" Big Six " 1980 and forward

It's okay to disagree with me. It's all good fun. Having disagreements over prog is all part of what makes Prog Archives such a great place to be.

You’re right, but its a list of six of my personal favs. 

Well to some there's a difference between prog and progressive. Yes, Genesis, KC, SB, PT, ELP, Rush, PF, etc is prog. Progressive might be stuff that is not typical prog rock. Maybe more experimental or stuff that is more literally progressive as opposed to bands who are trying to sound like old prog. TMV are very progressive but not typical prog if you know what I mean. Kind of the same way that krautrock, post rock, electronic and fusion are progressive but not prog rock(or Prog rock with the capital p).

Roine Stolt (Kaipa, The Flower Kings, Hasse Bruniusson, The Tangent, Transatlantic, Karmakanic, The Sea Within, et al.) 

Steven Wilson (Re-mastering of so many old classics, producer, engineer, & mastering of many modern releases, Porcupine Tree, No-Man, Jansen/Barbieri/Karn, Bass Communion, Blackfield, Storm Corrosion, six solo studio albums, et al.)

Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth, Ghost, Storm Corrosion, Devin Townsend, O.S.I. Insahn, Bloodbath, Katatonia, Edge of Sanity, et al.)

Francesco Zago (founder of AltrOck/Fading Records, Yugen, Not a Good Sign, Spaitklang, Empty Days, et al.)

Omar Rodríguez-López (four At The Drive-In albums, nearly 50 solo albums, 14 The Mars Volta releases, John Frusciante, and engineering help on many others)

Mariuz Duda (10 Riverside albums, Indukti, five Lunatic Soul releases)

I would argue for the first five without question and then leave it up to you to decide from among the other three as who belongs in a "Big Six"

A lot of stuff. For prog Neal Morse Band and Flying Colors. Also, sons of Apollo(more prog metal though). I'd have to look it up myself to discover what else but I know he has done other stuff(but I think mostly metal and rock; I think I(we)covered most of his pure prog stuff).

I agree with both of your posts on this.....to me IQ and some others are symph prog ....never really understood the neo prog genre that much. Most of the neo prog I own sounds like just a newer version of symph prog.

As I've said before, Neo-Prog to me is a chronological definition, meaning any post-1970's prog bands, but I don't mind at all if PA members disagree with that definition. It doesn't mean I'm right and everyone else is wrong. Far from it. It's just a difference of opinion that's all. That's just the way we used to categorise prog when I used to edit my own music site. We had just two primary genres for Prog-Rock:- Progressive Rock and Neo-Prog, divided between classic 1970's prog bands in the Progressive Rock section and modern post-1970's prog bands in the Neo-Prog section. I'm not necessarily saying that was ideal or correct, but it made things a whole lot less complicated. In total though, across the whole music site, we had 20 primary genres and 200 sub-genres of music, so we weren't exactly short of music genres to choose from. If I was running the site now though, I'd add most of the prog sub-genres that are on Prog Archives.  For a specialist prog site like ProgArchives, I think it's wonderful to have all of these additional prog categories here on PA, some of which I'd never even heard of before I arrived here last September. I used to think RIO was Prog-Rock from Brazil, but I know differently now.

Neo prog started as New Symphonic prog. back in the eighties only the likes of ELP, Yes , Genesis were still recognised as 'prog' so IQ, Marillion , Twelth Night and Pallas were the new prog bands (or Neo to make it sound a bit fancy) . There wasn't any other prog imo. 

The 90's brought a raft of retro symphonic bands such as Par Lindh Project , Anglagard and Anekdoten who were coming more from an 'art rock' back background rather than the stylistic approach adopted by the eighties prog bands. There is a clear difference but its all putting things in boxes as usual! Generally it could all be considered Symphonic as M27Barney suggests.

I also think that music freed itself up to some extent post 80's. The eighties was dominated by MTV and corporate interest. 90's and onwards a lot of people in music just did what the f**k they wanted. It was and still is largely very healthy but there are still bands that will follow the Yes, Genesis approach to the letter and therefore those can be clearly identified as Neo Prog. It can be tricky though defining a band like Big Big Train who apparently sit in the internal limbo of Crossover Prog never to be recognised as a fully grown up prog band. I'm not sure what they did to deserve that but hey ho.