Just wondering if anyone could recommend me some good new heavy/progressive bands? I seem to have fallen out of love with the genre over the last year or so as I havent found any good bands doing anything interesting. Just seems like my favourtie bands making original music have all been around for ages - Dillinger Escape Plan, Mastodon, Meshuggah for instance. Last great album I bought was Karnivool - Sound Awake. Hell, even Porcupine Tree and Mars Volta's newest CDs were average. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough since delving more into electronic music.... Someone help me out here guys!

Heavy music has become such a touchy matter. I can name off bands like Veil of Maya and After The Burial and tell you they are great (in my opinion of course) but someone else will of course say they suck. Heavy music is full of elitists, you just gotta try things out before making a big judgment.

Check out:
Periphery
Tesseract
Animals As Leaders
Between The Buried and Me(newer stuff is more accessible, I'd say.)
Darkane

Yep, you're not looking hard enough. Aussie-wise there's still Dead Letter Circus, 12 Foot Ninja and Sleep Parade (among others. I'm assuming you know Cog if you know Karnivool). Check them out. Do you have Cynic's last album, 'Traced in Air'? Get it now if not, it's a Prog fan's wet dream. Also, there's an album by a band called 'Exivious' floating around, they're a Cynic/Textures offshoot. Their debut album is excellent. Do you know Gojira? Amazing Porogressive Metal band, truly unique, grab some of their stuff, starting with 'From Mars to Sirius'. Just a few to get you started...

Also, some more Aussie straight out Heavy stuff: Check out Sydney industrial Black Metal band 'The Amenta'. Amazing band, more the 1st album 'Occasus', but the last album 'NoN' is amazing too. Melbourne band 'Synthetic Breed' are awesome, and highly underrated. If you like Meshuggah you'll like them. Psycroptic are excellent of course. There's also Brisbane Black Metal band 'Empyrean', who are world class. The list just goes on and on. You just have to open your eyes and ears. Listen to Haugy's Metal show on JJJ tonight, he's always playing the cool new releases.

[Octillus]

Just wondering if anyone could recommend me some good new heavy/progressive bands? I seem to have fallen out of love with the genre over the last year or so as I havent found any good bands doing anything interesting. Just seems like my favourtie bands making original music have all been around for ages - Dillinger Escape Plan, Mastodon, Meshuggah for instance. Last great album I bought was Karnivool - Sound Awake. Hell, even Porcupine Tree and Mars Volta's newest CDs were average. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough since delving more into electronic music.... Someone help me out here guys!

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that you weren't counting Addicted in this discussion were you?

the only 2 bands i can think of that established themselves in the 00's that i found to be great heavy music were Gojira, Yakuza and My Disco. Yakuza dont get much hype though even though they deserve it. im sure theres more but i cant think of any others at the moment.

[JuZ]

I'll go out on a bit of a limb here and say it may be a bit of an attitude thing. Also think we're due for a band to come along ala Mastodon and shift everyone's focus a little. Speaking for myself, my attention has been drawn to other genres in the past 12 months, with exceptions like Dev, Mastodon and a few others.

Perhaps it's a combination of heavy music not getting huge exposure and your current enjoyment of other genres?

That said, theres' good stuff out there. As mentioned, Gojira are excellent. Scar Symmetry have done some good stuff. Textures' last album was really excellent, I think, and Mastodon's last was a true masterpiece of heavy rock/metal... it''ll go down as one of the greats. Animals As Leaders was good, if a little indulgent. And Devin Townsend does alright, I guess...

oh Isis, Battle of mice and Made Out of Babies are cool

I'm probably a bit older than most people on here. I've watched every single generation, bar none, sit around telling itself 'only the old stuff is any good, I can't find any new stuff I like'. I've heard it over and over for 25 years, and I'm sure they were saying it way back before that as well. It's basically just a lazy cop out. And I used to be completely guilty of it myself.
The thing is, there's ALWAYS good stuff out there, you just need to open your mind and then make an effort to find it. In this day and age, there's more of EVERYTHING, which means there's more quality stuff out there than ever before, but there's also more rubbish to sift through to find the good stuff. It's harder to find, but it's there. You just have to WANT to find it.
I may be at an advantage being a Rock/Metal writer. I get sent lots of new stuff to review, and it still has me scratching my head saying 'wow, that band's incredible, how did I not hear of them before?'. It's because of the glut of new releases coming out. Don't allow yourself to get jaded by some of the crap you hear. Every crap album you hear brings you closer to something good.

