Alright, as much as I agree that JP is still metal, how on earth is tone not a part of metal to you guys? I remember one of the biggest things that drew me in when i started listening not only were the really heavy riffs, but the tons ans tons of distortion and loud anger. From the early Slayer records to Venom and stuff, no other kind of music uses that dirty and raw sound. If you're parents have to complain that you're music is too loud and it's barely half way up, that's fucking metal \m/ lol.

Its an element, but loud disorted guitar by itself is not a metal only thing. Punk, drone and noise genres are all in favour of distorted, loud guitar/bass/whatever tones. Plus having your music too loud for non interested passers by at half volume can be done with any brickwalled pop singer you childish twat.

Progressive does not have to mean "it progresses the genre". There are tons of Dream Theater and Pain of Salvation clones rehashing the same ideas coming out with albums and it makes sense to put them in the same category.

As far as the more "djenty" metal bands coming out now, it seems to me that people here don't want to recognize it as progressive metal. Fair enough, it doesn't sound like classic Fates Warning or anything. But they also don't want to recognize it as its own subgenre (namely, djent). I am one of the few people who have no problem using djent as a subgenre. Why? Djent bands (get over yourselves, you know the bands that fall in this category) sound very distinct. Many times here people say something along the lines of "It's nothing more than hardcore/metalcore with breakdown riffs in odd time signatures". I have to disagree. The squeaky clean production and the emphasis on virtuosity are distinct from what people have been categorizing with. Personally, just handing the label djent over would just make communication a lot easier when referring to these kinds of bands.

I've never understood how chugging on 1 note could be considered technical or progressive in any way.

Progressive should mean that it progresses the genre. The fact that we call clone bands "progressive metal" or whatever is only a matter of convenience.

Thank you. The above is correct in every possible way.

Reductive rock?

I dont know. I would call them "traditional English prog" or something like that if I was trying to make sense of them to friends. The type of progheads who hang out on progarchives would call them "neoprog", I think, which in itself suggests a sort of kind of backward-looking approach. While I know there are a lot of "neoprog" fans, the whole thing also seems to be a bit of a joke to modern progheads.

It doesn't matter though. All I've been trying to say is that "progressive" shouldn't be confused with a style of music; it's an adjective used to describe adventurous players/playing that goes outside of "the box".

Edit: FOr the record, I've never been very comfortable with the traditional tag of "progressive metal" either, but I guess some journalists in the 80s probably went gaga over Queensryche using some keyboards and said "oh look, now we have Progressive Metal!" and it stuck. Yeah, Fleurety is way more progressive than any Dream Theater clone...hell, even Lugubrum are.

That's not to say that Queensryche weren't a bit progressive for their time, of course.

God fucking damn it.

Problem?

Progressive metal might be a very vague word and also hard to define but then again, I'd have no idea how to label stuff like, say Fates Warning's Perfect Symmetry otherwise.

It seems my statements were pretty inflammatory so I feel obliged to clarify myself.

First of all, I've noticed many of you saying that "metal isn't just about being as brutal or heavy as possible!!" but I guess it should come as no surprise when I say I totally do subscribe to that belief. The way I see it, very early traditional metal from the 70s/80s (NWOBHM and USPM are extensions of this) comes from an entirely different way of thinking than the more extreme genres. The way they achieve heaviness (crunchy "metal" riffs, high pitched singers, twin lead guitars, etc) is entirely different than how death/black metal (harsh vocals, blastbeats, tremolo riffs) achieved heaviness and how today's tech-death/deathcore/djent bands achieve heaviness (even more guttural vocals, blastbeats/complex drum patterns, extremely fast lead guitars which are not limited to solos, the inclusion of breakdowns).

