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General => Archive => General Music Archives => Topic started by: Train of Naught on December 01, 2015, 04:53:16 AM
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Hi folks! Welcome to my top 50 albums thread! This is going to be my first version, and will probably be followed up by a v2 in about 1 year or 1 and a half year, the reason being I'm currently hosting a roulette and exploring music on my own, so I still have a ton of albums to take in, and this one's mostly consisting of the stuff I'm already fairly familiar with, plus some newcomers. Here's some bulletpoints about the format and rules etc.:
- The 14 pre-top 50 albums will be announced 2-3 at a time daily until there's only the top 50 left, doing this to give me some time to make my finishing touches to the write-ups, as I've already written most of it some time ago, the top 50 will start on Sunday.
- There's no artist/album limit, if I know an artist and think 12 of its albums (:neverusethis:) are worthy of the top 50, I'll do it.(For real though, I think the most albums by one artist in this top 50 is 4, which is still a lot, but IDC.)
- Expect more than half of the albums to be post-2000, I have a special place in my heart for classic albums, but the actual top doesn't have more than ~15 albums from before 2k.
- I'll post a short description/motivation for my favorite song of each album, along with another few recommendations, so if you're not familiar with an album but do want to check it out, you'll have an idea of what could be the best song to start with.
Now so you're 100% prepared for this preposterous list, here's some of my musical background info:
I was born back in 1995, pretty much from as young as I can remember I've been hearing my dad spin goo'ol metal/rock CD's (think of Metallica, Alice Cooper, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Overkill, etc.). Unfortunately he passed away in 2009, so from there on I've been carrying on his legacy with some of these bands, but I've been slowly developing my own tastes aswell, mainly being prog rock/metal for the past 2 years, but I also have my personal twist in this list with some alternative and nu-metal that I've been hearing a lot growing up.
I'll do the first update in a few hours, which will be #62, #61 and #60
Editing the whole list of the outsiders here in the OP for clarity:
#64: System of a Down – Steal This Album!
#63: Three Days Grace – One-X
#62: Dream Theater – Octavarium
#61: Opeth – Pale Communion
#60: Iron Maiden – Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
#59: Shinedown – Sound of Madness
#58: Porcupine Tree – Deadwing
#57: Disturbed – Indestructible
#56: Native Construct – Quiet World
#55: Seventh Wonder – Mercy Falls
#54: Gojira – The Way of All Flesh
#53: The Mars Volta – The Bedlam In Goliath
#52: TesseracT – Altered State
#51: Protest The Hero – Scurrilous
Top 50 albums:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
#50: Rage Against The Machine – Rage Against The Machine
#49: Mastodon – Crack The Skye
#48: Haken – Aquarius
#47: Muse – Origin of Symmetry
#46: Pomegranate Tiger – Entities
#45: Metallica – Death Magnetic
#44: Circus Maximus – Isolate
#43: Dream Theater – Train Of Thought
#42: Avenged Sevenfold – Waking The Fallen:
#41: Alter Bridge – One Day Remains
#40: A.C.T – Circus Pandemonium
#39: Linkin Park – Meteora
#38: Periphery – Periphery II
#37: Sum 41 – Chuck
#36: Iron Maiden – A Matter Of Life And Death
#35: Tremonti – All I Was
#34: The Mars Volta – De-loused In The Comatorium
#33: Megadeth – Rust in Peace
#32: Queensrÿche – Operation: Mindcrime
#31: Metallica – Master Of Puppets
#30: Distorted Harmony – Chain Reaction
#29: Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn Of Events
#28: Arctic Monkeys – Whatever You Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
#27: Sum 41 – Screaming Bloody Murder
#26: Iron Maiden – Powerslave
#25: Deftones - Diamond Eyes
#24: Machine Head – The Blackening
#23: Avenged Sevenfold – Avenged Sevenfold
#22: Haken – The Mountain
#21: Megadeth – Countdown to Extinction
#20: Protest The Hero – Volition
#19: Alter Bridge – Blackbird
#18: The Dear Hunter – Act II: The Meaning Of, And All Things Regarding Ms. Leading
#17: Royal Blood – Royal Blood
#16: Avenged Sevenfold – City Of Evil
#15: Slipknot – Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses
#14: Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory
#13: Dream Theater – Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence
#12: Protest The Hero – Fortress
#11: System of a Down – Toxicity
#10: Fates Warning – Disconnected
#9: Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory
#8: The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute
#7: Metallica - Ride the Lightning
#6: Alter Bridge - Fortress
#5: Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast
#4: Metallica - ...And Justice For All
#3: Dream Theater - Images and Words
#2: Machine Head - Unto the Locust
#1: Avenged Sevenfold - Nightmare
Anyone that doesn't feel like reading write-ups and is just interested in the results, here's what we got.
