Coyote Man |Prosthetic Memories |Independent

Coyote Man is a power trio from Chicago, Illinois. Augie Portugal plays guitar and keys, Rene Rodriguez plays bass, and Ian Wheeler plays drums and percussion. The three have been making noise together since the early 2000s and made it official in 2015. Their heavy music has no words, and it sits somewhere between the tidal swell of Russian Circles, the riff architecture of Mastodon and the melancholy of Deftones. “Prosthetic Memories” is their new full length album, released independently.

The album was tracked at Iron Hand Audio in Chicago during June and July 2025 and mixed and mastered by Dan Klein. It runs seven tracks and just over half an hour. The concept revolves around memories never lived, meaning borrowed scraps of emotion and history stitched onto the self. With no lyrics to spell it out, the riffs and the titles do the talking. Klein's mix is warm and heavy at the low end. Rodriguez's bass grinds high enough to steer the riffs, and Wheeler's toms’ boom through the long build of “Interpreting Dreams”. “War Hatchet” is pure groove, a lurching rhythm that swings like the weapon in its title.

“Holographic Heirloom” pulls back into calmer stretches where Portugal's keys add a cinematic glow under the guitar. The Russian Circles blueprint is obvious and the trio wears it openly, with Deftones haze seeping into the melodies. The tracks move in one arc, and Chris Pacific's voice on “Faith In A Burning Room” breaks the wordless spell at the very end, a human payoff after half an hour of silence at the mic. Beyond all this the cover is horrendous. It looks like a found photo from a haunted yard sale and tells you zero about the music. The music is good enough though to bury that image under half an hour of riffs worth returning to.

|8.0