Best progressive metal bands and albums

New Votum video

 

Anyone who considers Fates Warning the epitome is worth listening to. It has taken me a long time to get to this point but I agree.
I've had a recent spike in interest in the style again so I'll try to check out some in your list. The two I already know are Atheist, who were very interesting, and OSI's first album which I revisited yesterday and loved it.

 

Elegy — Forbidden Fruit is pretty good.

 

I do not feel competent to judge Astonishing. All I can say that they have apparently tried to outdo earlier prog-metal conceptual epic works and on the sheer scale and ambition they seemingly succeeded. Now it is up to Dream Theater's fans to confirm it at music forums/blogs, tickets booths and CD/download stores.

Business-wise it is also an epic project, as it has been carefully devised to create an array of potential franchises on different markets (theatre spectacle, video game, cartoon book, animated movie, symphonic/opera adaptation, even a literary work), if the album turns out to be very successful. Sky can be the limit here, and these guys seem to take the opportunity very seriously.

 

I'll have to take the time to listen to it someday soon. Not a big DT fan (yet), but it is nice they have it streaming.

 

Update 1 year later, I am now a huge fan of Between the Buried and Me's newest album, Coma Ecliptic. I also really like Parallax II. I'm still trying to go backwards and get into their earlier work.

 

I first started with Dream theater, Enchant, then Shadow Gallery, Magellan, Tool, Pain of Salvation, Opeth, most of all the bands mentioned here. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was prob the first, maybe Death Walks Behind you, by Atomic Rooster was about the same time.

 

"Salisbury" and "Look At Yourself" by Uriah Heap were both underrated albums in the U.S. and had a cult following. At the time of release would consider it prog metal. It was "Demons and Wizards" and "Easy Livin'" that put them on the commercial U.S. map. Still a great album though.

 

GR8 !!!Their studio live DVD is fantastic too.

 

For Coma Ecliptic?

 

That is a great list. I have 63 of those...

 

This is good to have if for no other reason than to know which albums by which band to get as an entry point. For instance, I've heard Seventh Wonder mentioned, but that Mercy Falls was the album to get.

I'll have to bookmark this and re-read it to commit these to memory in case I stumble across these bands in the used bins.

 

Sorry one other thing: if you know of any of the bands that are on this list or that you plan to post that have their music available as a download - either from their site or from an 'artist-direct' site like Bandcamp (not iTunes or Amazon, I prefer higher quality) - please include that information in your post. In many cases, I would go right to a site and get some music if I knew I could.

 

Voivod - Dimension Hatross, Nothingface, Angel Rat & The Outer Limits

All classics as far as I am concerned

 

Mercy Falls is very good.

 

And I've been looking for it for two years now!! Granted when I've been 'big city shopping', I've forgotten to look...

 

Brand new Animals as Leaders - new album out 11/11

 

Opeth

Porcupine Tree & Tool also dip their toe into the water from time to time. If you allow them then I would add both of them to my list!

 

This may spark some categorization debate, but I'm going to say Rush- 2112. I think this one skirts the line between hard rock and heavy metal more than any other Rush release, and it's definitely got its progressive side.

 

I don't see why there would be a debate. 2112 is one of the most influential albums of the progressive metal genre. I think if you took 2112 along with Rainbow Rising from the same year, you'd have a pretty good foundation for much of the prog metal to come.

 

I didn't think anyone would dispute the quality, but I figured someone would argue that Rush isn't metal and doesn't qualify. I agree with what you said about 2112 and Rainbow Rising in 1976 being the roots of prog metal.

 

BTBAM "Colors" is a personal favorite and a good place to start. Colors seems to represent a dividing line in BTBAM's song writing. You can then go backwards or forwords from there.

 

Well this is my first post after trawling these forums for a while now, and what a place to start! My favourite genre of all.

Thanks to all for the recommendations thus far. A lot of these bands I hadn't come across, and of all the suggestions above, Soen's Cognitive and Ark's Burn the Sun have been the two standout finds so far. Thank you!

For me, 25 years later TOOL remains the most influential prog metal band of our generation. While Undertow was the hook that drew me in, Aenima as a 14 year old was life-changing. Then, in 2001 Lateralus came along IMO rivals any of the great concept albums ever made. To this day, both albums remain my top 5 albums of all time.

Outside of the Tool obsession, the other prog metal album in my top 10 not mentioned here so far is THE MARS VOLTA's De-loused in the Comatorium. That and Frances the Mute are the band at their absolute peak, as sadly they never went close after those two masterpieces.

Over the last ten years, some of the other significant prog metal albums to emerge have been (in order):

• Tesseract - Altered State
  
• Tesseract - Polaris
• Mastodon - Crack the Skye
• Karnivool - Sound Awake
  
• Mastodon - Blood Mountain
• Mastodon - Leviathan

There's probably more that will come to me, but these are the ones I can think of for now.

Finally, two other albums that probably fall closer to the prog rock pile, but in which I think are absolutely sensational, are Opeth's last two: Pale Communion and Heritage. It was an incredibly gutsy move for the band to depart from their death metal roots, and one that paid off immensely. I would be surprised if there are many prog rock albums out there in the last 5 years that could beat these two. But perhaps this is a discussion for another forum!

 

I was considering starting my own Progressive Metal Appreciation Thread, but I see Dr. Metal has already done the grunt work for me! Thanks, buddy!!! Lots of great bands already mentioned, glad to see there is such a diversity of Metal fans here on the forum. I recently "discovered" Savatage and have been pimping their name all over the Metal threads lately. Such a great band that I simply overlooked back in the day. And although I bow down to the mighty Fate's Warning, the John Arch era is still my favorite. Another band that deserves more recognition (at least to me) is Crimson Glory. Their first 2 albums have a strong flavor of early "Power Metal" while dipping their toes into the Progressive pool...maybe a little like early Queensryche. Absolutely love those first 2 albums!

 

Another band I don't recall seeing in the thread is Conception from Norway...nothing Black Metal about them. Sort of in the vein of Dream Theater, but with perhaps a bit less keyboards and the like. Some of the riffs are downright Thrashy and the solos are stellar. The singer, Roy Khan, went on to join Kamelot.


(takes about 30 seconds for the main riff to kick in)