Unfortunately the war is having its bad impact, but both Ukraine and Russia were making excellent prog

How?!  Other than some fusion and some progressive metal, I don't see it. 

I honestly do not know. I also find the question unimportant. The country an artist is from does not matter much to me. If I enjoy the music, that's all that matters. How would I even assess the most successful country? Is it the number of bands that have become popular?  The country with the biggest number of popular bands is the most successful country?! 

In recent years I have found the most quality coming from the avant and eclectic bands from the US and France. I want to also add Japan because everything Tatsuya Yoshida touches is gold, but I don't think the quantity is as much as those two countries.

If we're talking about sales, I suspect it would be UK. If we're talking about overall from 1990 onwards, I'd be inclined to say Sweden and Italy.

I'm not a calculator. I'm a cabbage with a protractor.

very good considerations 

interesting information

If you're looking for music that sounds like classic era prog and is, conversely, not quite so adventurous or fresh (but still expertly played), I supposed Scandinavia, especially Norway. And also prog death/black metal stuff, but fresh new groups from Norway were more prominent in the 90s for those styles.

I'm more often lookin for some fresh meat as of late, so retro stuff just isn't amazing me at the moment. Just because a band uses 70s analog instruments doesn't make it automatically worth my admiration. That being said, I still think most of those bands play some great music.

America's population is 65 times higher than Norway's.

To this day, it remains.

For technical bands easily USA and also for sales.

I don't know why UK is mentioned, the general music scene here is terrible (Ed Sheeran, Jamie Cullum, Adele) and interesting bands such as Black Midi are totally ignored. Big Big Train were beginning to have some commercial success but the pandemic killed that and even some of their members were forced to retire as a result. Ignoring commercial success then there is a good underground scene and Tull, Yes and Heep are still putting out decent albums and servicing their fan base. None of them are remotely cutting edge though.

Norway is incredible and keeps producing brilliant music. Of course a lot is so called Retro Prog that apparently is some crime to progressive music (it still counts as music though!)

Italy still produces great music thanks to it's historical importance to classical music and 2 of my favourite bands at the moment come from Brazil (Caravela Escalarte) and Spain (Psicolorama) but there are good bands everywhere as prog is quite culturally diverse. Anyway my vote is for Norway.

erm wtf? I just hear a lot of ambient music and a very annoying repeating video.

Yep London has a good few 'underground' bands no doubt. I'm always pleased to see young musicians having a go at least and they may eventually mature into good bands. The Norway scene is already there and has many great musicians. I don't think something like Seven Impale - Summit is even particularly derivative. That would have been my favourite album any other year but for Zopp (from Nottingham, UK)

BBT are genuinely progressive with a small 'p'. They do a lot of long form tracks with lyrics based on English history. Putting them in AOR is unfair and very inaccurate. I know them may seem 'prog lite' to many but they mean a lot to me and many others.

It's debateable as to when they became an actual band. It was Andy Poole's and Greg Spawton's project and they would use session musicians. English Electric changed that somewhat and they started properly playing as a band around 2014 and had their first proper settled line up for the albums The Underfall Yard (2009) through to 2019's The Grand Tour. That's when I see them as a proper band and not just a hobby. Does that make them modern? Yes I would say so. They have been succesful as well. Does it mean UK is the top for prog, erm no not at all. (also 2 of their members are from the good ole USA!)

yeo really good band but not that significant sadly

When looking at the two toplists, I've made on basis of all the ratings on RYM and PA, these are the countries which have got most post-1990s albums on these two toplists if seen together:

1. USA - 26 albums (11 from '00s and 15 from the '10s)

2. UK - 13 albums (4 from '00s and 9 from the '10s)

3. Norway - 11 albums (4 from '00s and 7 from the '10s)

4. Sweden - 10 albums (3 from '00s and 7 from the '10s)

The number of albums are rather close to the number of different bands.

