What is "vanilla prog metal"?

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: In any case, I have never heard anyone put Death in a list of the top Prog bands, and when I had the idea to put a disliked band into the fray, I went looking at ratings and saw they had an album that had an average barely over 3, with over 100 votes. Yes, I dislike pure 100% death metal growls, but I don't make it a point to tell everyone that.  And I've actually listened to a few albums that were mostly growls and found quite a bit of merit to them.  Recently I listened to a Meshuggah album and thought it was good, though I don't prefer the vocals, and more recently I listened to Ne Obliviscaris and thought they were quite remarkable despite not being crazy about the vocal style.   Their first three albums were more straight ahead metal, and don't have high ratings on this site.  Their last four (Human, Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic, and The Sound of Perseverance) are more progressive, and all have ratings over 4 stars with 126-260 ratings each.   I prefer when metal bands mix the heavy portion of their sound with more soft/ambient sections, both in the music and in the vocal style (I think it adds more variety and makes it more interesting and listenable), but I like death growls too.  UneXpect mixes clean vocals with growls a lot, you should try them, though they might be a bit extreme for your tastes.

I've heard that name.  Haven't tried them yet.  They will have to go on the list, which is getting longer and longer since I started it....

My favorites, as far as mixing grows with other vocals styles, are Epica and Orphaned Land, by the way.

In any case, I have never heard anyone put Death in a list of the top Prog bands, and when I had the idea to put a disliked band into the fray, I went looking at ratings and saw they had an album that had an average barely over 3, with over 100 votes.

Yes, I dislike pure 100% death metal growls, but I don't make it a point to tell everyone that.  And I've actually listened to a few albums that were mostly growls and found quite a bit of merit to them.  Recently I listened to a Meshuggah album and thought it was good, though I don't prefer the vocals, and more recently I listened to Ne Obliviscaris and thought they were quite remarkable despite not being crazy about the vocal style.

A lot of people like Death, though, and I'm sure some would put them in their top ten bands.  Many peope who dislike DT are fans of Death, so it makes sense that they would keep voting for them.                                                                       You should have picked Torman Maxt, the most hated band on progarchives, instead.

Edited by Ambient Hurricanes - July 08 2012 at 15:18

dtguitarfan wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Death is actually getting a bunch of kill votes, Max (Fox on the Rocks) and I have been voting against them every time.  They're not bad or anything, but there's so many great bands on the list that I like more.  Do you like them? I'd never even heard of "Death" until recently - probably mostly because I have no interest in Death or Doom metal.  I only like growls/screams when they're mixed in with other styles of singing - you may have heard my "hot sauce" analogy before.  But no, I put them in the list to see what would happen when a band that clearly does not belong in a top 10 of prog bands was stacked up against a bunch that do, and people kept giving kill votes to the ones that clearly do.  The point is: sadly, this place, I believe, has become more about musical disappreciation than musical appreciation since people are more eager to share about what they don't like.

dtguitarfan wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: I've never thought of any progressive metal as "vanilla;" it's not sweet, it's very meaty and crunchy.  Not a vanilla wafer, not vanilla ice cream; more like a good, juicy steak with some homemade fries and chips, and a 32-ounce soda from Quiktrip to provide just a bit sugariness to the whole mix, complementing the more meaty metal sections... Dude...I respect you more and more, Jacob. And cool that you're getting more into DT by the way.  But I wouldn't bother trying to save them over on that battle thread - I put "Death" into the mix to prove a point - and it was proven well when immediately after adding them, Dream Theater, Flower Kings, and Pink Floyd were the ones to receive kill votes.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: I've never thought of any progressive metal as "vanilla;" it's not sweet, it's very meaty and crunchy.  Not a vanilla wafer, not vanilla ice cream; more like a good, juicy steak with some homemade fries and chips, and a 32-ounce soda from Quiktrip to provide just a bit sugariness to the whole mix, complementing the more meaty metal sections...

Dude...I respect you more and more, Jacob.

And cool that you're getting more into DT by the way.  But I wouldn't bother trying to save them over on that battle thread - I put "Death" into the mix to prove a point - and it was proven well when immediately after adding them, Dream Theater, Flower Kings, and Pink Floyd were the ones to receive kill votes.

Cristi wrote: I hope the term "vanilla prog" does not get picked or used; it's annoying and derogatory, even to name uninspired music.

^THIS

As I tend to use the term quite frequently, I'll put the record straight.

There are three sub genres of metal here on the site, Progressive Metal, Experimental/Post Metal and Tech/Extreme Metal. All three get reffered to as Prog metal by everyone for ease of use, but in discussions where the broad term prog metal has already been used, I use "vanilla" to diffirentiate between Progressive Metal and the other two subs. The term vanilla gets used because its the one most people readilly identify as prog metal and there are a lot of clones in that sub genre, but it is not always used as a derogatory term (I happen to rather like vanilla, more than most other flavours at least) and just as a way to differentiate prog metal from the other subs.

I think Vanilla Prog Metal would be bands that sound like DT, Symphony X, Fates Warning, and the like. The newer, more extreme bands are trying to do new things. I'm guessing the quality of the vanilla bands or the original bands is not being questioned in the thread, necessarily, just what does the 'vanilla' term mean.

darkshade wrote:

I've never thought of any progressive metal as "vanilla;" it's not sweet, it's very meaty and crunchy.  Not a vanilla wafer, not vanilla ice cream; more like a good, juicy steak with some homemade fries and chips, and a 32-ounce soda from Quiktrip to provide just a bit sugariness to the whole mix, complementing the more meaty metal sections.

Edited by Ambient Hurricanes - July 08 2012 at 14:42