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Here's the first batch!
#64: Three Days Grace – One-X (2006)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cf/One_X.png)
Alternative Metal/Hard Rock
The second studio album from the band that’s pretty much famous for their simple instrumentations by now. I had a hard time picking my favorite, but One-X got the upper hand in the end. It’s just like Steal This Album!, something I return to to just rock out a bit, while TDG also has some of those ‘emotional’ songs, they don’t tend to be as strong, well with a few exceptions. The ex-singer of this band, Adam Gontier, used to be one of my favorite rock-metal vocalists, known for his husky voice (don’t know if that’s the best term for it), he was basically the main attraction of the band for me, so it’s a shame I only saw them live after he left the band. TDG has a lot of post-grunge-y aspects, but the in your face guitar riffs definitely lean more towards alternative rock/metal. I’m very unaware of how familiar these guys are around here, aside from a few songs I expect to be pretty well known.
Favorite song:
Riot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixZDTiXiHsc): If it wasn’t clear already that Three Days Grace are all about writing simply structured catchy songs, then this song will definitely clear that up, obviously being about starting a Riot, this is one of those songs that gets the whole crowd pumped up during a concert. Nothing complex, but if you’re looking for simple anthemic rock, you’re at the right place here.
Other recommendations:
Animal I Have Become (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqds0B_meys): If you don’t like the first few seconds (bass intro), then don’t bother, because that’s probably the grooviest part of the song, although I gotta say the chorus is awesome too, my favorite chorus off the album.
Never Too Late (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL2ZwXj1tXM): This is one of those exceptions, Adam Gontier can indeed write good emotional songs. Being about overcoming suicidal tendencies (atleast that’s my interpretation), has very strong vocal deliveries, and a super powerful chorus which perfectly defines my choice of words when I said “husky voice”.
Get Out Alive (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHqo2FDJSU0): This song just became one of my favorites because the drums were interesting, not even challenging, just interesting to play, and left a lot of space to improvise. Eventually the song as a whole just started growing on me.
#63: Dream Theater – Octavarium (2005)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/Dream_Theater_-_Octavarium.jpg)
Progressive Metal
It should go without saying that Dream Theater is one of my favorite bands, but there’s still a lot of albums that didn’t make it to the rankings, so why did this one? Well, at first I only liked Panic Attack, and I had already read about the idea behind the album (8 songs, each in consecutive order going one octave higher and stuff), which intrigued me to give the songs on here a second chance, I was still too impatient at that point to listen to a 24-minute song, but in the end it became a DT masterpiece in my eyes. I guess I care more about the mixing process than I thought I did, because this seems to be mixed very well compared to most of the other albums. Moving on to the songs, there’s nothing that drags down the album, even TALW and IWBY which I disliked for a long period of time, don’t disappoint anymore, These Walls and Never Enough are middle of the pack for me, they both have some really awesome moments, but don’t strike me as particularly unique either. Being the 8th studio album, James still manages to keep the vocal performance on par, although there’s way better albums to show that, what really stands out in the individual tracks are the instrumentals.
Favorite song:
Sacrificed Sons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nBpLzNwkZw): Nope, it’s not Octavarium anymore, this beautiful 9-11 tribute was a late grower for me, but like I mentioned, it’s not just James being excellent (I feel like singing his own lyrics tends to make him perform better), but in Sacrificed Sons, it’s the fucking awesome instrumental section that some people may find misplaced, I personally dig it a lot, and it has some of my favorite DT riffs :metal
Other recommendations:
Octavarium (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVMIk3xYaYo): I shouldn’t need to recommend Dream Theater songs to a Dream Theater Forum, you all know this one, let it speak for itself.