(  https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=127673" rel="nofollow - Top 100 all-time as rated on RYM and PA  ,  https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=127706" rel="nofollow - Top 100-160 all-time as rated on RYM and PA  ,  https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=128935" rel="nofollow - Top 50 of the 2010s as rated on RYM and PA  )

The highest rated American bands are:

Tool

The Mars Volta

Mastodon

Maudlin of the Well

Swans

Kayo Dot

Phideaux

Between the Buried and Me

Vektor

Transatlantic

Spock's Beard

Blood Incantation

Dream Theater

Discipline

The Deer Hunter

Birds and Buildings

Echolyn

Only from a political and proggy perspective. When I think of European prog bands, I'm thinking of continental Europe. 

They're only "ludicrous and unrepresentative" if you dismiss the votes of the good members of ProgArchives. 

Prog Europa - Top 10 European Prog Bands -  http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=124979&PN=4" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=124979&PN=4

^ How many did vote? And why ever could lead that number of votes to the statement that those are "The 15 most popular European bands"?

These are rather rhetorical questions...

They're the 15 most popular European prog bands as voted for by the good members of ProgArchives. What more do you need to know? That's a rhetorical question too. 

Ah! That's already two additional criteria that were not mentioned before. Remains the question of why those 12-or-so voter in your thread could legitimize the proposition that that these are "The 15 most popular European bands" as you dared to state before? I don't think you can justify such a statement other than by lying to yourself. It suffices to do a diligent search in the PA database (or on RYM) to get completely different results...

Excellent reply! 

USA is seeing something of a resurgence in jazz-rock fusion, with younger players (Gabe Severn) hitting the stage and older acts (Al Dimeola) continuing to tour.   No huge break-out acts yet, I'll post when there are. 

Not much in symphonic from USA lately, although the new Glass Hammer CD "Arise" is certainly excellent!   Colin Carter's new CD "Tracks in Space" is another fine work (eclectic?) 

PA is great for tracking all of this stuff, thanks for all the updates!!  

It's really annoying and too bad, Paul, how much you ignore the OPs. 

Grumpyprogfan wrote: Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: If you look at the PA Top 10 for the last decade there are 5 Norwegian albums. There's your answer right there. If you look at successful as popular, yes. If you look at success as creating something different and fresh, I don't think Wobbler and those other Norwegian bands meet that criteria.

Being successful is about being somewhat popular. At least to an extent. I much prefer VdGG over Yes and ELP, but I would be incorrect if I claimed that the former band were more successful than the latter bands. Even though I personally think of them as artistically superior to both. If you create art that's differnt and fresh but nobody knows about it, you're partly unsuccessful. Unfortunately.

-Anyway, I think it needs to be a bit of both. A "successful modern prog nation" should to be profilic, vibrant and of course diverse. For every "Wobbler-band" there's at least twice as many experimental and forward thinking "Rune Grammofon" kinds of bands and projects etc... But of course, they are less "successful", so fewer people knows about them. I listen to them though (Wobbler, not so much. Although I fully respect them for working within an established tradition - and doing it well).

It's certainly true that Norway (and Sweden) has many current groups that are making all different kinds of music. But it does seem like a significant portion of it is in the symph vein with varying degrees of retro prog flavors. To my knowledge, many more bands from the US (and Japan, Canada) are producing fresh, new material that rivals that of Norway. And ALL of them are blowing the UK out of the water in terms of innovation (as opposed to quantity, black midi notwithstanding). Indeed, most of what you have posted helps make that point. And once again, this is to say nothing of the quality of the music. That is entirely subjective. And I enjoyed much of what you posted, to be fair.

Maybe I will be more convincing with this official video from Big Big Train, released a month ago, featuring the song "Oblivion," which is taken from their upcoming album “The Likes of Us," out March 1st, 2024. It has a healthy 138,589 views at this very moment.

Awesoreno wrote: To my knowledge, many more bands from the US (and Japan, Canada) are producing fresh, new material that rivals that of Norway. And ALL of them are blowing the UK out of the water in terms of innovation (as opposed to quantity, black midi notwithstanding).

