I’ve been recommended to listen to Queensryche time and time again so I definitely will now after this thread.
I have listened to a lot of Dream Theater, as I’m sure you can guess from my profile picture. I love John Petrucci as a guitarist and his efforts in moving the ball forward w/r/t technical development of the instrument, but he - and every other member of Dream Theater - should have broken up after Kevin Moore left.
They got so bad I get secondhand embarrassment listening to a lot of their recent metal and have to turn it off. They can’t write riffs and the technical passages are played out. Images and Words and Awake I treat like McDonald’s and other fast food - I know it’s not good for me to consume it, and there are far superior options, but sometimes it hits the spot of teenage nostalgia.
It’s nice to meet other people who like Opeth. I think they’re just great! Re: “the best album Pink Floyd never released”: Wow, that is an interesting description. “Damnation” gives me a similar emotion as Pink Floyd does - getting high without drugs. I say that because it takes me to a different place, sort of a floating feeling. And I don’t even drink alcohol so I’m just imagining the effect of drugs when i say that. There’s also a melancholy feeling to both their music. Despite being a 90s band, I hear much more 70s music in Opeth than 80s or 90s - in their “Damnation” style music I mean. Do you agree? I’ve heard they were inspired by some obscure European 70s bands and if so, I’d love to hear who those bands are.
Of their very heavy stuff, I can say that I like it but in small doses. I like it for maybe 15 or 20 minutes and then I need a break. What I love about it are the mellow vocals in the interludes. Those interludes are to me what make Opeth’s heavy stuff really stand out although the riffing is exceptional as well. If you like Blackwater Park I strongly suggest their previous album: “My Arms, Your Hearse” which is every bit the quality of album Blackwater Park is.
Yes, that’s why I mentioned “…And Justice For All” which I think is more progressive than Puppets although both have all those attributes you listed above. For some reason despite them fitting the qualifications of being literally a progressive metal band, I think it’s their vocalist that disqualifies them from typically being called “progressive metal.” The prog metal vocalists usually have voices that I guess I’d say are more “conventionally beautiful.” They also usually have high vocal ranges, although Opeth’s vocalist doesn’t have that high range that Tate, Arch, or Ray Alder had. Still, in my opinion the guy in Opeth has a beautiful voice and Hetfield, well, he sings nicely in “Fade To Black” for example, but I don’t think his voice is as nice as Opeth’s vocalist’s.
Speaking of beautiful voices, and I realize this is off topic, but speaking of 70’s style rock, yesterday I was listening to Heart’s “Little Queen” and “Dreamboat Annie” album and the two Wilson sisters are every bit as beautiful looking as they sound! If you’ve only heard the much more generic, bland 80s Heart, you owe to to yourself to check out the 2 albums I listed. They were so Zeppelin influenced that they recorded a cover of “The Battle Of Evermore”! How many rock bands could do that?
Yeah, Opeth is pretty open about their 70s folk and prog influences, but I can’t say I’ve ever bothered to hunt them down. Fun Fact - “Damnation” was produced by Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson, who also contributed keyboards. Akersfelt, who does indeed have the voice of an angel when he’s not growling, has been doing more clean vocals these days - checking out some of their newer material, Heritage and onwards, might be worth your time.
For me, for the heavier stuff, the highlights are Blackwater Park (which even then features a clean acoustic tune, Harvest, which is gorgeous), and Ghost Reveries, which is a bit more Tool-esq in some of its riffing, which as a fan of the band (Danny Carey is a goddamned genius) is totally cool by me.
Porcupine Tree is worth a listen too - I think this is amazing:
That’s the animation from their live show they’d project up on a scvreen while playing, and that’s actually the audio from a live performance, off their “Arriving Somewhere…” DVD.
