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.
