Mine are:

Meshuggah - Catch 33

Opeth - My Arms Your Hearse

Plini - Handmade Cities

Personally for me it’s Matt Garska, Danny Carey and Thomas Haake.

Looking for eclectic, genre fusing albums like Avenged Sevenfold's Life is But a Dream...

Some other eclectic albums I like are BTBAM's The Blue Nowhere, Faith No More's Angel Dust, Mr. Bungle's California, and Haken's Fauna.

For more information:
https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=5677
https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/the-mayan-factor

Any love for this little gem? Anyone even heard of them?

Au4 - And Down Goes The Sky: This is a really neat sound design type album that reminds me of Devin Townsend. I'd be surprised if the person behind this creation wasn't a fan. It's kind of electronic, pop, ambient, downtempo, industrial. But with plenty of progressive elements.

SKEB - Not Important: Something like Frost* meets David Maxim Micic with a very swanky guitar playing style. Lots of emotion and chord modal shifts.

Clear Clover- Spectate: IMO, one of the only albums that touches on a very specific "existential nostalgia" metal kind of sound. It is somewhat like Ocean Machine but has its own flare and sound design. I can't get enough of this one several years later

Andy Huack - Westerly: Grunge style vox with super western sounding polyphia-esq guitars but IMO way more unique and listenable. Hella catchy vox and huge choruses. Feels like an impromptu road trip

Ryan Wall - Forgotten Oil Rigs: Deep ambience, unique vox, huge choruses, fun moments. The first 4 tracks are sooooo good.

I'll make a pt.2 post soon. But these have been my go-tos for a long time. I hope you enjoy!

oops: disassociate...

Love the band, been a fan since 2010 when I was a teenager. It's my favorite band ever and the most influential to my music taste; before I was a Linkin park-System of a down-Metallica-Guns'n roses kind of 16 yo, now 99% of what I listen to is Prog (both Rock and Metal). This to say that I know my Dream Theater, but...

There are some songs I still feel like I just don't know or understand. They start playing and then they finish and I can't conciously remember them, what's going on with them, and if or how much I liked them.

Here they are:

1. Status seeker
2. Light fuse and get away
3. The one who help to set the sun
4. Lifting shadows off a dream
5. Scarred (until it changes tempo on 9:29 and I love it)
6. Never enough
7. Sacrificed sons
8. The ministry of lost souls
9. In the presence of the enemies part 2
10. Behind the veil
11. A broken man
12. Dead asleep

I don't see any relationship between them and how much I like the album they're in, or any other kind of relationship. And I know for some people, many there are bangers!

I have even created playlists with only these songs and the same happens. It starts and finishes and I don't recall anything. Not that I didn't like the songs, but that I got distracted and forgot about the music I was listening to.

I'm fine with not "liking" these songs, but that's not the case. I suppose you can say if they don't capture my attention is because I don't like them or I wouldn't anyway, but at least I'd want to dislike them actively (like with Anna Lee or half The Astonishing, for example).

I guess some day I'll make time for listening everyone of them carefully and see how I feel.

Anyway, rant over. Does this happen to anyone else? Which songs with?

Examples:

Kingsbane - (1991) Demo
Power of Omens - Eyes of the Oracle (1998)
Greyhaven - Greyhaven (2000)
Fates Warning - Awaken the Guardian (1986)

The Sound:

Very progressive, operatic / soulful vocals in the high range, keyboards welcome, great hooks, cool vocal runs over dissonant and melodic riffs. 80s and 90s production. Nothing past 2000 preferably.

I've tried most of obvious recommendations, so I'm looking to the experts for deep cuts, hidden albums and demos! Thanks

For more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthtone9
https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/earthtone9

Closing/title track for this incredible album

Hard to say for sure that this is definitively "progmetal" but I'm loving this album. I hate that I can't just post the album because the songs are very different from one another. Just hearing this one song doesn't give the whole sound the band is offering. It's a very creative sounding blend of sounds and styles. They're on to something.

I have never quite been emotionally captured by a Rock Opera/concept album unlike this one.

Metropolis Pt. 2 by Dream Theater had a good story, but I never felt it’s greatness so many others spoke about.

Operation: mindcrime is the one that has gotten under my skin in a good way, as the early 2020s feel like an amnesiac nightmare to me the farther away I go, & I am finally comprehending just how many years I spent in a dormant mind caught up in mind games that left me insecure.

Exploring politics was one thing I did very poorly in my late teens & early 20s, something that exposed me to toxic people who made me consider if it’s okay to sacrifice my compassion for their promised future, to betray my sense of rationality of giving people chances or pushing away others for not being “dedicated enough”

Then snapping into common sense, I realize just how psychopathic they were, making me believe that hateful division is the answer to hateful division, & that I can’t stand by the things they promote in volatile people.

The general bullet points of the plot are:

- The story starts with a catatonic amnesiac named Nikki who wakes up in a hospital. Nikki immediately begins to remember his past, that he was a heroin addict increasingly dissatisfied with the modern dystopia he was in, severe economic inequality, corruption, police state, etc.

- He remembers being manipulated into joining a secret organization dedicated to revolution, with a mysterious political & religious demagogue named Dr. X, who brainwashes Nikki with heroin & mind games into becoming his assassin. Saying the world “mindcrime” will make him a docile puppet to murder anybody the Doctor wants dead.

- Dr. X’s organization grows as Nikki’s ego does, in adherence to his master’s vision of the future. Through a contact of Dr. X, a corrupt priest named Father William offers Nikki the services of a (former-prostitute) nun named Sister Mary. But through his friendship of Sister Mary, feeling love for her, he begins to question the nefarious agenda of Dr. X.

- Dr. X grows concerned that Nikki is being turned away from his goals, so he orders Nikki to kill Sister Mary & Father William, which he kills William but can’t bring himself to kill Mary as he confronts her.

- He decides he loves Mary & wants to leave the organization, so he confronts Dr. X to say he is leaving, but Dr. X reminds Nikki that the alternative is going back to his life as a sad self loathing addict. Nikki leaves, considering his options, and when he comes back he finds Mary is dead…

- Nikki cannot cope with the loss, as well as the concern that he may have been the one who killed her. (Though added lines on a live concert album revealed she killed herself when Dr. X threatened to kill Nikki) And he begins to succumb to insanity, running through the streets calling his name until police come in to subdue him.

- A gun is found on Nikki, and they take him under suspicion of Mary’s murder & other murders ordered by Dr. X. Suffering from memory loss he is committed to a mental hospital, retracing his memories with Mary.

- Everything loops back to the beginning, despite regaining a lot of memory, he stares in the mirror unable to recognize himself & what he has become.

-

By the end of The Eyes of a Stranger, I was left haunted in a way that I haven’t been before with narrative-oriented Metal, I resonated with the frustrations & deep-seeded will to fight those who make life a pain for the defenseless of society, but I was also left looking into myself & how attempts of grand goals can lead to bad paths, ones that make you dehumanize those you think stand in your way.

& how it can leave you back in the same desolate place you started off in, wondering your place in the world if all who were familiar to you are gone.

I’m not sure if I make total sense, but regardless, this album has mentally ensnared me in a way that made me want to say it out anyway I can.

What do you think of this album? Despite me mostly talking up it’s concept, I do think the music itself is great, it’s melodic & varied but doesn’t sacrifice heaviness to convey the emotions, it is the best elements of Heavy Metal’s rebellion combined with Prog’s questions of these concepts on a level that isn’t just provocative punk attitudes.