How can metal be prog?

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: This is INSANE, there must be only one Prog Metal IMHO, and we can't follow all this madness, in this thread we have used terms as: Tech Extreme Metal Metalcore Technical Metalcore Progressive Metalcore Technical Progressive Metalcore Most of which I proudly say i didn't heard before, so I had to research Where will this stop?   Is all this multiple tagging  helping people who want to learn something or scaring newbies?

Of course we need more. I'm not sure where your sentiment against tagging comes from ... if anything, I'd say that we need to select the tags we use more carefully. For example, I don't use a genre label like "metalcore" since it's a really fuzzy term ... nobody really knows what it means. It's even worse than the label "progressive" - for that one most people at least have an idea of what it means, but for "metalcore" there are several specific definitions floating around the internet which contradict each other. The same applies to genre labels like "groove metal" ... they are not self explanatory, so I tend to avoid them.

But please, where is the harm in using several easily understandable tags to further describe an album? Does "4 stars prog metal" really describe to a newbie what to expect of Symphony X - V, if the person is new to prog metal and has only heard Dream Theater yet ... in that case, wouldn't a label like "Orchestral Prog Power Metal" be a better description?

Have a look at your own review ... I took the liberty of highlighting the words that I would call tags. What I'm trying to show is that we all use tags in our reviews ... the tagging on my website (or at last.fm for that matter) is only a way to make some of the information of the review available to the system, so that it can be used in comparisons.

"Until today I had refused to review any Prog Metal album, being that if I didn’t had anything good to say about a whole sub-genre, most surely the problem should be in my personal taste; but just found “V: The New Mythology Suite” by SYMPHONY X and must honestly say that I’m impressed.

The album combines elements of Metal with excellent Symphonic structures, and that’s something I’m able to understand or even like, this doesn’t mean I became an instant fan of the genre, but it’s good to see there’s some Prog Metal that I’m able to listen with pleasure.

From the operatic “Overture” it’s easy to know you are in front of something different, all those unnecessary solos and contests of egomaniac guitar pyrotechnics are left aside for a coherent structure, loved the opening.

“Evolution (The Grand Design) marks a change, were in definitive inside Metal territory which somehow reminds me of the galloping style of IRON MAIDEN and their obsession for Ancient Egyptian obsession, but designed in such way that the Symphonic component is almost as important, of course you will find some fast guitars, but in small dose doesn’t harm, and at the end there’s not Prog Metal without guitars. The vocals are simply impressive, excellent choral work, another high point.

“Fallen” starts slower than the previous track with a keyboard that leads to an “in crescendo” guitar work, the drumming is extremely accurate, but this time the vocals by Russell Allen are a bit over the top, like he’s making an incredible effort not to leave the Metal zone in which sounds a bit less confident than in Symphonic territory.

“Transcendence” is just a pompous intro (those we like so much) for “Communion and the Oracle” which starts with a soft guitar pretty unusual in this kind of music that sends us to less familiar territory, but again it’s nice, I can understand why some hardcore metalheads don’t like this album too much, because it’s as Symphonic ads metallic.

But the most interesting aspect of this track is how it evolves, linking every section with the next one, in such way you almost don’t feel the dramatic changes, with Michael Pinella and Michael Romeo doing an outstanding work.

“The Bird-Serpent War / Cataclysm” begins harder than all the previous with the expected (even when uncommon in this album) distorted guitar, again that reminiscence of IRON MAIDEN pulls me towards the most familiar an pleasant sound for a non Metal fan as me. But what impresses me more is the fantastic synth work.

Somebody please stop the world, I’m listening Prog Metal and I like it, “In the Breath of Poseidon” is full of pompous and ancient atmospheres with soft instrumental bridges to link the harder sections making the gap between them less evident, simply delightful.

“Egypt” as expected by the name is mysterious but frantic at the same time, two concepts that usually are not easy to combine are managed with enough dexterity to make them sound as natural partners, again the vocal work is amazing. Of course the soft piano closing section was a total surprise for me.

