Well, if quibbling over labels is counterproductive, then I guess we're all guilty of that. Maybe I misused the word "genre" and I'm not an expert in all the different labels that music is given. That doesn't mean I can't distinguish one type of music from another. Nevertheless, they are different types of descriptions as you mentioned simply because that's what they are, different. That's the separation I was talking about. I don't believe that a rock opera theme and progressive metal are even remotely close to each other. TA simply isn't heavy enough to be considered a metal album in any descriptive form. It falls under the "rock" descriptive and leans even more toward "soft rock" but not "metal" or "progressive metal" for that matter. For a band that has been predominantly "progressive metal" through out most of their catalog, TA is probably the polar opposite of that representation. If that happens to be an unpopular opinion, then I came to the right place.
Metal falls under the very broad rock umbrella (as I said already).
Yes, it does. That doesn't necessarily mean that TA is metal (as I already said). To me, a rock opera theme and a progressive metal theme are two different things, regardless if they are both considered rock. Would you put TA in the same category as SDOIT or ToT? I wouldn't but that's just me. It's not heavy enough to be considered "metal" IMO. Believe it or not, that aspect of it is open to opinion. That's pretty much what I've been saying all along.
Another thing, since when has anything that DT does and the category it falls under been commonly known as "fact"? We all know it's some form of rock. That was never a question. All I said was that I don't think TA represents progressive metal in the vein of what DT usually does. Therefore, I don't think TA is a predominantly progressive metal album. DT is diverse enough to be open to many different interpretations of where they actually fall in the grand scheme of the very broad rock umbrella that you keep bringing up. But, wouldn't you agree that progressive metal is usually a large percentage of the total?
Anyway, if you think TA represents progressive metal, fine. For the most part, I don't. It is more like progressive and soft rock with little metal teasers sprinkled throughout. At this juncture, whether I agree with you or not really isn't the point. I get what you mean. Not sure you get what I mean. If you do know what I mean and disagree, that's fine too. But, I hope this helped to clear up my point of view at least a little bit.