I did not grow up in the 80s. I did grow up listening to 80s metal though; I'm sure you guys all think I'm some lame poser deathcore kid but I was way into Judas Priest, Jag Panzer, Fates Warning, Exodus, Overkill, and Motorhead or whatever for many years before I ever got into today's metal. I've seen most of those old bands live, but when I do I can literally feel the generation gap between me and them, between what I consider brutal and "metal enough" for myself and what they're actually performing. It doesn't stop me from enjoying their music or the show, but it does help me realize what makes a band "metal" to me in 2013. In particular, today's bands have a sense of "immediacy" and "urgency" which is unique to them, I think. Perhaps they're written with a sense of instant gratification in mind. Obviously there were fast and attention-grabbing songs in the 80s, but when you compare even the fastest of Judas Priest's 80s stuff to something from today, can you feel that disconnect? It's faster, more intense, it rises and falls without regard to strict intro/verse/chorus/bridge format, the production is a different beast entirely than what the 80s were capable.

I'm not saying that Judas Priest isn't metal anymore, because they were one of the first and they defined what metal was in it's earliest incarnation. However, I'm merely placing an emphasis on the change which has occurred since then. Today's metal bands aren't emulating Judas Priest and Fates Warning, they're emulating Origin and Animosity and Decrepit Birth (probably some older bands like Meshuggah and Dying Fetus too). Judas Priest can still be metal because that was all you had back in the day. But the advancements in heaviness/brutality that death metal/deathcore bands have achieved in the past 10 years or so is what really creates the idea of "metal" to me. Because at the end of the day, NWOBHM and USPM will always be closer identified to hard rock or glam metal or some other decidedly unbrutal "proto-metal" genre. The metal shows I've identified with most have been brutal death metal/tech-death/deathcore/djent shows. To me, being a "real metalhead" was always about seeking the heaviest, most brutal, sickest and challenging metal you could find. It's the same idea that made kids want to be heavier than Venom/Slayer etc, the same idea that pushed old school death metal into NYDM/slam, and the same idea that merged the heaviest elements of hardcore into death metal bands.

With that said, it seems foolish that the ideal of metalness is rehashing 80s bands/imagery like Crescent Shield or Holy Grail do. We've done that. It was metal. Let's make some new metal already! Even if that means extensively using rhythms and chugging instead of playing that goddamn riff for the millionth time.

Also, I feel the need to clarify that I consider a band's "scene" to be a pretty big player in this decision as well. I know the Metal Archives doesn't and that's fine. But when it comes to borderline, crossover bands which are ever so present in modern metal, I think it's important to consider. For example, take one of the original convergences between metal and hardcore, the OG ones from before melodeath even existed. Crossover bands like Cro-Mags and Sick of it All and metalcore ones like Earth Crisis and Integrity we're originally hated by most of the hardcore scene because they were "too metal" or "rockstars who didn't care about the music". See the parallel? But despite their metal influences, they were not metal bands: these bands were hardcore at heart and the way the played and presented themselves was in line with what hardcore was at the time. Fastforward to today, when those bands are either broken up or over 25 years old, they are acknowledge as "true hardcore" by fans who were in diapers/nonexistent when those bands were actually relevant. I feel Periphery and many djent bands belong in the metal scene by way of their presentation, they bands they tour with, the solos they include (definitely a metal element which is not found in hardcore bands!!) etc. Even though they include many types of riffs which seem foreign and unusual to someone who grew up with Iron Maiden and Metallica, they still have the feel of a metal band.

For any of you oldz out there, admit it: if something like this had come out in the 80s, your head would have fucking exploded! And you'd probably call it metal too.

It's the "complex time signatures".

Haha...
Seriously though - can't they do both?

I'm going to be merciful and barely talk about how ridiculous your "there are new metal genres so the old metal genres aren't metal anymore if you weren't there when it happened" argument is. Because not only is it not even wrong, it requires you to ignore a huge portion of metal development. Genres don't simply develop in more extreme directions. Power metal went in the crunchy USPM manner, but also went in the sickly weak super mellow Fairyland direction too. Death metal went brutal and technical, but it also went melodic and progressive. Black metal went norsecore, but it also went into folk and ambient directions too. There is no linear increase of extremity.