“Death of Balance / Lacrymosa” defies all what I thought I knew about Metal, the aggressive guitars blending with traditional piano in the most Classical sense is brilliant, the controlled cacophony is almost pleasant, reminding me of a harder version of ELP, but the surprises don’t end, another amazing choral section proves me that SYMPHONY X is different than most of the bands of the genre….Vive la différence”

Despite “Absence of Light” is the harder song of the album and clearly more oriented towards what I could expect from a metal album, can’t say I dislike it, the elaborate vocal work makes it easy to digest even by a person who usually won’t listen distorted guitars unless is forced.

“A Fool’s Paradise” starts frantic and breathtaking, for the second time seems like Russell Allen does too much effort when trying to be a metal singer instead of a Symphonic Metal singer, but when someone fails to match ,my taste, another member rescues the song, in this case Pinella with his impeccable keyboards. Around the middle, Allen recovers the calm and everything matches perfectly again, specially when the chorus enter and during a Bach reminiscent organ section…..Loved the song.

“Rediscovery” is the short and softer interlude that places the audience in mood for the final epic, sadly is too short, I believe they could had exploited it much more.

The almost 12 minutes epic “Rediscovery pt. II - The New Mythology” is the cherry in the top of the cake, the band jumps from one style, mood and atmosphere to another one with absolute coherence but at the same time in a very dramatic and radical way, always linking every section with an accurate bridge usually classical or Baroque, sometimes is Bach, in this case is Mozart, another high point.

Now, is time for my biggest problem, I really enjoyed the album but not enough to classify it as an essential masterpiece of Progressive Rock, so five stars are out of my book, but less than four would be unfair and lack of coherence with what I wrote.

Now I will get “The Odyssey” and “The Divine Wings of Tragedy” to convince myself that this is not a mirage and that I really like SYMPHONY X."

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: HughesJB4 wrote: Of course there is a link between Progressive Metalcore and Progressive Metal, we have progressive metalcore/mathcore bands in Tech/Extreme Prog Metal in our database.   Thanks. HughesJB4 wrote: But before you tried to say there is a link between metalcore and progressive metal, but metalcore per se is a totally different beast to progressive metal and are not directly linked, that's what me and Dean have been trying to explain to you Ivan.   Please Hughes, WE WERE TALKING ABOUT MATH, I quoted you...You the expert were the one that said that the name was wrong and I believed you because I said (and I almost quote me) "I know very little and care less about Math", you said that it was really Technical Metalcore and used many terms (that keep growing with new adjective in each new post). But I quoted a place where Math is called Progressive Metalcore. BTW: Between the Buried and Me (A band I don't know about) is catalogued as Metalcore in other sites and we have them as Tech Extreme Metal...Do you insist there's no connection? Will explain further down But to make it simpler that, and will explain you step by step: There is Progressive Metal You admit Progressive Metalcore is related to Progressive Metal There's a sub-genre or whatever called Metalcore Some of the Metalcore bands are Progressive Metalcore In that case despite anything you say, there's a relation between Metalcore and Progressive Metal, call it direct or indirect (I never said direct, my knowledge doesn't go that far), but you can't deny the relation and the link between the two. Well yes, if you want to say metalcore is 'indirectly' connected to prog metal, I have no qualms, since both obviously are metal genres, but both have somewhat different roots, which again, I'm sure we can agree on now from previous posts explaining that. HughesJB4 wrote: And don't put words into my mouth like you did before, I never said Technical Metalcore was the same as Progressive Metalcore. Nowhere did I say that or even imply that. Technical Metalcore does not  equal progressive. Technical Progressive Metalcore does in fact equal progressive. No Hughes, you never said that,  I had to find it in another source.     Mathcore (also known as technical metalcore, progressive metalcore, or noisecore)     And its' funny how each step you add new names, now you call it Progressive Technical Metalcore....WOW!!!!!! What will be next?   HughesJB4 wrote: If I didn't understand the difference, I doubt I would have even got promoted to the Prog Metal Team at all.   I don't doubt you know the difference, I'm not saying they are exactly the same, but seems the difference is so subtle that even our own Prog Reviewers have problems. And I say that because Prog Reviewers in our one site, call "Between The Buried and Me" PURE Metalcore http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=16337 , and you call it Extreme Tech Metal....Aren't there enough similarities if some Prog reviewers catalogue a Tech Extreme Metal Band as Metalcore, even if they are wrong? Iván PS: To make it clear, i don't pretend to know more than you, as a fact I know almost nothing about 90% of the adjectives you add, but using logic and a short research, you find that there's a connection

