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First album you would consider progressive metal
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Snareman View Drop Down
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    Posted: December 29 2020 at 20:05
What is in your mind, the first progressive metal album?
Personally I would look to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath by Black Sabbath, Deep Purple made in Japan, Red by King Crimson or Fly by Night by Rush. Although all of these were released before albums like 7th son of a 7th son by Iron Maiden, Operation Mindcrime by Queensryche, Images and Words by Dream theatre, Undertow by TOOL or And Justice for all... by Metallica, they are all either by Metal Bands going in a Progressive direction or Prog Rock bands going in a more metallic direction so I would Credit Red, SBS, Made in Japan or FBN as creating the sub genre before Queensryche or Dream theatre.
What are your takes?
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Based on my research it would probably be "energetic disassembly" by Watchtower from 1985 which was their first album. Anything before that is proto metal imo(even Rush). Black Sabbath had prog elements and moments but were never full on prog metal imo. Fates Warning were pretty early also but Watchtower beat them to it as far as prog metal goes(imo). 

Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - December 30 2020 at 07:53
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To start off with how do you define Progressive Metal?
  • Is it Metal that has Progressive attributes?
  • Is it Progressive rock that has Metal attributes?
I think the early bands were more Metal/Hard Rock with Progressive attributes ie; Sabbath, Deep Purple, Rush, Rainbow heck even UFO and Scorpions. All these bands in the early 70's released albums one could choose.....

In the 80s you then had bands that were Progressive rock but added Metal attributes, because all of them wanted to be like Rush, Genesis, Yes but also loved the new sounds from Metallica.
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Black Sabbath’s first album.
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Catcher10
>To start off with how do you define Progressive Metal?
Is it Metal that has Progressive attributes?
Is it Progressive rock that has Metal attributes?
I think the early bands were more Metal/Hard Rock with Progressive attributes ie; Sabbath, Deep Purple, Rush, Rainbow heck even UFO and Scorpions. All these bands in the early 70's released albums one could choose.....

>In the 80s you then had bands that were Progressive rock but added Metal attributes, because all of them wanted to be like Rush, Genesis, Yes but also loved the new sounds from Metallica.


In my opinion, progressive metal is any music that fuses Prog and Metal, so Both Metal that uses prog elements and Prog that uses Metal elements.

Edited by Snareman - December 29 2020 at 22:41
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Originally posted by Manuel Manuel wrote:

Black Sabbath’s first album.

Yeah I'm pretty much in this boat. As long as metal has been around it's had pretty obvious prog tendencies. Would I say that Sabbath came out of the gate with a fully formed "prog metal" sound? No, it was definitely primitive. But I don't think any definition of progressive metal that excludes what Sabbath was doing right from the beginning is getting the whole picture. Definitely huge strides in the genre were made later by other bands, especially Rush in the 70s and Queensryche in the 80s, which would lead to the what I think of as the "definitive" prog metal band, Dream Theatre.  But I can't say DT was first, nor can I say that for Queensryche, nor for Rush. Metal was born with strong progressive leanings from the nature of the styles it came out of (psych and hard rock, and of course early prog like KC). 

However, in my mind the band and album that did the most work in carving out a place specifically for progressive metal to thrive as its own subgenre was Rush with 2112.
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Black Sabbath for me misses a lot of the Prog attributes, but hits all the Metal. I listen to their first album and I struggle to hear much prog/progressive stuff.
Deep Purple hits progressive a bit more and Rush hits it even more with FBN. King Crimson has too much of a jazz/fusion type flavor, maybe one or two songs has some slight metal but that's a stretch. Albums like Poseidon and Lizard, no metal. As far as Red its a bit harder but other bands were more metal......

You can push really, really hard and go ahead and make it Black Sabbath. But I think both Deep Purple and especially Rush are a more accurate choice if your looking for a balance of Progressive and Metal, rather than a little bit of one or the other.
Bands like Fates Warning and Dream Theater worked hard to be both on purpose, because of the bands that came before them.
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I would say the first real elements of prog metal would be releases within a year of each other, Black Sabbath Sabotage and Rainbow Rising. Extended compositions with real metal power.
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Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part 2 is my claim for where 99% of those bands ripped that style/sound of aggression from.

It precedes Watchtower and all those bands by over a decade.

Sabbath is just heavy paint-by-numbers blues riffs downtuned, very little progressive aspect or even innovation.

Sabbath starting metal? Sure. Prog metal? Not even close.

If we're going to argue "Well they inspired...", well then yes, no sh*t, follow the full logic all the way then because The Beatles owe all due to cavemen banging sticks, that's what go the Beatles where they are!
 
Even when they'd try, other bands still did it better. Sabra Cadabra is their closest prog track and it's less than stellar.


