Progressive songs from non-prog bands

goose wrote: What of Diamond Head's songs are proggy? The only one I heard which I suppose could be called prog was "The Prince", and based on that I bought the best of (for £2.99) and wasn't too impressed. It didn't help that only one song I'd heard and liked that was actually on it was "Am I Evil?" but still, The first two or three tracks just seemed like the same stupid lyric line over and over again... I'm not judging all of their output on that, I've heard at least three or four tracks I liked.

Diamond Head were the first prog metal band. OK, there's no Mellotron or Hammond - but neither is there in, say, Dream Theater.

DH released 3 "Genuine albums", apart from the recent stuff which I haven't kept up with; "The White Album", "Living on Borrowed Time" and "Canterbury". Of these, only the very rare White Album truly shows what Diamond Head were made of, as their career was extraordinarily badly managed for such an obviously gifted band, and even the superb "Living on Borrowed Time" is a pale shadow of the might of the White Album (AKA Lightning to the nations). "Canterbury" suffered from the fact that the band were going through musical differences, and one early batch of pressings was faulty, rendering it unplayable (although to be fair, with the musical differences, the result bordered on the unlistenable).

DH's "White Album" was way beyond anything that had appeared under the umbrella title of metal, with "more good riffs in a single song than on any Black Sabbath album" (to quote Geoff Barton of Sounds magazine - NOT my opinion!). Note that we are not talking prog a la Genesis, KC et al, but a new form that Heavy rock/metal had hinted at for ages in the hands of Led Zep, Deep Purple, Sabbath etc. With the latter 3, the music strayed into prog territory regularly, but was intrinsically rock'n'roll. With Diamond Head, things suddenly got a bit more pretentious, and rock'n'roll was more incidental, as they moved heavy rock into heavy metal proper for the start of the NWOBHM - but avoided the simple structures adopted by later metal bands.

Note also that Diamond Head were one of the main influences on Metallica, who produced an amazingly tight, if somewhat sterile cover of "Am I Evil" on the flip side of "Creeping Death" back in 1984.

threefates wrote: November Rain - Guns & Roses

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! Never in a million billion trillian gazillion years. Here's what I wrote on the subect in an identical thread a couple of months back...

>>GUNS N' ROSES: 'November Rain'

PROG? Are you MAD???  My god, if you think a string section and 11 minutes of repetitious dreary, pretentious and above all corny "please take us seriously" style rock ballad warbling is prog, then you are sadly mistaken, my friend.

This piece of sh*t is cringeworthy from the "aren't we cultured" grand piano opening to the turgid, clumsy and howlingly predictable coda.

Sorry if this upsets anyone, but come on! The song totally parodies its own genre, yet G'n'R, and it seems, their fans, are utterly oblivious to the humour, which makes them fair game for ridicule in my book<<

Sorry 3f8s but I feel very strongly about this one. Still m8s, I hope?

(ps. French and Saunders do an even funnier version, with Dawn French playing Slash, now that's funny)

Regarding Diamond Head:

I was planning on getting the debut album before i saw the best of for £2.99 in HMV. Looks like I should have stuck with my first idea...

I'll stick my neck out a bit further and throw in:

Bat out of hell (title track of the album) - Meatloaf

I take "November rain" at face value, without any preconceptions about the band behind it or their motives. On that basis, I love the song, and support the suggestion that it is indeed prog.

I reckon Meatloaf's work with Jim Steinman, and indeed Steinman's "Bad for good" album, are very progressive. Ironically, they have probably been tarnished by their massive commercial success, but I reckon they are still worthy of inclsion on this site.

Russians - Sting

Novocaine for the Soul - Eels

Stairway to heaven - Led Zeppelin

Chariots of Fire - Vangelis

B side of Beatles' Abbey Road LP

Novocaine for the Soul by the Eels?

Can't hear the prog - but I hear the gob-smacking inventiveness! That is a truly great song, and a hugely imaginative structure, but it's not prog.

Thanks for reminding me of its existence - I MUST go and listen to it NOW!!!