The Groove Train: Train's Top 2016 Albums v. No One Likes Cheap Wine

[Train of Naught]

This sub has a severe lack of top albums threads.

Last time I did one of these lists was a year ago and it was with a general ranking of my favorite albums. That list has changed drastically but still a lot of the same albums appear. This time I am doing something fresh, about 50 new albums released in 2016 (maybe a bit more based on the yet-to-be-released albums), and I will review them in no particular order, just listening to whichever I feel like spinning and then I will leave it up for discussion and post another one after that etc. These will all be written on the spot so unlike last time I am not keeping to a particular time schedule, it will just be me posting whenever I listen to the album I am reviewing. (expect like daily updates, some times once in 2 days)

What kind of music can you expect: I hate to be this person but "a bit of everything" sounds pretty accurate, if you are a fan of some good albums and a couple shitty albums this thread will be perfect for you. There is a good amount of roulette albums in this one as well thanks to that awesome 2016 bonus theme. I thought I had a good idea of my top 5 albums of the year already but compiling the stuff I have made me realize it is going to be hard. I can already reveal that I am very positive towards these for the most part, been really pleased with 2016 releases so far. So I guess you could almost see this as a recommendation thread.

I will post the first one tomorrow, it is a bit late right now and I don't really have the energy to do it before going to sleep. I'm going to start off the list with what is probably the earliest 2016 release I have on my list. Surprise, it's prog.


Train's albums:

- Sean Ashe: Flux
- Shokran: Exodus
- Haken: Affinity
- Messenger: Threnodies
- Novembre: URSA
- Ihsahn: Arktis.
- Rival Sons: Hollow Bones
- Slice The Cake: Odyssey to the Gallows

- Deftones: Gore
- Cult of Luna (ft. Julie Christmas): Mariner
- Thank You Scientist: Stranger Heads Prevail
- O'kingdom: Anthem for the Lost
- Lemaitre: 1749
- Dream the Electric Sleep: Beneath the Dark Wide Sky
- Gojira: Magma
- The Dear Hunter: Act V: Hymns with the Devil in Confessional

- Toothgrinder: Nocturnal Masquerade
- Periphery: Periphery III: Select Difficulty
- Thrice: To Be Everywhere is to Be Nowhere
- Pyramido: Vatten
- Slice the Cake: Odyssey to the West
- Obsidian Kingdom: A Year With No Summer
- Car Bomb: Meta
- Avenged Sevenfold: The Stage

[Crow]

you have over double the amount of 2016 albums I do

Slice the Cake when

[Scorpion]

Following this biatch, and I might do one of my own when the end of the year is a little closer.

[King Postwhore]

Time to train to follow this train.

[TAC]

Time to train to follow this train.

Groovy!

[King Postwhore]

To quote T.O.P.  I've got to groove.....

[Bolsters]

Following this biatch

[Accelerando]

Following. Don't think I've checked out a lot of albums this year

[home]

Yes all aboard that groove Train. I'll be following

[Train of Naught]

Cool cool cool, kicking this thing off with like I said, probably the earliest 2016 release I have, enjoy folks!

Sean Ashe - Flux (January 12th)

For fans of: Instrumental prog rock (Sithu Aye, Plini, Pomegranate Tiger, Widek)


Everyone has at some point heard one of those "solo project prog guitarists who produce their own music", everyone always seems to respect them even if they don't like the music. Sithu Aye, Plini (in earlier stages), and here we have Sean Ashe, the lovable Irish dude (jk he is not irish but he does look irish). At the age of 23 years he has just

From the second the album starts you already get this warm inviting feel from the guitar tone and throughout the album he maintains that approach. To flavour it up there is some cool piano here and there, most notably on the opening song "Imagine" which has one of the coolest piano passages I have heard. Unlike many of these instrumental prog guitarist albums it has never really bored me or sounded 'samey'. Granted, Sean does not focus on complex structures or crazy wahibrido pickingant passages or whatever, but rather has these groovy licks and catchy riffs to keep the listener entertained.

Maybe one gripe I have is that it starts off with Imagine, which I feel is the best song on the album. On the bright side, you get a very good impression of what this guy is capable of and the song showcases the range of styles he does on the album pretty well. With that said, if you are looking for an overall upbeat/happy record with some awesome grooves and you like the album opener, I think it is highly unlikely to be disappointed.

