What Does The Term "Technical" Mean to You?

You mention GG, and if you really listen to each part they play individually, it's often not actually that complicated or difficult to play. It's just a lot of layering and polyphony, so it sounds more complicated together. But just because playing your individual line is relatively easy doesn't mean it isn't hard to play once you all get together. And it's even MORE difficult to COMPOSE. Which, to me, is where the technicality of their music lies. 

I would say, yes, basically technical means something that cannot be easily assimilated at first glance.  Prog lovers love to pride themselves on their ability to grapple with music that is indeed more complex than chart topping rock and pop.  But music can often be complex and still have a hook to easily latch onto. Beethoven's symphonies have memorable motifs to hold onto.  Likewise, Genesis' long pieces have memorable vocal hooks sung a good deal better than Derek Shulman of GG.  

But with GG, yes, at first glance, the music can even be downright confusing and if you don't hang in there for a few more listens, you won't be able to work out the patterns where they start to make sense.  I KNOW because that was my exact experience with the first GG track I heard, Experience.  I was a neophyte to prog then and gave up. A few years later, I heard a different track, probably Runaway, and the music clicked.  And after that, it was like a flood.  I had no problem anymore once I understood the underlying 'logic' behind the construction of their music.  It just happens to be a more unconventional logic than Yes or Genesis (though some of Yes' material on Relayer compares).  

The reaction of music lovers to 'technical' music is somewhat akin to an audience at a stand up comic's event where the comic's jokes are too witty for them.  For eg, David Letterman riffing on the Yma Dream story with his Oprah-Uma gag at the Oscars fell flat but that wasn't necessarily his fault.  It probably amused him that this storied audience was unaware of a classic story that has been dramatized successfully by both Ann Bancroft and Christine Baranski. On similar lines, when a music lover finds they are unable to 'get' a composition, their natural instinct is to blame the composer and dub the music as too technical (which is short for 'trying too hard to be intelligent/pretentious).  I am not exempting myself from this, I have done this in the past too. 

I've never heard of "technical rock". Now you're making up stuff. 

Aw come on, we need more sub genre diffusion! 

I agree with the initially quoted statement, however; Relayer is technical music IMHO. Sound Chaser even more so!