The Gathering

Is progressive rock making a comeback at last? And if it is, is this good news or bad news?

The body of evidence: Spock's Beard, Ozric Tentacles, Dream Theater, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Mostly Autumn, Stream of Passion, ...

Just like the worst of 70s prog rock, Spock's Beard are too earnest, and the Dream Theater keyboard player shows off in true over-the-top 70s style. On the other hand ...

Opeth retain their death metal aspect but have taken on board all kinds of proggy influences (including King Crimson). Porcupine Tree have emerged out of 90s psychedelia into almost pure - but dark - progressive rock. Just like Pink Floyd and others before them, these two bands understand that a dark, edgy musical thing works, whereas endless technicality doesn't. Why? Because it doesn't connect with our emotions. And that's one reason why Pink Floyd have always been revered, despite being progressive.

Mostly Autumn have recorded songs that sound a bit like Fleetwood Mac, or a bit like Jethro Tull, etc. It isn't that they don't have a style of their own, but they seem happy to borrow. Stream of Passion is being discussed elsewhere: you can expect Arjen Lucassen's work to have a proggy aspect to it, even though this album is less proggy than the Ayreon rock operas.

If this is happening, who else do we need to rediscover? Well, Mikael Akerfeldt is helping us to unearth Rush, Caravan and so on (from Damnation onwards). Beyond that, we have to think about bands such as Genesis, Yes, Barclay James Harvest and so on - or do we? The essence of prog rock is "progression" - being musically inventive and taking "pop songs" much further than the old three-chord thing. But all that's been done - even if the exercise was crammed into just a few years between about 1969 and 1975. Now, 30 years on, things can take a different course. Fusions between dramatically different musical styles (as in the case of Opeth) give us a new interpretation, and that's the key. It's both the key to a renaissance and the key to acceptability. That's my view. What do you folks think?

I don’t know really… i ‘ve never asked myself this kind of question...

I think i can’t really answer it too... it's pretty difficult.

I think proggy pieces in Heavy, Thrash, Jazz, Blues, Goth, Death, Doom, Power, blablabla ... and also classic style ... is not a bad thing... it’s refreshing and it’s still bringing some good surprises to the listeners... sometimes creating some great dimensions... well, most of the time, it's a cool chemistry.

still don’t know if it’s a come back...

as far as i'm concerned, i ‘d just say Prog will never be unfashionable

This thread needs more mention of dredg.

There we go.

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I would like to know what you consider being prog?
Because I actually tends to find music so called 'purely' progressive very cheesy...
Dont get me wrong, I do love some progressive work... But my relation to prog is very weird..
For example, a friend of mine (mariner, who used to post here) told me Opeth had big inlfuence of King Crimson and made me listen to them, and I quite liked it.. Then I bought just without listening one of their album and I found it very cheesy...

On teh other hand, some albums by non prog only bands I love:
Justice from metallica, Seventh son from Maiden, Damnation from opeth, sfam from Dream Theatre... etc

So what is really prog, and could you advice me some non cheesy stuffs

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Maybe i'm paranoid, yeah that's my problem
You almost have to be when you look like me

@Burn
You can start from here. What is Progressive Rock? Progressive Rock is traditionally
melodic where multisectioned compositions replace normal song structures and lets
say, it is oriented towards classically trained instrumental technique. Very close to it
is what we call Art-Rock but Art-Rock is more likely to have experimental or Avant-Grade influences.

By the way Dream Theater is considered Prog-Metal.
About some good stuff I'll get back to you. I have to go through of my
collection.
And well, one good Hard - Progressive - Art Rock Band is Rush.

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Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Damn since all the time I hear the name of that band and I've never got my ears on it...

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Maybe i'm paranoid, yeah that's my problem
You almost have to be when you look like me

Same here (never heard Rush).

About King Crimson: I think a lot depends on which era of the band you listen to, but (although I haven't heard the whole repertoire) I always think of them in a positive light, despite some cheesy stuff. For example, Islands contains a wide range of both cheesy and non-cheesy stuff, but Lark's Tongues in Aspic gets cheesy all too quickly. I must listen to some of the later albums, such as Red (I think). The band's line-up was always changing, so there must be considerable variety. But there'd be no real King Crimson without Robert Fripp. Bob Fripp's crazy guitar work characterized the early band.

