Unlike the fictitious heavy-metal band from the 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, Shumaun frontman Farhad Hossain hasn’t lost skins players to bizarre gardening accidents or spontaneous combustion. But as his progressive-rock band was working on its full-length debut, Shumaun, he cycled through three different drummers.

That kind of instability could spell the end for many bands. But Shumaun powered through it — even managing to record a remarkably fluid album in the process (stream it below). Chalk that up to Hossain’s songwriting, sharpened by his years in the D.C. region’s progressive-rock scene.

Hossain has been involved in local music for more than a decade, playing in the bands Iris Divine and Encompass and serving as a session artist for other groups. When Iris Divine emerged in 2008, it quickly established itself as one of the area’s best progressive metal bands. In those days, Hossain split vocal, guitar and songwriting duties with Navid Rashid. But Hossain says it wasn’t always an ideal configuration.

“When you are in a situation like that, you have to make compromises,” says Hossain.

So when Hossain left Iris Divine in early 2012 — they remain friends and occasional collaborators — he turned his attention toward the wholly self-directed project that would become Shumaun. But soon he found that even going solo didn’t free him from certain hurdles, like picking a creative starting point.

“We started off as an ‘indie-rockish’ kind of band,” the musician says. “I had written an album’s worth of material that I scrapped before shifting to the more hard-rock direction that is now Shumaun.”

Then there was the drummer saga.

Tanvir Tomal, who had also played in Iris Divine, was Shumaun’s first drummer. Then his job took him out of the area and he left the group. So Hossain brought in Travis Orbin (formerly of Periphery, now in Darkest Hour) and Mark Zonder (Fates Warning) to help in the studio while looking for a full-time member. He eventually found one in Waqar Khan. But Khan didn’t last long, either; he recorded three songs with Shumaun before leaving the band due to professional obligations, Hossain says. Then as fate would have it, Tomal returned: He’d found a new job in the area, so he moved back and rejoined Shumaun.

This all means that Shumaun’s first album — released Nov. 13 — features three different drummers, none of which are the original and current drummer. But never mind that. The key thing is that where so many prog bands flounder, Shumaun flourishes.

The songs on Shumaun’s debut don’t meander with endless jam-bandesque solos that show off each band member’s mastery of their instrument — something that can grow tiresome to any but the most devoted prog fans. Instead, the record’s compositions are structured much more like pop songs; relatively short and exciting with catchy choruses.

The album has its moments of darkness, too. But lyrically, Hossain aims for uplifting, maintaining an optimistic outlook. The record’s theme, Hossain says, is “unity and the battle to achieve it across all spectrums of human life.” A fitting idea, considering his struggles to achieve unity in his own band.

Hossain never expected Shumaun to become his full-time group. It “started as a side project,” he says, and he “had no intention of leaving [Iris Divine] to pursue it.” But he found himself drawn to the self-directed work. “It’s a very liberating way to write,” the musician says.

Though Hossain may still return to working collaboratively one day. He acknowledges that sometimes he misses sharing the creative process with others. It could even work out again with the members of Iris Divine, who are still playing together.

“I am sure we will find a way to collaborate in some way in the future,” Hossain says. “Possibly something not metal or hard rock at all.”

Shumaun plays the NoVa Metal Family Reunion tonight at VFW Post 9274 in Falls Church, Virginia.

That’s because Hammerly and his bandmates have grappled with a series of setbacks in the run-up to Black Ocean Waves. In August 2011, King Giant’s rhythm guitarist, David Kowalski, broke his femur while filming the music video for “Appomattox,” the first track on King Giant’s previous record. That LP, Dismal Hollow, came out in early 2012 — and while Kowalski managed to fight through his pain and play a release show while sitting in a chair, he had to undergo another surgery immediately after the performance.

Then in October 2012, a week before King Giant was scheduled to play another local gig, lead guitarist Todd Ingram fell, breaking both his wrist and fretting hand. That injury — and the multiple surgeries and rehab it required — forced the band to cancel not only that comeback show, but also its entire Dismal Hollow tour.

Out of necessity, King Giant changed course. “For long periods of time we simply couldn’t play live due to the medical issues,” Ingram says. “So we just focused on writing and making a new album.”

Fans got an early listen to that new album in May, when King Giant previewed it at a Metal Night I co-hosted at Fair Winds Brewing. The band had planned to sell Black Ocean Waves during its release show at Springfield, Virginia, venue Empire, until another setback struck: The venue abruptly shut down just weeks before the show.

Despite the string of bad luck, King Giant finally released Black Ocean Waves on June 30 — and fittingly, it’s a gloomy record that still manages to find glimmers of hope amid the darkness.

The LP includes several uptempo — even catchy — tunes, including “Trail of Thorns” and “Requiem for a Drunkard,” suggesting a resolute strength achieved through overcoming hardship. That hardship didn’t just stem from the band’s injuries.

The song “There Were Bells,” Ingram says, “expresses our heartbreak at losing so many friends to addictions, suicide and other tragedies over the past few years. We have had to say goodbye to so many people we care about in such a short amount of time.”

Elsewhere, Black Ocean Waves weaves tales of adventure and mishap, usually led by a tough-as-nails protagonist who busies himself by toppling obstacles, venturing on gruesome killing sprees and — in “Blood of the Lamb” — joining a church of snake handlers.

Hammerly excels at adding a relatable human element to these songs, and despite the often questionable ethics of the characters involved, he’s surprisingly adept at making listeners feel as though they’re walking in the narrator’s shoes.

Take “Red Skies,” which tells the story of a man lured onto a boat to be murdered by the ship’s crew — except the crew has severely underestimated his tenacity, and they’re the ones who end up dead. It’s a macabre scene, but Hammerly doesn’t tell the tale with the alpha-male, tough-guy tone you’d expect. He takes a left turn, focusing on the killer’s ensuing struggle with guilt. (It also leaves the listener questioning if the crew actually intended to kill the narrator or if it was all a figment of his imagination.)

Doom and stoner metal have a long tradition in the Washington, D.C., region. King Giant has built on that tradition, but found an audience beyond typical metalheads. The band harnesses the fuzzy guitars of ‘70s heavy metal and Southern rock and adds the despair of blues and the storytelling of country western, imparting a blue-collar grit to the band’s sound.

From solos bathed in wah-wah to whiskey-soaked tales of hardship, Black Ocean Waves sets a high-water mark for the region’s metal scene this year. But it’s King Giant’s thoughtful songwriting — crafted with an eye toward the band’s own hard-luck experiences — that gives the record its heft.

King Giant’s Black Ocean Waves is available on iTunes and Bandcamp. Preview it below.