What are your favorite progressive rock/metal songs?

Fairly simple post.

Paste your favorite prog songs.

I love riverside and thats one of my favorite of them

Porcupine Tree was introduced to me years ago by a friend and I absolutely adore this track.

Does Opeth count? Because sometimes they're just prog rock with some extreme metal sections and sometimes they're extreme prog metal with some prog rock sections.

I'd probably say T2's "No More White Horses", Bo Hansson's "The Horns of Rohan" (from his 1970 Lord of the Rings adaption), Landberk's "I Nattens Timma" and of course King Crimson's "The Court of the Crimson King".

The Mellotron is one of the coolest musical instruments ever made and can be heard in both Landberk's and King Crimson's songs.

Oh, also, Aphrodite's Child's "The Four Horsemen" (with Vangelis and Demis Roussos). Also, check out the entire musical adaption of The War of the Worlds by Jeff Wayne from 1978. Some songs are more 70s disco, but there are some absolutely amazing progressive rock tracks on there too, but you should probably listen to that whole album in its entirety rather than single songs.

This may be on the outskirts of prog, but Dirty Three is amazing. Look up:

- Everything’s Fucked

- Sue’s Last Ride

- Kim’s Dirt

- I Remember a Time Once When You Used to Love Me

- Warren’s Lament

- Some Summers they Drop like Flies

There’s also a great pro-shot show On YouTube: Live at Fuckin’ Castlemaine Rock

To pick just one to link to...Everything’s Fucked is the first Dirty Three song that immediately bore a hole into my brain and never left.

What's a general description of prog rock? I've never really been able to nail it down, though I never tried very hard.

I'm a big fan of Coheed & Cambria though, and they're usually called prog rock.

Like a lot of genres it grew out as a reaction to other genres at the time, so I guess it's kinda hard to nail down these days, especially as there have always been a few fairly distinct movements within the genre. I suppose the most defining characteristic is the use of less common time signatures than what are/were common in pop and rock, and most also avoided the standard pop song structure in favor for inspiration from classical symphonies and jazz. But there was a lot of variety and some very different audiences too, with groups coming from the upper classes where the technical abilities of the performers and sophistication/complexity of the arrangements were the focus, as well as a kinda proto-punk wing coming from the lower classes where rejecting conventions and experimenting was more in focus.

There's a Japanese band called Te' that I really dig. Will try to post a track or two later.

One band that went from metal to prog rock that I really like is The Gathering. Their current singer is one of my favorite female vocalists at the moment.

Every song by Steven Wilson, solo or Porcupine Tree.

• Steven Wilson - Index
• Opeth - The Devil's Orchard
• Deep Purple - Child in Time
• Mastodon - The Czar
• An Endless Sporadic - Impulse
• Jethro Tull - Aqualung
• Haken - Earthlings
• Radiohead - Paranoid Android
• RUSH: 2112, YYZ,
• Aphrodite's Child - The Four Horsemen

Frame By Frame - King Crimson. Just gimme any King Crimson, really.

@crazybagman: Yesssss, Coheed is so good! Can't wait for the new album later this year :D

Oceansize- The last wrongs.

Just because I haven't seen it posted yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYAF_MgV0JA

"Kindly Bent to Free Us" by Cynic.

I'm more into tech death, so, that all I've got other than a few Obscura songs.

This is one is best listened on good headphones with your eyes closed.

Deafheaven the whole sunbather album. But i don't know if it fits the progressive tagline. IT Goes beyond that into the post genre, so it's post black metal i gues.

Nothing beats King Crimson - Red. That album is perfect.

Pink Floyd - Animals is also fantastic.

I am wouldn't consider myself an aficionado but Heart of the Sunrise by Yes the album Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson as the ones that probably have the most listens too.

On a slight side note, there used to be a taxi driver in my home town that was obsessed with Prog, it was always on in his cab at a pretty high volume. After a night out it was quite the thing to behold, Camel and Asia as loud as politely possible. He told me he'd regularly get people complaining, asking to turn it off and his response was almost always to stop the cab and cancel the fare, such was his dedication to the cause. Better him than the taxi driver who used to stow dead sheep away in the trunk of his car.

