S/D: awful neoprog

I'm talking about Arena, Pallas, Twelfth Night, Pendragon, IQ. Despite being a huge prog fan in the 80's (and in fact, again a prog fan now) I somehow managed to never hear any of this. Random samplings on youtube are all very, very bad. Note: I really love Marillion, but more the post-Fish years. I feel like all of these bands are quite a few notches below them, frankly. But there might be something good. But maybe, in fact, not.

From what I'm aware NOT, they all seemed to take on the totally overblown excesses of prog. I think the newer bands that took on prog influence in a good way may have been categorised differently - under postrock, hardcore or whatever Ultrasound, Saqqara Dogs, Levitation etc were filed under.

Mat#2 to thread!

I would argue that Marillion post-Fish has very little in common with 80's Neo-Prog so maybe you're not going to dig any of it tbh.

I remember hearing IQ's first album and their 1989 or so albums - basically poor man's versions of Script for a Jester's Tear and Holidays in Eden (admittedly avant la lettre) respectively.

paging Pashmina

I used to see a lot of these bands back in the 80s, when quite frankly it was the only live prog around. Mostly second rate in retrospect, but some of it had an appealingly lo-fi feel to it I guess.

Previous neo-prog thread!

Lesser-known bands from the era, often with good reason : Haze, LaHost, Solstice, Quasar, Citizen Cain.

I think the rerecording of IQ's Seven Stories Into Eight demo is probably the best thing they've done and would probably appeal to the H era fan. The first IQ record is a solid enough collection of songs but played hurriedly, badly mixed.

at the risk of repeating myself IQ's The Wake is fantastic