I listened to Porcupine Tree and although it’s not my taste, they’re good musicians. I’m curious: Is Porcupine Tree considered by their fans to be progressive metal"? I can see how they might be in the sense that Tool are called “progressive metal” but they’re a very different kind of progressive metal than Queensryche, Fates Warning, etc…
They blur the line between progressive rock and progressive metal - neither In Absentia nor Deadwing are all THAT heavy, but then Fear of a Blank Planet, recorded after a tour with Meshuggah, is. Their earlier stuff, particularly the stuff before Stupid Dream, is very overtly proggy in more of a classic 70s way, they just started to mix in a rock and pop songwriting sensibility over time. “Trains” is a spectacular song first and foremost, even if you’re not into prog:
But, it’s not a matter of their fans “considering” them prog or not - they ARE a prog band, openly and unabashedly so, they just don’t sound all that much like Queensryche.
Do you hear a little bit of the Tool sound in Porcupine Tree? I’m listening to Trains now and I listened to the first song you linked. So far Trains sounds like a more adventurous composition than the other song you linked. I thought I heard some Tool influence but I don’t listen to Tool so it’s hard for me to say for sure. I think they’re more like the Tool type of being progressive metal than the Fates Warning, Savatage or Opeth styles.
You say you didn’t care for Jon Oliva’s voice so I’m wondering if you;re familiar with the song and album “Edge Of Thorns” as that’s the one album by them that has Zachary on vox but still has Criss Oliva on lead guitar. Were you a Criss Oliva fan? I liked him a lot and fortunately got to see him twice - both times in a nightclub so I was close to the stage.
If you like Zachary’s vocals better than those of Jon Oliva than there’s one other album besides Edge Of Thorns I recommend. It’s the first album they made after Criss Oliva was killed by a drunk driver. So, on lead guitar is has Alex Skolnick who is an amazing player. I don’t know how familiar with him you are so here’s one that’s especially progressive because it has a series of vocal lines that I think is called a “round” or possibly a “canon”? I used to know the term but can’t remember it right now for some reason. Anyway this is quite an impressive song and probably my favorite of the Savatage songs not featuring Criss Oliva: Savatage - Chance - YouTube
EDIT: This is very orchestral and you can clearly hear them getting closer and closer to what they eventually became - The Trans Siberian Orchestra except this is still heavy metal and I don’t think TSO is.
Eh, it’s more than I don’t really love ANY Savatage, stylistically, and less because of any one of their vocalists. I’m just not that into that style of music.
In that particular composition, the only really Tool-esq element I’m hearing is the dominant bassline and the use of an odd-time signature (the bass riff at the beginning is in 9, and I want to say the high melody that comes in for the bridge is something like 13/8 but I haven’t counted it out lately to verify that).
If you don’t really know Tool, though, go spin the title track off Lateralus immediately. If you’re into prog… Very complex time signatures and rhythmic interplay between the different instruments, extremely conceptual in nature (the song is loosely based on a Fibonacci sequence, where every number is the sum of the two before it - the verses form a Fibonacci sequence of syllables ascending to 5 before descending down through the pattern, and of course spirals feature heavily in the lyrics), phenomenal musicianship (though unlike most prog it’s the drumming that steals the show, in Tool the guitar really truly functions as a percussion instrument than it does in most rock). I think the highhat fills on the bridge are such an awesome musical element - I actually managed to count out the shifting pattern Carey was playing there once, and I’ve never managed to work it out since, but he seems to be doing a something-against-something-else pattern, probably something against four, and gradually building complexity. He studied indian tabla playing for a number of years, and it really shows in how he phrases, it’s very unlike any other rock drummer I can think of.
Speaking of world music influences in prog, any other Orphaned Land fans here?
These guys are just out there, musically - an Israeli band with Jewish, Muslim, and Christian members borrowing heavily on various Arabic folk music themes. Sort of an eastern Opeth dealing with religious folklore themes, but in a not-preaching, folklore/history sort of way. I’m about as secular as they come, and I think this rules.
I don’t consider Awake and Images and Words anything like fast food. They are that really, really great, Michelin-starred restaurant that took a huge dump after the founding chef left and the owner got nicked for pinching the waitresses’ assses.
Seems I’m coming late to the discussion, I just wanted to quickly say that I love both bands, I’d say the riffs are equally beautiful but DT has a small edge for me because I tend to enjoy the guitar solos in DT a little more. True, JP is big on virtuosity, but also his ability to compose beautiful melodies in phenomenal.
