LOUDER: The 12 greatest prog drummers ever

 Easy list, great Peart quote though. All great prog bands need a great drummer.

Nice list. But you know who is often overlooked? Jerzy Piotrowski of SBB.

Hrychu wrote: Nice list. But you know who is often overlooked? Jerzy Piotrowski of SBB.

Personally, I don't really feel it's right for Nick Mason to be on the list but not Alan White. However, Bruford is on there so I'll try not to complain too much.  

One of my favourites that hardly ever gets mentioned is Giulio Capiozzo of Area. Franz Di Cioccio of PFM wasn’t too shabby either. I guess that they might discount many of my favourites as being jazz drummers playing in progressive rock bands. If they were more open to jazz-fusion, then someone like Billy Cobham of Mahavishnu Orchestra quite likely would be on the list. I do think that such greatest lists tend to be an exercise in futility. More interesting tends to be the justifications and methodology than the list itself, and one questions how great is the list users knowledge and expertise, and how do they even attempt to seem relatively unbiased and varied in the choices.

Edited by Logan - February 09 2021 at 14:32

JD wrote: Nod to missing drummers... [video removed for space]

Tatsua Yoshida is great.

By the way, I guess being LouderSound, it favours louder bands. I just notice a lot of hard rock and metal types in the list and I suspect that the writer is not a big fan of the more Avant Prog ones. Not surprising to focus on the more mainstream ones when doing “greats” generally.

Edited by Logan - February 09 2021 at 15:16

Grumpyprogfan wrote: Logan wrote: Tatsua Yoshida is great. By the way, I guess being LouderSound, it favours louder bands. I just notice a lot of hard rock and metal types in the list and I suspect that the writer is not a big fan of the more Avant Prog ones. Nick, Phil and Bill, metal? Hardly.

If you want to argue that there are not a lot of hard rock and metal types in the list, then I'm ready to learn.

I never said or implied those were (I didn't say all and I said hard rock and metal). I meant that it lists many "louder bands" with drummers who played in hard rock and metal bands, or made hard rock and metal music. I think they are going for drummers who play harder or flashier rather than the more subtle generally, but perhaps I'm wrong (Mason is not a flashy drummer). Of course I'm playing on the word louder for some humour (my humour rarely works), and that was what I most going for.

A reason why one of my brothers doesn't like King Crimson is because he finds it too hard rock (of course it depends on the piece). I mentioned jazz, and Bruford does come from that jazz tradition as they note, but an album like King Crimson's Red is definitely on the hard rock side (King Crimson might well be called a "louder" band by many even if it isn't always). Interestingly, they choose a jazz performance from Bruford as the video to highlight him (so my earlier jazz drummer comment does not seem true based on my first look). Neil Peart, the number one, played hard rock, influenced metal drummers, and Rush influenced progressive metal. Mike Portnoy, progressive metal. Gavin Harrison, they reference In Absentia and I would call that hard alternative rock with metal qualities. Marco Minneman has a hard rock/ metal pedigree in bands he has worked with. Danny Carey of Tool, involved in metal. Pat Mastelotto has been pretty varied, but the video they post sounds metal influenced to me. Mike Mangini, involved in Prog Metal.

They cover quite a few post-classic era ones, and there especially I do seem to see a hard rock or metal bias (heavy prog) in terms of the kinds of projects that the drummers have worked in. Frankly, I would have stuck with the classic era ones.

For more soft Prog drummers playing really quiet music see softersound.com

And here's some heavy duty Pink Floyd for you:



Edited by Logan - February 09 2021 at 16:07

I'll go with the guy who drummed on Thick as a Brick, A Passion Play, Minstrel in the Gallery and Songs From the Woods.