Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal

Front Cover
Bazillion Points Books, 2010 - Music - 364 pages
Revered former Metal Maniacs editor Jeff Wagner analyzes the heady side of metal in this exhaustive narrative history of a relentlessly ambitious musical subculture. Beginning with the hugely influential mid-1970s efforts of Rush and King Crimson, Wagner unfurls a huge tapestry of sounds and styles, including Queensryche, Fates Warning, and Dream Theater; extreme prog pioneers Voivod and Celtic Frost; Norway’s post-black metal avant garde acts Ulver and Arcturus; and the 1990s global movement that spawned Ayreon, Pain of Salvation, and others.

Fighting a tide of tradition and conservatism, progressive metal has proven to be one of the most viable, malleable forms in all of modern music; here its preeminent scholar tells the tale.
 

Contents

ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCE I InventionReinvention I
3
All Moving Parts
9
ByTor at the Gates of Delirium
21
Open Mind for a Different View
33
THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY 5 Passing the Threshold
49
Killed by Tech
68
A Constant Motion 9༠
90
A QUANTUM LEAP FORWARD 8 Sublimation from Underground I Voivod Celtic Frost
105
North America
147
Florida
161
From 2112 to 1993
181
GENETIC BLENDS
195
INTO DATA OVERLOAD
285
and the Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth
330
Thanks
350
Copyright

Europe
129

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