Progressive Metal

Metal by blueprint

The drafting room of heavy music, progressive metal, was forged where the loud aggression of heavy metal crashed into the long, cerebral compositions of seventies progressive rock, and it breaks the bar into odd meters, shifts time signature inside a single verse, piles syncopation on syncopation and hands the keyboard player a real seat at the table. Then it keeps going. The guitars often grow extra strings to reach lower, and the albums make room for ballads and acoustic passages between the storms.

A progressive metal riff is built like the movement of a tower clock, gears of different sizes turning at different speeds, and when they finally lock on the downbeat the whole mechanism comes down on the listener like a drop forge on red steel. That lock is the reward. Polyrhythm, unorthodox harmony and meter changes are the gears. The lyrics reach for fantasy, literature and outer space, the old reading list of seventies progressive rock.

The idea that separates it from its neighbours is structure over speed. Technical metal argues about how much fits into one bar, progressive metal argues about how much a whole song or a whole album can hold, and most bands do both at once, which is why the two words get swapped so often. The border on the other side leads to avant-garde metal, which puts the experiment ahead of technique. The progressive band wants the part played right. The avant-garde band wants it played differently.

Progressive metal cuts new roads

Two older bands laid the bridge: Rush, widely credited with joining hard rock, English progressive rock and pure heavy metal, and King Crimson, who hardened progressive rock long before metal borrowed it. The eighties sent out progressive metal bands of their own: Queensrÿche, Fates Warning, the Texas math metal pioneers Watchtower and the Quebec four of Voivod. Then the institution arrived. Dream Theater turned the style into a school with its own canon, and Symphony X followed in the middle of the nineties.

The extreme branches grew fast. Death metal met progressive ambition on Atheist's Unquestionable Presence in 1991, on the debut of Cynic and on the Swedish records of Edge of Sanity and Opeth, while Meshuggah set off djent, a riff of palm muted, syncopated attacks on extended range guitars. Metalcore took its turn through Between the Buried and Me, whose The Silent Circus of 2003 became a landmark. Sludge crossed over too. Mastodon reached for progressive rock on Crack the Skye, and a newer wave led by Haken and Caligula's Horse keeps the long form alive.

Eight records first

A listening order of progressive metal albums through the concept album, the math, the death metal branch and the long form of the present century.

• Queensrÿche Operation: Mindcrime EMI Manhattan, 1988

  A rock opera about Nikki, a heroin addict turned into an assassin by Dr. X, that became the band's breakthrough and later went platinum.

• Watchtower Control and Resistance Noise, 1989

  The first record with Alan Tecchio and Ron Jarzombek, jazz fusion wired into technical thrash, and a root of technical death metal.

• Voivod Nothingface MCA, 1989

  The Quebec four took thrash into dissonant space, covered Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine" and reached the Billboard 200 for the only time.

• Dream Theater Images and Words Atco, 1992

  James LaBrie's first album with the band, "Pull Me Under" in the mainstream rock top ten, and the only Dream Theater record certified gold.

• Cynic Focus Roadrunner, 1993

  Death metal crossed with jazz fusion, fretless bass and vocoder vocals, called by Decibel the most significant progressive death metal record of all time.

• Opeth Blackwater Park Music for Nations, 2001

  Produced by Steven Wilson in Gothenburg, death metal weight and acoustic passages locked into one design, the album AllMusic called the band's coming of age.

• Between the Buried and Me Colors Victory, 2007

  Eight tracks run as one piece of over an hour, carnival passages, jazz guitar and country detours inside the metalcore.

• Mastodon Crack the Skye Reprise, 2009

  An astral travel story through Tsarist Russia, a tribute to Brann Dailor's late sister, and a number 11 entry on the Billboard 200.