SlipknotMaggot

Eh, maybe Dream Theater. Insane instrument parts from that band.

Unknown Soldier

Firstly, they are too recent even though they are often credited with creating Progressive metal but when I think of Prog Metal I think of Opeth and not DT. I don`t think they can be classified as metal, as they are basically a rock group in the mold of prog era Kansas or similiar to say Toto. Their only difference to these two groups, is that their music has a metal feel to it. The groups most similiar to DT are Fates Warning, Shadow Tyranny and Queensryche for example, but early Queensyche had a strong Iron Maiden influence, probably making them the only group there that I think of as metal.

Certif1ed

I know this is off topic - but I find that opinion very interesting.

I would certainly consider Dream Theater to be a metal band - and I suppose "early" is a relative term - what is "too recent" after all?

DT formed in 1985, and metal as we know it started either with Priest (1975), Black Sabbath (1970) - or certainly no earlier than 1967. The maths would point to DT being the early side of the mid point, using the most aggressive calculation, and early metal using the least aggressive.



Second, while I too have difficulty in accepting Dream Theater's music as "Progressive" (noting from your comments that in the Prog community, many accept Kansas as Prog Rock - and having heard "Leftoverture", I can understand why, as it's a very intricate album), but I cannot find a single thread back to Prog in Opeth's music, which only sounds like heavy metal to me.

This is, of course, a completely separate discussion, which I would be delighted to go into further in a separate thread.

Unknown Soldier

Being a huge fan of 70`s American soft-hard rock, prog-pomp rock, makes me a huge fan of groups like Kansas, Styx, Journey, Toto and Boston etc but they were very much groups of their era and by the mid to late 80`s that sound had largely died away, for years I looked around for similiar sounding groups with an updated sound but never found anybody. Point being, that when Dream Theater and Fates Warning arrived they kind of filled the vacum that had been left by these groups, they all had obvious influences from the previous groups and all had the musical ability that these groups were associated with, along with great vocalists and musicians and they also the commercial appeal (less so in FW case) The only difference is, that both DT and FW had a metal feel, it was almost like they had been airbrushed with metal coloured paint for lack of a better phrase, and the hey! all of sudden you were listening to Toto or Kansas with a metal feel!

Albums like Masques, Leftoverture and Point of Know Return were classic and intricate albums and you can here all this in DT`s early work.

As for Opeth, well its like here is a proper heavy metal group, heavy and aggressive with a heavy dosage of death metal, lengthy compositions and dynamic shifts, I know this could be argued as not being enough to make them progressive metal and could easily open a debate as to what is progressive metal, my only point is, that I see Opeth as HM and DT not so based on DT obvious musical influences.