YouTube has most of Bill Bailey’s Top Ten Prog Rock, excluding Part One because, I assume, the poster is embarrassed that Bailey put King Crimson at #9. An even greater abomination is how he used Phil Collins era record sales pump up Genesis’ score so they are in second place. Harumph!
As is probably obvious, I listen to too much 40-yr-old prog/art rock. Is there anything current that would satisfy my desire for overwrought instrumentation and pretentious lyrics? My daughter suggested the latest Franz Ferdinand album because there’s a seven-minute synth solo, but only seven minutes?
For medium to very heavy, check out Mastodon, Dream Theater, Deep Black Sees, Porcupine Tree, Stephen Wilson (of Porcupine Tree), Ihsahn, Animals As Leaders, Opeth, Lacuna Coil, etc.
For regular old prog rock there’s Spock’s Beard, The Mars Volta, Coheed & Cambria, The Mystery Jets, Mew, etc.
If you just go to youtube and start looking at those bands, you’ll find that other artists are gonna be in the column of videos on the right hand side of the page; give a few a listen.
My recommendation as a starting point: Dream Theater. Not my favorite band, but they are prog as fuck and are all excellent musicians. They also serve as a good bridge between the really heavy stuff and the regular old arena rock kinda prog.
I should have mentioned one thing: I listed Mastodon in there, but their album Crack The Skye is the only one I would call prog rock. The rest of their albums have songs with huge changes in mood and tempo in them, but they are rarely longer than 5-7 minutes, and are also usually more in line with being a quirky kind of metal rather than prog.
Go on iTunes and grab the album “Kill All Humans” by the band Schnauser (yes, it’s spelled with an S, not a Z.) This is on the lighter and wackier side, think early Zappa, but is definitely prog, and every song has killer instrumentals. Hilarious lyrics.
I’m also a jam band fan and recently discovered Umphrey’s Mcgee. Their new release was pretty cool so I picked up their previous CD as well. That one is called “Mantis.” Imagine my surprise to find a handful of incredible modern prog rock tunes. As a guy raised on early Genesis, Yes & Rush, I was thrilled. Anyways…if you have 20 minutes to spare, here are 2 of my favorites.
The band itself doesn’t really count as a prog rock band, but the new album from The Atomic Bitchwax, The Local Fuzz is one 42 minute song, and it fucking rocks.
I’ve never really considered Porcupine Tree to be prog-for some strange reason they’ve been stuck with that label for years (tho ironically their last 2 studio albums have indeed trended in that direction a bit). To me they are tuneful nuanced hard rock (with some softer often folksy cuts here and there); they’re indeed one of my favorite bands, but I’d never be caught dead listening to the likes of Spock’s Beard or The Flower Kings-almost completely different musical universes really.
They are about as clear post-punk as you can be without being from about 1978. The earlier mentioned Franz Ferdinand are probably more art-rock than anything else.
I’d argue that post-rock is pretty much progressive without the pomp or weird jazz chord one-up-manship.
Robert Fripp has praised Keneally’s talents, as did Frank Zappa (Keneally was stunt guitarist in FZ’s final touring band, taking over the spot formerly held by Adrian Belew and Steve Vai).
I would start with Dancing and work forwards and backwards in his catalog from there, with special appreciation for the mostly-acoustic Wooden Smoke and his debut, Hat.