Your Prog Rock Hot Takes

ThyroidGlands wrote: TOAPP is better than Discipline. that is indeed a hot take Animals is overrated. one of my favs - not their best so to speak Camel is very boring, and Mirage is one of the most overrated prog albums. love Moonmadness & Sinclair era CTTE has a perfect side an and a decent side b. It's a highly overrated album. only 'decent' track is AYAI imo, hard to think if a more consistent prog album in general thus the acclaim imo

These days, 'Book of Saturday' is the only track from LTiA that still feels fresh to me.

I love how subjective music tastes can be! I totally agree with you on 'A Momentary Lapse of Reason'—it doesn't get enough credit for its atmosphere and mood. And yes, 'Think of Me with Kindness' is an underrated gem! Music's beauty lies in these unique perspectives

verslibre wrote: presdoug wrote: Chocolate Kings is PFM's greatest album Still peak PFM, so that's not a hot take.

Rick Wakeman's post 70s output is genuinely great. People tend to mock his later works. I've seen arguments ranging from him being "way too derivative of his influences", or that he's a "schematic boring w**ker with one to two decent tracks per-album".
I guess some of his stylistic choices are an acquired taste, but I don't see why he deserves to be lampooned more than anybody else.

Dream Theater has generally awful mixing, even in their best albums. I don't like most their new stuff, and the synthetic mixing is one of the reasons, but their recent output is already a subject of contention amongst the fans. I don't see that many people ever considering production issues when it comes to their older quintessential works. If to put it simply, I think that there is no balance between the volumes of the different instruments. The drums and the synthesizers are noticeably louder compared to the other instruments (vocals included), and the bass is completely overwhelmed and lost in the final mix. I see some coming with the argument, that loudness is a key feature of Metal, therefore this is justified.
DT, however, never came from that branch of loud "punk" inspired Metal. Roughness was not part of their image either.
Honestly, compare them to any of their contemporaries, or even bands partially influenced by them like Circus Maximus and Haken. None of them had such readability issues with their album mixes as DT. In fact one of the reasons to why I got into live bootlegs, is that I wanted to get a better grasp of Myung's bass. Listening to their bootlegs made me appreciate the bands virtuosity much more. I'm not a huge fan of LaBrie, but the way he re-harmonized certain vocal lines in some of his performances before the poisoning incident, made me enjoy some of these live versions more than the album mixes. Honestly, the bands problem is that they hinge too much on sustaining the image of a "calculated" act, while in-fact, they are at their best when they simply improvise on a whim.

Edited by KorgC3 - December 03 2024 at 23:40

Not sure how hot these are, but I believe "Flight" is Hammill's greatest (solo) musical achievement, as well as King Crimson's "Islands" being superior to "Lizard"