Opinions on why some don't like prog metal?

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Manuel wrote: rogerthat wrote: I know you are a musician. Cert1fied's Scenes from A Memory review is a good analysis of the problems in the prog metal approach.  Anyway, this in a nutshell is my problem: 1.  The accent in prog rock is heavily on melodic exploration along a clear melodic path.  I don't mind the often slow pace of the music because it is developing all the time, moving forward.  A lot of times, it is not clear in prog metal where the song is heading. Nor is there much melodic exploration. It is difficult to explore - once you bring in those crushing metal riffs, you have to find melodies that go along with the riffs and there's not all that broad a range of melodies that work with heavy riffs. In absolute terms, anything can be broad and exploratory, of course, but I am obviously comparing it to prog rock here.  There's not much melodic adventure in prog metal. Essentially, once you get past the complications and technicalities, it's good ol' metal music. 2.  But it ought to still work as metal music, right?   No, because metal music is driven by riffs. When you listen to Metallica or Slayer's 80s songs, there is a sort of mathematical progression in the riffs each time the verses are played.  That gives me something to focus on when there's not much happening melodically (especially Slayer).  But prog metal, especially the melodic side of it, draws from heavy metal and particularly from 80s pop metal, which is essentially a heavier kind of hard rock. Not too highly engrossing riffs-wise.  What prog metal bands do is to write complicated riffs instead. Again, complicated riffs only sound interesting in isolation and not in the context of a song as they don't by themselves propel movement.  Essentially, prog metal could be described as having an idealistic approach of getting the best out of both prog rock and metal but rarely succeeding in practice.  It comes across often as a pastiche of lots of interesting ideas that could not somehow be bound together as well they ought to be for my taste. 3. A big problem that comes with the metal sound is the base becomes rigid.  You might play a minute or two of reggae over it, a minute of hip-hop later, whatever, but the base is undeniably metal.  Prog rock bands were often able to develop their own unique base. In fact, superficial similarities like the use of organs or classical influence were all that Yes, Genesis and ELP had in common. Fundamentally, they were as different as three bands could be from each other.  That is difficult to achieve for prog metal bands because they all share the same base: metal. You can add your own colour and twist to it but at the end of the day you are all playing metal. It would not do to say that likewise prog rock bands are all playing rock because it's rock in a loose sense to begin with and what is rock, further, is not so easily identifiable as metal.  Particularly, modern metal is defined by 80s crunch, so the common base becomes swiftly evident.  4. Lastly, even after all these reasons are overlooked, remains the unfortunate preference for 80s pop metal cliches or 90s pop by prog metal bands.  If I could at least find some originality in the dimension of emotional expression, which is ultimately the most important part of music, other considerations become easy to forgive.  But I don't really want to hear LaBrie sing like those very pop metal singers I want to avoid, the same plastic and faceless approach to singing.  The playing too is precise and calculated rather than expressive. This is something particularly surprising for me because metal playing in the 80s was raw and often sloppy, emphasising speed and aggression over precision.  However, prog metal musicians seem to be influenced more by Malmsteen or technical metal like Megadeth.  You are indeed on target, I could not say it better. One thing I could add is the fact that the 80s influence is quite predominant, forgetting about the legacy of the 70s hard rock or metal bands, like Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, etc. Their sound was original and distinct, not like the metal of today. I find it very hard to see a difference of style on today's bands, and most guitarist have the same sound (The Eddie Van Halen sound to be more specific). You could very easily tell Ritchie Blackmore from Tommy Iomi, or Jimmy Page for example, which is not really the case today.

Completely agree.

I don't like Prog metal because I havn't found anything interesting in it, when I listen to it, I just hear the same song all the time, but I do however like Post-Metal since I'm very hooked on the experimental part of bands like Tool. I'm always drawn to the more experimental and jazzy side of music, and I feel that Prog Metal doesn't really fill those needs for me. 

Some people can't stand the heavy guitars.I don't understand it but it happens.Unfortunately!

