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Heavy Metal Thunder Progressive Death Metal

Genres Heavy Metal Speed Metal Thrash Metal Death Metal Progressive Death Metal

Progressive Death Metal

Death metal rebuilt around light and shade — acoustic passages, jazz harmony and long arcs, with the growl kept as one colour among many.

Active years
1991 – present
Origin
Sweden / USA
Family
Progressive Metal
Bands here
14

Start here

Four records in order of how easy they are to get into — which is not the same as best first.

  1. Blackwater Park Opeth, 2001 The landmark

    The record that proved this could be popular. Acoustic passages and death growls in the same song, arranged by someone who plainly loves seventies prog, and produced by Steven Wilson to sound like both.

    Listen to Blackwater Park

  2. Symbolic Death, 1995

    Chuck Schuldiner's best record and the moment death metal grew up. The riffs are still death metal; everything around them — the arrangements, the solos, the lyrics — belongs to a different band.

    Listen to Symbolic

  3. From Mars to Sirius Gojira, 2005

    French, enormous, and about whales. The heaviest thing here and the most accessible at the same time, which should not be possible.

    Listen to From Mars to Sirius

  4. Colors Between the Buried and Me, 2007

    Eight tracks that run together as one, and it goes from blast beats to honky-tonk piano without apologising. The deep end, because the first listen is bewildering and the fifth is not.

    Listen to Colors

What it sounds like

Light and shade, at death metal volume. The growl and the heaviness stay, but the songs are built like progressive rock: acoustic passages, clean singing, jazz harmony, tempo changes and arcs that run ten minutes. Mellotron and piano turn up. The contrast between the quietest and loudest parts of a track is the point, and the growl works as one voice among several rather than the only one. Compared with technical death metal it cares about composition rather than difficulty, which makes it far more accessible despite being just as extreme at its heaviest. Compared with progressive metal it is genuinely extreme in its heaviest passages, which is the difference that matters — the quiet parts exist to make the loud ones land.

  • Heaviness 4 out of 5
  • Speed 3 out of 5
  • Aggression 3 out of 5
  • Technicality 5 out of 5
  • Darkness 4 out of 5
  • Melody 4 out of 5

Where the name came from

A straightforward compound, in use by the mid-1990s as Opeth, Edge of Sanity and Cynic pulled death metal towards progressive rock's song structures. Opeth's Orchid (1995) and Blackwater Park (2001) made the label stick.

The bands

Hear these first

  • Opeth Sweden
  • Death USA
  • Gojira France
  • Between the Buried and Me USA
  • Edge of Sanity Sweden

And 9 more

  • Gorod France
  • Hacride France
  • Klone France
  • Scarve France
  • Atheist USA
  • Cynic USA
  • Rivers of Nihil USA
  • Fallujah USA
  • Obscura Germany

Where it happened

Counting this genre and everything descended from it.

  • France French Extreme & Atmospheric Metal 5 bands

If you liked this

Closest in sound outside this family, leaning towards the similar or the gentler rather than straight into the deep end.