Below you will find an evaluation of the 2011 poll results.

• 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.

The number of participants in the 2011 poll was 581.

Click HERE to view all participant countries.
 

Disappointingly, this year's 581 poll entries marks a significant drop from the 670 received last year and only a little above half the 1045 entries received in 2007. In fact the 2011 poll saw the lowest number of submitted entries since 1998! Maybe polls just aren't as popular as they used to be but clearly something needs to be done to stir up some interest in our readers for next year.

After dropping from the top spot last year the Netherlands vote is again the biggest with 20.14% of the total. The usual suspect countries make up the majority of votes as in other years but with a significant increase in the German vote to 9.12%.

The average age of those who chose to give it is 42.44, slightly younger than usual, and reassuringly there are 42 entries from people aged 25 and under - that's a significant 7.2% - so there does seem to be an increasing interest in the genre by the younger generation. The age range this year is from 14 to 62.

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.

In total 580 different albums were voted for. Below you will find the Top 10.

Links have been provided to the DPRP reviews of these albums.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the strides made by Porcupine Tree in recent years Steven Wilson's second solo release, Grace for Drowning, is by far the most popular album this year. Dream Theater's first album of the post-Portnoy era also rates very highly helping to cement their position as one of the biggest names in the genre. Despite some voices of disatisfaction Yes' Fly From Here does well as does Opeth's Heritage, their new direction clearly appealing more to prog enthusiasts than to the band's traditional metal following. Haken have built on their excellent debut release from 2010 and picked up a significant number of votes making them a big player this year and another newcomer, Sean Filkins, ranks highly with his debut release. Karmakanic did better than Agents of Mercy in the battle of The Flower Kings' side projects and Leprous scored well despite fewer individual votes, the votes they did get being placed higher in participants top ten lists.

Click HERE for the entire list of results.

In total 94 different DVDs received votes.

Rush did well in the poll with their latest live DVD, fans clearly not tiring of the slew of live releases now available from the band, the same also being true of Transatlantic. The Tangent's 'live in your living room' Going Off On Two also scored well as does Neal Morse's live Testimony 2 package. Marillion scraped the top ten with Holidays In Zélande but actually had 4 DVDs listed in the poll including one at number 11, quite an achievement, and Unitopia's European tour in 2010 made them plenty of new fans as their chart placing reveals. As is often the case we here at DPRP have not yet managed to review many of the DVDs that made the list and will try to do better next year.

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.

Unsurprisingly the big overall winners were Steven Wilson and Dream Theater but Neal Morse and Pendragon both did well.

Now let's look at which of the 448 individual tracks voted for proved most popular.

#	Band	Track	Votes	Percentage	Weighted Points
01	Dream Theater	Breaking All Illusions	55	9.46%	120
02	Steven Wilson	Raider II	55	9.46%	114
03	Pendragon	This Green and Pleasant Land	45	7.74%	91
04	Yes	Fly From Here	41	7.05%	80
05	Steven Wilson	Deform to Form A Star	35	6.02%	78
06	Neal Morse	Seeds of Gold	29	4.99%	65
07	The Tangent	Titanic Calls Carpathia	21	3.61%	45
08	Haken	Visions	23	3.95%	43
09	Airbag	Homesick I-III	18	3.09%	38
10	Steven Wilson	Remainder the Black Dog	16	2.75%	34

Dream Theater take the top spot despite Breaking All Illusions having the same number of individual votes as Steven Wilson's Raider II coming top by virtue of the weighted points but Wilson did manage to get three tracks into the top 10. Pendragon and Yes score highly with good placings for Haken and Airbag.

See the full Track results HERE.

In total 103 different albums received votes in the 'Best Artwork' category.

Legendary artst and Yes collaborator Roger Dean's cover for their comeback Fly From Here album makes the top spot slightly ahead of Travis Smith's Heritage cover for Opeth. Lasse Hoile and Ed Unitsky picked up a lot of votes as they usually do showing the high regard in which their style and body of work is held and it is nice to see Hugh Syme, familiar for his illustrious career and long association with Rush and many others make the list.

Click HERE to view the full Artwork results.

Poll participants voted for 273 different concerts in 2011. To get a clearer picture of who did best on the stage last year, we'll first have a look at which of the 132 artists got the most votes, regardless of which concert.

Steven Wilson again tops the list but is hard pressed by a good showing for Neal Morse's solo tour. The mega-tours of Roger Waters and Rush scored well and we have a three way tie including Marillion's weekend conventions tied with Opeth and Riverside.

Now let's have a look at which of these 273 gigs got the most votes for Best Concert 2011.

#	Band	When	Where	Votes	Percentage
1	The Enid	October 15	Birmingham, UK	9	1.54%
2=	Neal Morse	June 4	Zoetermeer, The Netherlands	6	1.03%
2=	Roger Waters	April 8	Arnhem, The Netherlands	6	1.03%
2=	Steven Wilson	October 26	Paris, France	6	1.03%
2=	Steven Wilson	October 30	Zoetermeer, The Netherlands	6	1.03%

For the second year running The Enid score highly, this time taking top spot for their performance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the U.K. in October. A bit of a free for all after that with a four way tie covering three gigs in The Netherlands and one in France featuring two Steven Wilson shows, Neal Morse and Roger Waters. Two of this years top 5 gigs have been reviewed on DPRP and we also managed to cover shows from all of the tours listed at the top of the poll.

Click HERE to view the full Concert results.

This year 87 different bands and artists were voted for Best Newcomer, a similar number to 2010, showing the vibrancy of the talent coming through at the moment. Sean Filkins' debut solo disc impressed a lot of people and deservedly gets top spot here. Once again the DPRP reviews gave all five of the artists listed above a recommended tag for their debut releases.

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 in the full list of responses.

Although all four of the albums listed above scored highly in the Best Album category the fact that they also make the top five disappointments proves that you can't please all of the people all of the time. To put this in context though, in each case more respondents voted for them positively than regarded them as failures. Nick D'Virgilio's decision to leave Spock's Beard also disappointed a number of readers.

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 2011.

As if by magic, the disappointment of Yes' Fly From Here is seen to almost the same degree as a happening and Dream Theater make two entries with both their latest album and the recruitment of drummer Mike Mangini scoring highly. Live shows and festival events continue to rate highly with both Roger Waters' The Wall shows and Night of the Prog VI at Loreley scoring well.

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

In this section we asked people what they thought rated as the best 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.

Dream Theater are used to winning instrumentalist polls and do so here in three categories - guitarist, keyboardist and drummer where Mike Mangini beat Mike Portnoy's work with Neal Morse to the top slot by a considerable margin. Best vocalist goes to Steven Wilson, slightly ahead of Neal Morse and Pain of Salvation's Daniel Gildenlöw. Jonas Reingold picked up the bassist award for his work with Karmakanic, despite also being voted for with Agents of Mercy, just pipping Chris Squire of Yes and Dream Theater's John Myung.

There were 79 different guitarists voted for and you can see the full results HERE.

There were 71 different keyboard players voted for and you can see the full results HERE.

There were 101 different vocalists voted for and you can see the full results HERE.

There were 75 different drummers voted for and you can see the full results HERE.

There were 76 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 to view the list of prizes.

Click here to view the prize winners. (Winners have now been notified)

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

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