Where are the christian progressive metal bands?!

Theocracy has some proggy elements. Lance King as well.

But I agree, as a sub genre, prog rock and metal are under-represented in Christian music.

Heh, I tried to exclude prog power in my original post. Yet with Theocracy things are more complicated. Matt draws inspiration from artists like Neal Morse, Fates Warning and Seventh Wonder (among others); yet there's also the obvious Edguy influence.

1) Why would christian artists stay away from prog metal that much?

Christian music is a niche.  Progressive music is a niche.  So you're talking about a niche of a niche.

Try putting together a band like this and keeping it together long enough to release anything good and you'll see why it's so rare and hard to do.


If you do manage to find some great musicians who can play prog metal they'll probably get recruited by some lame mainstream band that can pay them.  Look at what happened to Spiral Architect and why they've only released one 2 song demo and 1 full length album.

A sidenote before I will try to trigger some of you: just because prog metal is "musician's music" hasn't stopped bands like Dream Theater and Fates Warning (and recent examples like Haken) from having a fairly large fanbase. So complexity should not be an excuse.

No prog metal band, secular or Christian, will ever get as big as them again because the music industry is dying and won't be coming back.  Those bands built their names back when there was a music industry and are still milking it even though their current releases aren't that inspiring any more.

Haken is nowhere near as big as those bands.  Do they even tour the U.S?  I mean a real tour, not a few regional dates.

It is not about how big the band is; it is about how well they reach their target audience. If you take the year 2005 as a starting point, you will see that there have been plenty of prog metal bands and christian power metal bands releasing their first album since then. Compared to that, there is a disproportionately low number of christian prog bands.

So with 2005 as a starting point, let's look at the different groups.
Prog bands: Haken, Seventh Wonder, Darkwater, Circus Maximus, Waken Eyes and many more.
Christian power metal bands: Sacrecy, Northern Flame, Gloriam Dei, Diviner, Within Silence, Signum Regis etc.

Compare that to the christian prog metal bands: Affector (great!), Wingdom (split up), Mehida (haven't heard of them for years), S91...

Labels play a big part in pushing bands in the spotlights. And good bands are not easily overlooked, especially in the christian metal niche. Just look at the power bands I named; I don't think Gloriam Dei has more than 1000 likes on facebook, but I know them because christian metal has good channels on the internet; Gloriam Dei is unsigned even and I still know them. And again, I am not demanding high standards of publicity.

Christian power metal musicians also get "stolen" by the way; just look at Tommy Johansson who now plays in the (inferior yet fun) Sabaton.

There is no reason for christian progressive bands going unnoticed; they do not need to tour to gain attention in the christian music scene. So that brings me back to my point: there is a disproportionately low number of christian prog metal bands. And I want to know why.

To be fair, you can't compare the absolute number of Christian Prog bands to the number of secular Prog bands since there are way more secular musicians out there. You need to compare the % of Prog bands within the overall rock/metal genre for both Christian and secular musicians. Looked at this way, are the percentages that much different? Like Temple said, Prog is a niche sub genre. The number of bands in that niche is going to be a small percentage of the whole, both in Christian market as well as secular. I would expect there to be fewer Christian Prog bands, just like any other genre.

Maybe you are looking at percentages ... not sure.

Name an active christian prog metal band with more than two albums released.

I cannot. For power metal it would not be a problem though. And power metal is also a niche. But maybe a more popular one?

Active secular progressive metal bands / Total active secular metal bands = X%

Maybe (Total active Christian metal bands * X%) < One?

Ha!

Andreas89 wrote:Name an active christian prog metal band with more than two albums released.

I cannot. And power metal is also a niche. But maybe a more popular one?

Tourniquet.

And of course power metal is more popular than prog.

Professor_Valconian wrote:To be fair, you can't compare the absolute number of Christian Prog bands to the number of secular Prog bands since there are way more secular musicians out there. You need to compare the % of Prog bands within the overall rock/metal genre for both Christian and secular musicians. Looked at this way, are the percentages that much different?

