Below you will find an evaluation of the year.

• Participants
• Best Albums
• Best DVDs
• Best Tracks
• Best Artwork
• Best Concert
• Best Newcomer
• Biggest Disappointment
• Biggest Happening
• Individual Performances

If you want to go straight to the results tables, click HERE.

This year's poll had 670 participants, a bit of a drop from recent years. A possible explanation could be the fact that none of the current big prog acts (Porcupine Tree, Dream Theater, Marillion, etc) released an album in 2010. It seems our reader's demographic is shifting, because for the first time in 13 years the majority of participants did not originate from The Netherlands, but from the UK instead (20.75% in total). The Dutch follow with 16.72%, while the USA (15.07%), Sweden (6.27%) and Canada and Germany (4.18% each) round up the top 5 (err 6).

It looks like we're still collectively aging, with the median age of the poll participant being 45. Fortunately we still have more than 15% of the participants under 25 (with the youngest voter being 15), so there is still hope for the future of the genre.

As always we had a number of great prizes which we raffled among the entrants. DPRP would like to thank all the labels and artists who generously donated prizes. The prize winners will be contacted in the following week and the final prizes list published shortly after.

In total 561 different albums were voted for. Below you will find the Top 25.

We have provided links to the DPRP reviews of these albums.

Spock's Beard reclaim top spot in the DPRP best album of the year with their 10th album, the aptly titled X. Proof that perseverance pays off and, despite some wobbles along the way, they have completely shaken off the departure of Neal Morse whose best placing, album wise, was at #17 with the third Transatlantic live album. X was not such a hotly rated release amongst the DPRP team, with only 9 (42%) of us including it in our top 10, and the album only gaining the top position in one case!

Anathema's return after a 7-year hiatus follows closely on its heels, storming to a number two position and scoring a higher average rating, but a lower number of total votes than Spock's Beard. Both Norwegian art rockers Gazpacho and Antipodean prog ensemble Unitopia continue their conquest of the prog world with their latest albums scoring their best poll position yet.

The Enid made a welcome return with their highly favoured Journey's End, rounding up the top five. Apart from The Enid, only two other 'Old Guard' prog acts, coincidentally both of them previous members of Genesis, making the list. Despite not being released until the end of 2010, Moon Safari scored big time with their excellent Lover's End and the wait for the Karnataka proved worthwhile as The Gathering Light crept into the top 20.

DPRP reviewed all 25 of the top albums, with all of the top 12 haven been granted 'round table review'. Only two of the 25 albums failed to gain a DPRP recommended tag, although with ratings of 7/10 and 7.5/10 Star One came as close as you can get! The other album, Peter Gabriel's Scratch My Back, was greatly admired but was considered lacking in prog credibility. It all goes to prove, if proof was needed, that we at DPRP have our fingers firmly on the pulse of modern progressive music!

Click HERE for the entire list of results.

There were two clear leaders for best DVD of 2010 and it was neck and neck for a long period of the voting. However, Transatlantic ended triumphant with their recording from their Whirld Tour pushing Porcupine Tree's Anesthetize into second place (serves them right for spelling anaesthetise wrong!). The Enid make it a double top five triumph with the recording from Birmingham Town Hall and Opeth proved that 'borrowing' a cover idea from a 40-year-old Deep Purple album is not necessarily a bad thing.

We didn't fare so well in reviewing the top DVDs, having missed four of them. Tut Tut Team, must try harder this year!

In total 118 different DVD's were voted for.

See the full results HERE.

Before we go to the list of best individual tracks, let's see which 5 bands got the most votes, regardless of which track.

Now let's look at which of the 555 individual tracks proved most popular.

Unsurprisingly, the five bands who got the most votes for releasing the best track in 2010 were included in the top six album of the year, only Gazpacho having slipped down the ranking. The clear winner was Spock's Beard. Not only did Jaws Of Heaven poll 11% of the vote to gain top spot but they also had two other songs in the top 10. No wonder X was album of the year! Anathema also polled well getting two top six places whilst the breadth and variety of progressive music is represented by the placing of both the title track from Manning's latest release and Moon Safari's A Kid Called Panic. The proggers love of the long song continues strong with only three songs not reaching the 10 minute mark. Sobering thought that it would take nearly two and a half hours to listen to the top ten tracks in our poll!

