Okay, this is actually some super awesome music

[Leyrann]

It was a fascinating evolution in the history of music to me.  I sort of predicted it was coming and got to watch it all unfold afterwards and it was glorious.  Black metal was so caught up in this faux-tough guy mentality when it really needed to just let itself be emo as hell.  You got hints of that with Ulver and a few others, but it took until the mid-2000s for bands to really start to let go and not try to be so macho.  Alcest was the first band to really let it all go.  Neige took a classic black metal venue and chucked a faded, barely tangible, angelic sort of vocal track in the background, completely reenvisioned the focus of the sound.  The bleak, unyielding exterior ceases to be the point and rather comes to emphasizes the fleeting beauty buried beneath it:

 

 

Any chance you got more where that came from?

[LedZepMan]

I've heard of Iced Earth too.

 

 

Y'all are talking obscure bands to me lol.

[Leyrann]

I'll admit I've never listened Iced Earth myself. But considering I barely like Demons And Wizards half as much as I like Blind Guardian, I feel like I'm not really missing anything.

[Shad_]

I'm not a huge fan, but they're popular relatively speaking so it's a familiar name for me to drop for a lot of people.  Jon Schaffer is an amazing rhythm guitarist, if a huge jerk, and they've written some really solid material while Matt Barlow's been on the mic.  I can't say I care for any of the other vocalists they've had, and Schaffer can't keep a consistent band around him if his life depended on it.  This was my favorite song by them back in the day, if you're curious.  I must admit it still sounds pretty epic to me, if not a genre I frequent:

 

[Gentled Ben]

It was a fascinating evolution in the history of music to me.  I sort of predicted it was coming and got to watch it all unfold afterwards and it was glorious.  Black metal was so caught up in this faux-tough guy mentality when it really needed to just let itself be emo as hell.  You got hints of that with Ulver and a few others, but it took until the mid-2000s for bands to really start to let go and not try to be so macho.  Alcest was the first band to really let it all go.  Neige took a classic black metal venue and chucked a faded, barely tangible, angelic sort of vocal track in the background, completely reenvisioned the focus of the sound.  The bleak, unyielding exterior ceases to be the point and rather comes to emphasizes the fleeting beauty buried beneath it:

 

This sounds like some sort of metal version of post-rock to me, like a faster If These Trees Could Talk.

 

The original song posted was okay. I enjoy symphonic metal, so I could feel where it was coming from. 

 

I liked the Tyr song. I might have to check more of that out.

 

I cut my teeth on progressive rock. Yes was my favorite band all through high school, and I still listen to a lot of old prog rock, but I'm not as big on prog metal, although Epica has their moments (not a true prog metal band, I know), and I like some of the stuff that Spotify has thrown at me, like Mendel and Structural Disorder.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Gentled Ben

[Leyrann]

You know Dream Theater? Imo the best prog metal band out there.

[Gentled Ben]

I've heard Dream Theater. I think the issue is that I really like original progressive rock, and the metal expressions of it just don't work for me. I like symphonic and gothic metal, but I'm not much into metal beyond that, although I like Metallica and Iron Maiden and whatnot, of course. I prefer old progressive rock like ELP, King Crimson, and Yes to newer prog rock too, but I like both, the old and the new, like Porcupine Tree. I stumbled across a set of albums from a French trio called Delusion Squared that I really like too, but it looks to have been a one-time project to bring a particular concept to fruition, and I don't know that they will ever release anything else. Their albums were progressive with a metal edge, and the concept was one of a dysopian future of genetic manipulation and a female messiah who had the audacity to breed naturally rather than via a test tube. 

[Shad_]

My problem with most things labeled 'progressive' today is it just rubs me as pure tech worship.  An obsessive commitment to playing the most difficult scales in the most difficult time signatures faster than anyone else, with little attention left for song writing and aesthetics.  I find classic progressive rock significantly more appealing than today's prog metal, and I think that may be where the difference lies.  It might not be a legitimate complaint, but it's how my ears interpret the stuff.

