Progressive Rock Sub-Genres: Progressive Metal

Prog Metal is how we got into the whole progressive rock world, we didn’t know it even existed before we fell into it; it was love at first sight.

The genre emerged in the second half of the 80’s with bands trying to include both the classic progressive rock elements found in bands like YES, GENESIS, KING CRIMSON, PINK FLOYD with the new metal elements that had appeared in England with bands like IRON MAIDEN and JUDAS PRIEST.

Without a doubt, at first it wasn’t an easy marriage, combining both classical elements and new metal ones didn’t gain much attention from the public. Because of this the movement nearly divided helplessly and nearly died in search of original and creative musical ideas.
Probably the true first “successful” progressive metal bands started out as a mix between Classic Prog and Proto-Power Metal.

As the scene arrived to the late 1980’s, the Power Metal themes lost interest in the Progressive Metal genre and so it evolved into the now know American Power Metal.

Even thought Power Metal lost some interest, from the mid 80’s to the early 90’s, a new brand of bands mixed successfully a large range of influences, resulting in a very interesting musical experience that was diverse and fresh. It is during this period that bands start experimenting with more confidence between power metal to symphonic and melodic arrangements, and many bands also made their technical aspects be present in their music.

At this moment, bands like QUEENSRYCHE, DREAM THEATER and FATES WARNING emerged and renewed the progressive metal scene, not really making the genre mainstream but opening many doors.

Throughout the 90’s American Power Metal had lost complete dominance over Progressive Metal. Instead, melodic and symphonic elements became a must. DREAM THEATER quickly established themselves as the most popular band in the genre, especially when grunge came out and took audiences from most prog-metal bands, and became a point of reference, even thought they were not the first band to arrive to the scene.

Still many other bands also managed to surpass the grunge era and make themselves known to the public, establishing their own unique styles and expanding the limits of technical, melodic and symphonic perfection.

The Power Metal movement that started it all retook the principles and original sounds while adding new neo-classical elements made popular at the time by Yngwie J. Malsmteen and exploited by bands like RHAPSODY.