Lesser known Prog rock recommendations
 

Hi,

Could you recommend me lesser known progressive rock bands and artists? I have a playlist where I collect that kind of music.
The less known a band is the better suggestion it is for my playlist. They should also preferably have music released in or around 2020. The band should be on Spotify, because my public playlist is there.

You can also send me submissions trough soundplate.com if you find it easier.


If you want preferences or just listen to good music, here's a link to my playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0K...97643e64094989

I'm also looking for followers so if you like the list I would appreciate if you would give it a like by clicking on the heart icon.

Thank you in advance!

I don't know if they would be considered obscure, but Starcastle got some radio play in the seventies. I remember them sounding a bit like Yes if you're into them.

From their debut album in 1976

I suppose that depends on what you consider better or more well-known ones. If we assume you're talking your Yeses, your Genesises, ELPs, Camels and so on, and assuming also you know your Marillions, IQs, Pendragons and so forth, then perhaps
Arena
Spock's Beard
Willowglass
Twelfth Night
Big Big Train
This Winter Machine
Cosmograf
Edison's Children
Blackfield
Haken
IoEarth
Millennium (Poland)
Fish on Friday
Elephants of Scotland

I mean, I could go on for pages. Maybe an idea of what you've heard and are into might help narrow down a list that could, literally, be thousands of bands and artists long.

Thank you! This is not quite suitable for my playlist. I'm looking for newer and even more unknown music, but this sounds very nice so I personally am going to listen this more.

Thank you very much for your recommendations and sorry, I could have been more specific in what I was after. I didn't mean that bands should be unknown to me in particular. I meant they should be generally unknown. Your recommendations such as Willowglass, Twelfth Night, Edison's Children, IoEarth and Elephants of Scotland were pretty close to what I was looking for.
The less known a band is the better suggestion it is for my playlist. They should also preferably have music released in or around 2020. The band should be on spotify, because my public playlist is there.

Personally I like Progressive Rock like Genesis, Yes and Marillion from the 70's and 80's, but a more modern and experimental style can also surprise.

Anyway, thank you very much for your recommendations and if you have even more unknown bands to share, I would appreciate it if you could do it.

I'll plug my buddies in Panzerpappa for the occasion then :)

They're a norwegian avant-prog band from Oslo who take inspirations from various prog and RIO bands like Univers Zero, Samla Mammas Manna, Hatfield and the North and National Health (check those out too if you haven't, btw). Their music ranges from abrasive and disharmonic to beautiful and serene and their compositions range from complex to less complex, but never quite simple.

They played and recorded with Richard Sinclair back in 2006 and so have a very tenuous Canterbury scene-connection. Aside from a track featuring Richard on vocals (Vintervake) and some other more or less unintelligible shouting, all their music is instrumental.


Here's a song I quite like from their 2012 album Astromalist, Ugler i Moseboka. I especially like the continous build up just after the 2 minute mark.




Me and my daughter like to listen to music together for sleepy times and this song is in our bedtime playlist. It's a very mellow song with some interesting timing (parts that go 7/8 three times, then 6/8 and then another that goes 6/8 three times followed by 5/8 once (guess you might call them 27/8 and 23/8 respectively)).

If you take a listen, check out the gorgeous part where the acoustic guitar part comes back in after 2:30. Sublime!




And since you're interested in new music, here's a little ditty from their latest 2019-album, Summarisk Suite.




Currently, they've been working on a project where they make 99 versions of the same composition, Excercises in Style, which is producing some interesting new sounds from them.

Here's nr. 96 with a very strong country vibe:

Meh, I always say Starcastle should have been called Sugarcastle. There's just something sickly sweet about their music that turns me off. I got one of their albums - think it was that one - and the moment I heard the first track I knew it wasn't for me. They get a lot of love in prog circles, which kind of baffles me. But anyway.

Okay well in terms of bands who are generally unknown on the scene and are current, here are some links to reviews I wrote of a few last year.

Archetype Asylum by Exodus to Infinity

I Just Wanna Break Even by The Flying Caravan

You might also like The World We Used To Know by Shattered Skies

True North by Borknagar

(both prog metal)

or

Last Epic by A.C.T

These guys only had the one album but still very much worth a listen
The Hour is Upon Us by The Hour of the Shipwreck

Do you know The City Sleeps by Touchstone?

Also very good, excellent in fact is
From the Small Hours of Weakness by Verbal Delirium

I love this one to death
A Tower of Silence by Anubis

and this
A Story Two Days Wide by Iluvatar

Thank you very much Guybrush! I've already listened songs Ugler I Moseboka and Algerisk Symfo by Panzerpappa. I really liked the atmosphere of both songs and especially the saxophone parts. I actually already added both songs to my playlist. I'll also have to check those other suggestions later.

