Fellow Prog. Rock Fans, Help!

[Jolly Co-operator]

I haven't paid much attention to their recent work, but back around their album The Black Halo, Kamelot was a favorite band of mine.

I'm actually a huge Kamelot fan. I would've mentioned them, but I've always considered them closer to symphonic / power metal than prog. Then again, prog. is kind of hard to define anyway, so I don't get too hung up on it.

 

[Jolly Co-operator]

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.

I believe you may need some Ayreon in your life

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.


Anyway, sorry to spam you but I hope you enjoy

Noooooooo, don't apologize, this is great. I love reading the stories behind concept albums, and you've definitely convinced me to check them out.

 

[Jolly Co-operator]

This is all awesome, guys, thanks. I love finding new bands, so you've all basically given me an early Christmas. I can already tell that I'll be blowing through my next iTunes gift cards in no time.