‘earth’ in Arabic, “Turab” was written with the purpose of “questioning things that are culturally presumed as absolute truths,” the band says, using the culture of war as an example to question the “honour” of sacrificing oneself for “the land.”

In a release that’s anything but “Futile,” Canadian rockers Derev harness the intensity of metal with atmospheric progressive sounds, all while incorporating elements of their Arabic and Armenian heritage in this, their propulsive new single —  check out the video here on YouTube:

The freshly pressed debut track for the Toronto-based three-piece features the guest vox of Adel Saflou (Ambrotype); its video then whisks audiences on a vivid journey through the mind of an individual who is exhausted from a life lived glued to a screen and yearns to return to a more natural way of life.