Music that gets you

[[wcip]Angel]

How about Dream Theater for epic songs?  Though some are multipart, there's the 20 minute "A Change of Seasons" or the 40 minute "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence".
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*gasp*
I detect a soulmate!

Of the few bands I currently adore, Dream Theater and Pain of Salvation rank as #1 and #2 respectively. (Liquid Tension being a close third).

Pain of Salvation: Prog metal. I suggest listening to their first two if you're into heavier sounding music, of the third and fourth if you're interested in an amazing blending of music and lyrics. This is my current favorite band. Don't touch their newest one first, as it is very difficult to get into and to understand.

I just recently (year and a half ago) discovered this great band when a nice chap on another board suggested a song caller "Dryad of the woods", as he thought it might go well with my taste in music at the time. It did! As I began to delve deeper and deeper into the more heavy bits and pieces of "Remedy Lane" I fell completely in love. There's not a single song on that album that I would ever consider skipping (except for the title track, which is only 2 minutes of weird noices :P)

After Remedy Lane, I got my hands on "12:5", a fantastic live acoustic performance. The measure of a true artist is his/her competence when performing live. There's no doubt PoS PoSsess (:P) true skill.

I think you're right about "Be" (their latest album) though. It *is* extremely weird for a Prog-rock album. It's a mesh of all kinds of styles and genres, from the traditional rock and ballad that you find in most rock-albums to negro spirituals and folk music, which seldom appear on a rock-record. (At least the ones I know of.) In addition to the blending of genres, there's also a lot of talking "and stuff." My favourites are Dae Pecuniae, Iter Impius and Martius/Nauticos II. Dae Pecuniae is just *so* self-indulgent. I mean, the climax of the song lasts from 6.29 to 9.13. That's almost 3 whole minutes!! Amazing stuff.

Iter Impius is just beautiful. The piano in the beginning, the violin coming in later on.. It's just breathtaking. (Although, when the violin kicks in, for some reason, I always think of Joss Whedon's cancelled cult series Firefly. I think it might have something to do with the similarities between Iter Impius and the themesong for the show.)

As for Dream Theater, I love most of their stuff, and I have their entire discography (with the exception of "When dream and day unite" for some reason). During the first year of my romance with this band, I felt "The Spirit carries on" was the best piece of music ever written. It's still one of my all time favourite songs, but the live version of Hollow Years from Budokan is perfect. Petrucci's solo far outranks anything else he's ever done.

Hollow Years (live!)
It's so immensely better than the original studio-version (which is also very good), it's impossible to describe. Just have a listen.