About Barclay James Harvest: Their first (self-titled) album is seriously "cute" - not an adjective I use often. Later albums again contain a variety, drifting off into cheese from time to time. And then later in their career I think it was all cheese - and mouldy cheese too - but by this time we're talking post punk wipe-out, i.e. they had already become unfashionable.

About Genesis: I've never caught up with the early albums, in the days when Peter Gabriel was the front man. Like just about everyone else of my generation, I've heard some of the stuff that followed, when Phil Collins took over. From then on, things slowly degenerated!

In the meantime, Steve Hackett left Genesis but called most of the band in to help on his first album project, Voyage of the Acolyte. That album contains some moments of great beauty (especially "The Lovers") and some oddities. Later Steve Hackett albums are probably skewed towards the classical, because that's where the man has headed over the years.

So, you continental European people (amongst others), how do Tangerine Dream fit into this picture?

I think Tangerine Dream is mostly electronic. That what I would classify it.
Sins Of Arcadia mentioned Dredg earlier. I really like this band but it is
not Prog-Rock. Dredg is classified as Post-Grunge.

_________________
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Or buy the way guys now that you mentioned it, is Tangerine Dream still around?

_________________
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche

nice that's the album I picked up I chose it from the other cause reading the creidts it seems the guy who worte most of it was a major member of the band...

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Maybe i'm paranoid, yeah that's my problem
You almost have to be when you look like me

Alas! Listen before you buy - on Amazon, perhaps! I bought the album on CD because I found it going cheap in a shop in Exeter. An impulse purchase.

On Amazon, I've just been listening to bits of the remastered 1979 Steve Hackett album Spectral Mornings. Sounds good to me.

was the same kind of buy for me... LOL
Well I think emule is going to work for a couple of days... if I like it I'll buy it.. otherwise -> trash can...

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Maybe i'm paranoid, yeah that's my problem
You almost have to be when you look like me

Well I just saw something that totally amazed me.. I was thinking "hmm Tangerine Dream is more electronic music, could be interesting" I look for it on emule and I found out that this band has 82 releases in 34 years!!!!
I don't know if it includes singles/remixes and whatever kind of compilation but this is huge!! it's more than 2 release a year!

_________________
Maybe i'm paranoid, yeah that's my problem
You almost have to be when you look like me

Looks like they are still around. Wow that's a lots of albums.

_________________
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Interesting thread, this! I'm a big fan of both old and new progressive rock and metal. I agree with the theory that "progressive" means to progress, to push boundaries and move forward. Unfortunately, too many prog-metal bands think being "prog" means to try and compete with DREAM THEATER in the widdly solos stakes....

A few of you have mentioned RUSH, which is great. I'm an absolute fanatic of theirs, although the problem is whether you become a fan or not really depends on which albums/songs you hear first. In otherwords, like The GATHERING they have evolved constantly.

A potential fan may hear one of their albums and then dismiss them without realising the rest of their stuff is so different. Maybe the best way to start would be to get their double-cd Best-of album "Chronicles", but the RUSH albums I would recommend are:

From their heavy metal era:
2112 (1976)
Hemispheres (1978)

For the prog-rock/metal crossover:
Permanent Waves (1980)
Moving Pictures (1981)

For those who want to try their more synth-rock period:
Signals (1982)
Grace Under Pressure (1984)

And for their combination of hard-rock and prog:
Counterparts (1993)
Test For Echo (1996)

From the ZEPPELIN-on-crack heavy metal of their 1974 debut, to the synth-rock of "Signals" in 1982, to the alternative hard rock of "Test For Echo", they have never done the same album twice. A "progressive" band in the true sense.

As for today's scene, I think the best modern prog-rock and prog-metal bands out there now are:

SYMPHONY X
EVERGREY
DEADSOUL TRIBE
PORCUPINE TREE

those are my two favourites albums...
"Different Stages" is a great 3 live CD too

about prog rock, i think Kansas has to be mentionned.
this is an old band... but it simply rules... have seen them on stage this year.... probably the last time

Kerry Livgren was a music genius... according to me he was one of the best Prog rock composer of all time...

some other prog rock bands: Camel, Alan Parson Project, Saga, Marillion

The mention of Led Zeppelin prompts me to think that, well, they weren't exactly a "progressive" band, but here the boundaries get blurred. While they were primarily a "heavy blues" outfit, excursions such as "Stairway to Heaven" (well, most of the song) and "The Battle of Evermore" take them in a different direction. But it isn't so much progressive (inspired by semi-classical ideas) as folk music - hence the presence of folk singer Sandy Denny on "Battle".