Thank you for a very comprehensive list. I browsed the list and randomly picked The Flying Caravan to listen to and it sounded promising at least for a first listen. I'll have to listen some more and listen those other suggestions too. I'll probably do it today while I'm cleaning. I'm pretty sure I'll add some of those to my playlist.

By the way, here's my playlist if you want to check it out:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0K...7d1089f3f24c65

Maybe you'll find something new you like.

Nice, Lawry! My brain prefers 70s prog 9 out of 10 times for some reason entirely unknown to me, but I should be working on that and so might check out some of those tracks, even though I'm not a Spotify user.

By the way, maybe you'd like some Aksak Maboul for your list? I'm one of few people I've met who likes their new stuff even more than the old. Granted, the last two albums may be best described as avantgarde pop (with vocals), but there's stuff approaching progdom in there.

Like this fun instrumental tune from their 2021 album Figures.



Edit:

Also cool that you know Panzerpappa already :) let's just say that doesn't happen often, great though that they are.

Sorry, I was a bit unclear in my previous post, but actually no I didn't no them until today. I added them today shortly after listening the songs. So thank you for a great discovery.:clap:

Do Starcastle get that much love in prog circles? I thought they were just acknowledged as a decent Yes ripoff and not anything more than that.

That's precisely how I feel about them.

I wouldn't even put them in the same class, but yeah, I've seen a lot of people recommend them. Takes all sorts I guess. I mean, for me: hell, you only have to look at the name of the band: Starcastle? What the actual ****? :rolleyes: Maybe that was okay in the hippy-dippy sixties or very early seventies, but these days such a name just makes me chortle.

Well that first album came out in 76 when people were already starting to find that stuff cheesy, but then again not caring how much people find you cheesy is an important part of the prog rock ethos, shamelessly trying to sound like another band not so much.

This was also when Yes went 3 years without releasing any new material so the individual members could focus on solo and side projects so I have a theory that labels were signing up soundalike bands like Starcastle to try and fill that void.

This is why I never got beyond Jester's Tear in Marillion's discography. They sounded so much like Genesis, I got embarassed listening to it. I'm sure the songs are great, but I just found their sound to be a turn-off, especially the singer who sounds like a Peter Gabriel understudy.

I have similar feelings towards modern bands if I feel they're copying the old. I love the first prog rock wave for creating so many new, original sounds and unique bands.

It might be a bit more appropriate for a funk band name, but I don't know...its not that bad:laughing:

Honestly? I don't think Marillion sounds that much like Genesis, I mean yeah Genesis are clearly an influence but I think they still stand out.

Fish kinda has a similar voice to Gabriel but his style of singing is actually pretty different, I have no problem telling the two apart, Gabriel is more of a crooner while Fish can f*cking wail.

I don't think the rest of the band sounds that much like Genesis either, Rothery's guitar playing style reminds me more of Gilmour and Latimer than it does Hackett or Rutherford. Yes they do have the gated drum sound Collins popularized, but that's the '80s for ya.

I might as well admit it, I actually like Marillion a lot, well Fish era Marillion at least, it's just the right mix of prog bombast and 80s pop gloss and I'm a sucker for both. The Hogarth stuff is ok but I'm not a fan of that guy's wimpy Christian rock singer voice.

Aside from Marillion I don't really care for the neo-prog scene, prog rock will always be a 70s genre to me first and foremost, most prog after that is built on nostalgia rather than really moving the genre forward, not that that's automatically a bad thing, there are good retro prog bands, Anglagard is one of them. But for me a lot of post-70s prog is too tame and conservative and lacking the hooks that the classic prog bands had. If any bands in the 80s and 90s were keeping the adventurous spirit of prog alive it was weirdos like Cardiacs, Ween and Mr Bungle.

Yeah I would agree. Without doubt, Marillion took a lot of influence from Genesis, and Fish from Gabriel, but if anything I feel he was more a student of Peter Hammill than Gabriel; the latter tends, as you pointed out, mostly to croon and sing relatively softly (so much so that when he spits and growls on tracks like "The Knife" and a little in "Stagnation" it comes as something of a shock) whereas Hammill could go from angelic choirboy to raving devil in an instant, and back. He could be completely sane and then go off on a madman's rant, and return to normality as if nothing had happened.

The music itself drew much from Genesis, but it's very different. Look at the debut: the first song is a lament for a lost love, the second a sharp indictment of drug addiction, the third a retreat from life itself. Follow that up with one satirical upbeat song about the "posh folk", then right back down into one about unfulfilled dreams and suicide, and end with a rage against the Troubles in Northern Ireland, seen from a British perspective (duh) - doesn't sound like any Genesis I know.

If any neo-prog band ripped off Genesis I'd say it's Pendragon. I mean, I love the guys to death but they literally took sections of "Firth of Fifth" and I think "Cinema Show" and shamelessly used them in their songs. They also ripped off Supertramp and Floyd, but that's another matter.

