I'm a pretty big fan of progressive rock, and I'm already familiar with the classic, definitive bands (King Crimson, Yes, ELP, Van Der Graaf Generator, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues, etc.), and I'm looking for some prog. rock / prog. metal bands that are closer to the modern day. I'm already familiar with some, like The Mars Volta, Porcupine Tree, Riverside, and Opeth, but still, I'm always looking for more. And feel free to recommend any older bands that I may have overlooked.
BigElf puts out some really fun stuff. They have an interesting aesthetic that evokes a lot of the feel-good stuff from older Progressive Rock, but adds in twists from heavy metal. I'd hesitate to call them Progressive Metal, but they edge that way at times.
Also, if you haven't already, check out Pain of Salvation. Each of their albums has a very different feel, but I'd recommend checking out "Be" if you like experimental concept albums, and Road Salt One if you like your Prog tinged with some Blues Rock.
Also, since you mentioned Porcupine Tree, have you checked out any of Steven Wilson's post-PT solo stuff? It's really quite good.
I'm kinda surprised you haven't already got Mastodon down there, but if you haven't listened to them... Fix that. Crack The Skye is a beast of an album.
You might get a kick out of Baroness too, they're pretty awesome. The Blue Record is probably the best album, but Yellow & Green is pretty awesome and a bit proggier (if that makes sense. It feels more like one whole piece than a collection of songs).
Oh, and Isis too (the band, not the terrorist organisation). They're really post-metal if you want to be really anal about it, but they're fucking great. Very heavy, sludgy atmospheric stuff.
My girlfriend really likes a band called Big Big Train; it's basically oldschool prog brought forward a couple decades.
Also I really loved Pure Reason Revolution when they were still about. Their live performances were okay, but the albums were fantastic. Their first album is The Dark Third, which is really spaced out and swimming in male/female vocal harmonies. It's got quite a lot in common with classic prog, in my opinion.
They added more electronic elements as time went by and their second and third(last) albums brought in some elements of industrial and synthpop, but with the same prog vibe to it. Worth checking out.
And one of my personal favourites at the moment, Periphery. It's definitely much heavier, drawing from modern metalcore and leading the way in what was called Djent. Most bands seem to try to distance themselves from that ridiculous term though. Their latest offering is an epic concept double-album called Juggernaut (Alpha and Omega) and it has a wide selection of influences and sounds.
EDIT: How could I forget! TesseracT!
Their 2013 album Altered State was very well received; stepping away from the same Djent subgenre in to more prog territories. No screaming, just good clean tenor singing. Plenty of spaciousness and rhythmic complexity, and some fiendish hooks to boot.
I'm a pretty big fan of progressive rock, and I'm already familiar with the classic, definitive bands (King Crimson, Yes, ELP, Van Der Graaf Generator, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues, etc.), and I'm looking for some prog. rock / prog. metal bands that are closer to the modern day. I'm already familiar with some, like The Mars Volta, Porcupine Tree, Riverside, and Opeth, but still, I'm always looking for more. And feel free to recommend any older bands that I may have overlooked.
Ayreon is a prog-rock/metal band run by a dutch composer named Arjen Luccaissen. He writes all the music, plays like a dozen different instruments, and then invites other singers and musicians from bands he likes (Floor Jensen, now of Nightwish, Jorn Lande and Russel Allen of Symphony X have all been in it) to play with him. Each album is its own self-contained story (although they do link up to a larger sort of mythos) and each singer tends to play a specific character. Themes include space, aliens, the origin of life, what it means to be human, and so on. Lets see if I can dig up a few good example songs... Dawn of a Million Souls. The last human alive, a martian colonist, uses an alien machine that lets him look back through the lives of his ancestors. Upon reaching the beginning of humanity, and accepting the fact that life-support is failing anyway, he basically says 'screw it' and overrides the thing's safety parameters and jumps back to the birth of the universe. What follows is a flight through the early universe on a journey to catch the formation of Earth.
Isolation. This is from their "The Human Equation" album, and it basically follows the journey of a comatose man, trapped in his own head following a car accident, who has to deal with anthropomorphized versions of his various emotions. Some are trying to help him piece together what happened and wake up, some want him to give in to hopelessness and despair and just die.
Liquid Eternity. This song is about an alien species who achieved immortality by sealing their bodies inside of super-advanced life-support machines, but over time they have begun to lose their ability to feel anything at all, and even their will to live in some cases. The different singers are playing different aliens, with different views on their current situation (having the lyrics handy does help with these sorts of songs).