Instead I want to pick on you for your false... no, false won't cut it, your retarded dichotomy that you need to either appreciate the recent trend in vaguely metalish alternacore or you don't want metal to progress beyond 1984. Actual metal is always advancing and changing. The last few years have shown a boon for spastic, dissonant black metal bands like DsO, Dodecahedron and Svartidaudi, twisted, cavernous death metal like Portal, Mitochondrion, Abyssal and Antediluvian. Power metal has been been married to extreme metal elements by groups like Satan's Host or Charred Walls of the Damned and doom has just come out of funeral and torture doom explosions in the last decade, and is now moving in many mellower directions, some old fashioned, some not, as well as many takes on stoner doom. Metal isn't stubbornly stagnant, it's developing, but it's developing into more metal, unrelated developments which happen to have one or two similar traits are not the only way metal will move forward.

Unrelated to picking on TheExodusAttack, my take on Abom's progressive thing. Indeed, "progressive" is not a genre, it is a descriptive term, but the definition of it has certainly changed from it's original purpose. While it originally served to state that a band was inventive and exploratory for it's genre, somewhere along the way after the big 70's prog explosion it's become synonimous with long sprawling compositions with varying instrumentation, much like how black metal was usurped from literally anything satanically themed. Is it logically the best name for it? No, but it's stuck, and that's basically what the "progressive" descriptor means these days. So progressive anything is those old prog rock tropes applied to the genre, meaning progressive metal, is regular heavy metal plus prog elements, not just progressive any style metal ie black/death/doom etc.

TheExodusAttack, I think you're seriously confusing "heaviness" with metal influence. The two are distinct: they don't necessarily come hand-in-hand nor does the presence of one have to indicate the other. Metal was not defined by its comparative "heaviness" to everything else, even back in the 1970s - at that time I'm sure there were already early industrial/noise acts who were much heavier than the NWOBHM/early doom metal bands, so to say that these bands were classified by the intensity of their music, rather than the types of riffs, compositions, etc. that they used to create songs, seems rather short-sighted.

I can relate to the ideal of searching for the absolute endpoints of intensity in regards to music, since my tastes revolve around that sort of thing to an extent, but you have to realise that from the standpoint of classification you can't simply group "everything that is heavy" into a genre like that. Djent, for example, has roots disconnected rather far from the meat of the metal scene - it was spawned out of an exploration of groove metal (which is a rather borderline genre in and of itself), which was then toned down to retain the grooves and not the riffs, and mixed in a blender with various other things (metalcore, mathcore, perhaps a bit of post-rock, etc.). Associating with a scene, in my mind, doesn't make a band like Periphery or Tesseract metal; the reason for that being that, from a purely musical standpoint, their origins can be traced to areas of development that aren't based in one of the major genres (thrash, heavy, doom, death, black, etc.)

To attempt to illuminate the issue with this sort of historical revisionism, let's try to compare metal's evolution to the animal kingdom. Say that, somewhere, on a remote Pacific island, you find a new species that - superficially - looks sort of like a dog. ("Sort of" meaning its ears are too long, snout is too short, it's too prone to breakdowns instead of riffs, whatever.) DNA testing and physiological observation reveals that it is in fact a closer relative of the cat than the domesticated dog, and that the dog is a much, much more distant cousin of this new species in regards to its path of evolution. So, as a scientist attempting to describe this creature, what would you do? Do you completely redefine the traditional definition of a dog, trying to say that the new creature is one by comparing elements of both which tend to miss the big picture of the animal's anatomy? Or would you relate it to cats, because it is physiologically closer to a cat despite the fact that it shares some features with dogs? Now you might try to argue, then, that music is a completely different playing field compared to the rather hard science which is biology, but at the same time I'm pretty sure that with the help of music theory you could dissect the riffs of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and others, and find explicit melodic ties that bind their musical works together.

