Your top 5 prog metal albums?

[King Postwhore]

Only Promised Land has that PF vibe.

[KevShmev]

And I will give 'Ryche credit as even when they were channeling Pink Floyd, they almost never sounded like them or like they were lifting melodies or anything out of their songs, the one exception being the orchestra part at the beginning of Eyes of a Stranger sounding a bit like Empty Spaces from The Wall.

[TAC]

I also think they are more progressive in the Pink Floyd sense (atmospheric and conceptual prog moreso than the kind with a bunch of key changes and odd time signature and extended instrumental passages).

Eh, they made one album in their entire career that kind of feels has a Pink Floyd-ish influence.

I'm more saying they are prog in the way that Pink Floyd are prog than that they sound like Pink Floyd. But I think the run from Mindcrime through Promised Land is pretty awash in PF influence. You have all the sound effects and dialogue throughout Mindcrime (that also show up on both subsequent albums). You have Michael Kamen's orchestration throughout that run as well. DeGarmo's solos also have a good bit of Gilmour in them.   

I've never once thought of Gilmour when listening to Queensryche ever, but what do I know. Maybe Chris is influenced my him, and there's nuances in his playing that draw from that. I'm not a student of Gilmour's, so I would never pick up on that.

I've also never once thought of Pink Floyd at any point during O:M.

But I will not argue with what you hear.


But I feel this way:

Only Promised Land has that PF vibe.

[marztacy]

1. DT - I&W, SFAM (Impossible to split or choose one)
2. Pain of Salvation - Remedy Lane
3. Porcupine Tree - Fear of a blank Planet
4. Opeth - Still Life
5. Arcane - Chronicles of a waking dream

[WildRanger]

What about "hair metal" a lot of that stuff doesn't sound even like some of the 80s metal such as thrash. I feel like hair metal is more like hard rock these days but it was considered metal, so I just consider it a sub genre, like prog metal which I consider QR. I mean, even their newest album was kind of metal.

Glam or "hair" metal is mostly hard rock. For example Def Leppard's Pyromania is labeled glam metal, but it's not heavy metal at all, it's just 80's hard rock.

[WildRanger]

I get that, and while not all metal sounds the same obviously, if you take 8-10 of the main metal bands of the 80's and put them in a playlist with a bunch of Queensryche songs from the 80's (even the most rocking ones) and put them on a shuffle, it really stands out how metal Queensryche really wasn't.  A friend of mine did this years ago when making a metal playlist and ended up taking all of the Queensryche songs off of it because they, in his words, clearly were not metal.  And I had to agree after being at his house once when he had it on and he was curious what I thought, and after a bit I was like, "yeah, everything else sounds metal, but Queensryche really doesn't."

The most metal thing about them really was Tate's vocals.  If you listen to the music, there is not much metal really at all.  Brief moments here and there, yes, but it's way more hard rock than metal, IMO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_WUaMci6qo
This is metal as hell. Not much different than Accept.

[WildRanger]

I've honestly never considered Master of Puppets to be prog metal, but I can see why someone might.  To me, they just generally aren't consdered that even though there's certainly enough elements to lump them in.  It's kind of why I gave some honorable mentions, I was trying to keep my top 5 albums that are generally considered to be part of the genre and not fringe.

I've never heard or read that MOP is prog metal. I know only And Justice for All is considered Metallica's proggy effort(same as Iron Maiden's "7th Son"), but it's not prog metal either, it's just proggy thrash metal.

[Fritzinger]

Dream Theater - Scenes From A Memory
Haken - Vector & Virus
Tool - Lateralus
Opeth - Watershed

[bobzor]

It’s just funny to me because definitions seem to be changing all the time.

I walked into a record store in the 70s and there was an entire heavy-metal section.

Now....really stop and think about that.

There was an ENTIRE SECTION of the record store...in the 70s...labeled “heavy metal”.

What do you imagine was in that section? Black Sabbath and Judas Priest and nothing else?

Well at least according to Martin Popoff, what can be labeled as heavy metal (basically the first 2 waves before NWOBHM beginning the late 1970's) would be: Sabbath, Priest, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Thin Lizzy, Van Halen, Blue Öyster Cult, Motörhead, etc. Some of these bands always rejected the label and perhaps rightly so, but they essentially were what some people understood as "heavy metal".

[jammindude]

It’s just funny to me because definitions seem to be changing all the time.

I walked into a record store in the 70s and there was an entire heavy-metal section.

Now....really stop and think about that.

There was an ENTIRE SECTION of the record store...in the 70s...labeled “heavy metal”.

What do you imagine was in that section? Black Sabbath and Judas Priest and nothing else?

Well at least according to Martin Popoff, what can be labeled as heavy metal (basically the first 2 waves before NWOBHM beginning the late 1970's) would be: Sabbath, Priest, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Thin Lizzy, Van Halen, Blue Öyster Cult, Motörhead, etc. Some of these bands always rejected the label and perhaps rightly so, but they essentially were what some people understood as "heavy metal".

Yes. All of these. And Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, and even AC/DC. That was the heaviest music of its time.  It might seem ludicrous now, but perceptions change. I just find it fascinating.

[Peter Mc]

If you went looking in the metal section of a record store in the 80’s there were a ton of bands that are not considered metal today.  Bon Jovi for example were absolutely considered metal, Guns N’ Roses were metal, Def Leppard, Whitesnake etc.  Even Queen were borderline metal.  If you read metal magazines in that time like Kerrang and Metal Hammer, these bands were never off the cover.  They were headlining metal festivals like Monsters Of Rock (the precursor to Download).

I remember when Bon Jovi released Keep The Faith as the lead single off that album and arguing with my mates as to whether they were no longer metal.

Times move on and those bands would no longer be classed as Heavy Metal, more heavy rock, hard rock etc.  Queensryche absolutely dipped their toes into that with the likes of Jet City Woman, Another Rainy Night Without You but other songs like Surgical Strike, The Needle Lies are still very much traditional Heavy Metal to me.  Yes it’s not Slipknot or Slayer but it’s still metal in the same way that Iron Maiden are still metal.

[kirksnosehair]

FATES WARNING- DISCONNECTED

An individual with fine taste, I see. Great album with a very dark atmosphere somehow. One of my top-tier choices for Fates.

I am not an Opeth guy at all, but it's interesting how many of their albums are mentioned in this thread. Maybe I should try again. Had Blackwater Park at some point but I just thought it was boring.

I have to be honest it surprised me a lot to see this album mentioned not just once but twice     It's a great album but the lack of guitar solos (not a complete lack but very few) always kind of held it back from being a truly great album.  From that era I found the one that came next in 2004 (FWX) was better. 


Still I hold Disconnected in pretty high regard.  Definitely a top 5 in the Fates Warning catalog