Progressive metal grew from fans who loved both Rush and Iron Maiden
Take the volume, distortion and aggression of heavy metal, add the long, cerebral, almost classical structures of progressive rock, and you get prog metal. Its pioneers in 1980s America were, as AllMusic puts it, bands who combined a love of Yes and Rush with admiration for Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.
The style is known for virtuoso playing, unusual harmonies and rhythms that change metre constantly and lean hard on syncopation. The djent subgenre pushes the polyrhythms furthest. Lyrics often borrow from fantasy and literature, as 1970s prog did, and may range into outer space or anti-capitalism. Metal Hammer calls it the part of the metal family tree with the fewest boundaries, and Loudwire describes it as unaffected by trends.
Its roots reach back to the first overlap of hard rock and prog. King Crimson brought dissonance and experimental tones while keeping hard rock's power chords, most famously in 21st Century Schizoid Man. The Canadian trio Rush, starting out under Led Zeppelin's influence, is widely credited with bridging hard rock, English progressive rock and heavy metal, and their 1976 album 2112 paired complex composition with a heavier, more direct sound.
As a distinct genre it took shape in the American metal scene of the early and mid 1980s. Two bands, Queensrÿche out of Washington and Fates Warning out of Connecticut, put out full-length debuts in 1984, and each produced a landmark record in 1986, Rage for Order and Awaken the Guardian respectively. Queensrÿche's Operation: Mindcrime followed in 1988. Dream Theater came a little later, and Symphony X in the mid-1990s. The genre won widespread success only in the 1990s, when bands such as Dream Theater and Tool reached large audiences.
Thrash metal absorbed prog ideas too. Metallica's Master of Puppets in 1986 and Megadeth's Rust in Peace in 1990 carry progressive touches, Canada's Voivod added psychedelic dissonance, and Texas math-metal pioneers Watchtower took time changes to new extremes, borrowing rhythmic deconstruction from jazz fusion. That approach later fed technical death metal through bands such as Atheist, Death and Cynic. Because influences vary so much, groups like Dream Theater and Planet X lean on jazz-style solo trading, while others fold in ballads and acoustic passages.
Source: Progressive metal