Well put.

Temple of Blood wrote:Tourniquet.

Tourniquet is thrash. Progressive thrash maybe, but I have stated several times that this topic is about "pure" prog metal.

And of course power metal is more popular than prog.

That could be true. On the other hand, Dream Theater has twice as much likes on facebook as Helloween.

But well, it would be interesting to see what percentage of bands with the power and prog niche are christian. My thesis for now is that it's way lower in prog.

Andreas89 wrote:

Temple of Blood wrote:Tourniquet.

Tourniquet is thrash. Progressive thrash maybe, but I have stated several times that this topic is about "pure" prog metal.

And of course power metal is more popular than prog.

That could be true. On the other hand, Dream Theater has twice as much likes on facebook as Helloween.

But well, it would be interesting to see what percentage of bands with the power and prog niche are christian. My thesis for now is that it's way lower in prog.

What in the world is "pure prog metal"?  Euro-riffless flower metal?

Progressive thrash is a sub-category of progressive metal, just like thrash is a child of metal.

Dream Theater has probably played 10-20 times as many shows as Helloween.  I'd be cautious using likes as much of an indicator of popularity.

You can do an Advanced Search on Metal-Archives to get an idea of numbers for these genres.  And I guarantee there is no way to search for "pure prog metal".

"Pure" prog metal is prog metal that is melodic, without cookiemonster vocals of any sort. I called it "melodic prog" in my original post. And longer and/or unusual kind of songs. You might want to take a look at the examples I provided. I try to get that idea across by both saying "pure" and "melodic" prog and providing the examples that fit that description. Dream Theater being the most obvious example of course.

And I know perfectly well that a comparison of facebook likes isn't conclusive in any way; but it might be an indicator.

I did do a search on metal archives; and of course, there is nothing listed as "pure prog". That was just a way of getting my message across. I'm trying to focus on the bands that are only listed as "progressive metal", not "progressive thrash/power/death/black metal". Just to make things a bit more clear (which is definitely needed, I see), I consciously use the term "prog metal" and not "progressive metal" in this context. You know, "prog metal" as an established subgenre of metal, a subgenre that actually is not necessarily interested in being revolutionary.

Look, I'm trying to find out if my assumption of a relatively low number of prog metal bands in the christian scene is correct. And if yes (which certainly seems to be the case), what the reason is for that.

Dream Theater were influenced by thrash, as they have said many times.  So much for purity!

Tourniquet don't really have "cookie monster" vocals IIRC, at least on several of their albums.  But Dream Theater do!  At least on one song.

Your purity test is highly dubious.

"prog metal" is just a shortening of "progressive metal", as everyone knows.  They are the same term and same genre.  Otherwise, the word "prog" has no meaning.  It was clearly derived from "progressive", as it was in the days of progressive/prog rock which predates progressive metal by a decade or so.

I think you are thinking of Euro power metal, as opposed to US power metal.  Or what I and many others call "flower metal".  And yes, I agree it is far from revolutionary and certainly not progressive.

OK, I'm not going into that, because that's straying from the topic. This is NOT a discussion about how prog metal came to be and what is the proper definition. Neither is this a topic to bash euro power metal (I can see where that feud is coming from though, judging by your signature).

For this topic, I get to choose the definition of prog that I am looking for. Most metal fans would know what I am talking about. And because there are plenty of prog metal bands around that fit my parameters (melodic, no harsh/cookie vokillz), it is justified to wonder why there are so few christian bands among them.

It is kind of weird that the likes of DT, FW and Haken make you think about euro flower metal by the way. Not that it's too far fetched, but still.

Now, I'm still interested in discussing the questions I asked. If you want to discuss the actual matter, that's fine. If you want to keep talking about the things you speak about, you're free to start a new topic.

metaldude wrote:Millenial Reign is closer to power metal than progressive.