To approach this from the opposite direction: as far as extended compositions, concept albums and classical influences are concerned, let me mention Mike Oldfield. Of course, Tubular Bells was a great success, and it is an extended/concept work, but it's also a jokey little piece, complete with the vocal commentaries of Vivian Stanshall, whose voice introduces the instruments and whose footsteps on gravel grace the album.

Oldfield went on to produce similar - but slightly more "serious" - works, such as Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn, but stayed fairly near the rock end of the rock-classical spectrum. Things changed when he began to work with classically trained composer David Bedford. In a post-Stravinsky, post-Schoenberg and even post-Stockhausen world, it's hard to determine what a "classical" composer should produce. Well, Bedford put together modern classical compositions that made use of rock instrumentation. He set Samuel Taylor Coleridge's the Rime of the Ancient Mariner to music, and composed a suite around The Odyssey. And it's in the latter work that we reach the absolute epitome of soaring-electric-guitar-as-violin - in Mike Oldfield's contribution to "The Phaeacian Games".

However, let's not run away with the idea that this kind of work was ever universally popular. It was music for intellectuals, for people who were educated and aware of poetry, the Greek myths and so on. And that was one of the criticisms levelled at progressive rock by it's detractors - ostensibly people like Johnny Rotten/John Lydon, who would take to the stage and not-so-politely announce a different agenda: "God save the Queen", "We're so pretty" and of course "I am the anti-Christ". Which he wasn't. He was just a very angry young man.

Let's put that into perspective. While some of us old hippies were still drooling over concept albums, glorious exotic guitar soloing and all that, what was really happening in 1970s Britain? Well, the country was in the first deep shock that followed the 1973 oil-price crisis. The post-industrial world had arrived: manufacturing companies were failing, both industrial unrest (strikes etc.) and unemployment were high, and the Labour government led by Jim Callaghan was failing to manage the economy - they eventually went to the IMF for a loan to keep the country running. Many of the kids coming out of school had little prospect of finding work, let alone "career advancement". Derek Jarman's 1977 film Jubilee may be a fantasy (with Buckingham Palace taken over by insane impresario Borgia Ginz, and turned into a recording studio!) but, looking back, the film does capture some of the atmosphere of the time.

"Signals" and "Counterparts" are very good choices, although I think "Signals" does feel like more of a Geddy Lee solo album (ie. all bass/vocals/synths and very little guitar. Even the drums are quite muted at times ). I think they were right to change producers after that album.

By the way, you're right about "Different Stages - LIVE" (the WHOLE of 2112 from start to finish is worth the price alone ), although I would have liked to have heard more than one song from "Presto". That was probably my least favourite album of theirs (mostly because of the VERY disappointing production), along with "Power Windows", but in a live environment songs like "Chain Lightning" and "The Pass" work very well.

I hear that KANSAS are very good, although I haven't heard much of them and haven't kept up with what they've done since Steve Morse left to join DEEP PURPLE a decade ago. As for MARILLION, I'm a big fan. Especially the Fish era, although some of the Steve Hogarth albums are masterpieces .

Post Grunge?

no.

have you ever heard El Cielo? that's prog/art rock at it's finest. dredg have nothing to do with Grunge.

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I like prog-rock very much!!!!!!!!!!!! I have big collection all albums my fav bands(VDGG & PH, LZ, KC,JT,YES,GENESIS,ELP,GENTLE GIANT,RUSH,KANSAS,PAVLOV S DOG,MAHAVISHNY ORCHESTRA and other) . From new generation my fav are TG,,PAIN OF SALVATON(!!!!!!!!),OPETH,ORPHANED LAND, DT, THE TANGENT, PORCUPINE TREE,ANEKDOTEN,ANATHEMA,DREDG