Very good insight and laborious!! you persuade me so much that I  Agree with  you 100%.  that  was the problem that I had the first time I heard dream Theater  back in the early 90's every band that had the tag as progressive I used to do heavy source and I expect it to like them . because It suppose to be "progressivee" but when I heard Dream theater I really liked them not because they were progressive but because they were heavy and Metal I nevre really seen them as progressive rock band. to me progressive music was what was made in the 70's. and as you explained. it.....

Edited by darksideof - September 01 2008 at 13:34

Great post, Teo!

Of course I agree 100%. Prog Metal is like the evil twin of Prog Rock ... like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Well, T you made a great point with that enormous, but truth-telling post.  As long as we in this site DON'T even think in adding Metallica do prog-metal sub-genre, (just my two cents) it's all good people. Lets just discuss



Edited by LeInsomniac - August 25 2008 at 21:38

I love your comments and insight. It is indeed very important to know the difference, so we can know the bands and the kind of music they play. I personally like to know the difference, to know if I should even buy a CD.

sleeper wrote: Clearly someone that hasnt listned to much prog metal

Tons of prog metal bands fit my definition. I've heard plenty of things that are labeled prog metal and fit that formula to a T.

Certif1ed wrote: akin wrote: The arguments in this essay leads me to the conclusion that progressive metal is a misleading term, because it is not progression of metal at all.   I read T's post as saying the opposite - Progressive metal is progressive metal rather than progressive metal - this is the distinction between it and Prog Rock, as far as I can tell.   I also questioned this in my blog; http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=49371&PN=5, and the answers here are consistent with what was said then.   Heavy Metal (not Metal, which is a wrong term also) existed since the late sixties, flourished along with psychedelia and could be considered itself part of the "progressive rock movement" (as mentioned in the essay, progressive rock started when rock 'n' roll progressed from its basic bluesy form), because the "metallization" (excuse for the fake word) was part of the "progression" of rock and blues in late sixties. Since then, nothing new was made.   I don't see how you can justify this! The "metallization" process continued into the 1980s, where Metallica refined and redefined it at least 5 times, and other bands added their fair share to the process - what Metallica played on the "Black" album bears little if any resemblance to "metal" music from the late 1960s.   They fused rock with all the other possible genres in the late sixties/early seventies (and even with other forms of art), so there is nothing new to be done, unless it is mixing music with non-musical things that have not been tried yet.   Again, I can't see how this statement can possibly be justified.   Fused rock with all possible genres? I didn't know that all possible genres had been invented back then - more are being invented all the time, so this makes no sense to me.   "Nothing new to be done"? This is complete nonsense, surely - new music is being created all the time. This statement is equivalent to saying that Shakespeare used all the words and wrote all the stories, therefore no new ones have been written since. Could you provide examples of how this is true?   Take Metallica as an exemple (the new "paladins" of prog-metal to this site). They never made anything that have not been tried before.   Yes they did.     Their song structure was overly used before   Could you provide examples of this, as I hear fresh approaches to song structuring in their music.   You say "their song structure" as if they only ever used one - isnt' the structure of "Ride The Lightning" very different to the structure of "For Whom The Bell Tolls"?   Who used the structure of "Ride The Lightning", and in which piece? I'd like to hear it, as I obviously missed it.   and the "loud and distorted approach" was very common in late sixties and mid-seventies. There is nothing new in their music,   Yes there is.   they just combined many different elements that were there in rock music and created their original music.   Aha!   "Original music" - kinda disagrees with what you said above, doesn't it?   "Combined many different elements" - well, that's exactly what Progressive Rock bands did. They didn't create anything new (following your logic), they just pieced together what was there already in exactly the same way! So, we have two choices: either progressive rock was a movement of a certain period of time, that ended when the term became outdated or progressive rock is anything that is not the original rock 'n' roll and that is not part of any "back to roots" movement (for example, punk rock). The rest is purely illogical.   Not true - we can use the term "Progressive Rock" to refer to the "movement" of 1969-1975, or we can use it to refer more widely to music that follows similar approaches (in the same way as we use the term "Classical music"). In the mid 1960s, there was a Progressive music movement - and it was largely in the field of Rock, hence we have the Proto-Prog category.   My personal preference is for the first choice, because it is more in tune with the use of progressive term in other genres, like progressive jazz, progressive country, progressive house, etc.   It seems to exclude those areas of music, and would confine this site to a very small number of bands.   The other choice seems to be useless, since it makes progressive rock embrace much more things, and it would make the term more confusing. All the other alternatives are attempts on rewriting history, handling the truth or adapting the reality to people's needs.   The history was never properly written down in the first place - people who were "there" forget that "there" is only one place. History was being created all over the world. The second choice is the logical one, as it includes all Progressive Music. Another problem, the real problem of the site, is to coin a term to gather all the different genres under its prog umbrella to justify the bond among them. They tried coining Progressive Music, but this is an empty term, that has no validity outside the PA influence.   See above about the 1960s movement (there are compilation albums available from the time, such as "Wowie Zowie, The World of Progressive Music" for reference) - Progressive Music is a much more generic term, and largely refers to rock music - but is an inclusive term, which includes folk, jazz and blues oriented music too.   Now people is trying to find roots from "metal" outside of rock to justify the gap from prog metal to prog rock.   Actually, the term "Heavy Metal" was used within the Progressive Music scene - it's part of the roots of Prog Rock, not outside of it at all.   By the way, all the energy rests in justifying prog metal to people who don't see much in common between prog rock and prog metal.   There's clearly a link - if only in the aspirations of some bands. Other bands (such as Spastic Ink) have created music that is so clearly Progressive Metal that no justification is required.   On the other hand, some Progressive Rock bands created albums that are so light in Progressive content, that one wonders what they are doing alongside bands like Gentle Giant. In the case of Spastic Ink, there is no doubt.   The problem is that it seems that the site wants so badly to define progressive rock, "Prog", "progressive music", etc, that people here want to conform the definition of progressive-"something" to the content of the site, when this approach is erroneous, misleading and harmful to the site itself. Isn't it much easier to explain that the site is focused on progressive rock, progressive metal, jazz-rock/fusion, modern expermental music, etc?   Maybe that needs to be made more clear in an article somewhere - are you volunteering to write it?