I remember the guy even commented to thank me on reddit for listing his album as one of my favorites of the year in the dreamtheater subreddit, what a guy. If I made a rough estimation right now it would probably not be among my absolute favorites anymore but this is still a very good album if your mood fits. On bandcamp (link) he sells "Flux" for 8 dollars digitally. Unfortunately I don't think they are available in physical form but if you are dying to get it in physical form you could try to PM him on bandcamp, it has worked in the past with others and he is a very nice and approachable guy.


Favorite songs: Imagine, Creature, Hemispheres

[Bolsters]

I'm listening to Imagine now on Spotify and I'm liking.

[Crow]

i gave this a spin at some point and it was... okay, but not something i felt worth exploring deeper

[Tomislav95]

I hope you'll review Joanne. 

[Train of Naught]

Joanne isn't out yet but when it is I will probably give it the review it deserves. Take that however you want

I'm listening to Imagine now on Spotify and I'm liking.

[twosuitsluke]

I was actually listening to Creature last night. Spotify chucked it my way via the 'Discover Weekly' playlist. Sounded pretty cool.

That weekly playlist has a pretty good hit rate.

Edit: I just checked the playlist and I also liked Run Home by And So I Watch You from Afar. Never heard of them but they sounded pretty cool.

[home]

That weekly playlist has a pretty good hit rate.

O yeah, I have found so many great songs trough discover weekly, it's really great

[Train of Naught]

That weekly playlist has a pretty good hit rate.

O yeah, I have found so many great songs trough discover weekly, it's really great

I add songs I find through discover weekly to a dedicated playlist, it's a good feature but I wish there would be a way to filter out songs that you have already saved. I get songs that are already in my playlist almost every week.

I think 3 of the albums that are going to be on this list come from that discover weekly feature though, good stuff.

[twosuitsluke]

That weekly playlist has a pretty good hit rate.

O yeah, I have found so many great songs trough discover weekly, it's really great

I add songs I find through discover weekly to a dedicated playlist, it's a good feature but I wish there would be a way to filter out songs that you have already saved. I get songs that are already in my playlist almost every week.

I think 3 of the albums that are going to be on this list come from that discover weekly feature though, good stuff.

That doesn't bother me too much, you can always skip the ones you already know, they're usually in the minority anyway. It is better than a lot of other 'recomnendations' I've got through other sites/apps. It's usually really pointless ones like 'You like Metallica, maybe you would like Megadeth.' Or ridiculous ones like 'You like Foo Fighters, maybe you'd like Slayer.'

Discover weekly is chucking all sorts of great stuff my way and very rarely anything really mainstream or obvious. It doesn't assume you are a real noob who knows like 10 bands. I like that!

[Train of Naught]

Slice the Cake when

I want to do it justice so I might 'prepare' for this one (as well as a few others) instead of just churning something out in the 2 hours it takes to listen to the albums (yes, I'm doing Gallows + West). It should be no surprise that I am in love with this album by now.

Gonig to do one more write-up today, this one is going to be a bit heavier. And with a bit I mean a shitton, might be the heaviest album in my 2016 collection.

[Train of Naught]

Shokran - Exodus (September 17th)

For fans of: Oriental/Groove progmetal and melodic deathmetal (Solution .45, Myrath/Orphaned Land, In Flames)


If anyone has seen me mention this bands name last year in the "What album are you listening to?" thread, yeah they're correct. I found an album of theirs and fell in love with the oriental metal instrumentals but soon figured out that it was the instrumental version of an album with actual vocals. The vocals were such a chore to get through and from there on the band went completely under my radar.

I figured that one year and many heavy-as-shit bands being added to my collection later, I could give it another shot with their newly released album. With a total length of just 35 minutes spread over 10 songs it should be an easy listen, right?