The solos in Queensryche are of course very good but in places they give me more the feeling of a “Jam session” as opposed to a “careful composition”.
I found the above quite hard to put down in words, I have no idea if I’m making sense
I’m generally a fan of progressive metal, I like the sounds, the compositions, the concept albums, the level of musicianship, etc.
My favourite bands are Dream Theater, Nevermore, Angra, Toska, Plini and Gojira. All of them have progressive elements, some of them more, some less.
That being said, I think that “Images and Words” is the greatest progressive metal album ever written. It’s a masterpiece and I think it will pass the test of time. It’s already considered a classic.
It seems to me that you prefer solos that sound like “careful compositions” as you put it, to improvised solos. Some people do. Neither approach is necessarily right or wrong; it matters what you personally enjoy hearing more.
It’s my understanding that the guitar solo in rock music and jazz too for that matter, began as a showcase for the guitarist to showcase his improvisational abilities. That is the original purpose of the guitar solo in rock although if some of you music historians have a different understanding of how guitar solos in rock began, I’m sure we’d all be interested in learning about it.
I prefer the improvised approach to solos. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why Yngwie Malmsteen is my favorite guitarist. He has improvised every solo he’s ever recorded. Even live, he improvises upon the original recorded solo, retaining the most memorable melodies and improvising the rest. Ritchie Blackmore was known for improvising his solos live as well and in Rainbow Live In Munich he takes some songs by Rainbow that were originally 4 or 5 minute songs and through improvisation between him and the rest of the band, they extend these songs to two or three times the original length of the song. I enjoy that - getting to hear something live that you didn’t get to hear on the album. The record company would want songs that have potential for radio play, so it’s in a live setting that Blackmore and the rest of Rainbow got to really cut loose and show what they could do with 15 minute renditions of songs.
To me that’s the most exciting aspect of the solo - hearing what the musician is capable of coming up with on the spot. The rest of the songs generally are very structured, so those solos are about the only place you do you hear that type of spontaneity. You could go see players like Malmsteen or Blackmore on three different shows of the same tour and never hear the same concert twice. There is an excitement to not knowing what the setlist will be and not knowing exactly how every song and solo will sound.
Bands who do that often get die hard fans who will follow them on tour and go to as many concerts on each tour as possible because they know they’re going to get something new each night. Bands that have the same setlist every night and play each song as closely to how the played it in the studio don’t usually inspire the kind of enthusiasm resulting in fans following them around from town to town on their tours.
That’s the approach to music I like best. On any given night you can hear something magical which may never be duplicated. They may take a solo or an entire song to places you never would have imagined.
There’a certain energy and emotion to improvisation, a spontaneous type of feeling that I find very appealing whether that improvisation happens in the studio in a guitar solo, or on stage. That mindset of daring to take risks rather than sticking to one carefully planned out way of doing things that I believe gets right to the heart and the spirit of rock music.
I didn’t ask if Porcupine Tree’s fans considered them prog. I asked: “Is Porcupine Tree considered by their fans to be progressive metal”? I can see how they might be in the sense that Tool are called “progressive metal” but they’re a very different kind of progressive metal than Queensryche, Fates Warning, etc…"
I believe there’s distinction between “progressive metal” and “prog”, enough of one that the two can’t accurately be used interchangeably. Early Genesis and Yes were prog but I doubt anyone would consider them progressive metal.
I have a question regarding this particular statement: “It’s not a matter of their fans ‘considering’ them prog or not - they ARE a prog band, openly and unabashedly so…”
By that do you mean that if a band states they are or are not a specific style of music, then that’s the defining factor for classifying them as to what genre or sub-genre to which they belong and if the fans consider that band part of some other genre or sub-genre that’s irrelevant?
That’s how it came across - that what genre the fans consider a band to be is either irrelevant or maybe somewhat relevant but of minor importance and I have to disagree with that. Lemmy said for years that Motorhead wasn’t a metal band, that they were just a rock 'n roll band and he’s entitled to his opinion. But in making the case that Motorhead wasn’t a metal band, you certainly couldn’t prove it by the fans, by the section in which record stores put their albums, or by the bands whom they played with in live shows. When I saw them, Motorhead was 2nd billing out of three bands total. Overkill opened the show, then Motorhead played, and finally Slayer closed the show. Those other two bands proudly proclaimed themselves to be metal and if you asked the members of those two bands, I’m pretty they’d tell you that they considered Motorhead a metal band - one who influenced each of them considerably.
