Progressive Metal

There is a saying in the art world, “less is more”. But if we were to think about this logically that can’t be true. How can less be more? Surely, more is more! This ideology of “more is more” is the cornerstone to Progressive music. Progressive music, or Prog as it is known, is usually identified as long songs with complex orchestrations and multiple time changes. But put simply it is complex music. Unlike art or psychedelic music which prides itself on the strange and trippy sound, Progressive tries to do more. This process results in longer more complex songs. Many an artist have gone in the progressive direction later in their careers, because they try to expand and push the boundaries of their own music. They did this by adding more to the arrangements, lengths, and the “meat” of the music. It can be identified with complex instrumentation, soaring vocals, and concepts that spanned from daring to the outlandish.

But to get a full picture of this music we have to look at its beginning in Progressive Rock or “Prog Rock” for short. Prog Rock can be seen as an extension jazz music, with the free forming experimental sound. Bands like Yes, Genesis and King Crimson added different twists and turns in their music that weren’t being used in music. They were trying to see how far they could go as musicians. These time changes made the music more complex. Just like any type of art form, music evolves over time incorporating different aspects of different mediums into the music.

After the foundation of Prog Rock was made by incorporating classical and jazz influence into the newfound genre, the next step was to add hard rock music. Rush was able to do this with great success. They combined Prog with the rock influences of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Rush was able to push the envelope and fused complex melodies with rock. These desires lead to heavier music and the founding of what would become Progressive Metal. Rush musically structured their music into almost a narrative. This style is what helped create the epic songs in their catalog like “The Necromancer” on their album Caress of Steel. Even later in their career, they decided to be progressive in a way that was not thought of being progressive. They went with shorter songs. Rush also added a progressive twist by having an individual concept for each song without compromising the complex arrangements of the music. Again, more is more.

 The next step was adding heavy metal to Prog Rock. This pushed the genre into a more heavy direction. Queensrÿche (pronounced Queens-Reich) used the influences of heavy metal bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden to give them their metal foundation. The influences of King Crimson, Yes, and Genesis drove them to be more progressive. This fusion gave their sound a more aggressiveness Prog Rock sound. This sound evolved into what is known today as Progressive Metal. Much like their early sound, they grew as a band with the continual addition of progressive influences in their music.

One of the identities of Prog, although not exclusive to it, is the concept album. That is taking a story or theme and spreading it out through an entire album. One of the most notable concept albums is Queensrÿche’s “Operation Mindcrime”.

After the advent of Progressive Metal with Queensrÿche, many other bands have followed in their wake like Dream Theater. With each continued iteration of Progressive Metal, it has gone heavier and more complex with adding different aspects into the music. One such aspect is making the whole sound into rhythm. In other words, making the entire band sound the same, even the vocals. This is done by making every instrument basically into a percussive instrument, which makes the vocals mostly screaming.

Even bands that weren’t first considered progressive seem to have gone in that direction. For example, Iron Maiden had a longer song “Phantom of the Opera” on their first album. Even though most of Iron Maiden’s music has been comprised of shorter songs like “2 Minutes to Midnight”, this song and many others that have since followed are longer and known as the “Maiden Epic”. But since the turn of the century they have been steadily increasing the length of each album, from “Brave New World” to the most recent “Book of Souls”. This has to do with the increasing length of time on each song, and with the increased length comes more instrumentation within the song.

In conclusion, Progressive Metal showcases the music, shows how talented the musicians are, and how technical the music is as a whole. This can be described as the ever growing art form of Progressive Metal and Progressive Music in general.