Regarding Between the Buried and Me, they were a band that started off as a very much pure metalcore band with very slight hints towards prog metal.
They eventually evolved into a Progressive Death Metal band and their most recent album displaying very very little metalcore sound in it at all.
To call them metalcore or progressive death metal.....neither is incorrect (hence why you see them labeled as both), unless you apply the tag to the wrong phase of the band.

The thing is, with some PA genres, what can fit in them is somewhat broad.
In Tech/Extreme we sometimes have bands that are not technical bands (in the case of Opeth for example) but fit in there better than the other two genres for their Extreme (i.e musical traits such as death growls, death metal riffs/influence).

We then have bands which are progressive metalcore, yet fit into the Tech/Extreme genre.
We have progressive death metal bands that fit into Tech/Extreme genre.
We have progressive technical death bands that fit into Tech/Extreme.
We have progressive thrash metal bands that fit into Tech/Extreme.
We have some bands which are a cross breed between groove metal and various extreme metal genres that fit into Tech/Extreme.
We have progressive Deathcore bands that fit into Tech/Extreme (deathcore itself being an offshoot of metalcore, a hybridization of metalcore, death metal, hardcore punk and in some bands, grindcore or even death grind.......yep it's confusing, but I know deathcore when I hear it).
We can have progressive technical deathcore bands.
We have progressive black metal bands.

And that's probably not even all of it listed there (and had I listed much more, it may have been quite overwhelming to some readers), but you get my point that the common link between these sub genres/bands within the sub geners is that they contain elements of either technical metal or extreme metal or both.


Hell, in heavy prog, we have the example of Fall Of Troy.
A band which is not really influenced by the older heavy prog bands like Rush at all, and sounds nothing like Rush or Porcupine Tree.
They are a mathcore/post-hardcore/experimental with an aesthetic a lot closer to punk than and by many people are not associated with prog rock at all.
But the band is heavy, heavy enough for heavy prog, and perhaps most importantly, a progressive rock band too, in midst of all the mathcore/post-hardcore/experimental sound they have.
Sure enough, the Mathcore is there, but unlike the progressive mathcore of Tech/Extreme, The Fall of Troy does not have mathcore their main focus, and as such, isn't all out as heavy as the Tech/Extreme progressive mathcore bands.

As many can see, it can get confusing perhaps, but that's why the more knowledgable on the topic are called in to investigate because they know the subtle details of the genres/sub genres and know how to put them in the right genres because they can hear more than the obvious details in the music.



Edited by HughesJB4 - December 13 2008 at 04:39

^^ I think the main intention for this category (Extreme/Tech Prog Metal) was for bands that are either rooted in an aggressive style of metal (the "extreme" component) or play on a very technical level with the technicality being the main focus (as opposed to songwriting, melody etc). Fortunately those two components go well together - many Thrash/Death/Black Metal bands in the archives also play on a high technical level, and many of the bands in the genre which are there mainly for the technicality are also related to Thrash/Metal/Black, either because they started in those styles and then "outgrew" them, or because the band members come from bands which played in those styles.


Edited by Mr ProgFreak - December 13 2008 at 05:03

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^^ I think the main intention for this category (Extreme/Tech Prog Metal) was for bands that are either rooted in an aggressive style of metal (the "extreme" component) or play on a very technical level with the technicality being the main focus (as opposed to songwriting, melody etc). Fortunately those two components go well together - many Thrash/Death/Black Metal bands in the archives also play on a high technical level, and many of the bands in the genre which are there mainly for the technicality are also related to Thrash/Metal/Black, either because they started in those styles and then "outgrew" them, or because the band members come from bands which played in those styles.

