Best of the Two

Definitely Opeth for me; I have tons of respect for Dream Theater for their abilities, although I find their songwriting much less enjoyable.

Wow opeth by so much it is untrue... DT don't do it for me. Even though im a prog metal nut and have repeatedly tried Dream theater thinking i must be missing something.... theyv just never clicked for me

Opeth! My favorite band too lol

I went with DT, although I love Opeth, too.

This doesn't really have anything to do with my favorite style of metal, as such. I just think that DT are more important and have had a bigger impact in prog metal than Opeth has. Also, had there been no DT, there would be no Opeth - �kerfeldt himself has stated that it is because of DT that Opeth sound the way they do. I love both bands and both bands have made songs that rock my world and songs that don't do anything for me. I just like DT a tad more overall.


Edited by Time Signature - 15 May 2010 at 6:52am

This was very hard to choose between, but I had to go with my first metal band, Dream Theater. Since they were both progish in a way, the only seperating factor was that without DT, for me, there would be no Opeth, or metal for that instance.

Oh, this is hard. My two favorite bands of all time..... but I have to go with Dream Theater. One, Dream Theater was the first prog band I ever got into, and from Dream Theater I got into Opeth. They virtually created Prog metal (along with Queensryche and Fates Warning), and they were by far the most successful of the 3. They themselves were a major influence on Opeth, thereby making Dream Theater better, by the width of a hair, in my mind.

Yea, that got the ball rolling but what we know of as prog metal today essentially started with DT

Ha! Both of you are wrong! 

Here's my chronological evolution of prog metal's key releases... Dream Theater popularized prog metal, but saying they began it is quite a stretch. Here we go...

1985 - Watchtower's Energetic Disassembly



1986 - Queensryche's Rage For Order



1988 - Iron Maiden's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son



1988 - Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime



1989 - Fates Warning's Perfect Symmetry



1992 - Dream Theater's Images and Words



Of course, there's more but without these albums, traditional prog metal as we know it wouldn't exist IMO.

J-Man wrote: Ha! Both of you are wrong!  Here's my chronological evolution of prog metal's key releases... Dream Theater popularized prog metal, but saying they began it is quite a stretch. Here we go... 1985 - Watchtower's Energetic Disassembly 1986 - Queensryche's Rage For Order 1988 - Iron Maiden's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son 1988 - Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime 1989 - Fates Warning's Perfect Symmetry 1992 - Dream Theater's Images and Words Of course, there's more but without these albums, traditional prog metal as we know it wouldn't exist IMO.

I was almost right with 7th Son.

^ One could argue that Watchtower's highly technical approach to thrash metal was the beginning of progressive metal. Of course, it's more subtly progressive than, say, Images and Words, but I've always considered it the first prog metal album (and I'm sure I'm not alone in this).