See the full Track results HERE.

Ed Utnitsky proves that he is the up and coming prog artist of choice with his cover for Unitopia's Artificial proving to be our readers favourite of the year. The grandfather of prog album covers (photographic division) Storm Thorgerson proves he has still got it! His work for The Pineapple Thief brought back fond memories of his best work, so much so it even made me dig out my Hypgnosis art books for a stroll down memory lane.

In total 121 different albums got voted for in the 'Best Artwork' category.

Click HERE to view the full Artwork results.

The participants of the poll voted for 255 different concerts in 2010. To get a clear picture of which bands did best on the stage last year, we'll first have a look at the 10 artists that got the most votes, regardless of which concert.

Now let's have a look at which of these 255 gigs got the most votes for Best Concert 2010.

The results for the best concert shows why Transatlantic won the best DVD category as three of their shows were in the top five. That is also testament to the consistency of their performance as two of those gigs were in London. The other two bands in the top 5 also featured high in the rankings of best DVD, indeed for The Enid it was one and the same concert! The reunion of Francis Lickerish and Robert John Godfrey, albeit for just the one song, was obviously a highlight for many.

Click HERE to view the full Concert results.

What is somewhat startling is that 86 different bands were voted for in the best new comer category. That's EIGHTY SIX, in ONE YEAR! With that number you could have discovered a new band every four days in 2010 and still have had three weeks holiday! Even if only a small fraction of these new bands make a lasting impression, the future of prog looks rosy. English band Haken came out ahead of the bunch with their DPRP recommended debut. In fact, once again the DPRP reviewers got it right with all five best newcomers gaining the coveted recommended tag. Or could it be that our recommendations are leading where music fans love to follow?

Click HERE to view the full Best Newcomer results.

Many different albums, gigs, incidents, etc received votes for 'biggest disappointment'. We grouped the votes until they referred to a unique album, gig or incident. The other most often mentioned, and more specific, disappointments can be found below.

If there was one certainty in the poll results then Mike Portnoy leaving Dream Theatre was the sure bet as being biggest disappointment of the year. The 22 people who voted for Pain Of Salvation's Road Salt One as being the biggest let down of 2010 has to be weighed against the 110 people who considered the album among the best of the year. Sadly, Ronnie James Dio also made the list, although saddened is probably more an appropriate emotion over his death rather than disappointment. RIP Ronnie.

You can view the full results from the Biggest Disappointment section HERE.

As a balance to 'Biggest Disappointment' we asked participants what they thought was the best thing to happen to prog in 2010.

Not sure how one should take the fact that the biggest happening of the year was the same as the biggest disappointment. Presumably it is simply a reflection of the large number of fans Dream Theatre have and the effect it has had on them. Emotional bunch these DT fans, obviously! Possibly the biggest reaction a drummer leaving a band has had in a long while. Transatlantic's tour and The Enid's resurgence were also bright spots in the year with the other two positions being taken by prog festivals, both of which are running again this year and no doubt hoping to be highlights once again.

You can view the full results for the Biggest Happening section HERE.

In this section we asked people for what they thought was the their favourite musical performance on a studio album. There are too many results to evaluate into detail here, so therefore we have only printed the top result for each of the five section in this page, and you can view the rest of the results in the database tables using the links below.

There were 129 different guitarists voted for and you can see the full results HERE.

There were 94 different keyboard players voted for and you can see the full results HERE.

There were 108 different vocalists voted for and you can see the full results HERE.

There were 88 different drummers voted for and you can see the full results HERE.

There were 85 different bassists voted for and you can see the full results HERE.

Click here if you wish to see the full results of the poll.

Click here if you also want to see the list of prizes and winners.

You can also check out what the DPRP Team voted for themselves.

For comments about the poll, please e-mail The DPRP Team.