(Prog) Bands that got it together on the 2nd album!

[snowsnow]

Santana - Abraxas
Camel - Mirage
Harmonium -Si on a sit besoin D'une cinquiene saison
The Magnificent Moodies - Days of future passed (though debut album hardly full blown prog!)

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

Santana - Abraxas

the debut is solid, but you are right, Abraxas is way better

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

War (w/o Burdon) - All Day Music is much better and more progressive than the s/t

[flowerking]

Nektar - Tab in the Ocean (yeah, I'll get killed for saying this, but Journey to the Centre of the Eye, while interesting, doesn't do much for me apart for Dream Nebular)

Mothers of Invention - maybe not prog, but the music on Absolutely Free is quite a bit more sophisticated than that of Freak Out

IQ - if you count 7 Stories Into 8 as their first, Tales is so so so much better

[Gravedigger]

Nathan Mahl- The Clever Use Of Shadows

[bob_32_116]

The Magnificent Moodies - Days of future passed (though debut album hardly full blown prog!)

A prime candidate for "best sophomore album".

[progeezer's ghost]

Totally agree with virtually every album cited of which I've heard. While I certainly enjoy both of my examples debuts, they both (imho) really upped their game for their sophomore efforts, so I'll go with:

King's X- Gretchen Goes to Nebraska over Out of the Silent Planet (though Goldilox is one of my faves of theirs) &
District 97- Trouble With Machines over Hybrid Child (the band are in fine form on the debut, I simply favor the songs on TWM).

[trurl]

You know, I totally forgot Days of Future Passed was a 2nd album.

[hightea]

Gong- Camembert Electrique
Radiohead-The Bends
Strawbs- From the Witchwood (if Dragonfly the first album and A & C is live)

[Trane]

QUEEN

The début their best album, IMHO... not a filler in it... II is also quite good, but they never got better than those first two.

Renaissance (assuming you count "Ashes are Burning" as the second album).

their second is Illusion (could've been better).... and Prologue is better than Ashes or anything that comes after.

agreed. Tarkus was, is, and always will be a lackluster messy disappointment.

I expected that... I honestly don't count that first album. To me it was a producer project of Jonathon King's.

It would've been had the songwriting not theirs, or there had been exterior songwriters.

Gotta stop this "excusing the gods" for that first misstep, because it suits better revisionism

War (w/o Burdon) - All Day Music is much better and more progressive than the s/t

mmmhhh!!!!....
I find both eras to be a single continuum... It wouldn't occur to me to think of both parts as something else than a single entity.

[mnprogger]

Fair to Midland. The Carbon Copy Silver Lining, I honestly have listened to less than 5 times, but inter.funda.stifle is a modern classic.

[WytchCrypt]

Mothers of Invention - maybe not prog, but the music on Absolutely Free is quite a bit more sophisticated than that of Freak Out

^this...I still spin Absolutely Free regularly while the debut collects dust

[Modry Effekt]

Atila - Intencion

[Modry Effekt]

Soft Machine

First is my favorite.

[Galactic Bulldozer]

Voice - Capability Brown
Shine on Brightly - Procol Harum
Second Album - Curved Air
Polite Force - Egg
Abstract Truth - Silver Trees
Raw Material - Time Is
Second Hand - Death May Be Your Santa Claus
Gryphon - Midniight Mushrumps

[Calabasas_Trafalgar]

Raw Material - Time Is
Second Hand - Death May Be Your Santa Claus

ditto. Also High Tide-s/t. Sea Shanties was nice, but absolutely knocked it out of the park on the second one.

[Progatron]

Gryphon - Midniight Mushrumps

I semi-agree with this. I do think it's a much better album than the debut but at the same time I have a real soft spot for that one, it has such a charm to it. And it has "The Unquiet Grave", which I love.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Mothers of Invention - maybe not prog

How on earth were MoI "maybe not prog"? Why are Supersister singing - in December 1969, at the top of their goofy voices - that "[...] sometimes we even are progressive, and we listen with attention to the Mothers of Invention"? Why was the contemporary progressive rock media constantly writing on Zappa/MoI, and the scene so endlessly taken by the phenomenon of Z/MoI? Why were so many acts of a proportionally MUCH more radical musical nature back then than any InsideOut-artist nowadays (Knifeworld notwithstanding) influenced by MoI? When MoI's music already from December '66 ventured far beyond what 99% of UK groups were doing many years down the line, harmonically/rhythmically/structurally/dynamically/instrumentally - then how were MoI "maybe not prog"?

[Scrotum Scissor]

Gong- Camembert Electrique
Strawbs- From the Witchwood (if Dragonfly the first album and A & C is live)

Camembert was technically the debut Gong album, seeing how Magick Brother, Mystic Sister initially was presented as a Allen/Smyth release. Witchwood was the fourth Strawbs album, counting A & C. Dragonfly was their second one.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Nathan Mahl- The Clever Use Of Shadows

I very recently found Parallell Eccentricities on vinyl, and that's actually a surprisingly full-blown progressive release for 1983. Although Clever Use was way *better*.

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

How on earth were MoI "maybe not prog"? Why are Supersister singing - in December 1969, at the top of their goofy voices - that "[...] sometimes we even are progressive, and we listen with attention to the Mothers of Invention"? Why was the contemporary progressive rock media constantly writing on Zappa/MoI, and the scene so endlessly taken by the phenomenon of Z/MoI? Why were so many acts of a proportionally MUCH more radical musical nature back then than any InsideOut-artist nowadays (Knifeworld notwithstanding) influenced by MoI? When MoI's music already from December '66 ventured far beyond what 99% of UK groups were doing many years down the line, harmonically/rhythmically/structurally/dynamically/instrumentally - then how were MoI "maybe not prog"?

I think (since the Neo revisionism of the 80s) there have come to be an unmovable chunk of people who think Prog is only 1. mostly British and 2. only Symph

so that is why Zappa, a true pioneer of Prog, is not deemed worthy of being a Progressive Rock artist.
Keep reading this forum and you'll keep running into that revisionist chunk of people... yeah, I know it is sad, but true

[bob_32_116]

Amazing how it's possible for posts to sound shrill, even when they are read back as text.

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

Amazing how it's possible for posts to sound shrill, even when they are read back as text.

indeed it is!
Zappa was indeed one of the few pioneers of Progressive Rock music way before Yes and Genesis

[PeterG]

I honestly can't think of a single prog band where I prefer the 2nd album to either the debut or some later album.

[mixfo]

Audience - Friend's Friend Friend
Gravy Train - Ballad Of A Peaceful Man
Home - Home
Uriah Heep - Salisbury
Spooky Tooth - Spooky Two

BTW - these were all bands that were considered progressive at the time.