Avenged Sevenfold for Prog Metal

earlyprog wrote: The new album has many prog merits and their past output is not without prog leanings but it's a long way from there to PA

Alright I'll work on it within the next few days. I'll let the new album settle in a bit first

Edit: My main argument I guess, and I messaged this to Necrotica but I feel it's a good argument here, too, is that the band really is an introductory prog band, just like Muse, due to their accessibility which is unusual for bands as complex an them. While they're not Dream Theater, an A7X fan easily could become a Dream Theater fan shortly down the line.

Yes I may have actually started in Prog Related, but due to my Avatar post, I've been recommended to start this under either Prog or Post/Exp Metal before moving onto Prog Related. At this point any of the three are fine.

Edited by bardberic - June 02 2023 at 10:44

I do agree that most of A7X's albums have been prog adjacent. If they were to be included on PA, I believe it would be for a similar reason to Katatonia's inclusion: rumblings of prog in their discography that finally culminated in one unabashedly progressive album. And for the record, I do consider Life is But a Dream to be a full-on prog/avant-garde metal record. So while the band's inclusion may be an uphill battle, I'm curious to see what the rest of the team thinks about all of this 

First of all, all of their releases have progressive elements, except for one of them (looking at you HttK). To deny this is elitism. What they have now is two straight up prog albums. In this regard they are similar to Queen in that most Queen albums have some progressive elements, but three of their first four are straight up prog, and a handful don't have any.

Second of all, if I'm not mistaken, an artist here can be added on the basis of having only have one undeniably progressive album, even if their others aren't, no?

Edit: I also found this Reddit post that basically summarizes the band's progressivness very well, from r/progmetal. This guy apparently was also introduced to progressive music through A7X (as I stated below, a lot of people have been introduced to prog from this band) , which is why I think they're a great fit for Prog-Related due to how influential in the prog realm they are, despite their mainstream-ness.

The hard part with the band is getting over their aesthetics and appearance, their accessibility, and their metal "clichés" to to look at the music from a compositional point of view. Remember that Encyclopedia Metallum has rejected the band for these very reasons and have refused to accept the band claiming they're "hard rock," which we all know is BS. To deny them off their "metalness" (to parallel the pseudo-word "progressiveness") is also just elitism in the same way as it is to deny their "progressiveness." No, they're not Metallica (but at some points they may as well be lol), they're also not Dream Theater. But they come very close to both at various times throughout their career.

For instance here are two songs from 2005. The whole second half of this album is prog-adjacent. The first song I linked here is straight up prog metal song, and the second is extremely prog adjacent. Three other songs breach the eight minute mark;




Here's one from 2007, although tbf this album was a step down in terms of "progressiveness," I don't know much about it do idk of other songs here are prog-adjacent like this one symphonic avant-gardeprpg metal song a la Diablo Swing Orchestra:


Next in 2010, we have Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater playing drums the album, making this one a collaboration with a prog artist (another thing that is looked at on this site). This album is more or less a step up in the prog, bordering the prog metal territory throughout most of the album (hence Portnoy on drums). The album concluder is in my opinion a top tier prog song and 11 years after hearing it is still one of my favorites. "Save Me" was arguably my introduction to progressive music in general, and I think a lot of people my age were introduced to prog from the album Nightmare. While this is more of an aspect looked at in prog-related, it's still worth noting that the band has influenced prog and has been an influence in prog in this regard. This is the first album to really pay a lot of attention to:




We're gonna pretend 2013 never happened lmfao Moving on.

2016, The Stage, for which this thread was originally opened is a continuation in the development of the sound they crafted in the second half of 2005's City of Evil, and picks up right where 2010's Nightmare left off. They also took the avant-garde metal elements from their eponymous album as well and mixed that in. What we have here is the band's first true progressive metal album in its entirety. Any song on the album you listen to will sound like prog, except maybe God Damn which is thrash. I'm liking the 15 minute album concluder here, first - a fine example of prog metal, followed by Sunny Disposition, a prog song in a more avant-garde style. I'm also throwing in Roman Sky, a more traditional progressive rock song that even some of the older users here may like:





The whole album is linked here:
http://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGN96WAC2Fv2DNdIbAHQsGVO3IxNawtu4

And of course their new album in 2023, after a seven year gap between albums, was a further development in the direction of the The Stage, that pushed to the band to further boundaries and uncomfortable territory. This album stepped up their avant-garde material considerably. I would call this one a straight up progressive avant-garde metal album. Call me crazy, but in many ways this one reminds me of ELO's Out of the Blue, due to the heavy use of vocoders and the fusion of both orchestral and electronic elements, as well as it being the bands second foray into true prog and thus a refinement of this sound. If I'm not mistaken, this is the band's first concept album and I believe the concept is something along the lines of experiencing ego-death, that is the perception that your soul has left your body and thus the world is meaningless or something - I have to do more research on the concept. I linked the whole album here last night. Edit: embedding the G.O.D. suite here as it is the standout along with Cosmic, imo:

A standout for me right off the bat is Cosmic, so I'll embed that, too:



and the G.O.D. suite:






But once again the whole album: http://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxA687tYuMWhOiau-ePBBnRUZMfW5J-Vk

Edit: As recommended in the Reddit post, I'll embed the song "I Won't See You Tonight Part I." Not my cup of tea, but it is on the proggy side:


Edited by bardberic - June 02 2023 at 11:19

Mr ProgFreak wrote: "partially progressive" band.

First thought listening to Mattel ... can we get Mike Patton to sing this? ;-) 

Edited by bardberic - June 02 2023 at 01:03

Edited by bardberic - May 17 2023 at 02:19

Yeah... honestly, I don't dislike the song, but it's a pretty weird lead single. M. Shadows' vocals are also pretty much shot here, which is a shame... but I'll keep an open mind and see what happens. To be fair, I wasn't a huge fan of Nightmare's lead singles either, but I ended up being a big fan of the album as a whole 

Edited by bardberic - March 17 2023 at 16:52