 

Honestly I like extremely little music from prior to the 80s.  I think nostalgia and familiarity renders older music eternally popular, but bands continually build upon their predecessors and I really believe that most of the best music ever written came into being over the past 10-20 years.  When we're talking prog rock though, give me ELP or Kansas over the modern equivalent any day.

[Shad_]

As for Alcest sounding like post-rock, bingo.

 

Post-rock and black metal employ a ton of similar techniques.  What varied initially was the underlying mentality.  Black metal was a bit stuck in this hyper-masculine notion of being the hardest/heaviest/darkest/grimmest/I will crush you thing on the market, often to the point of self-mockery.  The more it shed that and turned to experimentation, the more the two genres intertwined.  Post-rock lost the hard cap on how extreme it could get and black metal stopped caring about keeping its emotions in the closet, and the result was stuff like this:

 

[Leyrann]

I've heard Dream Theater. I think the issue is that I really like original progressive rock, and the metal expressions of it just don't work for me. I like symphonic and gothic metal, but I'm not much into metal beyond that, although I like Metallica and Iron Maiden and whatnot, of course. I prefer old progressive rock like ELP, King Crimson, and Yes to newer prog rock too, but I like both, the old and the new, like Porcupine Tree. I stumbled across a set of albums from a French trio called Delusion Squared that I really like too, but it looks to have been a one-time project to bring a particular concept to fruition, and I don't know that they will ever release anything else. Their albums were progressive with a metal edge, and the concept was one of a dysopian future of genetic manipulation and a female messiah who had the audacity to breed naturally rather than via a test tube. 

 

What about Muse? Also definitely one I'd recommend. A bit more on the prog rock side than the prog metal side.

 

My problem with most things labeled 'progressive' today is it just rubs me as pure tech worship.  An obsessive commitment to playing the most difficult scales in the most difficult time signatures faster than anyone else, with little attention left for song writing and aesthetics.  I find classic progressive rock significantly more appealing than today's prog metal, and I think that may be where the difference lies.  It might not be a legitimate complaint, but it's how my ears interpret the stuff.

 

Honestly I like extremely little music from prior to the 80s.  I think nostalgia and familiarity renders older music eternally popular, but bands continually build upon their predecessors and I really believe that most of the best music ever written came into being over the past 10-20 years.  When we're talking prog rock though, give me ELP or Kansas over the modern equivalent any day.

 

I don't know. I feel like the 70s had a lot of good music, with bands like Queen in their prime, and then it got worse in the 80s until in the late 80s and early 90s power metal and everything started, and from then on it's basically been upwards ever since.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Leyrann
Green.

[Shad_]

It's more about the quantity of good music on the market, for me.  I'm sure I can name a dozen artists I enjoy for any given five year span.  I also probably possess more albums released in 2016 than between January 1st 1970 and December 31st 1979.  The chances of really visionary artists emerging from the pile goes up substantially.

 

If I look at my last.fm top 100, only 8 artists on it released the bulk of their work before 1990, and one of those was from the mid-1800s.

[Shad_]

What about Muse? Also definitely one I'd recommend. A bit more on the prog rock side than the prog metal side.

Interesting label. It might fit. I think of them as part of that big chaotic mass of unrelated artists we like to call alt. rock.

 

I haven't heard their last four albums though, so I don't know how much they've changed.

[LedZepMan]

I've never really put much thought into labeling artists beyond Metal, Country, Alternative (which consists most of the 90's), Punk, Rock, etc.

 

The main genres really, never took the time to branch them down to sub-genres.

 

I might have to start looking into this.

[Leyrann]

 

What about Muse? Also definitely one I'd recommend. A bit more on the prog rock side than the prog metal side.

Interesting label. It might fit. I think of them as part of that big chaotic mass of unrelated artists we like to call alt. rock.