By the way, I'm not sure if this is the issue within your mind or not, but you don't have to classify bands as metal to justify your enjoyment of them. Seriously, I'll be the first to admit that I like a lot of nu-metal, djent, deathcore, and so on, but I don't think of it as metal at all. And they don't have to be metal for me to like them.

I raged so much when I read TheExodusAttack's post, I will not even bother with a long post, Ghenghis and MT did it.

"To me, being a "real metalhead" was always about seeking the heaviest, most brutal, sickest and challenging metal you could find." and then you link Veil of Maya You live in your own secluded and biased historical revisionism. Your arguments about djent bands are also very ridiculous. Even if they are in the "scene", it doesn't make a band like Periphery a metal one. And anyway, the bands they tour with are chosen by the labels and they're present there because they're trendy (remember the amount of butthurtness when the Summer Slaughter tour headlined by Cannibal Corpse was announced). It's a matter of convenience and $$$$ decisions and a "heavy bands for kids" tour.

I also hard at your last sentence. I believe most 80s metalheads would had call this band "shit" and nothing else.

Sorry for the attacks, my jimmies were rustled.

They also have a short shelf life because anything that's done for effect rather than the actual music is utter shit.

It's never about the extremes you go to, it's always about the songs. Your virtuosity, quirky time signatures, how brutal it sounds, how high you can sing, how fast or slow you can play, how nasty your growls are, how weird or outrageous you look.... none of this means shit if it's not done to serve the actual songs.

That's what more and more modern metal (and proto-metal) bands don't understand. They attach importance to details and they build songs that serve these details when it's the other way around. You're supposed to push the envelope in order to create an amazing musical experience.

But whatever. If 20 or so nerds want to cram themselves up in shitty bars to listen to irrelevant music that's totally forgotten 3 months later, then so be it. Unfortunately, that's no way to build a following and create classic music that will last for generations.

Just saying something, TheExodusAttack: metal is metal, being heavy, thrash, death, black, etc. The fact that metal has become more extreme over time doesn't change the fact the 'less' extreme metal is still metal. And again, it's not about being brutal or downtuning the guitar to Z, it's about the riffs, imagery, delivery and heaviness acording to each style.

If you wanna say that metal is what the 'current trend' says, then you're completely wrong. Metal is always evolving, always growing, but there'll always be a root for the branches that grow, there'll always be 'less' and 'more' extreme metal and also, you need metal elements for metal songs/bands. It doesn't matter how fast for gritty it might be, grindcore is not and will never be metal, no matter is grindcore sounds more brutal and is faster than the most extreme metal genre or band in existence. It's about the origin, the elements that makes metal being metal and that has almost nothing to do with the 'apparent' heaviness.

You might try all that you want, but at least I won't buy the 'Periphery is metal cause ...(everything BUT metal elements). They don't have much (or any) metal riffs. The hardcore influence is too prominent. Are they bad cause they're not metal? of course not! it's not metal and that's fine. Just don't try to disguise it as something that is not. Will you tell me that the first Napalm Death album was metal? of course it's not! it's good? it's one of the finest.

I'll tell you something in a VERY personal level: I almost don't give a shit about the production or how heavy it might sound if the riffs are heavy/brutal in their construction, it'll be for me way heavier than the most brutal grindcore band, cause metal riffs for me delivers something that I can hear/sense and other styles don't. If you combine heavy as hell riffs, proper production and atmosphere, you'll get the real deal for sure.

Look, when I heard the first time Morbid Angel's Altars (90), I swore that was the extreme, the limit for metal in terms of evilness and brutality. I already knew about Possessed, Death and Obituary (for naming some) and, at the time, I thought Kreator, Sodom and Slayer were the most brutal and relentless stuff on the planet. That changed with Altars. Today I can hear bands that are heavy, fast and stuff, but very few can portay such evilness and sheer power as that album, just like God of Emptiness is heavy, majestic and evil in a way superior form than most of death metal.

