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SPECIAL COLLABORATOR: Honorary Collaborator

Member since: 10/19/2007 • Forum posts: 2628 • Last visit: 5/23/2013 2:29:33 PM EST
Location: Denmark

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Progressive Biography

My journey with music started when I was a kid in the early eighties. I´ve loved music since I was a small child. One of the first songs I remember listening to is Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush. In the Army Now by Status Quo is also a song I remember from my childhood. I was also very fond of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston as a child. But everything with a memorable chorus had my interest. As a child you tend not to be too picky though, everything seems to work. In the mid-eighties I used to watch a music show on swedish television ( I don´t remember the name) where I was introduced to soft heavy rock. Europe had their big hit Final Countdown and Twisted Sister had many hits with the Stay Hungry album. When I was 11-12 years old I had my first experience with being a real fan of a band. Bon Jovi had just released New Jersey which included multible hit singles Like Bad Medicine and You Give Love a Bad Name. I was completely sold to these poodle rockers and idolized them for a year or two before my big brother introduced me to something that would change my view on music forever.

Heavy Metal ( not the soft/ Aor variant, but REAL heavy metal) suddenly became my whole world. When you´re 12 or 13 years old you´re easily impressed and that´s exactly what happened to me. Strange aggressive sounds started to flow from my brothers room and soon he started wearing jackets with skulls and pentagrams. I remember lying in my bed saturday night listening to my brother and his friends drinking, smoking and listening to Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Kreator, Danzig, Coroner, King Diamond, Mercyful Fate and Voivod. For the second time in my life I was sold. This time not to a certain band but to a whole genre of music. In the following years I became a compulsive collector of Heavy Metal LPs and I have a very large collection today of music in this genre. In the early nineties my taste changed towards the more brutal Death Metal sound that was very popular then. I remember listening to Sepultura´s Beneath the Remains which was the most brutal album I had heard at the time, and I just had to have more, so I delved deeper into the Death Metal genre and discovered bands like Death, Obituary, Napalm Death, Carcass, Malevolent Creation, Morbid Angel, Entombed, Dismember, Benediction, Bolt Thrower etc...etc. It just couldn´t get brutal or fast enough for me but soon I discovered that I was predominantly into the Doom Death style represented by bands like My Dying Bride, Cathedral ( the british band), Katatonia, Amorphis, Cemetary, Tiamat, Anathema, Enchantment and my favorite Paradise Lost. I started playing guitar in a band around this time and of course played this genre. I was also the main composer for this band ( www.myspace.com/Lastabide). My interest for tech metal was also born in the early nineties as I was introduced to Atheist. It took a couple of years before I really understood their music though and it took another band´s music ( Dream Theater) to give me the curiosity back to try and listen to Atheist music again. This was the early nineties and as strange as this may sound when you read my above preferences I was also really much into Grunge. Nirvana, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots and especially Alice in Chains were some of my favorites.

After a couple of years I grew tired of the doom/ death genre and as I had seen a music video on Headbangers Ball called Pull Me Under by an intrigueing band named Dream Theater, I was completely overwhelmed and just had to have the album. I bought Images and Words and was blown away by the complex yet memorable and melodic songs. My interest in complex ( progressive metal) music was born, and I soon found other bands in this genre like Psychotic Waltz, Fates Warning, Queensr˙che and Nevermore. I re-discovered the tech metal genre and bands like Atheist, Cynic and Watchtower became frequent visitors in my CD player. Around this time I was also introduced to one of my alltime favorite artists: Frank Zappa and a long journey into his extensive discography started. I also listened to a lot of classical music like Mozart, Beethoven, Ravel, Bartok, Paganinni, Stravinsky etc..etc.. My interest in jazz/ fusion was also born at this time and albums from Return to Forever, Brand X, Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra was soon a part of my record collection.

A natual curiosity grew in me though. Who were my heroes influenced by ? I started reading interviews with the bands I liked and soon found out there was a genre called progressive rock. Curious as I am I started exploring that genre which let me to bands like Genesis, Yes, Marillion, Rush, Pink Floyd, Camel, King Crimson, Eloy, Kayak, PFM and a bunch of other mainly seventies prog rock bands and a new love started. After a couple of years I was fed up with the genre though and started listening to more simple music.

Bands like The Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim, Joy Division, Tinderstics, Depeche Mode, The Cure, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, The Smiths, Morrissey was soon my prefered listening. At the same time Trip-hop was the big thing and I fell for albums from bands like Massive Attack, Morcheba and Portishead.

