Progressive Metal Pioneers?

Atavachron wrote: Certif1ed wrote: Atavachron wrote: as I said in my first post, if I had to chose one band as the ProgMetal pioneer (which is never ideal) it would have to be Maiden..  the band took the metal birthed by Sabbath, Priest and the Scorps and brought a progressive, semi-classical element to the structure of the music.. sure Rush had done heavy prog but never metal strictly speaking, and though I give huge credit to Metallica, Maiden predates them and had prog elements on their debut, whereas Kill 'em All was mainly thrash (not to say Metallica shouldn't be here, my stance on them has softened, but that's a different debate that's been had)     Ignoring completely the Metallica aspect - and overlooking the fact that KEA predates Queensryche's debut and contains progressive elements, and RTL kicks it's ass, progressively speaking, and is on at least a par with Dream Theater's debut... oh, I was going to ignore that   The "progressive semi-classical" elements may easily be found in the Scorp's and Priest's early music - both bands were into complex structures, but the Scorps focussed on the technical elements far more heavily than Priest, who focussed more on structuring.   They may also be found in Deep Purple and early Rainbow - who are more deserving of the "Prog Metal Pioneer" badge than Maiden.   Some of the complex structuring and twin-guitar work can also be traced directly back from Maiden to Thin Lizzy - whose "Johnny The Fox" album is a must-have.   I really don't think that Maiden deserve as many plaudits as they get in the Prog Metal development arena.   I'm not denying that there are aspects of Prog Metal in their music - but the facts as I see them are that Maiden are no more important in the development of Prog Metal than Metallica or Priest.   Come to think of it, Randy Rhoades was putting a whole load of amazing classical work into the music he was helping to write for Ozzy - and, with a significant chunk of Uriah Heep featuring on his early albums, Ozzy is a strong contender too.     ...sits back and watches blue touch paper burn... I'm not convinced, and that argument seems more to do with the pioneers of tech guitar playing than progmetal as an entity (though the two are related)..  I firmly agree about Randy Rhoads though, and I personally think Diary is an incredibly progressive album, but Ozzy was a songwriter first, a lover of melody and lyricism, and didn't usually focus his music on the instrumentalism found in more progressive artists ..in fact, in the Bay Area metal scene in the early 80s, I didn't really start hearing the term 'progrssive metal' used seriously until Maiden had appeared

Atavachron wrote: ^ my point is that Maiden were doing 'progressive metal' before Metallica had even recorded, making them a pioneer of the form.. Metallica didn't start getting progressive till well after Maiden had tipped the balance

Atavachron wrote: unfortunately Maiden stopped their progressive movement whereas Metallica began notching it up.. but that doesn't negate the structural breakthroughs and implications of those first two Maiden albums, credit must be given even if the band was eventually outdone

As ever, I find it hard to add much to what Certif1ed said. For my money, though, here are the albums I personally would nominate as being influential to progressive metal;

Edited by salmacis - April 10 2008 at 13:34

Atavachron wrote: Certif1ed wrote: Atavachron wrote: as I said in my first post, if I had to chose one band as the ProgMetal pioneer (which is never ideal) it would have to be Maiden..  the band took the metal birthed by Sabbath, Priest and the Scorps and brought a progressive, semi-classical element to the structure of the music.. (...)     (...)   The "progressive semi-classical" elements may easily be found in the Scorp's and Priest's early music - both bands were into complex structures, but the Scorps focussed on the technical elements far more heavily than Priest, who focussed more on structuring.   They may also be found in Deep Purple and early Rainbow - who are more deserving of the "Prog Metal Pioneer" badge than Maiden.   Some of the complex structuring and twin-guitar work can also be traced directly back from Maiden to Thin Lizzy - whose "Johnny The Fox" album is a must-have.   I really don't think that Maiden deserve as many plaudits as they get in the Prog Metal development arena.   I'm not denying that there are aspects of Prog Metal in their music - but the facts as I see them are that Maiden are no more important in the development of Prog Metal than Metallica or Priest.   Come to think of it, Randy Rhoades was putting a whole load of amazing classical work into the music he was helping to write for Ozzy - and, with a significant chunk of Uriah Heep featuring on his early albums, Ozzy is a strong contender too.   (...) I'm not convinced, and that argument seems more to do with the pioneers of tech guitar playing than progmetal as an entity (though the two are related)..  (...) ..in fact, in the Bay Area metal scene in the early 80s, I didn't really start hearing the term 'progrssive metal' used seriously until Maiden had appeared

