3) Fates Warning
Like Mastodon, Fates Warning is a band that didn’t often make the same record twice. In their mid-’80s period, however, they seamlessly combined thrash metal with prog. 1988’s No Exit, their first album with Ray Alder singing, was their highest-charting album at the time. Like Yes, who followed their prog-rock years as ’80s hitmakers, Fates Warning’s subsequent work was more commercial-leaning. And while their earlier work might be a little hard to pin on a band like Yes, No Exit‘s album-ending “The Ivory Gate of Dreams” combines the tendencies of a mid-80s thrash band with that of a ’70s-worshipping prog-rock band, like an earlier version of fellow prog-metallers Between the Buried and Me.
2) Mastodon
Mastodon have had quite an interesting career trajectory. It would’ve been hard to look at 2002’s Remission, their debut album, and pinpoint them as a prog band, let alone one that would be writing radio hits a decade later. However, none of their albums has been the same, and after releasing Leviathan and their major label debut Blood Mountain, they got proggy as hell on their next album, 2009’s Crack the Skye. While each of their previous albums had a loose concept (fire, water and earth for their first three), Crack the Skye, in addition to being about another element of sorts (ether), was a full-blown concept album about time travel, wormholes and Tsarist Russia. It also has “The Last Baron,” a track that certainly has some Yes-like instrumentation on it.
1) Dream Theater
Dream Theater have been around for 31 years (let that sink in for a moment), so they are one of the bands that should be considered an inspiration for a lot of the newest progressive acts. But going back, there were the obvious choices of music that inspired them, which of course include Yes. Guitarist John Petrucci and Keyboardist Jordan Rudess have stated the importance of Yes in their musical lives, with Rudess expressing about Close To The Edge:
I’ve always loved Jon Anderson’s voice. There’s something really beautiful and pure about it. It’s like a magical kind of sound. But there are so many other things I also love about Yes. There are a band filled with really amazing players. The way their parts intertwined with each other was so powerful, and then having Anderson’s voice on top of that made it even more special. The word “glorious” comes to mind when I think about that album.
You can even find several Yes covers done by the band but the best one to explain their love for the Brits is this medley which contains “Machine Messiah,” “Heart Of The Sunrise.” “Close To The Edge,” “Siberian Khatru,” and “Starship Trooper.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icMmxW0kgLQ
