Progressive Rock/Metal

Cobalt.

Nice to see the love for Arjen Lucassen's work.

I love Ayreon but by far my favourite record of his is the project he did called Stream of Passion. The album, 'Embrace The Storm' is simply one of the most perfect pop metal albums ever made. Not a single dud track on it.

After this record he handed the band over to the singer, Marcela, and for my mind the subsequent albums have suffered for not having his songwriting genius.

I'm stoked for the new Ayreon. He's been very quiet about it lately. Usually he likes to tease the title, artwork and, or course, his guest musicians.

Moon Safari is like Transatlantic and... let's say Queen.

http://grooveshark.com/s/We+Spin+The+World/2VqCuZ?src=5

I remember this thread.

Haken's The Mountain is my favorite prog album in a long time. And Colored Sands by Gorguts is intense.

Maaaannn, I think I like it more than Dream Theater's new album.

@brenderous: That triumphant solo part in Atlas Stone made me swoon, and once In Memoriam hit I was ready to track down their discography.

That crazy muppet video for Cockroach King is what got me. About halfway through I realize that besides the muppets, the music was something special.

@csl316: Visions is a great song and album.

@brenderous: This thread is beautiful and thank you for bumping it.

Never really got into that genre.

@cynicalbuzzard: it's good stuff, man.

@believer258: you are most welcome.

I like my metal symphonic and/or parodic, but I'll never say nay to Tool.

Me 2, but I kinda forgot the name of that type of metal. Symphonic... thanks for reminding me. Found this list on wikipedia and am sticking the names in youtube and discovering some good shit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_symphonic_metal_bands . I also love Tool.

This is my favorite song. Anything Steven Wilson touches is gold.

@erhard: One of their best. Lately I've been loving their live Russia on Ice/Anesthetize mash up.

The Ocean - Peligial

Cult of Luna - Vertikal

These are the two best albums of the year for me. Absolutely brilliant post-metal.

I like older prog rock. King crimson, rush etc

But prog hardcore / metal, now you're talking.

Anything that succeeded Neurosis / Isis, I'm probably into

I'll link a few recommendations. This stuff is leaning preeeety post metal / hardcore / but bare with me.

Scot Kelly in general is pretty badass.

I'm not a fan of the symphonic stuff, but I sure do love prog metal. Between the Buried and Me never disappoints.

@chiablo: I enjoyed Vertikal, but still haven't picked up part 2. Cult of Luna is a heck of a band.

Progressive is like a nerd's Milky Way.

(the chocolate, not the galaxy)

@brenderous: I do listen some progressive stuff but mostly Pogressive Rock rather then Progressive Metal. I suppose you don't want the obvious classic bands (Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Yes, Rush, Marillion, King Crimson, Frank Zappa etc.)

People already posted a lot of the good bands I like as well.

I do love Porcupine Tree like some other here. The new solo albums by Steven Wilson were great too. His Blackfield albums are good too but hardly what you'd call progressive.

Dream Theater have some good stuff but overall it's not to my liking though I enjoy some obvious albums such as Images & Words.

Opeth are also a great band. They used to be most death metal but they're going progressive nowadays and I enjoy it more now. (not a big fan of death metal). If I remember correctly both Damnation and Heritage haven't got a single death metal track. Avoiding the rest of the discography however would be missing out on a lot of good music. Mikael's got such a good voice.

One band you might not have heard however are Ozric Tentacles. I like them a lot but it's hard to recommend because they're pretty different. They have a 30 year career but a lot of people never heard of them.

Another good band one may have never heard of (though they're well known in some countries) are Angra. It's a brazilian band. The first full album was released in 1993 They also have some power metal influences as well so I'm not sure you'd enjoy. They changed vocalist in the middle of their career so there are some differences in their style from before. I enjoy most of their album but the 1995 conceptual album, Holy Land, is their masterpiece IMO. Considering everything they've covered during their career is hard to decided something to show but I'll search something on youtube and post here along with a Ozric Tentacles song. The English is not always 100% spot on but it doesn't detract from the music.

@brenderous there you have it. I won't post anything from Ozric Tentacles because I thought they were way too different from what you seem to be looking forward so just posting Angra videos :p The 1st one is the most different because of the rhythms. If you don't mind something outside the norm you might like.

By the way, Haken are pretty good but I'm yet to listen to something besides the first album :p I feel I should after this thread. Should I go the 2nd or the newest album first?

Oldest stuff

Older suff

Newer stuff

Newest stuff :p

It's not 100% Progressive Metal, but I just got my copy of Devin Townsend's "The Retinal Circus" in the mail. I can't wait to jump into both the audio and video content (got the Blu-Ray/2 DVD/2 CD set)

Yeah this is pretty much my genre. I've been listening to the new Ihsahn album 'Das Seelenbrechen' and it's pretty good.

You can't go wrong with either, as they're both great, but if you don't mind you might as well listen to them in chronological order.

Some more cool bands that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet:

OSI (If you don't know OSI, what are you even doing in this thread? Go listen right now.)