Edited by Frenetic Zetetic - December 30 2020 at 00:38

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Originally posted by Catcher10 Catcher10 wrote:

Black Sabbath for me misses a lot of the Prog attributes, but hits all the Metal. I listen to their first album and I struggle to hear much prog/progressive stuff.
Deep Purple hits progressive a bit more and Rush hits it even more with FBN. King Crimson has too much of a jazz/fusion type flavor, maybe one or two songs has some slight metal but that's a stretch. Albums like Poseidon and Lizard, no metal. As far as Red its a bit harder but other bands were more metal......

You can push really, really hard and go ahead and make it Black Sabbath. But I think both Deep Purple and especially Rush are a more accurate choice if your looking for a balance of Progressive and Metal, rather than a little bit of one or the other.
Bands like Fates Warning and Dream Theater worked hard to be both on purpose, because of the bands that came before them.

I'd give credit to DP or Rush WAY before Sabbath for any progressive tendencies in that sound, and I've been in metal bands nearly my entire semi-professional career as a musician.

"I am so prog, I listen to concept albums on shuffle." -KMac2021
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In A Dramatic Turn of Events, Dream Theater's Images and Words was The Astonishing first Progressive Metal album I listened to back in 1992, and I've been Falling Into Infinity with Dream Theater ever since then. Smile
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The first photograph album that includes bullets...
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I posit that prog metal evolved in bits & pieces.  Beatle's "Helter Skelter" rings the prog-metal bell for me. 

As far as the "first" prog metal album, I'd suggest Uriah Heep's earliest LPs.  "Bird of Prey" always floats my boat!


Edited by cstack3 - December 30 2020 at 03:05
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I think Sabotage is the proggiest Sabbath album. Anyway, I've heard about prog-metal starting from Dream Theather. Looking back, Emerson Lake and Palmer "Living Sin" from Trilogy is quite metal.
Good points about Uriah Heep and also Blue Oyster Cult. 
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Originally posted by Frenetic Zetetic Frenetic Zetetic wrote:

Originally posted by Catcher10 Catcher10 wrote:

Black Sabbath for me misses a lot of the Prog attributes, but hits all the Metal. I listen to their first album and I struggle to hear much prog/progressive stuff.
Deep Purple hits progressive a bit more and Rush hits it even more with FBN. King Crimson has too much of a jazz/fusion type flavor, maybe one or two songs has some slight metal but that's a stretch. Albums like Poseidon and Lizard, no metal. As far as Red its a bit harder but other bands were more metal......

You can push really, really hard and go ahead and make it Black Sabbath. But I think both Deep Purple and especially Rush are a more accurate choice if your looking for a balance of Progressive and Metal, rather than a little bit of one or the other.
Bands like Fates Warning and Dream Theater worked hard to be both on purpose, because of the bands that came before them.

I'd give credit to DP or Rush WAY before Sabbath for any progressive tendencies in that sound, and I've been in metal bands nearly my entire semi-professional career as a musician.
I tend to agree, a lot. As I said in my first post I also think many forget about Rainbow, they are rarely mentioned here as an early band that was hard rock/metal but also had that melodic base that grew into progressive tendencies. 

Black Sabbath are easily the Fathers/Creators of Heavy Metal, stretching them to include Progressive is well too much of a stretch, others were more balanced between Metal and Progressive.
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Looking back even further into 'Proto' Hard Rock and 'Progressive' i'd say look at lps like 'Thank Christ for the Bomb' by Groundhogs, 'Sea Shanties' by High Tide and 'Never Never Land' by the Pink Fairies. Even Hawkwind's Space Ritual.. Ok, ok these are not very sophisticated sound wise and no keyboards to speak of but attitude wise it helped move 'Hard Rock' in a more progressive direction.

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The first Mahavishnu albums had a lot of the dexterity and volume that define Prog Metal for me.
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for me it is "Sea Shanties" by High Tide


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If we follow the PA database, the first album which appears as subgenre Prog Metal is  The Warning by Queensr˙che of 1984. 

In that case we would consider everything that came earlier as Proto-Prog Metal. They could have elements of prog and metal, but the style had not even been recognised as a genre in itself. Same as, for example, Days Of Future Past can be considered Proto-Symphonic.
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Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

If we follow the PA database, the first album which appears as subgenre Prog Metal is  The Warning by Queensr˙che of 1984. 

In that case we would consider everything that came earlier as Proto-Prog Metal. They could have elements of prog and metal, but the style had not even been recognised as a genre in itself. Same as, for example, Days Of Future Past can be considered Proto-Symphonic.

Except the problem by doing this, is that bands and artists are bound by one genre within PA, despite how different the individual albums might be. I suspect most Queensryche fans themselves, would not consider The Warning to be a prog metal album, even if the band became such.

Having just come from reading the discussion under your Stats post, I noted that you mentioned Ulver as being one of the first to appear as Post Rock/Math Rock, with an album that has none of that at all, and is definitely an album that (in PA terms) is actually Tech/Extreme Metal.

Put simply, attempting to find the starting point of any genre by using PA “genres” is pointless, and likely to be erroneous.
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