I'd mentioned the Prog Rock Palace in an earlier post HERE. It occured to me that in that posting, I never included the link to the actual webpage. I will point out that here at Thermionic Studios, we're not particularly fervent followers of Progressive Rock. That said, I do like to take occasion to listen to different rock genres because of the occasional spillage of one genre into another. There are oftentimes a lot of "operatic" or "orchestral" (or "bombastic") influences from Metal into Prog Rock, and conversely from Prog Rock into Metal.

With respect to Thermionic Studios, can I be accused of "not being true" to metal? Of course. That said, if we're going to talk about musicians creating, writing, and performing great music, I've come to believe that if one swims in the pool of one's own favorite chosen genre to the exclusion of everything else, there's likely not a lot of new and or interesting inspiration. This is something that I think can be reasonably argued happened to Metal in the late 1990s. For a good, long while, there was nothing new that was interesting or original or fresh. There was nothing challenging. Nothing compelling. Even Sleep's Holy Mountain was released in the U.S. in 1993. Kyuss was done in 1995. For me, it took hearing Age of Winters by The Sword before I was convinced metal was back.

It was a long cold winter for fans of Metal. But I'm distracting myself...

So here's the link to the Prog Rock Palace. As of this article, the show up on the site is dated Saturday, 31-Jan. I listened to the whole show for this week. Beyond losing the last fifteen minutes of the show, (it was cut short so that UC Davis Women's Basketball, against Cal Poly SLO, could be broadcast starting at 1:45 pm Pacific), I personally didn't find too much to be excited about by this particular week's show - especially if you're a headbanger.

Here's what I did find that I liked:

• The 1963 hit "Out of Limits" by The Marketts (I sometimes have a soft spot for old surf music), and,
• A new (2014) release from Tarja (Album: "Left in the Dark") called "Medusa".

I was actually surprised to hear Out of Limits. To my reckoning, outside of the "Rock" part, Surf Rock doesn't have much connection to Prog Rock. I'm chalking it up to DJ Curtis Carroll being a fan of the tune, and having a couple of minutes in the show schedule that needed rearranging due to the Basketball preemption. I'm fond of the tune due to the particularly tasteful use of the French Horn.

My favorite tune of the show was Medusa. Tarja Turunen has a great pedigree in Metal, having performed with Nightwish from 1996 to 2005.

Anyway, please enjoy.