Progressive Metal

Progressive metal or sometimes known as prog metal is another subgenre of the heavy metal community. Progressive metal has features from rock, jazz, classical and metal. The different elements combine into one genre is some new metal music news. Prog metal bands usually have some type of jazz or classical inspiration. Progressive metal has taken these musical genres and used them as their backbones. This small metal genre has less fans and popularity than other metal genres. With more bands entering in, it could find its way to the mainstream of the metal community.

The Start of Progressive Metal

Back in the 60′s and 70′s in the beginning of Progressive metal. High Tide was one of the first metal bands to start mixing some of these other elements into their metal music. Other bands started to follow the trend. Rush and King Crimson was another band to take some of the features of other music genres and mix them. With these bands scratching the surface, there was really only three bands that took progressive metal to the next level. Fates Warning, Queensryche and Dream Theater all had their own ideas and inspiration for progressive metal With having some inspiration of rock, jazz and classical music, this gave these three bands more edge and influence of a metal sound.

The Breakout

The start of the 1990′s was a good breakout year for progressive metal. This popularity was because of MTV, it was played on all the radio stations and was available in all stores, people loved the song Queensryche, Silent Lucidity. Other progressive bands started to come out and became more mainstream after this explosion of popularity. Band like Opeth, Pain of Salvation, Threshold, Symphony X, Tool and Ayreon all started to come out and make a name for them. All these bands had their own unique style that made them a new popular progressive metal band.

More Progressive Music

As time went forward so did the style of progressive metal. This metal genre needs some new leaders and new styles of music. For the present time we have Disillusion, Conscience and Dark Suns. The new ages of progressive music were all influenced by Tool, Anathema, Pain of Salvation, Green Carnation and Opeth.

Progressive Metal Structure

There isn’t a standard way to play progressive metal, there are some elements that are common in the genre. Mostly they have heavy metal distortion with jazz or classical harmonies and complex structures. You can branch down more metal genres within progressive metal. The most popular bands in progressive metal are King’s X and Opeth. These two bands could even be considered to be progressive death metal bands. Band like Symphony X, Devin Townsend and Shadown Gallery have been tagged as traditional progressive metal. Also watch for bands like Pestilence, Meshuggah and Between the Buried and Me which are considered to be jazz / fusion death metal.

What Does the Future hold for Progressive Metal?

With the variety of new bands coming out in progressive music, this will enhanced and bring new features for the metal community. With time going forward this genre of music will continue to change with all the different music genres that started the music genre. The metal community will also have progressive metal, giving the community some type of new and exciting genre of music.

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