Listen Incantation's Onward to Golgotha. Man, that album one of the most dark, crawling brutal statements in metal ever. You can have your Brain Drills, Viraemias, Cannibal Corpses, etc but they are nothing in terms of delivering heaviness; the kind of heaviness that you can feel running thru your spine, that drowns you in fear thinking about monolithic beings coming for you, a blasphemy that it's almost uninimaginable, an unspeakeable darkness that simply destroys you in pieces and throw them to the cosmic void.... slowly.

Let's talk about black metal. One of my first experiences was Samael's Worship Him. When I heard the first time Into the Pentagram', I could swear Vorph as speaking as Satan himself. That album is another masterpiece in terms of atmosphere and heaviness, but a different kind. Listen for example 'Total Consecration' from Blood Ritual. It's only piano/keys and vocals, but it's heavy and opressive as all hell. Then listen 'To Our Martyrs' from Ceremony of Opposites. Vorph once again manages to sound like a Satan's (or Cthulhu's) avatar, facing God with no fear, emerging with majesty, power and darkness.

As you might think, those albums are landmarks in their current styles, but you know? no matter how 'heavy' the modern production goes, it can't portay those feelings and landscapes. Now, I listen a lot of new stuff that I enjoy, like Portal for example. They are a band that can deliver the heaviness I looks for; Immolation has been consistently good and brutal over time - even Providence is really strong - for example, the title track is a monument of death metal darkness.

I listen too many different things, in and out of metal and I don't dismiss anything for being metal or not. I just get nothing listening Meshuggah and djent stuff; there's no feelings or thoughts behind it. When I hear a Burzum track I can feel desolation and misanthropy, when I hear Bloodbath's Nightmare Made Flesh I can feel how Pete tries to kill me with his inhuman growls or CC' Tomb, I could believe that Barnes could eat corpses; if I listen Varathron's His Majesty at the Swamp I can hear another kind of darkness, full of ancient pride (no Necromantia pun intented) or when I hear Empyrium, I can feel the sorrow thru Markus' lyrics and tortured vocals. all those bands are way different from each other but everyone has something deeper than the simple production values, it's the lyrics, the content, the performance, the atmosphere, etc.

Djent and mathcore for me it's just souless alternative heavy rock/hardcore done for the sake of playing stuff like that.

I'm so relieved that people like you exist. The amount of breathtaking ignorance and stupidity made my heart hurt, but this post makes me feel a bit better. Thank you.

I'll just say this: Riffs, Kveldulfr, Metantoine, lord_ghengis, even (;)) MalignantThrone get it ("it" being "heavy metal"). One poster here doesn't. He has no clue about metal, what makes metal what it is, let alone what makes metal good. He's kind of like the typical clueless fuckwit who wears Cannibal Corpse t-shirt because they're "so sick and br00tal, brah". In fact, he's exactly like that, because he said himself that the more brutal the music, the more "metal" it is. I was hoping that such myopic, childish ignorance was confined to the caricature mallcore kids that have become such a tiresome cliché as to make me think they never really existed in the first place, but unfortunately threads like this serve to remind me why I made this site so "elitist" in the first place. Stop passing all that egregious nonsense as metal, you cunts!


You really shouldn't have, you just dug yourself a deeper grave. Unless, of course, you were trolling, in which case, congrats, you got me and a few others, 9/10, yadda-yadda, also, DIAF.

This was a really good post. I appreciate that you point out that djent or metalcore are not just for kids who don't know any better. In fact, this whole thread made excellent reading. What I have gleaned from this whole thread is that there is no single definition of 'metal', and everyone is entitled to get what they want out of metal. If we all wanted the same thing, every band since Black Sabbath would have been a copy of Black Sabbath. The fact that people think metal means different things is the very reason we end up with so many genres. Look at how black metal started - the BM bands saw what was happening in death metal and didn't think it was what metal should be about. Regardless of whether they were right, we got black metal out of it. You might hate djent now, but at least you've learnt that you don't like music going in that particular direction.