 

I haven't heard their last four albums though, so I don't know how much they've changed.

 

 

I know them as halfway through prog rock and prog metal. To be fair, I don't know them all that well, but my brother (who listens prog metal and power metal) loves it, and he recommended it to my father (who listens prog rock and classic rock) and he loves them as well. Only song of them that I know truly well is Knights of Cydonia, but there's a lot more stuff out there.

 

[Leyrann]

The music video for the song is actually super funny as well. It kinda skirts the PG-13 line though, so I'm gonna be safe and not post it here.

[Gentled Ben]

Shad, I am unfamiliar with black metal, so that might be why it only sounded like metal-tinged post-rock to me. That is some interesting stuff; I kinda like it.

 

I have not heard Muse until now, but I liked the Knights of Cydonia song that you posted, so I will check them out.

 

There was a lot of fantastic music in the 70's, and almost everything we listen to now has its roots there. The 80's saw something of a deconstruction of it with the various new wave movements, but a lot of that music is also interesting, and rap and metal came into their own, but overall, I think the 80's was the weakest of the last 4 or 5 decades for music. The 90's were great, and what I think was best about them was the blending of styles that continues today. Kids started listening to a broader variety of music instead of just listening to hip hop or just listening to metal or just listening to whatever, and instead, they started appreciating anything that sounded good to them, and the musicians responded by creating more of a collage of musical styles, so that bands like Linkin Park are not remarkable, yet in the 70's and 80's, no one was blending together rap, electronica, and rock that way. I am not much of a Linkin' Park fan, btw, they were just the first (and a good) example of a blended style that came to mind. What I hear on the radio today is not much better (just different) than what I heard on the radio over the last 40 years (I'm 53), but digging below the surface, I see more creativity than what has come before, but like Shad said, it is because of what has come before. It's the same reason that modern horror is better than Dracula or Frankenstein, and modern detective novels are better than Poe's early offerings. 

[Shad_]

I always hated Linkin Park, but I get what you're saying (and I think the overwhelming majority of what makes it onto the radio these days is garbage).

 

Here's a nice fusion of pretty much everything on the metal side of matters.  This whole album felt impressively informed to me.  I was going to say it's recent but I guess it's six years old now.  <_<

 

[Shad_]

Speaking of bands that bridge massive genre gaps, new Boris album comes out in just under a week.   :laugh:

 

This Japanese trio might have the biggest cult following of any band that isn't a household name, and as far as I'm concerned they deserve it.  :)  Here's a 15 minute snip from the climax to their most famous work (the full song is over 70 minutes), though no one track is remotely representative of their overall sound.  They've dabbled in just about every direction you can imagine, often pulling it off better than bands that have been playing it their whole careers, in my opinion.

 

[Gentled Ben]

*Bangs head and shakes fist* Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! That Falconer song rocked. I'll have to check them out. 

 

I browsed through a few Boris songs, too. I really like Pink, for the way it backs off its intensity for a bit of singing, then returns again, lathers, rinses, repeats. That's a formula dating back to the 60's that has always worked with me, I'm not sure why. Thanks for turning me on to a few new bands!

[Leyrann]

This is the only Falconer song I know.

 

[Shad_]

Check out Armod.

 

Falconer is one of those bands that were generic and boring for a really long time and then had some sort of epiphany and became awesome.

[Shad_]

Oh yeah Ley, I was supposed to drop some bands that would appeal to a Turisas fan.

 

Listen to Sagas by Equilibrium.  Don't bother with their other albums imo.

 

[Shad_]

Eluveitie started to tank pretty quickly and then I stopped keeping up with them, but Spirit was a solid album.

 

 

I take it for granted you're familiar with Ensiferum.

[Shad_]

Waylander might be a bit heavy for your taste, but I love 'em.

 

[Shad_]

Arkona ldo

 

This is probably the most Russian song ever written.