Progressive rock / metal

Hands down my favorite living Jazz bassist, Victor Wooten, is involved in a progressive metal project. :o


Had no idea he was doing anything like this, I'm really excited to hear it.

Here's an example of what he does as a solo artist, although he's a very diverse player in general:
 
I hope they don't bury him in the mix like most prog metal bands do to their bassists. He's Victor fucking Wooten.
 

Whole song is up!

Wow that was awesome. Consider me hyped. Also never knew I wanted to hear prog metal recorder until now.

jazz from hell said:
More surprised to see Steve Weingart here... Check out Dave Weckl Band's album 'Live (and very plugged in)', if you don't know it, particularly the track 'Mesmer-Eyes' (not the studio version). The track itself isn't special, but from 2:00 on Weingart fights a duel with Gary Meek (sax), and they're fucking killing it -- this includes Tom Kennedy on bass and Dave. If you like heavy jazz fusion riddim...:)
(Couldn't find a Youtube-link, but it's on Spotify)
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That sounds cool, but it's not on USA spotify. :(
 
Too big of a Dream Theater rip off for me. Some cool ideas but not that coherent.

The part with Victor Wooten soloing and the ney type instrument (it's called a blul I think) entering was really good though.
 
Yeah, honestly this isn't as great as I was expecting. The playing is incredible all around, but the song just sounds like The Dance of Eternity for 9 minutes. Also, that rhythm guitar tone is really thin.

EDIT: It gets better around the 6-minute mark with that groove and choir stuff followed by Wooten being Wooten. Wish they had layered some of this stuff up top instead of loading the front end with wank.

EDIT EDIT: I never thought the most exciting thing about Victor Wooten playing prog metal would be the world instrumentation.
 
Blending of the traditional rock band format and Middle Eastern/Western Asian instrumentation rarely fails to impress. It's my dream sound actually, I'd be trying to form a project like that if I knew some people. Qanun, bağlama, oud, ney are among my favorite instruments.

I saw in the description of the video that a qanun was featured but there wasn't a qanun highlight in the song, disappointingly. Blul part was definitely a highlight, sounds like a less deep Armenian version of the Middle Eastern/Turkish ney.
 
Cool, was wondering what the instrument was called. The stuff with the Blul was definitely my favorite.

The second half of the song is definitely better than the first half, but I didn't think the first part was bad. I hope the whole album isn't as guitar heavy as this, because I really liked the keyboard and bass playing.
 
Mosh said:
The second half of the song is definitely better than the first half, but I didn't think the first part was bad. I hope the whole album isn't as guitar heavy as this, because I really liked the keyboard and bass playing.
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My thoughts exactly. The guitar playing isn't bad, but it's certainly the least interesting thing happening there.
 
Finding good progressive metal guitar is a bit difficult these days. Everyone either wants to djent or be John Petrucci.
 
I forgot to post this when I saw it months ago:


A Turkish prog metal project. Ridiculously good playing. Very wanky though.

That is Eren Başbuğ, who works with Dream Theater, on the keyboards.
 
Eren Başbuğ is awesome. He did all the string arrangements on DT12. His orchestral cover of Octavarium is insane.

The most exciting thing about that tune was the bass playing IMO. Guitar playing was at least a bit more unique, had more extreme (death/black) traits to it.

My guitar teacher showed me a middle eastern prog metal group a long time ago that employed eastern harmonies (quarter tones, etc) and rhythms. Was really cool, wish I could remember the name.
 
Mosh said:
Finding good progressive metal guitar is a bit difficult these days. Everyone either wants to djent or be John Petrucci.
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Yeah, it seems like progressive now is just a code word for playing quixididlian mode in Z flat minor at 240 bpm for 10 minutes, or playing some stutter-stop riff in 132/6.5 time. Progressive to me used to mean simply incorporating other elements/styles/approaches outside of the conventional 4 minute blues scale based rock song (see Rush) , but now it pretty much means "Meshuggah theater" (at least that's my perception based on what I keep seeing/hearing).

Edit: I like both Meshuggah and Dream Theater - not a knock on them; it just seems like they are the two most copied metal bands out there right now.
 
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