Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Dream Theater - The Astonishing
This goes to reassert everything that has nagged at me about US Prog bands since I first heard Kansas. The singers nearly always sound like they have been recruited from a particularly anodyne branch of musical theatre. The sing like they are inhabiting a role not living it. RJ Dio is probably the only singer from America who makes Prog subject matter sound in any way convincing and he wouldn't have been seen dead around such a lightweight musical palette. Whatever you say about the Andersons, Hammill, Lake, Gabriel et al in their pomp - they sang like they meant it, man (even if they now say they didn't really).