Peter wrote: For me, it's simply because I don't care for much modern metal -- "prog" or otherwise.

I don't care for modern music -- prog, metal, prog metal or otherwise.

Manuel wrote: rogerthat wrote: I know you are a musician. Cert1fied's Scenes from A Memory review is a good analysis of the problems in the prog metal approach.  Anyway, this in a nutshell is my problem: 1.  The accent in prog rock is heavily on melodic exploration along a clear melodic path.  I don't mind the often slow pace of the music because it is developing all the time, moving forward.  A lot of times, it is not clear in prog metal where the song is heading. Nor is there much melodic exploration. It is difficult to explore - once you bring in those crushing metal riffs, you have to find melodies that go along with the riffs and there's not all that broad a range of melodies that work with heavy riffs. In absolute terms, anything can be broad and exploratory, of course, but I am obviously comparing it to prog rock here.  There's not much melodic adventure in prog metal. Essentially, once you get past the complications and technicalities, it's good ol' metal music. 2.  But it ought to still work as metal music, right?   No, because metal music is driven by riffs. When you listen to Metallica or Slayer's 80s songs, there is a sort of mathematical progression in the riffs each time the verses are played.  That gives me something to focus on when there's not much happening melodically (especially Slayer).  But prog metal, especially the melodic side of it, draws from heavy metal and particularly from 80s pop metal, which is essentially a heavier kind of hard rock. Not too highly engrossing riffs-wise.  What prog metal bands do is to write complicated riffs instead. Again, complicated riffs only sound interesting in isolation and not in the context of a song as they don't by themselves propel movement.  Essentially, prog metal could be described as having an idealistic approach of getting the best out of both prog rock and metal but rarely succeeding in practice.  It comes across often as a pastiche of lots of interesting ideas that could not somehow be bound together as well they ought to be for my taste. 3. A big problem that comes with the metal sound is the base becomes rigid.  You might play a minute or two of reggae over it, a minute of hip-hop later, whatever, but the base is undeniably metal.  Prog rock bands were often able to develop their own unique base. In fact, superficial similarities like the use of organs or classical influence were all that Yes, Genesis and ELP had in common. Fundamentally, they were as different as three bands could be from each other.  That is difficult to achieve for prog metal bands because they all share the same base: metal. You can add your own colour and twist to it but at the end of the day you are all playing metal. It would not do to say that likewise prog rock bands are all playing rock because it's rock in a loose sense to begin with and what is rock, further, is not so easily identifiable as metal.  Particularly, modern metal is defined by 80s crunch, so the common base becomes swiftly evident.  4. Lastly, even after all these reasons are overlooked, remains the unfortunate preference for 80s pop metal cliches or 90s pop by prog metal bands.  If I could at least find some originality in the dimension of emotional expression, which is ultimately the most important part of music, other considerations become easy to forgive.  But I don't really want to hear LaBrie sing like those very pop metal singers I want to avoid, the same plastic and faceless approach to singing.  The playing too is precise and calculated rather than expressive. This is something particularly surprising for me because metal playing in the 80s was raw and often sloppy, emphasising speed and aggression over precision.  However, prog metal musicians seem to be influenced more by Malmsteen or technical metal like Megadeth.  You are indeed on target, I could not say it better. One thing I could add is the fact that the 80s influence is quite predominant, forgetting about the legacy of the 70s hard rock or metal bands, like Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, etc. Their sound was original and distinct, not like the metal of today. I find it very hard to see a difference of style on today's bands, and most guitarist have the same sound (The Eddie Van Halen sound to be more specific). You could very easily tell Ritchie Blackmore from Tommy Iomi, or Jimmy Page for example, which is not really the case today.

Triceratopsoil wrote: it has nothing to do with whether or not it's prog metal, some people just don't like music that they don't like

Couldn't have said it better!

