Modern Prog

Hey, what goes around comes around. Supposedly hung, drawn, and quartered by punk, progressive rock refused to call it quits, and was given an injection of fresh blood throughout the '90s and beyond by the likes of Tennessee's Glass Hammer — founded by Steve Babb and Fred Schendel, here covering Dan Fogelberg's 1979 hit "Longer" in a cascade of elegant keyboard runs — and the U.K.'s innovative Porcupine Tree, who took their early cues form Pink Floyd while expanding their horizons in the context of newer musical genres and styles (e.g. ambient trance): the title track from 2005's ghost-movie-concept Deadwing plunges us through a firestorm of guitars into an intriguing modern nightmare. Behold: modern prog. The planets align for the Mars Volta, in Next Steps.

Prog rock's bold push into the 21st century is being spearheaded by the Mars Volta, the collective tag for Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López (supported by various friends), who have given us the classic and superbly titled modern-prog tracks "Eunuch Provocateur" — which not only anticipates the band's full-length debut album with the lyric "Dethroned by the comatorium . . . de-loused in the comatorium," but also plays the words of nursery rhyme "Itsy Bitsy Spider" backwards at the end — and "Inertiatic ESP." Their work is a furnace of rock creativity, as is that of Muse, who have charted a course to stadium supremacy on the back of vocal histrionics, deliriously overblown production, and pop-edged mega-ballads like "Sing for Absolution." Big ideas, gargantuan sounds, geekish perfectionism — all's there, in our Modern Prog Deep Cuts.

You simply can't deny the poetic ambition of modern prog. What radio DJ in the world could ever deny him- or herself the opportunity of introducing "Lycanthrope" by Thinking Plague (the Colorado outfit that has been around since 1982) or "Aquaplane" by Overseer (the U.K.-based DJ who has specialised in punching several megatons above his weight, carving a niche where freak big-beat meets grandiose metal)? All of these artists will take your appreciation of rock to another level — maybe another dimension. Check out Norwegian art rockers Gazpacho, whose "Desert Flight" from 2009's Tick Tock uses constellations as stepping stones, and "Thank You for the Evil" from Phideaux's big-bro/eco-crisis project, Doomsday Afternoon (2007).

At its best, modern progressive rock does exactly what it says on the label — it moves rock forward by experimenting with concept, sound, and scale. The running time for each of the tracks in our playlist is way above the average; you just can't rush artists — Frogg Cafe, Vox Tempus, and the highly percussive Pat Mastelotto (of King Crimson) — who take time to express their visions. Nearly a quarter of our Modern Prog Essentials broach the eight-minute barrier, and that in itself is a gauntlet in the chops of anyone who maintains that modern rock is merely a series of short attention spans strung together with no concession to coherence. Collectively these tracks constitute vintage wine to punk's frothing lager . . . and they only get better with time.