Rush, the best band, almost all of their 20 studio albums have at least a few great songs on them, though a few might not be considered prog. King Crimson is good but a little ridiculous sometimes, I like Red the best. Yes is great, Close to the Edge and Fragile both fantastic (Fragile contains popular meme song Roundabout). Mastadon, Crack the Skye is a masterpiece; not sure if that is prog but it has long songs that are more complex than usual which I think is the criteria.

I've always dug Matt Bellamy's crazy Rachmaninov-based piano extravaganza with the delightful Space Dementia on the Origin of Symmtery album.

I think Deathspell Omega should count as progressive metal, especially their album Paracletus

Most of my favorites and the classics have already been mentioned, so I'll go for a slightly different route with more modern stuff. Admittedly progressive tends to be slapped on as a descriptor way too easily nowadays, but I think these fit the bill. Favorite songs as links to youtube:

VOLA, Caligula's Horse and Voyager are on the more modern metal side of prog. Very catchy and melodic with plenty of experimentation and unusual song structures.

Pain of Salvation has been making their brand of prog for a while and tend to be bit of hit and miss for me. Occasionally hitting the nail on the head like on Meaningless and at some songs (Reasons) not clicking at all.

Leprous is another long time favorite with a very unique vocal approach.

Grayceon has some interestingly complex, but approachable prog rock/metal songs performed with cello, guitars and drums.

Intronaut dwells in more post-metal influenced waters with plenty of jazz blended in.

On even more heavy ground there's the more death metal based Usurpress.

And on the more extreme side there's Ne Obliviscaris.

Then there's of course progressive/technical death metal, which has been growing on me as of late with the likes of Beyond Creation and Archspire pushing things to see if and when they break.

There are many more like the many projects of Devin Townsend, but I have to stop somewhere.

Pink Floyd's Echoes is a Side-A length journey. Especially when its paired with 2001

My favourite moment in all of music is probably when the vocals kick back in in the final third of the song.

Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding by Elton John has a great buildup to a driving beat in its second half.

Siberian Khatru by Yes is one of the few Yes songs that I can tolerate. The skill of Steve Howe on guitar offsets the vocals and nonsense lyrics (sorry-not-sorry Yes fans).

Also, I can't stop listening to this version of A Simple Game by the Moody Blues, even if it's relatively simple. I think it's the lilting vocals that get me.

It probably isn't really prog, but I'll throw Bitch's Brew by Miles on here. At least, that's the album that bridged my love of prog into jazz.

Baroness is pretty great especially if you like some of the other Georgia based prog metal bands.

I'm big fan of late 60s 70s prog rock

King Crimson 21st century man

Gentle giant free hand

Genesis music box

Focus Hocus Pocus

Emerson Lake and Palmer take a

pebble

Jethro Tull thick as a brick

Deep Purple Child of Time

procol harum salty dog

ELO can't get you out of your head

One last thing I really really hate rush .

@fram: That's the song I thought of when I read the title of the thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFVeU7_FJ5c

A Fool's Overture by Supertramp

@doctorodds: Wow, that Echoes/2001 video is really something special. Thanks!

I like Supertramp's "If Everyone was Listening"

My favourite RUSH song ever:

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Karn Evil 9!

The Mars Volta - Cassandra Gemini (and all of Frances the Mute, honestly)

I came here to post Pineapple Thief but it turns out I already posted that song and I completely forgot about it and this entire thread. So go up and listen to that one! Then when you're done you can listen to this one which is pretty good.

Anything by the French band Magma and the whole catalog by the Japanese band Chakra. Chakra isn’t really prog but are also 100% prog in a way I can’t really explain. They were amazing.

Every time I hear or think about the genre progressive rock/metal, the first band I think of is Tool. And everything I hear or think about the band Tool (or sometimes even just the word tool) I think of their song called The Pot. So I guess that's my pick for this, since it obviously has left such a strong impression on me to be recalled in every one of these instances.

@wezqape: Since we're talking about metal now and since you've specifically mentioned tech-death... how does everyone feel about Atheist?

Also I really like Oceans of Slumber, they kind of straddle the line between progressive rock and metal.

Coheed and Cambria are fantastic.

Didn't know Baroness were prog rock, but I love them as well.