The REAL problem with prog-metal: is not prog-rock

NaturalScience wrote: HughesJB4 wrote: Images and Words really doesn't sound like much power metal at all. QFT. And another vote for the Metallica influence - every one noted it at the time, they played "Pull Me Under" on the radio quite a bit and the phrase "Metallica meets Yes" was bandied about quite a bit.  Pretty sure the band was admitting the influence at that time as well.

Still does as far as I can tell.

That's like asking Yes, if there was a Beatles influence to their music; or questioning Marillion and IQ as to the Genesis slant to their sound.  

crimson87 wrote: sleeper wrote: crimson87 wrote: What I meant is that I was not that surprised the first time I heard prog metal , from hearing With a little help from my friends to The Gates of Delirium was a huge difference. But with metal , when I heard Images & Words for the first time , there wasn't a big difference from powermetal i heard those days. Are you kidding, streight up Power Metal is a night and day difference to Images and Words.   Probably It had to do with my expectations , I expected something closer to Yes than to Metallica.

Images and Words has very clear Metallica influences in it.
As soon as you kick into the first track of Images and Words, once the heavy guitar kicks in, I can already hear the Metallica influence and the Metallica influence doesn't stop there either.

sleeper wrote: crimson87 wrote: What I meant is that I was not that surprised the first time I heard prog metal , from hearing With a little help from my friends to The Gates of Delirium was a huge difference. But with metal , when I heard Images & Words for the first time , there wasn't a big difference from powermetal i heard those days. Are you kidding, streight up Power Metal is a night and day difference to Images and Words.

crimson87 wrote: What I meant is that I was not that surprised the first time I heard prog metal , from hearing With a little help from my friends to The Gates of Delirium was a huge difference. But with metal , when I heard Images & Words for the first time , there wasn't a big difference from powermetal i heard those days.

Are you kidding, streight up Power Metal is a night and day difference to Images and Words.

crimson87 wrote: rogerthat wrote: Surely, whether tech extreme has prog elements or not doesn't rest on whether crimson87 can spot them, is it not? I trust all of the above is addressed at Hughes's response a few posts back. You pretty much demanded that all prog metal bands must rank below the classic bands and he disagreed....good enough reason for you to get so aggrieved?  Personally, I don't like prog metal as much as the 70s stuff but it's not about what I like or don't like, everyone will have different views.  Oh, and just because prog metal is not prog in the same style as the 70s or - let us suppose - not even as progressive as the 70s stuff doesn't mean it has to be inferior to the 70s stuff, it can be good in its own right, which is what the whole point of this thread is.     I remember posting something like this in a thread similar to this one ( or maybe this one)   "First the 70's then prog metal"   I said that just meaning historical importance , not quality. Honestly , if I you were to explain someone what prog is all about , I would start start with Yes ELP KC Genesis , VDGG , Gentle Giant and Tull. Then I would mention DT , PoS , Opeth  and others as a more complex form of metal. Wouldn't you?? Metal evolved so gradually that it's harder to realize about the prog component unless you are a die hard fan.

Not really, it took about 20 years to go from "Rockabilly" to prog rock and about the same for metal to go from Black Sabbath to Dream Theater, maybe less even.

Are you, or Progmonster for that matter, particularly familier with metal in general, not just Prog Metal. If your not then maybe thats the problem, you dont have a base of referance to start from to be able to pick up on why some bands are consider Prog Metal, in any of its three genre's, and why others arent.

This base of refernace isnt exactly neccessary, in my case I came to Prog Rock and Prog Metal at the same time and I was able to see the connections between the two styles and its obviously more clear in certain bands than it is in others (as it was with the 70's groups as well), but I've heard enough popular metal from multiple different styles to be able to instantly say its not prog and recognize a distinct difference to the bands that we do call Prog Metal.

rogerthat wrote: Surely, whether tech extreme has prog elements or not doesn't rest on whether crimson87 can spot them, is it not? I trust all of the above is addressed at Hughes's response a few posts back. You pretty much demanded that all prog metal bands must rank below the classic bands and he disagreed....good enough reason for you to get so aggrieved?  Personally, I don't like prog metal as much as the 70s stuff but it's not about what I like or don't like, everyone will have different views.  Oh, and just because prog metal is not prog in the same style as the 70s or - let us suppose - not even as progressive as the 70s stuff doesn't mean it has to be inferior to the 70s stuff, it can be good in its own right, which is what the whole point of this thread is.

I guess I am gonna listen to more prog metal milestones first and then come to a conclusion. But why do the fans get so pissed off when someone says metal is not prog for god's sake? Is it carved on stone???

PROGMONSTER2008 wrote: Anyone who actually likes Cookie monster vocals is totally brainwashed imo. It was ridiculous when it began maybe 25 years ago. Only rebellious types would have listened to it and started a trend which people follow today because it's the cool thng to do

rogerthat wrote: I don't really agree with the notion that metal is just an extension of rock. It may have emerged from rock music but it has gone to become something very different. While both are riff based, in metal, whole songs and albums can be constructed around the riffs, which is more difficult to achieve in rock.

But there are plenty of rock songs that are entirely based on riffs.  Some of them classics even... The whole concept of riffs comes from the blues, really.

Another thing: metal is inherently guitar based and it is difficult to do away with that in prog metal. In contradistinction, much of the prog rock of the 70s was centred around keyboards.

That's true, that was pretty much what I was getting at...the guitar based nature of metal can work against the prog elements in the music.  But that doesn't mean the prog elements aren't there.

While on the surface modern metal is very different sonically from normal rock music, when you look under the hood, it's not all that different.  It's more of an exaggeration of certain elements that were already there.  That's the way I see it at least.




Edited by DatM - December 10 2008 at 19:01