Agreed.

Tool are not any more skilled than the other bands on the poll. The only member of that band I could call a virtuoso is Danny.

And best drummer in prog he is not. That's easly Bill Bruford, but Carl Palmer and Alan White are way better than Danny Carey also.

I didn't mean people think about the difficulty itself when they listen to music. I just mean that, generally, one can tell by listening how complex the sound is just by listening to the interplay between instruments.

Boo Boo: Nice to see we both understand the same thing. :P

Especially for the one genre of rock music that really requires it.

You don't have to be an amazing musician to be in a prog band, but you have to be decent at least, whereas even a metal band can get away with a sh*tty bassist or sh*tty drummer, I don't think a prog band could.

And I like The Secret Machines, I'm not sure weither people consider them prog or not so I didn't include them, though I was considering it.

Should I add them?

If Oceansize are prog (i don't see it much myself) then Secret Machines are. Good band, ahven't heard their second album though. Massively loud live.

Add Riverside and Fates Warning too!

Bah, I prefer to leave out any prog metal.

Because I'm biased. Against prog metal. :)

lol, and which prog band is NOT too pretentious?


...not that being pretentious is necessarily a bad thing.

I guess Gong since they don't take themselves that seriously.

Of course not, that is the philosophy of many a prog band.

It's not that we don't realise these bands are pretentious, of course we do. I love these bands regardless of their level of pretentiousness. I don't consider pretentious to be an automatically negative thing, actually I consider it a good thing, the only kind of music that is not pretentious in anyway is probably stuff like hair metal, bands who are only in it for the drugs, sex and money, and therefore write songs about drugs, sex and money. And without taking themselves seriously in anyway.

If you think that's what music should be, then be my guest. :laughing:

If you ask me, what's even more pretentious than prog is the whole singer songwriter thing. Lets take guys like Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, David Byrne, Morrissey. All great songwriters, sure. But they also play "characters", they have all built up this public persona, based more on their music and stage act than what kind of people they actually are, Dylan especially admits to being a character actor type of songwriter, he's played so many "characters" that no one really knows who the real Bob Dylan is, if there is one.

These songwriters have built up all this mystery and cult of personality around themselves. I don't see how that's any less pretentious than prog bands like Yes and King Crimson who write songs about the things they're truly interested in, in fact very few prog musicians are guilty of the kind of pretentiousness that guys like Dylan and Bowie are guilty of, Peter Gabriel and Ian Anderson being some of the exceptions.

I consider all (great) music and art to be pretentious to an extent.

And what about Tool?:D
Some of these metal bands aren't metal just for the sake of it. Their music is as progressive as any other band here tbh. They definitely do deserve to be in there if Battles, Muse or Coheed & Cambria could make it. Oh well, it's just a poll anyways. Not that these results matter to me :p:.

I agree it's nice to have talented musicians, but just because a band doesn't have "the best" drummer in prog doesn't mean they should be dismissed. It's not about the talent, it's what you do with it.