Progressive Metal Pioneers?

 

For all I know Cro Magnon is belgian

 

 

like someone else in this thread said above, you don't need to have played in that style to be a pioneer. A pioneer blazes the trail for those to come later. Any progressive metal band worth its salt will cite Crimson as an influence. I just saw 2 young bands this past year that were prog metal and definitely had KC influences, Nebelnest and Indukti.

 

Chuck Yeager was never an astronaut, but he is absolutely a pioneer of space flight. He and test pilots like him paved the way for the original Mercury astronauts that followed.

 

Ah come on, you forgot Fats Domino!

 

HughesJB4 wrote: Real Paradox wrote: Rush all the way dude. They were the first heavy prog band, and basically every progressive metal band site them as main influence, specially DT.   Go back and read the rest of the topic first. We have been round and round on whether Rush is a prog metal pioneer many times, and I imagine some of the people that have been posting in this topic for a few pages now are getting sick of Rush coming up. An influence is not the same thing as a pioneer, a point we already established many pages back.

 

I hope you get my point. Oh yeah, that was backing up Certif1ed, just in case anyone got confused there.

 

For "crest of a knave" isn't it ? Metallica should have earned the Grammy instead...

 

 

I agree. The heavier parts of early Crimson did influence progressive metal, so for that they are rightly considered a pioneer, and I think any progressive metal band would consider them an influence and a pioneer. King Crimson probably has influenced more progressive bands than any other band in history in a variety of types of progressive rock. Progressive metal is certainly one of them. I also would think of Metallica as a prog metal pioneer. Certainly any progressive metal bands that arose in the 90s would have been raised on Metallica.

 

No problems with such bands being the forerunners - and I'd include Spooky Tooth, Vanilla Fudge (at a push), Yardbirds, Cream, Led Zep, Black Sabbath, May Blitz, High Tide, Arzachel, Khan, Pink Fairies, Groundhogs et al among their numbers.

 

I don't think any of those bands fit into the rank of "Pioneer", though;

 

1. Sir Lord Baltimore - the overall sound is not in the same "metal" ball park as, for example, UFO - it's closer to 1970s hard rock in style, rooted in the sound of Cream/Yardbirds. The riffing and drumming is in much the same vein as Led Zep - perhaps a little more quirky and certainly looser. It's very easy to hear this as a precursor to the metal sound and style, but not a consolidation, like the Scorpions or the Sweet.

 

The soloing, while fast, is non-constructed, and pure pentatonic bluff. Contrast this with what Schenker did. The changes are all pretty much in the same key - there's no harmonic experimentation or hints at Classical music. Ritchie Blackmore was well ahead of the game here - Mark II Purple are a stronger heavy metal root, and hint strongly at Prog Metal, while I don't really hear a link here.

 

Perhaps you could pick out some bits and pieces that demonstrate the pioneering?

 

 

2. Blue Cheer. Oh come on!

 

Blue Cheer are the antithesis of Progressive - they turned it up to 11 and let rip. They're at the very root of hard rock and heavy metal - just for the up to 11 thing and the monster riffs - but that's it. There's no Progressive connection here, musically speaking. This video demonstrates what I'm talking about perfectly - unless you think I've missed something.

 

 

3. Queen.

 

A bit harder - and perhaps a borderline case, especially with their first two albums. Perhaps Queen II ought to be considered Prog Metal, in a way. Let's face it, Queen were Queen, and they were a unique, pioneering band that fits almost any rock category you care to put them in.

 

Extremely talented and Progressive band - there's no doubt in my mind that they wrote Progressive Rock, and they were certainly an influence on The Sweet (who themselves are only borderline "Pioneers" - their most progressive song is "Love is LIke Oxygen" - the extended version. I only included some vids from them to show the link between Glam and Metal/Prog Metal) - and were in turn influenced by Uriah Heep (especially in the vocal harmonies), among others - but I don't really hear their influence in any Progressive metal I've ever heard. Queen were/are inimitable, and most Prog Rock doesn't compete with them in terms of complex structuring and virtuosic performance.

 

Maybe some of the PM afficiandos can put me straight here - but I don't "feel" Queen (even early Queen) as pioneering PM. They wrote songs that have a kind of metal feel - but there's something else in their music that stops them being "proper" metal.

 

Just my feeling, of course.