*** Gretchen Goes to Nebraska by King’s X – Good, but There Are More Complex Prog Rock Bands.

I favor what is more complex, just as a matter of personal preference.  I think King’s X are  good band, and though you probably won’t love them, they won’t disappoint you either.

When I listen to this album I can’t help but think that King’s X is incorrectly billed.  To me, King’s X does not seem like a Prog Rock band.  The music comes up just shy of why I would deem as Progressive Rock.  When I think of Prog Rock, names that come to mind are Rush, Dream Theater, Planet X, Queensyrche, and Ring of Fire.  There is no way that this album is in the same league as what those bands and several others regular output.  That actually might be a plus for King’s X, because sometimes complex music can be exhausting to listen to.  That said, compared to what you are likely to hear on the radio, King’s X is probably more complex than what the local rock station will consistently play.

I don’t hear anything different from King’s X and many other bands that are just considered to be rock.  Take for instance maybe the Dave Matthew’s Band, Chicago, or Steely Dan.  They aren’t billed as progressive rock, even though there music is superior, in my opinion to King’s X.  For example, I estimate the complexity of this band as slightly above or at the level of the rock band AC/DC.  I’ll also add that they rock fairly hard.

This makes me suspicious that this band was billed as a progressive rock band instead of a rock n’ roll band because corporate America correctly estimated that this is a way that they could achieve more sales, all the while not offending anyone, and filling a very small niche, which might be termed a Pseudo Progressive Rock.  That is, there is a gazillion Indie bands, but there aren’t so many Prog Rock bands, and that is probably because many musicians prefer to play jazz and classical to rock, especially from the generations King’s X appeals to.

As a general rule those that like progressive rock in my experience have a much more voracious appetite for music, and would be more likely to give a band that they had never heard of a chance, even though they had never heard them before.  Unfortunately, I have yet to hear of a radio station that specialized in Progressive music, and it is such that this whole genre while at the national level, is virtually what many would call underground.  That is, while the market is saturated with Indie rock bands and has been for some time; it is not saturated with Progressive Rock bands, and though the number of Progressive Rock fans are far outnumbered by Rock fans, there is a market for bands that can sneak in under the billing of being a Progressive Rock band, and be more likely to make a living through a marginally questionable categorization.

This is a trend that I feel is quite common in music.  For example, Stratovarious is billed as Progressive Power Metal, but realistically there is hardly any difference from them and bands like Hammer Fall that don’t  claim to be progressive and play “Power Metal,” and the same is true that Stratovarious as a Progressive Rock band fails to achieve the complexity of Metallica, Slayer, or Megadeth when they are playing speed metal.