Just earlier you and I were discussing how Metallica fits the definition of a progressive metal bands very well, or they used to at least. Maybe they still do. You mentioned Master Of Puppets and I mentioned …And Justice For All" as examples of albums that fit the description of what a progressive metal band is. They contained more than enough elements of the various elements of which a progressive metal band must include some of in order to actually be progressive metal.
Metallica had more than enough of those elements to fit the description of “progressive metal.” The one they lacked was a singer with a very wide vocal range. Hetfield can’t hit the notes that Geoff Tate, John Arch, Ray Alder, Midnight, Jon Oliva and Jamie LaBrie can. Hetfield’s upper range doesn’t come close to being able to hit the notes those vocalists can hit. But Maynard from Tool can’t hit those notes either and they’re considered progressive metal by their fans. I don’t know if Tool themselves describe themselves as a progressive metal band or not.
So, it’s Metallica’s fans not considering them progressive metal that has led to them not being classified that way. Metallica themselves don’t call themselves progressive metal but that’s not up to the band. If it were up to the band to classify the genre in which they belong, everyone would go along with Lemmy’s description of Motorhead as a rock 'n roll band and specifically not a metal band.
The same statement you made about Porcupine Tree could be applied to mid to late eighties Mteallica - “It’s not a matter of their fans ‘considering’ them prog or not - they ARE a prog band, openly and unabashedly so, they just don’t sound all that much like Queensryche.” After all, Metallica has plenty of the elements that make a band a progressive metal band.
If that’s all that matters in how a band is classified, Metallica is, or at least was a progressive metal band. The only problem with that whole line of thinking is very few if any people consider them to be progressive metal. Their fans call them either thrash metal or just metal. There was a time when a lot of their fans called them “speed metal” and that’s an appropriate description of their earlier recordings. That term was pretty much interchangeable with “thrash metal” however, and eventually the term " speed metal" fell out of popular usage in the modern lexicon. Who was responsible for that? The fans. The media can use a name to describe a sound 24/7 but if the fans ultimately reject it, that term falls by the wayside.
This all leads me to the conclusion that the arbiter of whether a band is a progressive metal band or not (or any other term describing their genre or sub-genre), isn’t the band themselves, it isn’t the media, and it isn’t even the music itself and how many objectively defined elements it possesses. On the contrary, it absolutely is a matter of the fans considering them progressive metal or not. The fans are the arbiter of whether a band is progressive metal or not.
Eh, I think definitions get pretty arbitrary pretty fast - I’m not even sure personally if it makes sense to differentiate between prog and progressive metal, as the later are just bands combining prog influences and metal influences and I’d say a prog rock and prog metal band have more in common than a metal and prog metal one. But, Porcupine Tree’s prog bona fides are pretty strong, quite a bit more so than Queensryche, I’d say, which makes this conversation a little ironic and bemusing to me. It’s not what their fans think they are, it’s that prog fans talk about Porcupine Tree (and Dream Theater, and Fates Warning) a whole heck of a lot more than I see them talk about Queensryche.
I think you’ve got it backwards, which is kind of what I’m getting at above. Fans of prog consider Porcupine Tree a prog band. Wilson happens to agree with them, but that’s less important than the fact they’re widely considered a prominent example of their genre. Their fans may like them for other reasons too, but - noting that genre classification can get pretty arbitrary and involves a lot of hair splitting - people who are into progressive rock and progressive metal consider Porcupine a prog band. I’m gathering you personally aren’t really a fan from your posts, and you may like your prog more in the thrash and 80s hair metal influenced side of the genre (I’ve been spinning some Threshold at work lately which is probably more your speed), but it’s not like whether or not PT is a prog band is at all debatable.