I agree for the most part.
But "as opposed to songwriting", doesn't gel with me at all.
If I thoroughly enjoy an album (take Colors from Between The Buried and Me, which I enjoy immensely) doesn't that mean the band did focus on song writing then? Doesn't that mean the songs are well written, if I was able to sit there and immerse myself in the music, regardless of the lack of melody, or whether the playing was technical or not?
Of course they focused on song writing, the whole point was to make music wasn't it, not a battle of how technical/aggressive/non melodic it was?
It just happens in between what (IMO) is amazing song writing also happens to a very complex, technical, aggressive and relatively non melodic album.

The song writing tag of all tags, make some of the least sense of all to me, because if someone enjoyed the music, then they enjoyed the song writing......the two are inseparable. 



Edited by HughesJB4 - December 13 2008 at 05:27

^I guess I can somewhat see your point about the 'song writing' tag, but it's very much open to a lot of misinterpretation.

And while obviously BtBaM aren't a straight out tech band, much of their material off Colors anyway, is certainly far more technical than that of say, Opeth and many bands that fall in "prog metal', so it's not entirely incorrect to apply the technical tag to them.

hahhaha

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: Of course we need more. I'm not sure where your sentiment against tagging comes from ... if anything, I'd say that we need to select the tags we use more carefully. For example, I don't use a genre label like "metalcore" since it's a really fuzzy term ... nobody really knows what it means. It's even worse than the label "progressive" - for that one most people at least have an idea of what it means, but for "metalcore" there are several specific definitions floating around the internet which contradict each other. The same applies to genre labels like "groove metal" ... they are not self explanatory, so I tend to avoid them. Maybe Progfreak (site) needs more tagging, because you are obsessed with tags and you created a site for that Mike, but that's not the case of ProgArchives.

Of course PF is different from PA, and I'm no longer trying to get my visions implemented here. I'm just trying to say that many people like tagging - for some things you simply can't find a short and precise label. Sure, we could just simply call everything "music" ...

Iván wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: Have a look at your own review ... I took the liberty of highlighting the words that I would call tags. What I'm trying to show is that we all use tags in our reviews ... the tagging on my website (or at last.fm for that matter) is only a way to make some of the information of the review available to the system, so that it can be used in comparisons. Mike , a review is a place for PERSONAL OPINIONS, you say everything you want with freedom. But for a genre is absurd, we would need a specific combination of names, moods and influences to describe each and every band and we will have no point to end, because if I in my PERSONAL REVIEW feel that all the terms I used are correct in a phrase, we would have to tag V as: Symphonic, Operatic, Egyptian, Fast, Choral, Keyboard, Synth, Pompous, Instrumental, Dramatic, Bach Mozart Prog Metal That would maybe be OK for ProgFreak, but honestly....Would be ridiculous for a Prog label band of a place as Prog Archives. Since you're mentioning my website, let's look at how the album is currently labelled there: "Neo-Classical Technical Prog Power Metal" Is that so bad? I know that you're having problems with the word neo-classical, but let's not go there in this thread ... Of course it makes no sense to include every bit of information about an album in its genre label. But we can collect all the tags people assign to it and then select the most important ones. That's where the power of tags comes from: The system can count them. If you have only reviews, the system can't possibly know how many people think that an album is pompous, for example. Plus the fact you point it well, I use several terms in MY review, to clear my ideas, but each person has his own ideas, his own perceptions, and ProgArchives is not a place where people put their own twenty words definitions. Sure. But whenever I'm browsing through reviews - be it here, at PF or at any other website or magazine - I find out that people are using these tags in the text. You may reject my website for whatever reason you want, but you can't deny that even you use them. A PERSONAL REVIEW is a place to be as explñanatory as you want, to use the adjectives you need, to add as many literary figures as you wantt, but a definition must be concise and d simple, if not, we are confusing the person who comes here and finds a place with so many names. I remember when I took Symphonic, you told me to split it as much as I needed, but I honestly believe that there is one Symphonic, and even when we pretend to add Schools and eras to EXPLAIN, the genre will remain as simple as it is now....SYMPHONIC PROG. Well, maybe it doesn't make sense to split the genre - you're the expert, and I trust your judgement. However, assigning more tags to something doesn't necessarily mean that something is split, or that you're narrowing/boxing something. If you added the tag "pompous" to something which is also "symphonic", you're not creating a new sub genre called "pompous symphonic" ... you're merely saying that the music is both pompous and symphonic. Maybe I should explain these things in more detail at PF ...

