Australian Prog

Must confess I've never heard of any of those bands before. 

tbonson04 wrote: Australia has been smashing the heavy and crossover prog scene with bands like Karnivool, Caligula's Horse, Dyssidia, Transience, Like Thieves, and Chaos Divine. Is Australia the new haven for modern prog, or is it just a fluke?

^ Great album

As an Australian, I can say that generally prog bands aren't popular here, especially our own. Australia has always been more blues/hard rock than prog.

backtothegarden wrote: tbonson04 wrote: Australia has been smashing the heavy and crossover prog scene with bands like Karnivool, Caligula's Horse, Dyssidia, Transience, Like Thieves, and Chaos Divine. Is Australia the new haven for modern prog, or is it just a fluke? They certainly seem to have a good thing going right now.   I have wondered how well received these bands are in Australia.  I know with the advent of the internet, scenes don't always have to do well where they originate anymore.  For example, Periphery is from a town that's about an hour from where I live, and it seems like no one around here knows who the hell they are.  Yet they can go overseas, pack out venues, and headline major tours.

Of the bands mentioned I believe the only one that has national recognition nearing the mainstream is Karnivool - their releases get into the charts (for what that's worth these days) and their CD's have an ongoing presence on the shelves of the one remaining major national CD retail chain. Hopefully Caligulas Horse are building a profile too, having toured Oz as support act with some overseas artists (they supported TesseracT here recently in Adelaide).

I'm familiar with Transience and Dyssidia too, but partly by good luck and partly because I search out music around the fringes of the prog scene. By the way, you might like A Lonely Crowd too (from Melbourne) and Voyager (from Perth).

Oz is a wide land with many widely separated capital cities, even now in this age of the Internet. And the ABC's national "alternative" radio network "Triple J" is I believe not "prog friendly" - though reputedly they did give airtime to Karnivool.

So, due to the distances involved, I doubt I'll be seeing Ben Craven doing a concert in Adelaide (though that would be a grand thing).

Like any bands though, their Facebook pages suggest they do have their own passionate local following...and credit where credit is due: the Progfest concerts have given some bands a chance to travel at least between the capital cities on the east coast...




Edited by David64T - October 24 2015 at 02:15

tbonson04 wrote: Australia has been smashing the heavy and crossover prog scene with bands like Karnivool, Caligula's Horse, Dyssidia, Transience, Like Thieves, and Chaos Divine. Is Australia the new haven for modern prog, or is it just a fluke?

Nice one
It's one of the best 2015 outings for me, and I still play it almost daily.

Hardie and split enz were good ones

You forgot to mention Ne Obliviscaris. They tend to get great reviews from around the world, and are probably more popular overseas than at home. I am not a huge death metal fan, but have really got into these guys.

Check out their album "Tundra"