DPRP.net: 30 Years, 12,000 Album Reviews
...And Still Counting
We're not exactly sure, but many years after the fact, it was deduced that it must have been October 1995 that Martijn Albering and Jerry van Kooten founded the Dutch Progressive Rock Page.
Some time before that, Martijn had started an Arena fan page but had started to include information on other bands as well. He asked Jerry to help, and together they decided to make it about progressive rock in general. Although "Dutch" is part of the name, the site has always been in English. It was just set up by a couple of people from Holland.
Within a couple of years the site had grown to welcome up to 350 visitors per day. More and more bands were covered and in 1998 the very first DPRP album review was published.
DPRP.net has continued growing and is now one of the biggest websites specialising in this genre of music, with 1.3 million annual page views and 18,000 unique visitors per month. We hardly ever do advertising and when we do it's related to the music: a band, album, tour, concert. We cover the costs (servers, postage) ourselves.
We currently have 25 reviewers from 12 different countries. We publish around 500 reviews a year plus interviews, special features, a new releases blog and a podcast.
To celebrate the publication of our 12,000th review (in over 2,100 editions) and our 30th anniversary year, we take a pause to look back on some of the highlights.
Our year-by-year summary includes one landmark album review from every year in our massive archive. The first of this three-part spacial feature is below and covers the years 1998 to 2005.
Andy Read
1998
We didn't begin reviewing until halfway through the year, but we still produced 12 issues with 71 reviews.
You can read the full list of albums that we reviewed here.
During this period there was a mix of future stars releasing their first albums and older bands making comebacks or having new formations. Included in the above list you will find the likes of: Spock's Beard — The Kindness Of Strangers, Arena — The Visitor, Pallas — Beat The Drum, Threshold — Clone and Genesis — Calling All Stations.
However, there is only one place we can begin, and that is the very first album review to appear at the top of the very first review edition on DPRP.net.
1999
Already we were up to a healthy output with 66 issues and 225 reviews.
You can read the full list of albums that we reviewed here.
And from the very start, DPRP was offering a ground-breaking mix of music from across the progressive music spectrum as well as what would become our familiar blend of well-known artists along with many names that you had never previously heard of.
There was the debut, self-titled solo album from a certain Neal Morse; someone who would go on to become one of prog's most prolific artists. Also from the USA we came across IZZ — Sliver Of The Sun.
With more established artists we covered Marillion — marillion.com, Yes — The Ladder and Jethro Tull — J-Tull Dot Com.
However, showing that we have often been ahead of the game in supporting new talent, here is the review of one of the first releases by Big Big Train.
Big Big Train — Goodbye To The Age Of Steam
2000
Fully up and running in a consistent manner, this year we published a few fewer issues (51) but with more albums reviewed (273).
You can read the full list of albums that we reviewed in 2000 here.
Our very first edition of the year again showed how we were giving coverage to the very first albums of bands that would go on to have a lasting career in prog circles. We liked The Pineapple Thief's Abducting The Unicorn and also gave a recommended score to Guy Manning's Tall Stories For Small Children.
Another band we have been able to cover from its earliest days are Porcupine Tree. They of course went on to become one of the biggest band's of their type in the world. Here are our thoughts, 25 years ago, upon the release of Lightbulb Sun.
Porcupine Tree — Lightbulb Sub
2001
With a number of new contributors, we were able to continue to expand our coverage. This year we published 69 issues containing 327 reviews.
You can read the full list of albums that we reviewed in 2001 here.
Most of the big band and albums in prog history pre-dated the internet by several decades; so we missed covering them. However, the sub-genre of progressive metal was in full throttle at the turn of the century.
Several new writers came onboard to help us cover these bands and our archive includes reviews of many classics from the genre including: Shadow Gallery — Legacy, Dream Theater — Live Scenes From New York, Evergrey — In Search Of Truth, ARK — Burn The Sun, Andromeda — Extension Of The Wish, and Threshold's Hypothetical.
Another band we covered was one that blends some prog-metal heaviness with plenty of prog, soul, jazz and art-rock influences. Sweden's A.C.T. is a band we have covered from their earliest releases, and they have always received a favourable review. This is our take on Imaginary Friends.
2002
This year we sent 63 issues out into the worldwide web. Among them, you can enjoy our thoughts on 244 albums.
You can read the full list of albums that we reviewed in 2002 here.
To make DPRP a little bit different, one thing we have always offered readers are our Round Table Reviews. The idea being to give the same new album to several reviewers, allowing readers to have different perspective on a release.
This year we provided RTRs on Camel — A Nod And A Wink, Peter Gabriel — Up, RPWL — Trying To Kiss The Sun, Porcupine Tree — In Absentia, and Galahad's Year Zero.
This was also the year that saw our first review of a band that would go on to become one of the most covered artists in the DPRP archives. Here is a very early review of Gazpacho and their album Get It While It's Cold.
Gazpacho — Get It While It's Cold (37°C)
2003
This year we concocted 345 reviews of proggy albums delivered to our readers within 66 splendidly-brewed issues. Within a few years we had grown from nothing, to become a website consistently putting out more than one edition of reviews, every week of the year.
You can read the full list of albums that we reviewed in 2023 here.
Even though we now have more than a million page views every year, the vast majority of our efforts get no response from readers, artists or labels. A little note to say thank you for taking the time and effort to listen to your album multiple times and then putting one's thoughts into writing would be nice every now and again.
However, there is one thing that guarantees a response: daring to be critical of a cult band's latest opus.
This Round Table Review of Dream Theater's Train Of Thought received one of our biggest ever mailbags, with fans incandescent that one of our four reviewers could even contemplate giving such a perfect band a score as low as five, whilst calling the album a load of "musical masturbation"!
Dream Theater — Train Of Thought
2004
A milestone! For the first time we pass 400 reviews in a year. The final figure was 438, spread across 75 issues.
You can read the full list of albums that we reviewed in 2004 here.
This was the year that the focus shifted to female-fronted bands, especially those with a symphonic-metal edge to their sound. The fact that two of the biggest bands in this new genre came from The Netherlands helped a lot too!
Round Table Reviews were completed for Nightwish — Once, Epica — We Will Take You With Us and After Forever — Invisible Circles.
In fact this was the year that we carried out more Round Table Reviews than any other. Evergrey, Pain Of Salvation (twice), Flower Kings, Ayreon, Derek Sherinian, Neal Morse, Asrai, IQ, Aina and Fish all received our in-depth analysis.
One of our most detailed Round Table Reviews was saved for The Tangent's The World That We Drive Through, with three reviewers giving a track-by-track evaluation on the music.
The Tangent — The World That We Drive Through
2005
And we managed to keep up this new pace of reviewing, with another 456 reviews published across 69 issues.
You can read the full list of albums that we reviewed in 2005 here.
If you want a good example of how views can vary enormously, even on soon-to-be classic prog albums, then have a read of this Round Table Review on Sieges Even and their album The Art Of Navigating By The Stars. One reviewer gives it a 10 and another a 6. Which one do you agree with?