It is completely unfair to use this kind of rhetoric, because you quote one phrase when you want to contradict its meaning out of context and you quote previous things wrote to contradict other arguments, always out of context. If you have strong arguments, you don't need to do that.

For example, I never said that bands clone older music, otherwise all the bands would be sued for plagiarism and music would end. However there is no new approach to music, since the late sixties. They fused rock with everything that was possible. It is not a matter of considering, for example, Nu Metal a new genre and saying that nobody did Prog Nu Metal in the late sixties. It is considering that rock eliminated all the "genre purity" and everything blended with rock is considered rock, so nothing new, just new melodies and harmonies.

As for Metallica, they use the same approach as other heavy metal bands. Just because the tone of  the guitar distortion and singing changed, it isn't true that they do something different to power chord riffs, solos and changes in tempo of the riff. Have you ever heard, let's say, Rush? If every kind of song structure was used in rock before, event free-form structures, common just to avant-garde music, why Metallica song structures were something new? They just created their own melodies and harmonies, which is what we expect from every musician, but unfortunately it doesn't happen so often as it should.

And, by the way, history is written when it is happening. When anyone thinks he is knowledegable enough to call not-progressive bands that were called progressive at their time and call progressive bands that were not called progressive at their time, it is clear that you are trying to redefine the meaning of progressive, but for people who learned the term by other sources will disagree with the new meaning.

Anyway, the obsession with a "magic term" to define everything the site has is similar to the obsession of the alchemists to find a formula to turn other metals in gold. As I said before, it is easier to admit that the site covers much more than prog rock and state this. Then, the prog rock fans wouldn't be pissed off because the site states clearly that are other things in the site, like jazz-rock/fusion, progressive metal, modern experimental, etc. The genres are somewhat related, but their are not the same thing and it is useless to try to call everything 'apple' if, for many people, some of the 'apples' are 'oranges'.

akin wrote: It is completely unfair to use this kind of rhetoric, because you quote one phrase when you want to contradict its meaning out of context and you quote previous things wrote to contradict other arguments, always out of context. If you have strong arguments, you don't need to do that.

I just wanted to clear up why Tool sounds like King Crimson. From Aenima on, Tool has borrowed heavily from 80s Crimson. The main similarities are reliance on mostly pentatonic scales, odd time signatures implemented more often than more common ones, and polyrhythms. Anyone doubt need only to listen tosongs like H., Lateralus, 46 and 2, The Patient, and many others, and compare them from any 80s Crimson output.