I like Riverside a lot. They’re a Polish band, but sing in English.
I was just listening to CAFO by Animals as Leaders and that shit is crazy. You’ve made an excellent list here. The only group I might add is Battles ( the old drummer for Helmet is in it) weird but, good.
I don’t care for Battles, and it bothers me for 2 reasons.
The first is that they went to a lot of trouble on their last album to get some really cool people to collaborate with, including an old favorite of mine, Gary Numan. Unfortunately, I just don’t care for their music enough to listen to them even with the awesome guests.
The second thing that bothers me is that I actually know John Stanier. He was a year behind me in school and I took his sister (a year ahead of me in high school) to her Senior Prom.
They’re a band I’d really like to like, but I just don’t. Still, John is an amazing drummer.
Yes, plenty.
Even if you frown upon modern subgenres of progressive music, such are prog metal, post rock or math rock, moder avangarde rock, or Radiohead-like stuff, there’s load of Hammond-driven hard rocking bands, symphonic Genesis/ELP/Yes style bands, acoustic prog folk with flute, psychedelic rock, angular riffs in King Crimson style, even old Berlin school electronica with huge modular synthesizers a la Tangerine Dream.
Some of them are even good.
Flying Colors - a little more pop, maybe, than Dream Theater, but definitely worth a listen.
Yep. Progressive Metal.
Some of the Decemberist’s stuff might fit. Mainly Hazards of Love, The Tain, and parts of The Crane Wife.
I have 3 preset stations on Live365.com that play TONS of stuff by bands I’ve never heard before, and most of them are pretty good.
Try:
Progressions In Rock
PROG.FM
PRM (Progressive Rock/Metal)
I just checked Progressions In Rock, and they were playing a band called Frequency Drift. Not bad!
I’d consider OK Computer and onward to all have prog elements and will group Radiohead under prog when I’m using the big umbrella. Their first albums have much more in common with britpop than progressive.
This is another “big umbrella” progressive band. They certainly play with time signatures and have the long compositions of a typical progressive band. If you like King Crimson, Tool is certainly worth a listen. My recommendation is to start with Aenema and work outward (i.e. toward their first and last).
And here’s where we start running into problems with “progressive rock” as a genre. Or at least, with any kind of meaningful definition. PT and SB are two very different bands, and I’m sure that fans of one can not like the other. That’s fine. Different strokes. (FWIW, I like both, but PT more.) But both pretty clearly meet the “classical” definition: unusual instrumentation, use of time and key, non-traditional song structure.
Of course, some of the genre-defining prog bands sound nothing alike either. Zappa is not Magma is not King Crimson. The genre is so broad that calling something “progressive” is virtually meaningless and does little to suggest to the listener whether they will like it.
Since the OP likes King Crimson, starting with Porcupine Tree or Tool seems like a good idea. It’s a little hard to say because KC’s catalog is so diverse (there’s that genre definition problem again), but I think “heavy” when I think KC.
There are a lot of incestuous relationships among progressive bands, and that’s a good way to explore. OSI is a “supergroup” with members from Dream Theater, PT, Spock’s Beard, Fates Warning, Gordian Knot, and several other groups. Likewise, Transatlantic has members from DT, Marillion, and Spock’s Beard. Find a band you like, find what other bands the members have played in, and start following the family tree.
I was going to mention Flying Colors. I have tickets to see them during one of their few US shows. Steve Morse, Mike Portnoy, Dave LaRue, Casey Macpherson, Neal Morse.
Mercury Rev
The Flaming Lips
And You Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
Muse
I am dying of envy down here! I’m hoping they’re going to do more US shows.
No real argument here, other than to point out there are and have been tons of bands who would (and whose fans would) totally abhor the prog label, yet, had all of these elements-such as Cabaret Voltaire, who are ostensibly a postpunk (or industrial) band more than anything else. Yet nobody calls PT postpunk, even tho they have often had a healthy dose of postpunk elements.
PT’s problem is that they did a Floyd homage with their 3rd album, people all started lumping them into the prog field as a result, people who wear “prog lives!” proudly on their t-shirts thus flocked to them in droves, and nothing they have done since seems to have budged that preconception one micron (or brought in a completely different fanbase from another genre-yes most of the PT forums I’ve participated in are pretty much chock full of proggers, and hardly anybody else).
I wonder how they would have fared if they had done a dedicated postpunk-flavored album at that time (well they pretty much did with their next one, Signify, but nobody noticed). Frankly they are probably unclassifiable-which is one reason I like them-I dislike bands which hew too close to one narrow set of genre conventions-and which is why my hackles raise themselves a bit when someone drops their name in a prog thread like this one. But labels and preconceptions die hard.