Metal as a Gradual Process

While the popular genres of progressive rock and heavy metal have received significant scholarly attention, discussions of the syncretic subgenre of progressive metal are rare. Jonathan Pieslak’s 2007 article on the music of Meshuggah does much to delimit the stylistic boundaries of the subgenre, noting the importance placed by progressive metal bands and their fans on the rhythmic and metrical complexity of the music. Dream Theater, one of the most visible and commercially successful progressive metal bands, however, has received little scholarly attention to this point. The aim of this article is to describe Dream Theater’s unique metrical processes, focusing on a technique that I label the ABAC Additive Metrical Process (ABAC-AMP). The temporally complex examples I analyze in this article—culled from throughout Dream Theater’s decades-long career—are compared with techniques of early minimalist composers. The analysis demonstrates Dream Theater’s “progressive” aesthetic, and it aids in a characterization of the band’s sound as possessing a progressive rock center and a heavy metal periphery.