Caligula's Horse (First album was very Tool-like, but with their just released second album they've really developed a great style of their own. Very much recommended.)

Osaka Punch (Think early Incubus but more prog metally. The most fun you'll ever have listening to prog since Devin Townsend.)

Wisdom of Crowds (A project by Bruce Soord of The Pineapple Thief and Jonas Renkse, vocalist of Katatonia.)

There's so much more I could've posted here but I'll leave it at this for now. I'd ask you all to come join us at reddit.com/r/progmetal, but it's currently kind of shrouded in drama over the departure of a certain mod and a pointless discussion over whether or not metalcore bands like Between the Buried and Me and Protest the Hero are prog metal. It's silly, and should subside soon since it's usually a great place for discovering new music and talking about it.

That is a tough question. The Mountain is a solid album, but Visions is also great. The track Visions on the album Vision is probably still my favorite Haken song.

Seeing as this thread is up again, I'll say that this year has been great already.

the new Ayreon and the new Protest the hero probably taking the cake for me with other great releases from leprous, James labrie, The Aristocrats, Haken, Disperse (not sure if i am into the vocals), Tesseract and Riverside.

And some others one like Persephone and Diablo swing orchestera(not from this year but i discovered them this year) that could be included in there or not depends on how you look at it.

Obligatory youtube spam.

Pretty much this.

@kittyvondoom: Great album,But I still can't help but prefer their other albums, except Remission.

@kittyvondoom: @cheappoison: Is Mastodon considered prog?

@nightriff:

I'd say they definitely are, maybe some albums more then others. I'd say they are maybe more so then other bands cause i feel every album has been truly different. Some bands listen on her use some weird time signatures or are technical but stick to the. same formula. Like for example Dream theater one of the big players in the genre, I like them but i do think one can say that.

But It depends on what album i'd say their first album and their latest fall less under this, but Blood mountain, Leviathan and Crack the skye certainly do.

although i will admit progressive as a genre is really dodgy cause i feel it isn't really a genre, more something you can say about a band within a certain other genre. And there are tons of ways you can fill in 'progressive' From concept albums, to time signatures, technicallity, trying new things, mixing genres, long songs...(that is a reason why i mentioned some bands in my post with a little remark, some people might consider it progressive some might just consider it death metal.)
In a way it should signify bands pushing the envelope but it has also just evolved to be a genre that can be defined by certain elements.. it is a weird beast.

@cheappoison: But Remission has Crusher Destroyer!

@nightriff: Probably not (especially considering what they chose to follow it up with), but CTS is most defo a prog metal album.

Beardfish is a cool prog band. Some Zappa-esque stuff from time to time, though not in this song.

Jeez I could lose some time in this thread. But hey since I didn't see this particular band in any posts I suppose I'll help contribute to the super slow loads of this page :D

I nominate this for best thread on giant bomb dot com.

While Iced Earth is necessarily primarily a Prog Metal band, their Gettysburg Trilogy from the "Glorious Burden" album is pretty great and pretty...proggy, for lack of a better term.

@cheappoison: Agreed. Remission and Leviathan both rip.

And yeah I'd absolutely call Mastodon prog. Just more prog metal (earlier).

Been listening to Moon Safari for like a week straight now. http://moonsafari.bandcamp.com/album/blomljud

I'm glad this thread got bumped because it got me to listen to Stream of Passion for the first time in a while. The first record was great, second one didn't do much for me, and I listened to the third quite a bit. Their live dvd was a great performance, too.

My favorite collaboration between Arjen and Marcela turned out this be this little thing:

Edit: And holy crap, I just realized this was mainly Heather Findlay. Years later, hot damn.

If we're going to include Mastodon and Kylesa in the discussion, then I'll bring up Baroness who came out of same Georgia scene as those other two. Their first two albums are great, although you won't miss much if you decide to skip Yellow & Green. I was really into Opeth and Dream Theater at one point, but I moved on to other stuff and never really got into any other Prog Metal bands. Today I still listen to alot of "post-metal" bands like Neurosis, Isis, Russian Circles, and Agalloch.

Now that Ayreon's "The Theory of Everything" is out today, what do people that have listened to it think? I gave it a couple of quick listens and think it is pretty solid, and will need to listen to it more to fully form an opinion. Anyone else care to share their thoughts with the class?

My buddy found this guy on bandcamp. Pretty decent stuff.

http://plini.bandcamp.com/album/sweet-nothings

Not yet. I listened through it and it seems very good. A concern for me is cause of how the story has to develop some songs are very short. I i feel some might not flow to well or it is because it switched general feel to much. And need to sit and listen to the lyrics better to know what to get the actual details, which is q big part of the ayreon albums i think.
Seems good, still not sure if it passes the human equation for me.

And comparing it to other recent releases i think i like Volition more.

This song in particular stood out for me:

I also highly recommend Devin Townsend's work, one of the most brilliant musicians in existence, I wish he would get more recognition outside of the metal community though. There is a huge amount of variety, so make sure to sample a lot of his work.

Super heavy Devy:

Super happy Devy: