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FloydWright 
Prog Reviewer
Joined: January 20 2005
Status: Offline
Points: 369
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 Topic: "The Progmetal Affinity"
Posted: February 21 2005 at 16:51 |
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I realize there are many of you out there that this isn't going to convince, but I've been doing some thinking about why prog and metal go together so well in spite of some of the really stupid things some people do with metal.
The main reason why prog and metal are a good fit for each other is that metal is a kind of music that has no limits in terms of its intensity. This fits right in with prog's boundary-bending philosophy--and when the "highs" are so much more intense, the softer parts can be highlighted to a more dramatic effect than in genres where there's an (in my opinion) artificial ceiling on how far you can go.
Metal does not have to be morose or tuneless or angry--although there is a time for all of those. For a couple examples of more upbeat metal, I'd first suggest Symphony X, and then a gorgeous song by Ayreon called "The Tower of Hope". The latter is the most striking example of all...powerful, driving metal guitar somehow creates intoxicatingly happy atmosphere. There can be very deep emotion involved of all types--and again the whole thing about this genre that is so liberating is there are no limits, nothing to force you to rein in the intensity of what you want to express.
Metal can also be a place for prog musicians to really run free and exercise their technical skills, facing challenges other genres tend not to offer. Yes, Dream Theater has taken that to an extreme in later albums to the point of annoyance sometimes, but for some displays of incredible skill that don't go over the top, there are fantastic bands like Opeth, Ayreon, and Symphony X (yes, they're cheesy sometimes, but they know when to STOP with the soloing!).
Obviously if you have all that range, power, and speed at your disposal, you do need to use some sense about just how much or how little is appropriate with any given concept, but it is intensely liberating to know that no one and nothing will force you to hold back if you DO find a need to let loose. I think this is a good start as to explaining why the two genres do fit together so well...
Perhaps some other metalheads would like to make some contributions?
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Tony
Forum Senior Member
Joined: February 01 2005
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
Points: 108
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Posted: February 21 2005 at 17:03 |
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But still, it sucks more than any other kind of music. That remains my opinion, though.
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Aaron
Forum Senior Member
Joined: April 08 2004
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 395
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Posted: February 21 2005 at 17:13 |
what are you going on about?
honestly, if it wasnt for metal, i dont know if i would be listening to prog right now
Aaron
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slipperman
Prog Reviewer
Joined: January 05 2005
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 217
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Posted: February 21 2005 at 17:17 |
Cheers Floydwright!
Considering myself equal parts progger and metalhead, I couldn't agree more with your views. (well, I'm not a Symphony X or Ayreon fan, but we don't need to splits hairs on tastes here...) There's not much to add, because from a musical standpoint you hit it right on the head.
It might also be worth pointing out that, to THOSE on the OUTSIDE (ie. people that actually care about the Grammys and listen to nothing but what's popular in mainstream music), metal and prog have always been THE two most unfashionable, most disliked, most reviled kinds of music...probably because of their no-rules parameters, people just don't understand it. Both incredibly misunderstood genres. Both are incredibly vast, having sprouted a zillion sub-genres, thanks to the incredible variety of visionaries that have made the most of their talent and infused these music styles with the almost-infinite potential they possess.
I think more metal bands lean prog than prog bands who lean metal. The list is long, but I would start with Voivod, Opeth, Arcturus, Mekong Delta, Solefald, Fates Warning, Cynic, In The Woods, Frantic Bleep, Green Carnation, Canvas Solaris, Spiral Architect, Enslaved, Sieges Even, Psychotic Waltz...just for staters. But then again, King Crimson's final 3 albums in the '70s (Larks, Starless and Red) can be seen as being radical takes on metal in many spots (Larks' Tongues parts 1 & 2, The Great Deceiver and One More Red Nightmare).
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...it is real...it is Rael...
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slipperman
Prog Reviewer
Joined: January 05 2005
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 217
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Posted: February 21 2005 at 17:20 |
 Aaron wrote:
what are you going on about?
honestly, if it wasnt for metal, i dont know if i would be listening to prog right now
Aaron
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I hear ya Aaron!
And prog fans gotta pay tons of respect to Opeth, whether they like Opeth or not, because Mikael Akerfeldt probably sold more records for Camel in the past 10 years than any other publicity they've gotten. I know I investigated Camel in the early '90s after reading some early interviews with Akerfeldt, who praises that band, and many other prog bands, any chance he gets.
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...it is real...it is Rael...
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Certif1ed
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: April 08 2004
Location: England
Status: Offline
Points: 7559
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Posted: February 22 2005 at 03:48 |
Although I naturally moved from metal to prog, I can't help feeling that although metal would like to be prog - and progressive metal is a bona fide genre (and has been since I first heard the phrase applied to Diamond Head back in 1980) - progressive metal is a different genre to prog rock and, I think, always will be.
The clue is in the word "metal" - whereas with prog rock, the boundaries are not so clearly defined.
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GFoyle
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 06 2005
Location: Finland
Status: Offline
Points: 199
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Posted: February 22 2005 at 04:51 |
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I was "introduced" to prog through Tool and by listening alternative
rock/metal. I seemed to like bands with more complex, different song
structures and rythms, so my musician friend once just stated that "oh
you like prog" and after that I started investingating the genre more
and found tons on "new" bands I liked.
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Swinton MCR
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 19 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Status: Offline
Points: 848
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Posted: February 22 2005 at 04:56 |
Apply the long-tracks, complicated time changes and ally fast guitar riffs with cute keyboards and you get an exhilarating music Genre - Dream Theater have produced the finest I have heard yet - but I'll be getting around to the rest, coz the metal-man in me needs that thrash-rush, I have never held disdain for complicated adult-oriented thrash and I never will, But has any band tried Gregorian chants between bursts of metal power.....................
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AngelRat
Forum Senior Member
Joined: July 14 2004
Location: Netherlands
Status: Offline
Points: 1014
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Posted: February 22 2005 at 06:27 |
Let's face it: metal and prog both are very masculin forms of music. It's basically about young (or wannabe-young) men trying to impress each other with their flashy skills. Most of them don't know how to get girls (with the exception of Greg Lake of course) so they release their frustation by playing loud and outrageous music. Once that makes 'em popular and they get female attention, they soften up their sounds and get commercial.
Or maybe I'm wrong...
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Manunkind
Forum Senior Member
Joined: February 02 2005
Location: Poland
Status: Offline
Points: 2373
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Posted: February 22 2005 at 07:13 |
 BELLIGENRENT POST ALERT
Let's just say "Images and Words" by the Most Self-Indulgent Band in the World made me listen to music more carefully and appreciate music outside of the 4/4 universe, and therefore led me to, among others, King Crimson, Magma, John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor for crying out loud, as well as to the re-evaluation of the stuff I had been listening to before.
From this perspective this is what I have to say to people who dismiss a genre upon hearing one song or just because the "prog metal=sh!t" is today's party mantra and they don't want to be left on the wrong side of everyone elses' backs:
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"In war there is no time to teach or learn Zen. Carry a strong stick. Bash your attackers." - Zen Master Ikkyu Sojun
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Captain Fudge
Forum Senior Member
Joined: December 21 2004
Location: Romania
Status: Offline
Points: 238
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Posted: February 22 2005 at 08:15 |
Tool have transcended the 'metal' categorisation .TRULY Prog-metal are only bands who have no real seal to be be slapped with  , just like real grunge bands, etc. 
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Teenage sucks hard -- Emo sucks even harder
Epic. Simply epic.
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FloydWright
Prog Reviewer
Joined: January 20 2005
Status: Offline
Points: 369
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Posted: February 22 2005 at 16:29 |
Swinton MCR wrote:
But has any band tried Gregorian chants between bursts of metal power..................... |
I've heard a suggestion that Opeth might try it someday--BUT, that may be outdated/obsolete information, or never true in the first place. I'm not entirely sure.
AngelRat wrote:
Let's face it: metal and prog both are very masculin forms of music. It's basically about young (or wannabe-young) men trying to impress each other with their flashy skills. Most of them don't know how to get girls (with the exception of Greg Lake of course) so they release their frustation by playing loud and outrageous music. Once that makes 'em popular and they get female attention, they soften up their sounds and get commercial.
Or maybe I'm wrong... |
Careful now, both genres DO have their female fans (me being one), even if there ARE fewer women. And I'm not one of those goth chicks or other women that tries to look like a man, either.  I would not call prog "masculine", personally--just "intelligent" or "complex". Now, metal...that one's tougher to not call "masculine", but there ARE female fans, and I like it because it is powerful.
And I wouldn't want bands to soften up just because I am listening. Granted, I tend not to choose bands in the first place that have REALLY obscene lyrics...but that is just MY personal taste. And that doesn't mean bands can't growl, scream, and be earsplittingly loud. 
Edited by FloydWright
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Aerosol Grey
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 05 2004
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 109
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Posted: February 22 2005 at 17:18 |
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Dream Theater write better and more memorable songs than Symphony X,
Ayreon or Opeth(save the first few tracks on Damnation) could ever hope
to come up with.
They're better musicians AND better songwriters than the new-jack European metal movment, get over it
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Prog is the new punk, becuase kids who shop at Hot Topic don't know Bill Bruford is God.
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FloydWright
Prog Reviewer
Joined: January 20 2005
Status: Offline
Points: 369
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Posted: February 22 2005 at 22:49 |
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The earlier Dream Theater did some neat stuff (Images and Words and especially Awake are great), and Train of Thought wasn't bad either...but I really think they do themselves in with the over-soloing. Because they can't control their compositions anymore, they end up devaluing the good they do. And even their most self-indulgent albums DO have good moments. The trouble is, when those moments are surrounded by so much useless showing off, they either can't be remembered or simply aren't worth sifting through all the chaff to hear.
With Ayreon, I'll agree there are better lyric-writers. But while the music isn't as "technical" as Dream Theater, and their concepts are simple, I think it is much more effective at creating an atmosphere and holding the listener's attention (and that is NOT for lack of complicated sections; they do exist, but when necessary...NOT just for the heck of it). What Arjen Lucassen does, he does well.
As for Symphony X--their lyrics are actually quite good once you pay attention to them. The songwriting and some of the synthesizers they use can sound silly at first (I love their music to bits, but I STILL wanna toss that Korg out the window sometimes), but then you start to notice how good they are at knowing just how much is enough. Not to mention that the musicians to a man are all superior to any musician Dream Theater has to offer. (Well...TECHNICALLY I suppose it's very difficult to surpass Rudess, but Pinnella gives him a run for his money, and in my mind wins because he knows WHEN to use his skills and when to back off.)
And Opeth...they are VERY memorable indeed; Mikael Akerfeldt is a guitarist (most especially acoustic), vocalist, and songwriter to be reckoned with. That band's sound is instantly recognizeable, and the lyrics...while very ODD to say the least, are great at conveying a feeling even if not some grand conceptual idea like Scenes. Nonetheless they HAVE created great concepts like Still Life and My Arms, Your Hearse. And I'll tell you why those succeed where Scenes from a Memory fell down--because they never, ever became self-indulgent to where the point got lost under a ton of pointless noodling. They had balance between lyrics and music, and (unless you find death-metal as a style completely overwhelming) they never overdo it.
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greenback
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: August 14 2004
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
Points: 3300
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Posted: February 22 2005 at 23:01 |
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be careful: there is prog metal and metal prog!! it is not the same!
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[HEADPINS - LINE OF FIRE: THE RECORD HAVING THE MOST POWERFUL GUITAR SOUND IN THE WHOLE HISTORY OF MUSIC!>
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Eemu Ranta
Forum Senior Member
Joined: December 26 2004
Location: Sweden
Status: Offline
Points: 150
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Posted: February 23 2005 at 02:01 |
FloydWright wrote:
Swinton MCR wrote:
But has any band tried
Gregorian chants between bursts of metal power.....................
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I've heard a suggestion that Opeth might try it someday--BUT, that may
be outdated/obsolete information, or never true in the first place. I'm not
entirely sure.
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You're right, Mike said that in an interview a few months back. However,
he also said that he says things in interviews just to get the fans busy
speculating.
Opeth is my favourite band, and I know their music better than just about
anything. I didn't know them being labeled "prog" before I found this site,
and I think their advantage is to not deliberately create progressive music
(like the DT-clowns ) and to follow their artistic views without
compromising in technicality, simplicity, brutality or mellowness or try to
belong in some specific genre.
To not compromise, isn't that what prog once was all about?
Edited by Eemu Ranta
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tuxon
Forum Senior Member
Joined: September 21 2004
Location: plugged-in
Status: Offline
Points: 5502
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Posted: February 23 2005 at 02:41 |
Swinton MCR wrote:
But has any band tried Gregorian chants between bursts of metal power.....................