Well yeah this was still a bit extreme for me at times, but they managed to nuance their extreme vocals very well with some cool cleans that remind me of a mix between Orphaned Land and Avenged Sevenfold in several songs, if that makes sense. This album - be warned - does not leave the listener with much breathing room, it's pretty heavy on the djent and metalcore elements (just underlining these words so you guys know whether you can stop reading at this point) but the vocals are simply impressive, maybe not the most talented singer ever technically but he manages to pull off a shitton of different styles and pitches and the low growls work better than I expected. The cheap programmed synths are a bit much and overstay their welcome at times though, seems like they are really dedicated to create that middle-eastern vibe. And don't get me wrong, I tend to have a weak spot for that kinda thing but it's a bit much here. I think these guys would be better off making a full-on melodic deathmetal album or something along those lines. Still, solid effort and I am going to check out that other album I tried last year, it's called Supreme Truth and seems to be the fan favorite.

The Disfigured Hand -> And Heavens Began to Fall run is definitely the most interesting part of the album. Maybe that tells us something about this band since those are the only two songs with guest artists. Structurally these are also the least predictable, especially the latter, which sounds more like an actual progmetal song than melodeath/groove which probably best describes this band normally. With songs like Revival of Darkness and Firstborn they managed to capture the essence of the album pretty well, they're good album closers. Meaning they maintain those heavy downtuned guitars that define their agressive sound, but they also throw some good familiar clean vocal lines in there to remind us that they can write some damn fine choruses.

I would mainly recommend this album to fans of prog metal who also take an appeal towards death and core vocals (there's a lot of both on here) and lots of downtuned djenty guitar riffs. So maybe a good description could be: A combination of Solution .45 and Shattered Skies? Take that description with a grain of salt though.

Favorite songs: And Heavens Began to Fall, Creatures from the Mud, Disfigured Hand

[Scorpion]

Shokran

I had no idea that they did stuff with vocals as well, the only stuff of theirs that I knew was purely instrumental.

[Bolsters]

I've heard a different Shokran album, one which was instrumental, but I didn't really like it enough to give it another go. I'll listen to this one though.

[Train of Naught]

Well, I don't know too much about this band but I am pretty sure that Supreme Truth is the only album that they officially released as an instrumental album alongside the album with vocals.

I am still not even sure if I prefer that album instrumentally or with vocals, gotta relisten.

[Train of Naught]

Okay, following up two albums that are probably not as well known (the latter likely because it was only released this month), comes what might be the most popular prog release of 2016. Sit back, relax, enjoy the ride.

Haken - Affinity (April 29th)

For fans of: Progressive rock/metal (Dream Theater, Leprous, Ayreon)


Remember just before the release when Haken put up that old-fashioned codec website where they released the tracklisting and stuff? I have seen a lot of great pre-release hype campaigns (Gojira and Dream Theater to name the other standouts) but this one was the best. Some very subtle hints, some obviously fake misleading updates which somehow managed to actually trick some people (who the hell thinks "Verbatim" is a proper album title?). But they made it interactive and raised the hype pretty well.

I guess for this reason it was pretty hard for the album to live up to the hype. At first it definitely did, when it came out I spun Affinity on a daily basis and some songs on it I would still consider some of their best. Anyway let's break down the songs. I am tempted to call affinity.exe/Initiate the best album intro Haken have done. The interlude track is a perfect callback to the pre-release updates and fits the album 'theme', and even though I overplayed Initiate it is still one of my favorite songs on the album, maybe even my favorite. Above anything else, that main riff is catchy as hell and I can not stop airdrumming along to it. Alongside that, the vocals have a very dramatic feel to them, it gives the song this dark mood that I wish was present a bit more on this album. Everyone loves 1985, and I can't argue that it's a really good song. The chorus is fantastic, the instrumental section is glorious (you know which one I am talking about), but that "djent" riff after the chorus really sticks out in a bad way for me and some of the vocal melodies in the verses feel really awkward and I get that they wanted to have this goofy 80's feeling to the song, but that's not really my thing I guess. Still, a really good song overall. Whenever I listen to Lapse I really like it, but for some reason it does not have much staying power, it is the one song of which I always forget how it even goes whenever I am not listening to it. Now The Architect is just awesome, I loved it from first listen and noticed people were kind of skeptical about it, but some are finally coming around to it. Might not be as good as Celestial Elixir and FBTE for example, but it is still a really good song and to me feels way shorter than 15 minutes.