Not sure if ya'll think Protest the Hero is heavy enough to mention, but I think they're great. And Textures of course. Tesseract will be one to watch out for this year.

If Psyopus isn't too crazy for you, they are INSANE, and way original. Animals as Leaders as mentioned...I'm sure there is more, but I am so busy I don't have time to care.

There are always the classics. Death, Cynic, Spastic Ink blah blah...

Sometimes Ihsahn's solo stuff is pretty progressive. Especially "The Adversary"

'Smells like Teen Spirit' killed heavy music is the sad truth of the matter.

I have no idea why ipods and their ilk have such huge capacity. A Sony Walkman and cassettes of Back in Black, Master of Puppets and Piece of Mind is all you need. If you have a friend to borrow Holy Diver and British Steel off, you're set for life.

Just a few.

Voyager - Bordering on a Euro power metal and progressive sound. Great atmosphere and catchy tunes for any occasion.
Alarum - A mixture of Prog and Death metal. Similar to Cynic or Death, yet a little more rough around the edges.
Astriaal - Technical black metal band with a sound that mimics Candlemass and an atmospheric Immortal.
Be'lakor - Awesome proggy death metal Melbourne band. No words can describe...just listen too them, you won't be disappointed.
Ayreon - Epic prog rock project from Arjen Lucessen. Also check out Star One and Guilt Machine.
Kalmah - Awesome symphonic/melodic death metal band from Finland.
Rage - One of the pioneering german power metal bands. Very catchy stuff. The band's new album is fantastic.
Planet X - Progressive instrumental jazz fusion.
Mnemic - Industrial metal. Sounds similar to Meshuggah, Fear Factory and Sonic Syndicate.
Deathstars - Mish-mash of Rammstien and Marilyn Manson.
Pain - Industrial/Pop Rock/Electro musical project. In the same fashion as Ayreon, yet not as melodramatic.

There is so many great bands out there, it's hard to keep up with it all. I find it hard to keep up with it all myself.
I tend to go through different stages. Once in awhile I'll stick to the stuff I know and love and wont touch any new stuff then the week after I'll want to go on a spree and get as much new stuff as possible. Even when I get advanced copies of albums from record companies and what not, there still doesn't seem to be enough time to listen to them all. Wish we had more time.

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I'm familiar with a quite a few of those bands.

Sleep Parades album was great and DLC's might be good if they can break out of their formula a little. I remember downloading some Tesseract songs, they were ace, have they got around to making an album yet? Will check out Animals as Leaders and Cynic's newest one and a few others (although havent Cynic been around for like ever?).

Everyone seems to crap on about how good BTBAM are, I thought they were total fucking aimless wank when I listened to them, maybe that was their older stuff.

As for Addicted (I did prefer Ki more though), the point I was trying to make is that the best albums around at the moment are being made by artists around for ages (ie Devin). I'm kinda looking for some fresh music doing something different. It seems to me (from what I've heard) bands are just trying to be more technical than each other, even though Meshuggah out poly-rhythmed everyone 15 years ago...

Everyone seems to crap on about how good BTBAM are, I thought they were total fucking aimless wank when I listened to them, maybe that was their older stuff.

O_o

Dont know which you've heard, but Alaska, Colors, and The Great Misdirect are everything but aimless wank. Even their original stuff was just very chaotic/grind-y stuff.

KYLESA!