Around 2001-02 my second wave of excitement over heavy metal started and it has lasted since and it´s the same with progressive rock. I discovered bands like The Flower Kings and Spock´s Beard and understood that the prog rock I loved for a period of my life was still very much alive today. This time around I feel like I´ve been through the full palette of music though and my references are much better than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I´ve learned so much about different genres, sub-genres and styles over the last decade that I feel confident today that I can make insightful reviews other people will appreciate ( or hate).

I want to emphazise that even though I often get bored with genres and musical styles I never get bored with quality bands and albums no matter what genre they belong to. Simply put: I Love great Music. My definition of great music is hard to pin down, but the most important thing is that it touches me somehow. Music should either move my body, challenge my mind and in the perfect cases both.

A list of some of my favorite albums:

Dream Theater: Images & Words, Awake
Cynic: Focus, Traced in Air
Atheist: Unquestionable Presence, Elements
Death: Human, Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic
Voivod: Killing Technology, Dimension Hatröss, Nothingface, Outer Limits
Enslaved: Isa, Ruun, Vertebrae
Caravan: In The Land Of Grey And Pink, If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You
Psychotic Waltz: A Social Grace, Into The Everflow ( Mosquito and Bleeding are also special albums to me)
Nevermore: The Politics of Ecstacy, Dreaming Neon Black, Dead Heart in a Dead World, Enemies of Reality, This Godless Endeavour
Frank Zappa ( most of his work actually)
Gentle Giant ( again most of their albums are great maybe except for the last two)
Genesis: Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound and yes I know this is strange but it is true I love ...And Then There Were Three ( I also like both tresspass, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering very much)
Rush: Moving Pictures
The Smiths ( well again everything they ever touched sounded great, maybe except for their debut)
Katatonia: Viva Emptiness
Opeth: Blackwater Park, Deliverance, Ghost Reveries, Watershed
Alice in Chains: Dirt, Facelift
Fates Warning: Perfect Symmetry, Parallels, Inside Out
Slayer: Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, Seasons in the Abyss
Metallica: Master of Puppets, ...And Justice for All
Marillion: Script for a Jester´s Tear, Fugazi, Misplaced Childhood, Clutching at Straws
Megadeth: Rust in Peace, Countdown to Extinction
Iron Maiden - Somewhere in Time, Live after Death
Type O Negative: Bloody Kisses, October Rust
Meshuggah: Chaosphere, Nothing
Spiral Architect: A Sceptic´s Universe
Burst: Prey on Life, Origo
King Diamond - Fatal Portrait, Abigail, Them, Conspiracy, The Eye
Mercyful Fate - Melissa, Don´t Break the Oath
Jethro Tull: Stand Up, Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, A Passion Play, Songs from the Wood
Saviour Machine: I, II, Live in Deutchland
The Doors: The Doors, Strange Days
Yes: Close to the Edge, Relayer
Anekdoten: From Within, Gravity, A Time Of Day
Ved Buens Ende: Written In Waters
Dødheimsgaard: 666 International, Supervillain Outcast
Neurosis: Souls At Zero, Through Silver in Blood, Times of Grace
Dun: Eros
Virus: Carheart, The Black Flux
Trouble: Manic Frustration
Van Der Graaf Generator: Godbluff
Porcupine Tree: In Absentia, Deadwing, Fear of a Blank Planet, The Incident
The Flower Kings: ( I like most of their stuff)
Guns´n´Roses: Appetite for Destruction
Air: Moon Safari, 10000HZ Legend, The Virgin Suicides, Talkie Walkie, Pocket Symphony
Depeche Mode: Violater, 101
David Sylvian: Secrets of the Beehive
Black Sabbath: ( the first six albums in particular)
Robert Wyatt: Rock Bottom

Reviews distribution by sub-genre


 Sub-genreNb of reviewsAvg rating
1 Tech/Extreme Prog Metal3653.19
2 Progressive Metal2253.23
3 Experimental/Post Metal1603.29
4 Symphonic Prog1383.24
5 Prog Related1343.16
6 Crossover Prog1133.06
7 Heavy Prog873.29
8 Eclectic Prog853.51
9 RIO/Avant-Prog643.47
10 Jazz Rock/Fusion563.38
11 Canterbury Scene533.32
12 Psychedelic/Space Rock523.31
13 Post Rock/Math rock423.02
14 Proto-Prog373.38
15 Prog Folk323.59
16 Neo-Prog273.37
17 Krautrock213.10
18 Progressive Electronic182.61
19 Rock Progressivo Italiano113.27
20 Zeuhl34.33
21 Various Genres14.00

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