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It has been done. I believe some Norwegian/Northern Europe band made Metal with Gregorian Chanting. I can't come up with the name of the band. (I'm pretty sure there are more than one bands that did this) I'll check it out, and maybe produce a name shortly
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I'm always almost unlucky _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Id5ZcnjXSZaSMFMC Id5LM2q2jfqz3YxT
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Valarius
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 08 2005
Location: Germany
Status: Offline
Points: 1480
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Posted: February 23 2005 at 03:23 |
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I don't mind Dream Theater "over-soloing". When all five musicians in the band are playing at their best in unison, it is truly unbeliveable how they keep up. (Check out "Instrumedley" from Live At Budokan).
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John Gargo
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 26 2005
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 450
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Posted: February 23 2005 at 08:27 |
What a wonderful thread...
Metal was the genre that saved me from Top 40 Radio... I really had no idea about music as a whole until one day my friend passed over his walkman and played me a song. I thought "Hey, this is different," and asked him what band this was. He replied by saying that it was a British heavy metal band called Iron Maiden. Next time I went to the store, I went out and bought one of their albums and I fell in love with the genre. Here was a band who wrote ALBUMS as opposed to singles and whose songs had extended instrumental compositions. I immediately purchased every single one of their albums and branched out to different bands within the genre... thrash metal, speed metal, NWOBHM, traditional metal, progressive metal, the works.
Opeth was the band that opened two new doors for me... for one thing, they introduced me to more extreme forms of metal and made it possible for me to appreciate death metal vocals, something that I had completely written off before. But they also introduced me to Camel, King Crimson, and other 70s prog bands... These days, I listen to pretty much 50 % metal, 50 % prog. I find both of the genres perfectly compliment eachother, and they both share many of the same approaches to rock music.
In both genres, you find bands that are more than willing to indulge themselves in outlandish experimentation and bizarre experimentation. In both genres, you have bands that go completely over the top, and in both genres you have bands that simply ape previous bands and are pretty much the antithesis of progressive music (Dream theater clones, I'm looking in your direction). However, if you ask me, some of the most challenging and experimental music created these days are not coming from progressive rock bands, but from experimental metal acts who grew up listening to equal parts Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd... While many neo-prog bands (and I love the genre myself, but it's not really progressive in the true sense of the word) have stuck with their style and are simply churning out retro-tinged excersises in mimicry, many extreme metal bands are constantly progressing and constrantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible within rock music.
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FloydWright
Prog Reviewer
Joined: January 20 2005
Status: Offline
Points: 369
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Posted: February 23 2005 at 10:49 |
Great comments from you, JG--that was true for me about the death-metal vocals, too. I hated it at first. Then a friend sent me "The Drapery Falls", which I listened to over and over and over until I was immune to it. THEN, eventually, I came to LIKE the death vocals.
Eemu Ranta wrote:
FloydWright wrote:
Swinton MCR wrote:
But has any band tried
Gregorian chants between bursts of metal power.....................
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I've heard a suggestion that Opeth might try it someday--BUT, that may
be outdated/obsolete information, or never true in the first place. I'm not
entirely sure.
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You're right, Mike said that in an interview a few months back. However,
he also said that he says things in interviews just to get the fans busy
speculating. |
Well, I'm glad to know I didn't hallucinate that quote, anyway.
Opeth is my favourite band, and I know their music better than just about
anything. I didn't know them being labeled "prog" before I found this site,
and I think their advantage is to not deliberately create progressive music
(like the DT-clowns ) and to follow their artistic views without
compromising in technicality, simplicity, brutality or mellowness or try to
belong in some specific genre.
To not compromise, isn't that what prog once was all about? |
I do agree that DT (i.e. RUDESS) of late tries too hard to be prog, but when they kinda relax a bit, better things happen. That's why Train of Thought--although it DOES still have problems--is actually something I'll listen to willingly.
And I think you have described fantastically what prog should be about. It is not about "being prog". It is about having a vision and following it, whatever that vision may be. If others think it's their kind of "prog", so be it, and if others disagree, so be it. That's not what bands ought to be worrying about.
Edited by FloydWright
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"The Progmetal Affinity"
