Hi everyone, I'm Aaron and I'm a DT fan. It has been 2 days since my last DT song. I... I relapsed over the weekend. Saturday night was rough. Started out slowly enough, listening to some favorite tunes off of D/T. As usual, things escalated and I lost control. Last thing I recall was rifling through my music collection at 3:00am, intent on listening to all the instrumentals in chronological order. I awoke on Sunday with my headphones tangled around my neck, ears throbbing and CD jewel cases and DT album liner notes strewn about the floor.
It occurred to me that Dream Theater is one of only a handful of bands that drive me to this level of fandom, and none of the others are progressive metal. DT is my fave, but I also seem to love specific bands from a variety of genres: some of my other favorites are Cheap Trick, Skinny Puppy, Propagandhi... you get the idea. I guess I'm a fan of specific artists more than genres. Other popular progressive metal bands have never done anything for me. I've tried to get into Fates Warning and Symphony X to no avail. With the exception of Operation: Mindcrime, I can't get into Queensryche either. As far as modern prog metal is concerned, I've briefly listened to bands like Periphery and BTBAM but they also lack some sort of magic 'lightning in a bottle' that DT seems to have for me. I do like lots of prog rock (Camel, Rush, Pink Floyd), lots of metal (Megadeth, Anthrax) and some bands that combine elements of metal and prog into a their sound (Nightwish, Coheed and Cambria, late-era Death, Opeth). But none of those would be considered straight "progressive metal".
I guess I'm asking for recommendations in a round about way, but also genuinely curious about what others on this forum think of progressive metal as a genre and whether their love begins and ends with DT like mine does. I'm new here, and I hope this isn't a noob post. Thanks!