Spotify Pie Chartby Trackify

  1. Genres
  2. Metal

Progressive Metal

Progressive metal joins the power of heavy metal with the long, complex song structures and skilled playing of progressive rock.

Songs are often long, change tempo and time signature many times, and leave room for extended instrumental sections. Keyboards are common. The style formed in the United States in the mid-1980s with bands such as Queensrÿche and Fates Warning, and Dream Theater brought it wider attention in the 1990s. Later bands have mixed it with death metal and other styles.

Artists it is known for: Dream Theater, Queensrÿche, Opeth, Tool.

Family
Metal
On Spotify
A current genre
What it is
A genre
From
United States, mid-1980s
Also called
prog metal
Trackify listeners who play it
5%

About 4,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have progressive metal among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.

Progressive Metal artists

The progressive metal artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.

Sources

The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.