Bounced this question off my buddy with the 'Ryche tattoo, and after pausing for a moment to lament the band that died in a horrible bus accident not long after recording Empire, his take is that they’re a hard rock band, that he wouldn’t really call them either prog or metal, and that the prog elements they may have incorporated were mostly in their fondness for concept albums and some unique songwriting. Similar to Savatage, in his mind, as another band that wasn’t really all that prog but loved concept albums.
So, yeah, definitions get super arbitrary… But the biggest 'Ryche fan I know doesn’t consider them a prog metal band, which that and a couple bucks will get you a cup of coffee, but there’s that.
I think there’s a case to be made that ‘prog’ is a particular genre (it means ‘sounds like Pink Floyd at least some of the time’) and ‘progressive’ appended to a genre means ‘like that genre normally sounds plus some elements that aren’t what that genre sounds like’ or ‘that genre but not as dumb as it usually is’.
Hence Porcupine Tree are definitely Prog and Cynic are definitely Progressive Death Metal, but Cynic are definitely not Prog.
Likewise AJFA, MOP and maybe even RTL are progressive but not Prog, and so on and so on.
Yeah, this is kind of how I see it too, though I might go as far as to say “progressive” would also mean incorporating elements of the prog genre, plus whatever it’s being appended to. So, cynic defintely have some prog elements, but calling them prog would be a mistake since it leaves out a lot. Even DT probably couldn’t be called prog without the metal tag attached to them. PT, depending on which album, started off as fairly straight prog WAY back in the day but veer between prog metal and prog rock on their last few albums (with Fear of a Blank Planet being on the more metal side, while Deadwing being more rock).
Hi all! I’ve never posted here before. But this topic got me. The greatest prog metal band is def Fates Warning. Perfect Symmetry is pretty perfect. It doesn’t have perfect musicianship. Zonder builds the songs. It’s a perfectly made album. Cold , antiseptic, clinical and lyrical.
I’m definitely more of a 'Ryche guy (and Fates Warning–all eras) than Dream Theater. And Savatage too. I’m sorta in a similar camp to @Drew’s homie in that I don’t really consider 'Tage or 'Ryche full-on progressive metal bands but they were very forward-thinking and ambitious in their ideas and execution and influenced for a lot of other bands who would take those ideas to another level.
@Acecrusher Have you heard the more recent John Arch albums? He did a record with the current Fates Warning lineup in like 2012 that was pretty cool and they have a new one coming out this year. Here’s the single–it might be the most straightforward song that Arch has sung since the first Fates record.
Ctrl+F “Haken”: No results found. “Devin”: No results found. Oh well. Tho’ I’ll admit I’m pleasantly suprised Angra and Plini got a passing mention…
I’d most likely pick Dream Theater over Fates Warning… even if I don’t care about most things post Octavarium (minus Train of Thought that I did not care about). I’ll gladly admit I have a soft spot for concept/thematic albums, which is why Octavarium gets quoted: it may not have a huge single, but it feels very cohesive to me thematically, even if it’s not an out-and-out concept album.
I liked their last effort, Distance Over Time more than anything since Octavarium. While I don’t like it as much as some of their other efforts, it felt a lot more “unapologetic” in a way, embracing what they are at the moment a lot more instead of going through a check list of things they must add to an album, even though it still has some shades of it: it’s more than time to make James sign a good fourth lower, if not more.
I liked what I’ve listened to from Fates Warning, but the band didn’t catch me as much when I listened to their discography as other bands in the genre, even less well known ones such as Dreamscape (despite being very much dead at this point and having some cheesy 90’s prog vibes), Subsignal (more Prog Rock than Metal to be fair), Votum or Seventh Wonder (whose latest effort I did NOT care about, to my disappointment).
I honestly enjoyed listening to Fates Warning, but I simply fail to quote something from them, and that’s a shame. They fall in the category of artists I’ve enjoyed listening to, but wouldn’t necessarily have in my music collection. To mention another Prog act, there’s also Pain of Salvation that enters this category… although the music video of Meaningless still left a pretty good mark on me, with how disturbing it plays.
Tho’ I’ll admit I’m pleasantly suprised Angra and Plini got a passing mention…