The Hemispheres Of Heavy Prog

Bravo, great work!
This subgenre of "progressive hard rock," dubbed heavy prog, has had me scratching my head for quite a while. I too have my musical roots in hard rock (mainly "classic" hard rock of the late seventies) and am a die hard progger, and I never could find enough bands to combine both concepts. Hence Rush is and probably always will be my favorite band, especially their mid to late seventies era from 2112 to Moving Pictures. As a result I've been able to branch out in both directions of prog, the classic prog like Yes, Genesis, and ELP to prog metal like Symphony X, DT, and Kamelot. Similarly I've found other bands incorperate distortion guitar in the sense that heavy prog does such as Mahavishnu, Return to Forever, Kansas, King Crimson and Gentle Giant. So I was pretty happy when the subgenre of "heavy prog" was established to allow me to find more "progressive classic hard rock" bands like Rush. I do a search on 70s and 80s heavy prog and the only consistent bands ranking above 3.0 are Rush, Uriah Heep (which I had already discovered thanks to Mike Akerfeldt, ironically) some Atomic Rooster and Lucifer's Friend, which I still have yet to check out. I was a bit disappointed that there weren't more bands that were anything like Rush and that there's was no heavy prog in the 80s in response. Thanks for clearing some things up for me regarding the evolution and nature of heavy prog. Now my goal is to someday form a great heavy prog band to add to the subgenre!

rushfan4 wrote: Thanks Pat.  That is good to know.  I like having original CDs, but I also download quite a bit on my eMusic account so I have gotten used to that as well.  I have downloaded some songs from Amazon on occasion too, so that might be the way to go for Anekdoten.

^whenever you listen to them, please remember to tell me what you think about them.

^ Black Widow - Sacrifice, is a real must, while not being mind-blowing or extremely awsome heavy prog, it's a quite interesting mix of Jethro Tull's flute and acoustic guitars with Rooster's Hammond style.

Warhorse is a little bit weaker, but still, if you have Captain Beyond you must have Warhorse, Rod Evan's band and not Nick Simper's!?! hehe.

Excellent job there Mike! Glad to see Deep Purple, Atomic Rooster, Cream, Uriah Heep and Captain Beyond.

You might quite as well add some stuff from Jethro Tull, though not being really Heavy Prog, they quite have a lot of hard rocking albums and they quite could be considered Heavy Prog, though that could only be Aqualung I suppose.

How about Warhorse?

Again, great list Mike! An excellent entry to the magical Heavy Prog scene.

Oh! Where's Black Widow's Sacrifice, a must for Heavy Prog fans!

Edited by cacho - July 09 2008 at 13:36

Thanks Pat.  That is good to know.  I like having original CDs, but I also download quite a bit on my eMusic account so I have gotten used to that as well.  I have downloaded some songs from Amazon on occasion too, so that might be the way to go for Anekdoten. 

Excellent work King By-Tor.  This was a very enjoyable read.  As PA's unofficial Tiles' cheerleader, I must say thank you for their mention.  They really are a good Heavy Prog band that could use a bit more attention on PA, although I understand that they don't appeal to everyone.  I really do wish that those Anekdoten CD's were more readily available.  I think that they might be a band that I would really like, if I could actually hear them to like them.

Edited by rushfan4 - July 08 2008 at 10:40

Well done King By-Tor you obviously did your homework.I felt like i was reading through a documentary. Funny but my 3 favourite all-time bands were listed by you.Rush,Porcupine Tree and Anekdoten.

Awesome, I'll have to check out Andromeda and High Tide. ...And maybe Coheed & Cambria and Fall of Troy, haha.

For modern heavy prog though, I love Black Bonzo's (whom I just recommended in Orb's thread) Sound of the Apocalypse. Just check out the song Thorns Upon a Crown on their profile here. Awesome keyboard and drumming work.

Great stuff, By-Tor, love your enthusiasm and knowledge.. actually HeavyProg is only partly a PA invention, the term has been used for years as a descriptive term, we just gave it some legitimacy (and some capital letters )

other greats in the HP family;

Badger   debut (One Live Badger) very underrated project of Tony Kaye's, kinda Traffic meets early Yes
Arc   short lived post-underground band with a nice mix of prog and hard blues
Fusion Orchestra   fantastic heavy symph ensemble, as good as Rush in their time, album Skeleton in Armour a lost Prog jewel
Elonkorjuu   virtually unknown but very good Finnish band
Yang    Frederic L'Epee's band after Philharmonie, top-notch
Solution Science Systems    eccentric little group some might like









Edited by Atavachron - July 07 2008 at 17:34