I would also recommend Symphony X, a prog-metal band out of New Jersey. Russel Allen is their lead singer (he did the vocals for Dawn of a Million Souls) and they sing about various different things. One album may be based on Greek mythology, with a 20 minute long metal-opera retelling of the Odyssey, another album may be based on Frank Milton's "Paradise Lost", about the fall of Satan and Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden. Another album may be about a robot apocalypse in the far future. ...I'll just toss up a couple of their songs here too.
Neurosis, Cult of Luna, Rosetta, Jesu, Edge of Sanity, Arcturus, and later Ulver should whet your appetite. Each offers something different. Bands like Agalloch, Drudkh, and Primordial are great if you're partial to a little folk[footnote]None of that gimmicky Mumford & Sons dross, we're talking about the genuine article.[/footnote] with your metal.
I'll point a couple that have not been brought up.
Dream Theater is a good choice for prog metal if you don't mind some longer track lengths. You might have to shop around a bit for what you like though.
They're more post-rock than prog-rock, but I'd still say they're worth checking out all the same.
Animals as Leaders and Scale the Summit are the more proggy types of instrumentalists (which I'd also recommend OP check out, as it happens).
OT: These are going to be extremely obvious, but I notice you made no mention of Tool or Dream Theater, so if you didn't just not-list them, you should check them out.
As for where I go from here, a lot of it would probably come with qualifications because I don't know anything about your musical tastes in general.
Instrumental prog death metal which is really quite fun to listen to. His song structuring tends to be predictable, but considering he's a solo bedroom act I'm still impressed.
An experimental prog rock/post-hardcore supergroup formed by Adam Fisher of Fear Before, Dan Briggs of Between the Buried and Me, and Ashley Ellyllon of Abigail Williams and Cradle of Filth. Vocals are going to be the big point of contention here for most people, as Fisher's voice is something that tends to be an acquired taste.
It's honestly hard for me to pick a song to recommend from them, but not because I don't think their music is great. It's just highly unapproachable; I tend to categorize them as "chaotic progressive metal/core", so if you can parse that you'll know what you're in for. Vocals will again likely be a point of contention. Tommy Giles does a lot of screaming, and while he's got a unique sound for it (that actually sounds the same live as it does in recording, which is pretty impressive), he's certainly not the best. And before their 2005 album, Alaska, his voice really did make the music hard to listen to. Fantastic range for clean vocals, though.
No real qualifications for this one, they're pretty straightforward. Kind of a "best-of" for prog rock acts over the past few decades all combined together into one band.
He does a lot of very experimental work as well -- he's released two ambient albums, for example.
They're a heavily experimental Japanese band, and it was only with their 2008 album Uroboros (or debatably their previous one, The Marrow of a Bone, which is still much closer to metalcore or deathcore) that they started really moving into playing around with progressive metal.
Here's a couple more recent psychedelic/prog-rock bands I enjoy:
I'm especially big on Earthless and Causa Sui, because they're of the "20 minutes of sheer guitar porn per song" variety. As for classics, maybe you're already familiar with them but if not they're definitely worth pointing out:
Dry the River are not quite prog rock, but they have a lot of similar elements (cohesive albums, slightly more experimental and intellegent music ect). They're also just really fucking good and no-one knows about them, so I'm helping expose them. Make sure you watch the first one all the way through to see where the slightly heavier stuff comes in (seeing as you also wanted something with a little more metal involved).
In your defense, all three of those bands have very obvious prog influences. XD
EDIT: They're kind of like a halfway point between prog-rock/metal and post-rock. They're a little too atmospheric and ambient to be pure prog-rock, but they're really heavy for pure post-rock.
Although nobody has mentioned it yet (I think?) then an obvious one is Rush, but seeing as you mentioned Porcupine Tree, have you checked out Steven Wilson's solo stuff? I'm only just getting into it myself, but 'The Raven that Refused to Sing' is a fantastic album
I would very much recommend Rishloo. They've been my favourite band for a few years now. Very good progressive metal with nice clean vocals, and fairly abstract lyrics that lend themselves nicely to interpretation.
Karnivool is also very good, with a similar clean vocal style.
Well RUSH is a must in that case, not modern in any way though , as isn't Queensryche but their early material was really great.
I have nothing otherwise, as I don't really know the "classification of metal", just listen to what I like xD
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