Exodus Attack has been here for ages! I'm willing to suppose he just can't accept that metal is a defined style/genre of music. I'm pretty sure he is quite ok with liking non-metal stuff, so I'm not really certain what the deal is. Ah well...




In a sense, I agree, and I'd never use "progressive metal" as a label to describe a black metal band that thought outside of the strictures of its genre and just leave it at that, but I do think "progressive" has indeed retained its original meaning. Listen to the progressive rock bands of today...at least the ones that are relevant: They don't sound like Genesis...Mars VOlta (god I hate them, but still), Porcupine Tree, that band Riverside, maybe even some stuff like Secret Chiefs 3...that's progressive rock today. It's still sprawling compositions with variant instrumentation (well, many bands have learned the art of writing shorter songs), but incorporation of electronics, modern production techniques, new experimentation with vocals, etc, is common. I don't know a lot about modern Dream Theater clones, but I'd say an album like Symphony X's The Divine Wings of Tragedy is still progressive despite the fact that it's not really doing anything too new. It's just not as progressive as, say, Fleurety's debut, or maybe The 3rd and the Mortal.

Funny how confusing this topic has gotten. Despite not being a genre, I think diehard progressive rock fans have just as many heated arguments over there on the progarchives forua about what constitutes "progressive".

All right, my brain isn't doing so well today; I think I'm done here.

1970s prog incorporated synths and various styles of music like folk, classical, jazz, as well as "non-Western", for example African and Indian music. And of course, rock/hard rock elements.

I think in this topic we're talking more about djent and mathcore.

If "progressive" can't be a genre, or rather a subgenre, then what do you propose calling the genre currently referred to as progressive metal? Or progressive rock? They aren't progressing anything anymore, even though they clearly were at the beginning of the genre. You'd have to find some new term to call the whole genre. Keyboard rock/metal?

It's just like modern classical music. In 500 years, the style of classical music associated with the early 20th century will still be called modern classical.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone who actually listens to it call any symphonic music from the 20th century or the last twelve years "classical". I suppose if it deliberately harkens back to the older style of music, then yeah, sure....but I think it's a different case than the "progressive" music we're discussing here.

No one calls it "modern classical music". Modernism would be the proper term. The "classical" part refers to a period between baroque/rococo and romanticism.

Hmm, The Mars Volta (I'm a big fan of the debut myself) do kinda hurt my point a little haha. Porcupine Tree still seem to borrow enough of the ideas of old prog rock to feel similar to me though. So I can weasel out of this without appearing to back down, I'll say maybe it can be applied to actual progressive bands as well as all the ones which just use the existing definitions of it



What I'm saying is progressive has become a descriptive term, but is not a genre in itself, it's like "Melodic" or "Technical" or "Atmospheric", all the words imply certain things, and can be used in conjunction with existing genres to make an easily understood genre of it's own, but no band can just play "progressive" or "melodic", it always has to be an extra detail attached to an existing genre. It's the genre rock/metal/alternative/death metal with the added distinction of having progressive traits.

I think the term can be used both as a descriptor and as a genre.
For example; original 70's progressive rock is definitely a genre of its own, bands like King Crimson and ELP were playing music as detached from traditional "rock" as, say, death metal or hardcore punk; and they definitely had their very own aesthetics, lyrical themes, regional scenes, etc... It wouldn't feel right to call those bands just "rock music with progressive elements." On the other hand, in more modern subgenres like progressive black metal or progressive metalcore; "progressive" is indeed used just as a descriptor instead of the main genre (which would be black metal or metalcore).
"Progressive Metal" is stuck between the two cases mentioned above, I tend to think of it more as a true genre (not as well defined as prog rock though); as there are indeed bands playing pure progressive metal; it wouldn't feel right calling Dream Theater just "Heavy Metal", same for bands like Fates Warning, Theshold or early Opeth (which, of course, is not Death Metal).

