Are they Prog.?

Ed_The_Dead wrote: I love Primus, but still wouldent call them prog.. they have prog elements, but theyr not prog... I preffer calling them thrash-funk.... And if You wanna hear some serious psychadelic bass action then try 'em Lessie claypool is wacky but great!

 I've never encountered the word thrash-funk before ... nice idea!

BTW: I agree that they're not prog.

Primus are not at all derivative. Their motto is "To defy the laws of tradition", and you only need to read the lyrics of "Year of the Parrot" to see what they think about plagiarism:

In the year of our lord
Call it 1994
A fine vintage of mimicry

There are those that take their sound
From someone else's toil
Liking to parrots you see

I've seen the likes of Kate Bush
and Van Morrison
Teaching the parrots to sing

Take a Zeppelin riff

and you alter it a bit
You make lots of money
It's called plagiarism

You want some of that cheese
Just take a big ol' bite
Careful not to choke on it please

Now here we go
It's called plagiarism

 

The guy who works in my local used vinyl shop played me some Rare Earth. The five minutes or so I heard were kinda proggy, but I really haven't heard enough to say if the rest of their output was too.

Iron Butterfly's early stuff was psychadelic. Their later stuff was rock with occasional slight traces of prog.

I know many consider Primus to be progressive, but I find them to be truly amongst the most boring, repetitive, and derivative hard rock bands today.  And whilst Iron Butterfly did play a few shows with King Crimson, I would never consider them to be a truly progressive band for similar reasons; they are more accurately "moderate art rock", likely having more influence on Heavy Metal than on the Progressive bands of the time.  I am totally unfamiliar with Rare Earth.

Edited by hegelec

Primus is not prog.

Iron Butterfly is not prog (except for Inna Gadda Da Vidda).

Rare Earth is not prog.

I would never consider Primus to be prog, but many others do!