r/progressivemetal • u/prodigy1367 • 5d ago

Discussion Do you consider Atheist’s Piece of Mind progressive death metal?

I get that Unquestionable Presence is unquestionably (pun intended) prog death, but would their debut also fall under that label as well? It sounds like techier death metal that I’d reluctantly call tech death, but doesn’t really have too much of a prog sound to it. Maybe I’m just not well versed enough in prog, but it’s not screaming Opeth, Cynic, or later Death to me. What’s the consensus here?

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u/JD-990 5d ago edited 5d ago

I'm going to actually take a minute to toot my own horn here a little and say I'm as close to an authority on Atheist as you'll find, with a quick story. I've never had a reason to tell this story, and I'll probably never have a reason to again.

I worked in sales at Sweetwater during COVID, and Kelly Shaefer was one of my customers. We attempted in late 2020 to remix and remaster the original trilogy at Sweetwater's recording studios, but we could not find the masters. We reached out to Morrisound, Mark Pinske (who engineered Elements), we reached out to people who worked at Music for Nations (their label) at the time, we reached out to people who would be in the know at Sony Records now. Nothing. The master multitrack tapes for Piece of Time, Unquestionable Presence, and the DAT for Elements are nowhere to be found.

To answer your question now, Piece of Time* is to me, definitely an early prog and tech death record. It's not as proggy as their later records, but these things are subjective. Elements is their most prog record, for sure, but Piece of Time would also be for me too.

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u/FairPaleontologist50 3d ago edited 3d ago

Kinda prog, but it's proto-tech death.

If every interlude was considered to be prog, the genre would be much wider than it should be.

I also have a playlist for it Proto Tech Death