Mr ProgFreak wrote: Of course PF is different from PA, and I'm no longer trying to get my visions implemented here. I'm just trying to say that many people like tagging - for some things you simply can't find a short and precise label. Sure, we could just simply call everything "music" . As far as I know, definitions must nbe short, clear and concise, but you are free to do in Prog Freak as you want Since you're mentioning my website, let's look at how the album is currently labelled there: "Neo-Classical Technical Prog Power Metal" Neo Classical Technical Prog Progressive Rock Power Metal Don't you think that's more than enough to talk of over tagging?   Is that so bad? I know that you're having problems with the word neo-classical, but let's not go there in this thread ... I don't have any problem with Neo Classical, used alone to describe a determined genre of musicor a sub-genre of Classical. Of course it makes no sense to include every bit of information about an album in its genre label. But we can collect all the tags people assign to it and then select the most important ones. That's where the power of tags comes from: The system can count them. If you have only reviews, the system can't possibly know how many people think that an album is pompous, for example. But Pompous is not a genre definition, it's an adjective that can suit ELP as well as Jethro Tull or Genesis or Symphony X in a determined moment of their albums, not a  tag for a band or album. Sure. But whenever I'm browsing through reviews - be it here, at PF or at any other website or magazine - I find out that people are using these tags in the text. You may reject my website for whatever reason you want, but you can't deny that even you use them. We atre not tagging, by definition a review has to be wide, explanatory, argumented, a name or tag must be clear, concuise and short. Well, maybe it doesn't make sense to split the genre - you're the expert, and I trust your judgement. However, assigning more tags to something doesn't necessarily mean that something is split, or that you're narrowing/boxing something. If you added the tag "pompous" to something which is also "symphonic", you're not creating a new sub genre called "pompous symphonic" ... you're merely saying that the music is both pompous and symphonic. Maybe I should explain these things in more detail at PF ...   For God's sake, Pompous is only a wide and subjective adjective used as part of a long detailled descriptive review, not in a name or tag.  What is pompous for me, may not be Pompous for other person, as a fact w3hat is normal for a Proghead, is extremely `pompous for the rest of the world...A review MUST BE SU(BJECTIVE, a tag MUST BE OBJECTIVE. Iván

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Dean wrote: You're going to have a long wait . I don't think so Dean I proved that at least for some experts, the term that is called Math and should be called Mathcore but which Hughes calls Technical Metalcore, is an equivalent with Progressive Metalcore, so the relation is undeniable, to the point that Hughes has accepted it....And trhatb my friend, is an achievement . Iván

Dean wrote: Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Dean wrote: You're going to have a long wait . I don't think so Dean I proved that at least for some experts, the term that is called Math and should be called Mathcore but which Hughes calls Technical Metalcore, is an equivalent with Progressive Metalcore, so the relation is undeniable, to the point that Hughes has accepted it....And trhatb my friend, is an achievement . Iván The statement is not commutative: if Harry calls Mathcore Technical Metalcore and what Harry calls Mathcore is Math Rock then what he calls Mathcore is not what he calls Technical Metalcore and therefore what is currenly called Math Rock is not what is currently called Technical Metalcore and Mathcore is not Metalcore.

Dean can I use that post as my signature?