I know you are a musician. Cert1fied's Scenes from A Memory review is a good analysis of the problems in the prog metal approach.  Anyway, this in a nutshell is my problem:

1.  The accent in prog rock is heavily on melodic exploration along a clear melodic path.  I don't mind the often slow pace of the music because it is developing all the time, moving forward.  A lot of times, it is not clear in prog metal where the song is heading. Nor is there much melodic exploration. It is difficult to explore - once you bring in those crushing metal riffs, you have to find melodies that go along with the riffs and there's not all that broad a range of melodies that work with heavy riffs. In absolute terms, anything can be broad and exploratory, of course, but I am obviously comparing it to prog rock here.  There's not much melodic adventure in prog metal. Essentially, once you get past the complications and technicalities, it's good ol' metal music.

2.  But it ought to still work as metal music, right?   No, because metal music is driven by riffs. When you listen to Metallica or Slayer's 80s songs, there is a sort of mathematical progression in the riffs each time the verses are played.  That gives me something to focus on when there's not much happening melodically (especially Slayer).  But prog metal, especially the melodic side of it, draws from heavy metal and particularly from 80s pop metal, which is essentially a heavier kind of hard rock. Not too highly engrossing riffs-wise.  What prog metal bands do is to write complicated riffs instead. Again, complicated riffs only sound interesting in isolation and not in the context of a song as they don't by themselves propel movement.  Essentially, prog metal could be described as having an idealistic approach of getting the best out of both prog rock and metal but rarely succeeding in practice.  It comes across often as a pastiche of lots of interesting ideas that could not somehow be bound together as well they ought to be for my taste.

3. A big problem that comes with the metal sound is the base becomes rigid.  You might play a minute or two of reggae over it, a minute of hip-hop later, whatever, but the base is undeniably metal.  Prog rock bands were often able to develop their own unique base. In fact, superficial similarities like the use of organs or classical influence were all that Yes, Genesis and ELP had in common. Fundamentally, they were as different as three bands could be from each other.  That is difficult to achieve for prog metal bands because they all share the same base: metal. You can add your own colour and twist to it but at the end of the day you are all playing metal. It would not do to say that likewise prog rock bands are all playing rock because it's rock in a loose sense to begin with and what is rock, further, is not so easily identifiable as metal.  Particularly, modern metal is defined by 80s crunch, so the common base becomes swiftly evident. 

4. Lastly, even after all these reasons are overlooked, remains the unfortunate preference for 80s pop metal cliches or 90s pop by prog metal bands.  If I could at least find some originality in the dimension of emotional expression, which is ultimately the most important part of music, other considerations become easy to forgive.  But I don't really want to hear LaBrie sing like those very pop metal singers I want to avoid, the same plastic and faceless approach to singing.  The playing too is precise and calculated rather than expressive. This is something particularly surprising for me because metal playing in the 80s was raw and often sloppy, emphasising speed and aggression over precision.  However, prog metal musicians seem to be influenced more by Malmsteen or technical metal like Megadeth. 

andyman1125 wrote: Now don't you go and say "But I like prog metal!!" I know some people do, but a lot of people don't. Why? In my opinion, I think many of the classic prog fans don't like the heavier music tainting their genre. If you like Harry Potter, Prog Metal is like half-bloods: where classic prog rock is pure-blood and metal is mud-blood-- when the two mix, the pure-bloods don't like it. Prog metal is essentially the combination of bands that most classic fans don't like, such as Metallica or Slayer, with the bands they do, such as Yes, Genesis or Rush. The resulted product is a tainted one. You wouldn't eat something that had dirt on it would you?  What are your thoughts?

CCVP wrote: 40footwolf wrote: I like progressive metal when it's progressive death/black/doom/what-have-you. I don't like prefix-less prog metal like Dream Theater and their ilk a lot of the time because I find they often have bad songwriting and terrible vocals. Those aren't problems with a band like, say, Opeth or Agalloch, who are two bands who also happen to use their prog roots in far more interesting ways than Dream Theater, as it happens.  Protip: Agalloch & Opeth are hipster garbage and DT is 2deep4u.

Obvious troll is obvious.

FWIW, I don't like the Prog Metal genre very much, but I do like Tech/Extreme and Post/Experimental a lot.