The Mars Volta aren't doing anything progressive. Their riffs are straight Fripp/Howe-meets-Santana, vocals and lyrics are Yes/Rush, played with a similar energy to At the Drive-in and some salsa and Latin influences from their youth. They're a better example of prog as a style than a way of thinking.

Anyone who thinks a specific guitar tone = "metal" should go look up the difference between sufficient and necessary conditions. Most metal may have crunchy guitars, but most music with crunchy guitars is NOT metal at all.

Sorry for responding to what is probably a mostly irrelevant side argument.

The only thing these newer bands in this djent and -core genres are good for (nu-metal included) is opening younger generations to what metal really is. Many of us who read these threads and listen to bands in the archives started at the Limp Bizkits and KoRns and Killswitch and Slipknot and so on and so on.

It is a mainstream act that is hot for a few months then forgotten like they never happened. We all hate them for how they mimic metal in a horrific way, yet you have to appreciate the fact that it is essentially a gateway to this. I can admit that Korn was my gateway to what I listen to today and I have no shame in admitting to that fact.

And no, they are not in any way shape or form metal. They are a short lived outside looking in genre who only hope that one day they can make it in with the cool kids.

haha, ok. Well, I never made it through enough songs to really judge their influences. I just wanted to use them as an example of modern progressive rock and couldn't think of many appropriate examples.

there hasn't really been any new developments in old-school prog (heh) but it did develop into avant-prog/RIO by the mid-to-late 70s. That's about the last development. Actually, it's pretty much the last development in every form of music (the ones that even make it to the avantgarde) when you think about it.

This is honestly one of the best ways of conveying that point I've ever seen. To be frank, I've never really been sold that nu-metal acts like Slipknot aren't metal until I read that. I sort of just accepted that it was fact based on how many older, more experienced listeners of metal music seemed to feel that way, though I could never truly understand the full reasoning behind that opinion other than people just disliked the music. I can completely follow that logic.

I think people hold Periphery and company to too high of standards. Yes, a lot of these bands are not progressive in the sense that they're doing pioneering anything, and I'm certainly not going to argue over their metalness, but is the whole problem simply what they are labeled as? "Serving the actual songs" is not something that is practiced in the majority of ANY genre; look at a thousand OSDM or thrash metal bands for reference. Moreover, trying to label a given genre based on how creative or how song-oriented its members is pretty futile considering the subjectivity of such characteristics.

Now, I am actually quite partial to the usage of "progressive metal" to describe metal which falls under the aforementioned characteristics and "prog metal" to describe Dream Theater clones and such, but I'm sure that if you pressed me in applications of those labels, I'd have a hard time defending their use sometimes. You can complain about how modern metal/modern "metal" bands cling to certain ideas and focus entirely on extremes or gimmicks, but that is something that is perfectly compatible with 80's metal as well (see: Nitro). I agree that TheExodusAttack is wrong when he says that older bands become obsolete when a new level of extremity is reached, but both tasteless quasi-progression and musical stagnation are rife throughout some of the most thoroughly metal bands. For an example which I wish I could find the link of, on the alt.thrash newsgroup I recall reading a post from ~1993 lamenting how tech-death had declined into musical masturbation, admitting that Atheist while was pushing the genre forward, Nocturnus and others were concerned only with speed, scales, and other frivolous traits. Today, both are of course considered seminal.

You took the words right out of my mouth. Also Periphery are atrocious.

You have got to be kidding me.

I think the OP choose the wrong example in Judas Priest, but I understand his point. Several bands that were labelled as Metal back in the day now are, all of sudden, Hard Rock.

Genres come and go, it's how it works. In 10 or 20 years we will look at the current Tech-Death, Djent, (Metal/Death)core bands and try to group them with either metal or hardcore. I can't see genre-labelling fading...