I saw their show in Houston supporting Theocracy. The new bass player is a full-blooded prog-metal player and he has said the next album will have a keyboardist and lean towards prog, probably still with power elements too.

metaldude wrote:
Above Symmetry 

Were these guys Christian? I had no idea.

ManipulatorGeneral404 wrote:

metaldude wrote:Millenial Reign is closer to power metal than progressive.

I saw their show in Houston supporting Theocracy. The new bass player is a full-blooded prog-metal player and he has said the next album will have a keyboardist and lean towards prog, probably still with power elements too.

If they get a different singer, then I'll be interested...

You could ask the same question "Where are the christian <blank> metal bands?" for any genre of metal, or music for that matter.  I actually think there are far more Christian prog metal bands than there should be, considering how niche prog metal is to begin with.

The answer to your question, and the question in general, is no great mystery:  There's no money in Christian music and evangelism is passé.  So the only reason to make Christian metal music is as a hobby for a few dozen or hundred people online to appreciate.  If you're a great musician who can make prog metal, why would you waste your talent making albums no one will appreciate except for a few middle-aged Christians?  I suspect any Christian musician with chops is going to try and join a legit prog band that has at least a chance, however small, of getting them a little spending money and audience appreciation.  Especially since most prog bands' lyrics are completely non-offensive to Christianity anyway.

Boy, I just love this song so much...








I am looking for any Christian bands that have this keyboard sound in their music. Anything along the lines of current Opeth would be awesome as well.

strangerhoncho wrote:You could ask the same question "Where are the christian <blank> metal bands?" for any genre of metal, or music for that matter.  I actually think there are far more Christian prog metal bands than there should be, considering how niche prog metal is to begin with.

The answer to your question, and the question in general, is no great mystery:  There's no money in Christian music and evangelism is passé.  So the only reason to make Christian metal music is as a hobby for a few dozen or hundred people online to appreciate.  If you're a great musician who can make prog metal, why would you waste your talent making albums no one will appreciate except for a few middle-aged Christians?  I suspect any Christian musician with chops is going to try and join a legit prog band that has at least a chance, however small, of getting them a little spending money and audience appreciation.  Especially since most prog bands' lyrics are completely non-offensive to Christianity anyway.

I know, I know. It just seemed to me that this phenomenon is somehow stronger in prog metal. Which is weird, since it's one of the more well-established sub genres of metal.

sentient 6 wrote:Boy, I just love this song so much...
[snippitysnip]
I am looking for any Christian bands that have this keyboard sound in their music. Anything along the lines of current Opeth would be awesome as well.

Affector is a weird album in the sense that it's just the one album by the band and at the same time of such high quality, both music-wise and lyrically. I particularly like that song because of the riffing, which I have fairly recently discovered is a huge factor to me in lots of cases. The keyboards you're talking about... you mean like in the beginning? Sounds a bit like Neal Morse on his One album.

Andreas89 wrote:

sentient 6 wrote:Boy, I just love this song so much...
[snippitysnip]
I am looking for any Christian bands that have this keyboard sound in their music. Anything along the lines of current Opeth would be awesome as well.

Affector is a weird album in the sense that it's just the one album by the band and at the same time of such high quality, both music-wise and lyrically. I particularly like that song because of the riffing, which I have fairly recently discovered is a huge factor to me in lots of cases.

Daniel Fries said awhile back that the second Affector album has already been written and ready to be recorded.

Andreas89 wrote:Name an active christian prog metal band with more than two albums released.

I cannot. For power metal it would not be a problem though. And power metal is also a niche. But maybe a more popular one?

We (S91) released 3 albums:

- Sto per tornare 2009 (EP)
- Volontà Legata 2011 (full album)
- Behold the Mankind 2016 (full album)

We are writing the next album, and also have a show next week, so we are active
Did we win something?

Just kidding, btw very interesting topic and good analysis about the Christian prog metal scene