A more general piece of (unsolicited) advice on this:
Prog music these days, much like 5th edition D&D and “modern metal,” suffers greatly from being too self-referential. If you want to make cool prog, listen to and learn lines from other genres. You’ll be much cooler for it. 
Or just find one of Robert Fripp’s semi rants on “what went wrong in prog” prog was supposed to be stretching the boundaries but like all things it became a formulaic style. Hence KC throwing new wave elements in the mix in 80s was progressive as well as the industrial elements in the 90s
In this way a band like Polyphia is the most prog with all their disparate electronica influences and have gained recognition far outside of their niche for it. Celtic Frost was a similar band that for their time had many disparate elements, no one would call them “prog” but what they were doing in the 80s was very progressive especially on Into the Pandemonium where they could almost be said to have inadvertantly started to invent symphonic metal.
In the modern era I think the Japanese metal bands get closest to this ethos of not being afraid of taking very non metal elements into metal. Marty Friedman has talked about this in interviews and how hearing X Japan in the 90s reinvigorated his love of rock music.
Prog metal to me has always been the most delicate of genres to walk the line of as the metal crowd will turn on a band quickly if they subsume too many non metal elements. See Cynic getting anything that wasn’t nailed down in venues hurled at them while opening for Cannibal Corpse in the 90s and then being absolutely moved that people knew every word to every song when they reformed in the 00s. Queensryche from the mid 90s to the 2010s is a good example of this as well although it was probably impossible for a Seattle band to not see the success of grunge and want some of the bread.
Now I think people care less about “metal cred” in the modern age as scenes proper don’t really exist in the Internet age. The success of bands like Deafheaven kind of prove this as well as the rediscovery of a band with very disparate elements like Deftones by the younger generation. Sure the haters are gonna hate but no one cares about them and their forum circle jerks.
Early prog metal was basically dudes that like Iron Maiden but also really like Yes, Rush, King Crimson. But is that really “progressive” like 40 years after it’s been done?
Tl;Dr if you want to be the “most prog” listen to everything and throw bits that you like into the mix.