Certif1ed wrote: What other aspects of Prog Metal do you think we should be tracing back, apart from guitar techniques and formal complexity?

notably higher ambition, musical competency and musicological/historical understanding in rock and roll..  as I've said many times on this forum without too much shame, I believe Brian Wilson was the grandfather of progressive rock music, the first popular artist to truly take rock seriously, to record it with greater care and with an emphasis on modern technologies, infuse other musics with authenticity, not to mention a major move toward experimentalism and avant garde, i.e. Smiley Smile (1967)   ..other influences may point at the earlier heavy psych bands as well






Edited by Atavachron - April 10 2008 at 22:35

Well, if we must insist upon playing with boxes...

Why is it that we need an exact time, date, band an album to refer to as the beginning of prog metal.  I don't believe that this is the case.  Rather, I think several earlier attempts at odd-meter time signatures and heavy riffage contributed to the eventual first prog metal release. 

Odd-Meter - The Beatles, Touch, Brubeck, and numerous others contributed odd signatures to numerous songs early on...but were not necessarily very heavy.  However, I would mark "Helter Skelter" and "Revolution" as having a very big eventual influence on Metal.

Heavy - Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest and others were heavy but not necessarily playing in odd-meters.  DP did use an orchestra very early on, and I would mark this as an influence.

While I would agree that there is a definite starting point timewise for what is popularly known as progressive metal genre (just as there were several metal bands that existed before the Heavy Metal tag came into regular usage), and several bands that were successful (Queensryche, Rush, Dream Theatre, etc.), I believe that there were several other notable moments that many here are overlooking:

Comments have been made regarding Rainbow Rising.  This to me is a classic prog-metal album.  Yes, it is metal...we were calling it metal when it was released.

Led Zeppelin - A band that has been tossed around with the hard rock/metal tag forever.  They never put out a prog-metal album, but the had numerous prog-metal moments scattered about.

Sir Lord Baltimore - Who?  Only the first metal band.  Heavy riffage with the rare odd-meter here and there.

Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptus is ripping riff metal, with occasional odd-meter.

Queen II - Yep, Queen.  This to me is one of the earliest albums that fits my mind's idea of prog metal...not the entire album, but a good 75% of it.

Alice Cooper's Muscle Of Love - Again another good candidate for this class for the heavy riffage and unusual arrangements and rhythmic shifts.


It is rather sad that after 7 pages of this thread that Captain Beyond was only briefly mentioned.  If there was one album that fully qualifies as a defining starting point for Prog Metal, their debut would be it.  As heavy as any Sabbath or Priest album, with the blues sensibility of Zeppelin, and with odd-meter that was as complex as anything Crimson was doing at the time, this is a sadly overlooked gem...probably as important to the development of prog metal as Time Out was to jazz.

One other sadly overlooked prog metal gem is III Sides To Every Story by Extreme.  Possibly the greatest lost prog-metal album of the 1990s.

Of course, this is all just my opinion...but in my world that is all that matters.

StyLaZyn wrote: I just stopped over to the Progressive Nation website, which is an excellent idea, but I was a bit taken back by Dream Theater being called Progressive Metal Pioneers. Not that they don't play a huge part in this genre, but I always felt Progressive Metal had roots in the mid-70's to early 80's.   Thoughts? Is this statement a marketing tool?

You have the great Dave Brubeck. I have had the police show up several times when I lived in the burbs and Take 5 was emanating from my Bose 901's at 1000 watts per channel.....lol

I forgot Alice Cooper......Some great proto prog metal songs on Love It To Death and Killer.........also Arthur Brown, Kingdom Come(both Arthurs and the other one), Vanilla Fudge, and I have dozen's of little known groups which I will have to look at again to put their names here........