Progressive Thrash
Located in 2 routes
Progressive thrash keeps thrash's speed and palm-muted aggression but threads it through odd time signatures, abrupt tempo and key changes, dissonant jazz-fusion chord voicings and labyrinthine, through-composed song structures. Riffs are angular and technical, basslines are busy and often fretless or lead-melodic, and drumming layers polyrhythms over thrash beats; vocals range from a wild operatic wail to a clean mid-range or a thrash bark. Tempos shift constantly and solos lean atonal and cerebral. The mood is intellectual, cold and intricate, prizing compositional ambition and instrumental virtuosity over the genre's usual blunt-force drive.
History
Progressive thrash grew out of mid-1980s technical thrash as bands chased complexity beyond speed. Austin's Watchtower fused thrash with jazz fusion on 'Energetic Disassembly' (1985) and the landmark 'Control and Resistance' (1989), pioneering the technical-thrash blueprint alongside Texas' Toxik and Watchtower's odd-meter ambition. Switzerland's Coroner brought clinical European precision from 'Punishment for Decadence' (1988) through 'Mental Vortex' (1991), while Canada's Voivod added dissonant, sci-fi atonality on 'Dimension Hatross' (1988) and 'Nothingface' (1989). Germany's Mekong Delta and Sieges Even and the US's Realm and Heathen pushed the same envelope. The style directly seeded technical death metal and the wider progressive-metal movement, and its key acts still tour and record.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Metallum (Metal Archives) band/album entries
- The Progressive Subway and Invisible Oranges feature articles
- AllMusic technical/progressive thrash artist profiles