This is were the album kinda goes downhill for me. Earthrise and Red Giant are alright songs but I would never really revisit them, the only things that stick out in a positive way for me are the chorus in Earthrise and the Drum 'n Bass section at the end of Red Giant. The Endless Knot on the other hand is fantastic, when it was released I thought for sure this would be my album of the year, Initiate and it were some of the best things I had heard all year, and The Endless Knot was so cool in a live setting too. Bound By Gravity is the obligatory mellow ending some bands seem to feel is a must this year. Apparently they are generally very well received (Periphery's Lune and this song mostly) but the only thing I love about this one is the reprise at the end. Speaking of reprises, Affinity definitely wasn't the most subtle at them, but both The Architect and BBG had such epic reprises, to the point of almost feeling like a really good conclusion of a movie.

Overall this is a solid album from front to back, though I feel that the affinity.exe - The Architect run is much stronger than the last four songs. I still strongly believe that The Mountain and Aquarius are their strongest efforts, but this one is not too far behind. If anyone somehow still does not know this band, I'd stay away from Aquarius at first and start with either of the last two albums.

Favorite songs: Initiate, The Architect, The Endless Knot, 1985

[Crow]

bound by gravity is the best, and earthrise is pretty great too, and so is the endless knot, i actually prefer the back half in general to the front half

honestly the architect is one of my least favorite, it has its moments but it's too drawn out and generally slow-paced. i actually sort of spaced out when they played it live last week... oops

[Bolsters]

I'm warming up to pretty much all of it.

[Tomislav95]

Pretty good album. Endless Knot and 1985 are my favorites.

[home]

Definitely one of my favourite albums of this year, it hit me a lot more emotionally then the other Haken albums did. I love Red Giant, the rhythm is really nice and some of the high floaty vocal melodies are just so beautiful.

[Train of Naught]

It feels like part of me bashes on the few negative aspects too hard just because it didn't live up to my expectations because it really is a good album. Guess it just does not compare to some of the other stuff I have found this year, this is a really good year for music.

I might hold off updating this thread for a few days sometimes during the process btw guys, I will try to have this done around late November so I don't miss out on the good stuff that is still being released this year.

[King Postwhore]

Hearing the songs from this album live made me love this album even more. 

[Train of Naught]

Hearing the songs from this album live made me love this album even more.

I had this with Crystallised, but only slightly. Still think it pales in comparison to most of their epics but the chorus was much better in a live setting, and the acapella section was magnificent.

Messenger - Threnodies (April 22nd)

For fans of: Progressive rock with a touch of sludgy/stoner guitar tones (Yes, Mastodon, Dream the Electric Sleep, The Flower Kings, Pink Floyd)


As one of the many spotify discover weekly things I have.. discovered, this is one of the only ones released this year. It actually took quite some time for me to recognize the effort that went into this album, at first it sounded like a lazy mix of The Flower Kings (yes, I have actually checked out some since my roulette) and Dream the Electric Sleep, with some heavy moments that remind me of Mastodon. But the musicianship on this is actually quite great and not in a technical show-off sense, everything blends well together and never during the entire 46-min runtime do I get the feeling that they put too much attention on one instrument/bandmember.

The song that got me into this album (the one that was on my discover weekly playlist once) was Oracles of War, a pretty heavy song with some striking similarities to Mastodon, only this sounds way cleaner, for better or worse. The song has some guitar leads that are almost too similar to ZZ top's Sharp Dressed Man, almost. Balearic Blue seems like the best introductory track for fans of older progrock. Especially the chorus which is essentially Yes. Following it up, Celestial Spheres, is basically a much groovier alternative of the last song, and way superior if you ask me. Soaring vocal lines, orgasmic synths (unlike Ayreon - Reign of Computers) and sexy basslines. The most interesting song for me remains Nocturne, it has these dark Pink Floyd-like verses and then they go into a bombastic chorus and it's the most satisfying thing ever. Pareidolia is a good track, may even be the best introductory track, but in the context of the album it kind of sounds like everything we have just heard put into a blender to crank up the album length. Though I gotta say the chorus is really cool. Crown of Ashes is pretty forgettable and not a good song to end the album with, and I feel like these guys have more in store because there were some nice mixes of different styles throughout the album, leaves me a bit disappointed but I can't say the album as a whole left me disappointed, it's good.

