Atheist

yes, but did you expect their most progressive album to be as riff driven as a full on death metal/technical death metal or death/thrash album? Its a completely different piece of work and shouldn't even really be compared to their previous works.
Good point. The album probably could have benefitted from a few of the shorter track being culled though. The album never did all that much for me and I was a little bit disappointed when I first heard it.
 
I'd even go as far to say that Elements isn't as progressive as the first two albums. Whilst POT & UP contain songs that shape shift endlessly, Elements tends to just present you with a collage of fractured ideas that don't really cover all that much ground (at least in comparison to the first two albums).

But yes, it is like a beautiful painting. I don't wanna rag on it too much.
 
Piece of Time is fairly technical for its time but not all that progressive. Still many other albums from around the same time or earlier that were way further out there (the first three Mekong Delta albums and both Watchtower albums for starters). UP is the busiest album and probably has the highest riff-count not to mention a billion drum fills a second, but the riffs are individually ordinary, it's just the sheer left-turniness that makes it stand out. Elements is catchier and has more obvious hooks, yet at the same time the songwriting itself is much more layered and subtle, and builds more progressively.
 
Jupiter's pretty solid. A few lame moments like that JESUS FAUX KING CHRIST x 100 chorus and it doesn't push boundaries like their first three did, but overall it definitely sounds like them and has its great moments too, as much as you can ask for from a reunion album.