The one thing I admire the most about Colors and probably the one detail that makes it so much more than just a great album for me, is just how cohesive and consistent it is. Not just in terms of quality, but you can really tell that they wrote basically 65 minutes of music, and it just flows perfectly. Recurring themes appear in different songs, and some sections are only featured once. And we're talking some of the best moments on the album. They just appear, they blow you away and then they are gone. Sometimes less is more, and what drew me into Colors and made me go back so many times, and still makes me go back is that I want to revisit all those epic moments.
TGM is a very worthy follow-up IMO. Some people hate on it, but personally I think Swim to the Moon is their best epic. Yeah, IMO it edges out White Walls (though not by much) and I think Silent Flight Parliament, while good, doesn't come close to the two. Future Sequence is a really strong album for the most part, but it's somewhere around the Melting City/Silent Flight Parliament mark that I kinda zone out when I listen to it these days. Not that those songs are necessarily bad, but the album does feel its length towards the end, and the ending of the album is a bit anti-climactic in the sense that the big epic finale is also probably the weakest non-intermission song on the album, at least for me. It has some great sections and it's a good song overall, but where White Walls and Swim to the Moon (at least for me) are two of the biggest highlights (if not biggest) on their albums, Future Sequence ends on a lower note. Just a minor complaint though.