I guess this is a solid effort, and I will keep this and on my radar for sure to see what else they can come up with, but particularly looking at some of the vocal melodies, they're not all that interesting at times. Also might be sufficient to note that while it's solid all the way through, apart from the instrumental work in Celestial Spheres and the entirety of Nocturne there is nothing too special going on. You should go into this expecting something solid but not amazing, still definitely worth the listen. This may become one of those albums I burn out on after like 10-20 listens, but for now it is an enjoyable album, a nice surprise this year.

Favorite songs: Nocturne, Pareidolia, Oracles of War, Celestial Spheres

[Train of Naught]

No takers? Next one came out right after I started becoming a fan of these guys.


Novembre - URSA (April 1st)

For fans of: Doom/death/atmospheric metal (Opeth, Katatonia, Alcest)


This was and still is the first time I have ever been properly introduced to a band through the monthly band feature (which seems to have died out now) of the progmetal subreddit. The first song I heard was Verne off their most 'popular' album, whatever that means for a band this small.

Novembre started out as a deathmetal band in the early 90's and have since developed a really cool blend between deathmetal, doom metal and an atmospheric sound that reminds me of Alcest with its own unique twist to it. With all the new stuff I had never heard before by this band I was kind of skeptical that they could live up to their earlier albums (Materia, The Blue and Classica were on regular rotation), and that's exactly what happened.

I did not like the album at all and kind of ignored it for months, until eventually I was on a Novembre kick and decided to give the lead single another shot (titled "Umana"): This is quite easily the best introduction to the band. The song includes their signature gloomy/somber clean vocals, it has the death growls (I personally believe Carmelo Orlando does the best growls that I've ever heard, they are so powerful). On the flip side, Umana does not have a strong instrumental section like many of their other songs do, so it fails to explore that side of their sound and it may be a turn off when people get into albums like Classica and realize that this band is actually very focused on instrumentals. To be fair, this entire album is a bit minimal on the instrumentals and that may be a slight gripe of mine when reviewing and ranking it amongst the other 2016 releases. This time I am not going to bother going song-by-song, will just be doing as much songs as needed to capture the essence of the album since this is a pretty concise and straight to the point album.

With Umana out of the way, let's move on to the preceding track, The Rose. It is a fair bit darker and not as heavy on the background orchestration to try and make it sound "epic". It has some more retro-Novembre vibes to it which I appreciate, and with that drk mood at the end it definitely reminds of some of the songs on "Materia". URSA, the title track, does not do this album justice I feel. It is too heavy on growls and they feel a bit misplaced. I always thought that title tracks should represent the album but I would not say this is. They kind of flipped it around so they have growls at the start and clean vocals in the part that leads up to it. Notice how I refrain from using the terms "verse" and "chorus". Novembre have very interesting song structures and rarely use these, repeating certain parts in songs does not happen often, one obvious exception being the song Verne, where I feel they repeated the chorus so many times because it is packed with emotion, maybe they wanted this to be their live hit or something. Oceans of Afternoons is the breather they did not necessarily need on this album. It is already a pretty pleasant, relaxing listen throughout so they could have done without a relatively slowpaced, all clean vocals song. But regardless this is a good and interesting song, and the payoff at the end (sax solo) is brilliant. Annoluce, unlike any other song on the album, pretty much represents the structure of many of the older songs by this band, with the progressive, longer instrumental sections and all. Like you're taking a trip through several songs and it all ties in together at the end. See it as a clean, softer alternative of their older material, pretty cool. Agathae, being the longest song on the album, feels like they were trying to make another "Zenith" from The Blue album, not even close man. They will never be able to make a song that good, this one is too dragged out and I feel like these guys are not amazing at doing instrumentals. The one time the vocals do come in they are not even that good. I guess this is the only real disappointment for me on the album too. The last two songs are not really noteworthy. Both are good songs but are mostly similar to other stuff on the album. If you liked this album, chances are you will like these songs just as well.

Favorite songs: Umana, Oceans of Afternoons, The Rose, Bremen, Annoluce

[Bolsters]

No takers?

I was going to listen to that album today but didn't get around to it.

[Scorpion]

I really like URSA, great album. I disagree with your thoughts on the final two songs, I think they're two of the album's best songs. I have a stout support for Agathae in particular. I'll have to give this a few more listens (so much awesome new music this year, ugh) but I could see this beating out Materia as my faerie Novembre album.

[King Postwhore]

Train, we had a power outage in Boston so they played as a bonus both Celestial Elixir & Crystallised.