I think the problem with Marillion is that they were always going to be compared to Genesis, being one of the first bands to bring back prog into the mainstream, and one of the best known and biggest survivors of a trend which left a lot of bodies in its wake. A lot of people could not see past the Genesis tag, but I think it does them a disservice. Genesis were always more esoteric in their lyrical matter; Marillion went full-on into politics, human relations and controversial subjects. Marillion were definitely not the 80s version of 70s Genesis, not by a long way.

You can read more of my rantings about Marillion
here

Gabriel's lyrics with Genesis dealt with sociopolitical issues a little bit like slumlords with Get 'Em Out by Friday and globalization with Dancing With the Moonlit Knight but in his own cheeky way, when the 80s came around his political commentary became a lot more straightforward.

Fish's approach as both a lyricist and a vocalist is more emotional and direct, just like Hammilll's, I agree that's a much more fitting comparison.

Hey, you leave my personal beef with Marillion alone! I don't wanna listen to Jester's Tear now just to see if my 15 year old impressions still hold true.

.. I'll concede I may not know at all what I'm talking about.

.. Okay, maybe I'll give it a re-spin one of these days and then I can get embarassed all over again by how much they sound like a Genesis tribute band.

Boo, to your point that the first wave prog spirit lived on in bands like Ween and Mr. Bungle, yes - I agree. For myself, I prefer to think of myself as someone who likes a bit of avantgarde music rather than a proghead these days. The ethos of challenging the musical art form and finding a sound that's unique is what I love about early prog, but it also happens in so many bands and artists outside the scope of what most people think of as prog.

This is part why I like Aksak Maboul's new direction, even if my prog friends do not. A lot of prog bands and artists are looking backwards and being nostalgic. AM had a very diverse sound back then and have also reinvented their sound into something that I find pleasingly original (even if their latest album Figures is a little more retrospective than Ex Futur).

I know it's probably unwarranted, but like a fanboi, I'll post my two favourite tracks from their latest two albums:

From Ex-Futur




From Figures

Here’s some of my favourites, they’re kinda on the line between indie and progressive, but Last.fm seems to think they’re prog so here you go…

Oceansize
Aereogramme
Clann Zú
Paatos
Iamthemorning

Thank you for sharing those. They are unfortunately still a bit too popular to my playlist. Although I understand that in the big picture they are pretty unknown.
Paatos is a finnish word so for a moment I thought that the band would be also from Finland, but it was from Sweden which is quite close too. Maybe they have taken that word from Finland.
It means kinda like powerful/passionate speech so it at least would fit the name of a rock band.

Anyway thank you for sharing those. Maybe I'll listen them more even they don't come to my playlist.

Oh okay.

Edit: Actually I’m gonna edit this out, not sure I’m allowed to plug a friend’s music.

How about a band who took their name from a type of potato, maybe?

There are quite a few old Norwegian prog bands unknown to most of the world, like Kerrs Pink, Junipher Greene, Aunt Mary, Popol Vuh/Ace, Høst, etc.

But while they have the occasional moments of goodness, I don't think they feel very inspired comparatively to what went on in England - or in neighbouring Sweden for that matter.

Yeah there's actually one song from Kerrs Pink on my playlist, "Hvis Jeg Er Der Neste Ar - If I'm Still Here Next Year".
At the moment, though, I’m looking a bit newer music. The reason for that is that I'm trying to have music on the playlist from the bands that are currently active. The goal would be that they would also get a little boost for being on the playlist.
Of course at the moment there are only 86 followers, but I think that is better than nothing for totally unknown bands.
Thank you anyway for sharing those. I keep them in my mind for the future.

I always have a lot of time for Salem Hill...

This guy's pretty good too; another one-man band.

Thank you, this was great discovery. I listened their Live album "Live Catatonia". I liked it a lot. Singer has very pleasant voice and the structures of the songs were very smooth. The songs were nice and easy to listen to for the first time, but I think they will get even better with new listening times.
I added their song Awake to my playlist. It was maybe my favorite and I found a good spot for it from my playlist.

Glad to help. Do you know Mystery?

They're probably not lesser known anymore, but Coheed and Cambria have some solid music out there. They have a new album coming out in May. Their previous release The Unheavenly Creatures, it's easily my favourite of their discography.

We meet again! I've heard some C&C but not enough yet to form an opinion about them. Are they prog? I suppose they are, but I think they're more almost in the prog metal side of things really, from what I've heard to date.

Coheed, their albums (all but one) are based on a comic book series written by the singer in the band, Claudio Sanchez. I sometimes wonder what the word progressive means these days. I think they count.

If you're going to check them out, start with their latest works first. I find they're better than the earlier stuff. I discovered them through the game Rock Band. Welcome Home was my favourite song in the game. I'll be damned if I could play it though!

You would call Pink Floyd a lesser-known prog band????? :rolleyes:

I forgot the greatest prog band nobody knows.

Something tells me you're correct. I've no idea who that band is.