54 albums · 1967–2024

Progressive rock, from King Crimson and Yes to Canterbury, Italian prog, prog metal and today

· 2 min read · by 1001 Albums

Yes on a dark stage with a coloured floor: a singer in red at the microphone, a bassist in a striped suit, a guitarist on the left, the drummer behind and a keyboard player in white on the right
King Crimson's eight musicians standing among three drum kits before a blue curtain, the audience in front holding up their phonesSteven Wilson, his long hair over his face, playing a green electric guitar in front of blue and orange stage lights
Yes in concert in Indianapolis, August 1977. Photo: Rick Dikeman, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · King Crimson on stage in Japan on their Uncertain Times tour, December 2018. Photo: Masahiro TAKAGI, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Steven Wilson with Porcupine Tree at the Arena in Poznań, Poland, November 2007. Photo: Grzegorz Chorus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Progressive rock grew out of the psychedelic rock of late-sixties England, when bands began to write long pieces in several parts and borrowed from classical music, jazz and folk. The Moody Blues made Days of Future Passed with an orchestra in 1967, Procol Harum and the Nice put the organ at the centre, and in 1969 King Crimson's first album came out. In the seventies it filled concert halls in Britain, spread to Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands, and after punk it lived on in neo-prog, in the prog metal of the nineties and in bands that still play it today.

From Britain come Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, Van der Graaf Generator, Gentle Giant, Camel and Renaissance, and from Canterbury Soft Machine, Hatfield and the North, Robert Wyatt and the Henry Cow of Legend. Italy has Premiata Forneria Marconi, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso and Area, France Magma and Gong, the Netherlands Focus, Germany Can and Eloy, Brazil O Terço. In North America Rush and Kansas played it, and Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells and Supertramp's Crime of the Century are here too. Marillion and IQ stand for the neo-prog of the eighties, Dream Theater, Tool, Opeth and Mastodon for prog metal, Anekdoten and Wobbler for the Scandinavian revival. Later come Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson, the Mars Volta, Riverside, Big Big Train, Haken, Leprous, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and black midi.

The list has 54 records from 1967 to 2024. It leaves out the live albums, among them Yes's Yessongs and Genesis Live, most of the jazz-rock fusion of the same years, the Rock in Opposition bands after Henry Cow, the prog of Japan and Eastern Europe, and the albums Deezer does not have, among them Caravan's In the Land of Grey and Pink and Änglagård's Hybris. About 53 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

Rock 80%Metal 12%Jazz 2%Other 6%
  • Rock 80%
  • Metal 12%
  • Jazz 2%
  • Other 6%

The genres named most: progressive rock, rock, art rock, progressive metal, symphonic prog, psychedelic rock.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 12 countries: United Kingdom 31, United States 5, Italy 3, Sweden 3, Canada 2 and 7 more. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Genres first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.