Let's talk music, no genre boundaries

@toddalin 

Bring back Progressive Rock!  I don’t think there is anything like Gentle Giant anymore.  Gotta be one of my all time favorites.

https://youtu.be/ifRnVEkqB2I

What do mean "bring BACK progressive rock"?

Progressive music has been going strong ever since the Swedish band, Änglagård  released their debut album, Hybris in 1992! Complex, emotional, great musicianship.

They sort of opened the floodgates.

Deus ex Machina - Italian band with frightening levels of musicianship. Vocalist with 5 octave range. Borders on jazz-fusion at times.

After Crying - Hungarian chamber-prog band. Their first 6 releases are killer, 

The Thinking Plague - US band deep in the avant-prog subgenre. Atonal, complex, and "difficult", but worth the effort. 

Flower Kings - Swedish band doing classic sounding prog. Have many releases, although the latest have gotten a bit "been there, done that". 

Haken - British band that straddles the line between prog-metal and classic prog. Complex and emotional, with world class musicianship. Their album "The Mountain" has more than a bit of similarities to Gentle Giant.

Echolyn - US band with some killer releases. "As the World" and "Suffocating the Bloom" are their best, IMO, and have some very Gentle Giant influenced, multi part vocal passages.

Zopp - British band steeped in the Canterbury style (National Health, Hatfield and the North, Caravan). Really good stuff. 

Corima - US band in the Zeuhl style (Magma). Killer stuff, with amazing violin playing by Andrea Calderón.

Koenjihyakkei - Another Zeuhl band, this time from Japan. These guys are intense and can be relentless. Their latest are their best. 

This is just a small sample of some killer prog from very recent times. 

Here’s a list of top prog albums from just 2025.

ProgArchives

As I noted L&M blur the lines.

Mellotron????  We don’t need no stinkin’ mellotron when we got real strings.  A song can be progressive and country at the same time.

https://youtu.be/ccYE-33ddkU

Mellotron?  Certainly synthesizer and orchestra.

https://youtu.be/fbt0Ik_LL2M

Somebody mentioned above not listening to the Beatles. Over the years as my friends gave up their record collections, they gave them to me. I inherited some great classical music that enlarged my range of appreciation. I was also given a Mobil Fidelity box set of the Beatles remastered. I find the one record I listen to over and over is the first record in their White Album with "Back in the USSR." That gets me on so many levels. 

Too much music, not enough time! 

@audio-b-dog 

I don’t see how L & M qualifies as Prog.

Their music did span a range from very radio friendly Pop to something a bit more stylistically adventurous. The latter was displayed in longer tracks that alternated with the 3 minute hits.  Like them or not, their musicianship was always excellent. 

Here’s a good example of them at their (IMHO) best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnI1-AiFrjU&list=OLAK5uy_m-iUndbrYwZmRJpQ-mBScNV53Vq_eHC1I

This track comes from what I consider their most musically ambitious album; "Mother Lode".  

Given J. Messina’s roots in B. Springfield and Poco, I tend to regard him as coming out of Country Rock. I admire guitar players who can say a lot with just a few notes, and he certainly qualifies in this regard.