You speak the true-true! But that range though, keeping up is a fool’s errand.

I’ll always feel “closest” to Colors as it came into my life at the right time. Sonically though… either Parallax I or The Silent Circus… ugh but The Great Misdirect slaps so hard.

Ooo thanks for reminding me about Metal Archives… are they still a bit elitist? I seem to recall them being opposed to anything vaguely metalcore.

I’m considering switching back to Spotify for just that reason. I jumped over to Tidal a few years back as they pay artists more, but their recommendation algorithms are garbage in comparison.

If this gets traction, maybe we could sticky it?

I hate to say it, but I feel like I’m kind of mainstream as far as prog metal goes; I really don’t know if I’d consider anything in my list lesser known. I think my issue is that I have no idea how to find new music anymore (short of EveryNoiseAtOnce, which I just remembered existed).

The first album that came to mind, which is definitely not metal, is 100% Yes by Melt Yourself Down. I believe the genre description I read was “Afrolatin inspired post-bop punk-jazz”, so of course I had to check it out.