The way I see it, King Crimson is different from Pink Floyd who are different from Genesis who are different from Jethro Tull who are different from Emerson, Lake & Palmer who are different from Yes, Rush, National Health, Mothers of Invention and Gentle Giant.
The first wave of prog bands were diverse. That's what makes it so great and so much fun. It can very hard to set up rules because one or more of the founders will probably break it. Long songs? Gentle Giant didn't. Exotic instrumentation? ELP didn't. Weird time signatures? Pink Floyd generally didn't.
However, they were united in their want to elevate the rock band and their music to artistic heights and places not heard before. In doing that, they certainly didn't want to sound like eachother. They were after their own sound.
The treatment of prog as a strict genre is a very taxonomist view of music which doesn't work in any neat way. It's the prevailing attitude, but I find it somewhat embarrassing. The point wasn't to copy and confirm to genre rules and the bands that sound like that's what they're about generally get a pass from me.
For a time, I considered myself a proghead, but the term prog leaves me with a slight distaste these days. I prefer to describe myself as interested in avantgarde music, prog or otherwise.
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