Prog-rock opera
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Prog-rock operas are epic, sometimes overblown or at least slightly pretentious stories written into lyrics and set to music to be recorded and performed. Prog-rock operas usually have characters and a plot, as any other story would, and unfold over one or more studio albums, typically called a Concept Album. Themes include fantasy, mythology, dream interpretation, oppression, self-enlightenment, and life and death.
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[edit] Notable Prog-Rock Operas
Since the early sixties and seventies, the prog-rock opera has evolved over time. Rush, an early Progressive rock band, is notable for their story of a future ruled by an oppressive class of priests, chronicled in the song "2112", based on the novella Anthem by Ayn Rand. Lyricist Neil Peart also penned a mythical sci-fi tale of a spaceship's journey through a black hole that transports the hero to the realm of the gods in order to bring balance to a war-torn world, described in "Cygnus X-1" from A Farewell to Kings and the side-A title track from Hemispheres. Around the same time, The Who, a British Invasion-era band, not typically considered prog, released Tommy, about a young boy who, after seeing his long-lost father murdered by his mother's new lover, withdraws into himself, becoming deaf dumb, and blind. He is repeatedly abused by various people throughout the story, as they think that no-one will find out, and he becomes famous for being the best pinball player. Eventually, he snaps out of the self-induced isolation and becomes a cult leader, and ultimately ends up learning many lessons. Prog-rock operas often deal with stories of a fantastic or science-fiction nature, but not always, as shown by Tommy, and many Pink Floyd albums. Their album The Wall tells the story of a man who has been oppressed all of his life, and through various halucinations brought on by drug use, builds a wall in his consciousness, to separate himself from all the injustices caused him in his lifetime. Eventually, through another series of halucinations, orders himself to tear down the wall.
[edit] Recent Prog-Rock Opera Revivals
Though the Prog-rock Opera is said to have hit it's peak in the mid-seventies, there has been a recent revival of albums that correspond to the label. Dream Theater, a prog-metal band, has released Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory, a full-length concept piece about a man trying to solve a murder in his past life through hypnotherapy. Their album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence includes an extended piece on its second disc dealing with different stories of mental illness. Because these two albums and the subsequent Train of Thought and Octavarium each begin with the same musical passage or sound effect that ended the previous album, some believe they form a successive story; however, the band has denied this and the subject matter of the albums is generally unrelated. Octavarium, though, does include a twenty-four-minute title track that might well be considered a rock opera. The Mars Volta has released De-Loused in the Comatorium, an album commemorating a longtime friend of the band, Julio Venegas. The hero, Cerpin Taxt (symbolizing Venegas) overdoses on morphine, goes into a week-long coma, and is shown visions of humanity and his own twisted psyche. When he wakes up, dissatisfied, he jumps off of a highway overpass to his death.
[edit] Notable Multi-Album Operas
The Coheed and Cambria albums The Second Stage Turbine Blade, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, and Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness are the second, third, and first half of the fourth installment of the supposedly five part saga of the characters Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon, and their children, android-like beings created to combat a corrupt race of mages on humanity's behalf and take back the Keywork (their universe).
[edit] Writing Styles
Claudio Sanchez, lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist of Coheed and Cambria, demonstrates very simply the style of writing a Prog-rock Opera. The idea is to take what you know, think, or have seen, and turn them into a fantastic story to chronicle them. Sanchez takes this to the extreme of basics, modeling Coheed and Cambria after his parents, and making their children into himself and his siblings, even using their real names for their characters(in the story, Claudio Kilgannon is the main character, a messiah-like figure, made to bring about the end of a writer's imaginary world. For More, See The Amory Wars). Jesse, A.K.A. The Prize-Fighter Inferno, "brother" of Coheed and a prize-winning boxer, is modeled after Claudio's brother Matthew Sanchez (not to be confused with Matthew Kilgannon, brother of Claudio in the story). Al the Killer, a ship's captain in the story, is supposedly based on an uncle of Sanchez's.
