PROGRESSIVE NATION 2009 TOUR NOW WORTH GOING TO!

Back in March I bitched that this year’s Progressive Nation lineup — featuring Pain of Salvation, Beardfish, and Zappa Plays Zappa supporting Dream Theater — was decidedly less metal than last year’s lineup (which featured 3, BTBAM, and Opeth supporting DT — killer show) and wasn’t worth the price of admission to anyone under 50. A press release delivered good news to the MS Mansion earlier this week, announcing that Bigelf and Scale the Summit have replaced Pain of Salvation and Beardfish. Suh-weet!

Scale the Summit are the real bonus; their early-2009 instru-metal release Carving Desert Canyons is certainly a contender for my year-end “best of” list, and I’m psyched to finally see the band live. I find Bigelf’s band of retro-prog somewhat intriguing, if not terribly interesting, but I’m open to the live experience. And Dream Theater… ya know, they’re fuckin’ Dream Theater. Axl was tired and planned on leaving after a few songs at last year’s Progressive Nation but the band was killing it so hard he ended up staying for the entire show, including two encores. And we all know I’m a total Dream Theater fanboy.

Suddenly Prog Nation is definitely worth attending this year. If only it stopped in NYC. View the full list of tour dates here.

And, oh hey! Dream Theater have a new album coming out tomorrow [update: I’m an idiot, it came out yesterday!] called Black Clouds & Silver Linings! Watch the video for “A Rite of Passage” here and watch some footage of James Labrie stinking it up at this year’s Download Festival here.

-VN