Surely, the U.S., Japan, and Canada have a number of interesting contemporary bands that explore new territories; however, I strongly disagree that they "blowing" the UK. In that regard, I'd like to mention Chlöe Herington. She is a London-based avant-gardist whose shining project is called VÄLVE. Emma Sullivan, a fellow Chrome Hoof, joins her, and they released an amazing album recently, titled "Tiny Pilots." This is an official video of the song "Gertrude's List from that album. That is a top-notch avant-prog song, in my humble opinion.

In my book, the main criteria for being "successful" is to be appreciated.

listeners and fans I guess 

Kalugin is a very prolific and well-appreciated musician, both as a solo artist and as the leader of the recognised bands Karfagen, Hoggwash, and Sunchild. Kscope's band, Iamthemorning, made, within the progressive music standards of the second decade of the 21st century, a significant breakthrough in terms of popularity. Also, Iamthemorning composer and keyboard player Gleb Kolyadin released a few well-regarded solo albums with guests like Steve Hogarth, Theo Travis, Gavin Harrison, and so on.

One of my favourite Italian progressive albums released in the last few years is LogoS' "Sadako e le mille gru di carta" (2020), which is an ambitious concept album about Sadako Sasaki, a girl from Hiroshima who, as a two-year-old child, survived a nuclear explosion two miles away from her home.

I would also point out 2020's "Il Velo dei Riflessi" by Quel Che Disse Il Tuono, a Milanese band that was founded in 2019. It's also a concept album that, via the use of the metaphor of mirrors, delves into topics like the repulsion of one's own personality and latent insanity in humans; each of these subjects is represented by one of the four mirrors and correlates to the first four songs on the album.

Very good band indeed, one of the few djent bands I enjoy. It helps that they have a great vocalist. 

There's another big fan of Antony Kalugin and Karfagen right here. 

And yes, we must not forget France. I will not list all the bands from the contemporary French avant-prog scene; I'd like to only point out that this PoiL video has 40,706 views this day yet, which is not bad at all for a live video of such an avant-prog band.

"The Road of Bones is the eleventh studio album by the British  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-progressive_rock" rel="nofollow - neo-progressive rock  band  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_%28band%29" rel="nofollow - IQ , released on May 3, 2014. It peaked at number 36 in Germany on the  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GfK_Entertainment_charts" rel="nofollow - Offizielle Deutsche Charts , number 62 in Switzerland on the  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Hitparade" rel="nofollow - Swiss Hitparade  and number 68 in the Netherlands on the  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Charts" rel="nofollow - Dutch Charts . It's the first album to feature Neil Durant on keyboards and it marks the return of original members Paul Cook on drums and Tim Esau on bass, the latter's first appearance on an IQ album since 1989."

-but I've had enough of you and your way of interacting already. Bye.

I would say ... America.

In essence, America is like 4 or 5 or more countries and the amount of music and its difference is incredible.

But if we go per capita, the decision would be nearly impossible to find ... we would never get done adding names to the listings to see which country did better.

This thread has turned to be quite a farce but anyway, I can tell that I haven't seen any better arguments or evidence than to be 

most into pointing at USA as the most successful country for progressive music in the post-1990s.

-Those chart entries were too low register on wiki btw.

It was a farce to begin with. Your opening question never established what the criteria for "success" was. That can mean a lot of different things: album sales, sales per capita, number of artists, artists per capita, following, quality of writing/recording, bands happiness with their lot in life, most sexual exploits on tour, etc. This was pointed out on the first page directly and you didn't elaborate other than "good considerations", which said f**kall about your intended criteria. Eventually you made a list that established that you are apparently only talking about album popularity as the criteria for "success", with which you declared USA was evidently the winner. Your list, by the way, points out that on a per capita basis Sweden is about 5 times more productive of popular prog albums and Norway about 10 times more.