Panic Attack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hDs6mCVAKs): Amazing intro, leads into what is literally an assault of instruments, heaviest song of the album.
The Root of All Evil (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgAc7ekYmVA): To this day I believe that this was the best concert opener DT ever had, it has the most energetic intro, and a beautiful chorus, what better contrast can you ask for?
#62 System of a Down – Steal This Album! (2002)
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/18xqc5HQKl0/maxresdefault.jpg)
Nu-Metal
Man, this album brings back some memories, I know 2002 doesn’t seem all that old, but when you consider I was almost turning 7 years old by the time, it’s pretty self-explanatory. This is one of those albums that has a lot of short tracks on it, which is basically S.O.A.D. in a nutshell for you, they’re also the only band who manage to make such amazing songs like Innervision, staying around or under the 3 minute mark. What this does for the album as a whole is not an awful lot, which makes it hard to rank, because to me it remains a record of randomly ordered songs, but the songs are all very solid S.O.A.D. songs. So yeah, album flow is definitely not great, but I merely return to this album for some fun, but also strong emotional songs, there’s no need for any stories within the songs or the album here. After Toxicity it was quite a task to continue their spree, but Steal This Album! More than sufficed.
Favorite song:
Roulette (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrazhpsuYLc): Everyone who is familiar with S.O.A.D. knows they’re not only about the short extraordinary songs, they also have super emotional/heartbreaking songs like this one, made complete with a moving acoustic guitar solo. I usually don’t recommend this band to a lot of people because it’s pretty weird for most, but this song, I recommend to everyone.
Other recommendations:
I-E-A-I-A-I-O (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_66uBa2yDk): The most fun song on the album, has a great chorus that everybody can sing along to, and energetic whacky lyrics in the verses.
Innervision (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NklhTCw1TiA): One of those songs with very well thought out lyrics that they tend to have a lot, but what I like most is Serj’s vocal performance overall.
Chic’N’Stu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfHGqyMxuqI): I guess this is what you’d call a guilty pleasure, because this is easily the weirdest song I’ve ever heard from these guys, and that’s saying a lot. (the song is about pizza, proceed at own risk)
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Octavairum and Steal this album are both great, and I actually really like the flow of the latter.
Looking forward to the rest of the list :metal
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You had STA in your top50 right? Well deserved, dont see it get mentioned that often.
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the only one of these i know is 8vm, which probably would've been mentioned if i did honorable mentions at the start of the list
still would say it's my #4 DT album, i guess
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I was born back in 1995, pretty much from as young as I can remember I've been hearing my dad spin goo'ol metal/rock CD's (think of Metallica, Alice Cooper, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Overkill, etc.). Unfortunately he passed away in 2009,
Damn. That's terrible. I'm sorry to hear that. He must've been young.
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44 years old, it was really hard to digest and truly realise, but I've come to live with it.
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44 years old, it was really hard to digest and truly realise, but I've come to live with it.
I bet it was. That is too young.
Will be following. The list of bands in the OP is right up my alley.
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Damn, I still haven't even finished the writeups for my own list :lol
Octavarium is maybe my #3/#4 DT album :P
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I'm not a huge Three Days Grace fan, but One-X is pretty solid. I think Time of Dying is probably my favorite track from that album. The main riff is pretty cool.
Never heard of this band called... Dreem... Tehatre? I agree with you about Sacrificed Sons. It's also my favorite song on the album.
And for some reason I had never listened to Steal This Album! before last month, but it's a very good album. I'd say that Vicinty of Obscenity might surpass Chic’N’Stu in term of weirdest SOAD song though.
Anyway kudos for being able to make a top 50 album list. I have no idea how you guys do it :lol
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I'm not a huge Three Days Grace fan, but One-X is pretty solid. I think Time of Dying is probably my favorite track from that album. The main riff is pretty cool.
Never heard of this band called... Dreem... Tehatre? I agree with you about Sacrificed Sons. It's also my favorite song on the album.
And for some reason I had never listened to Steal This Album! before last month, but it's a very good album. I'd say that Vicinty of Obscenity might surpass Chic’N’Stu in term of weirdest SOAD song though.
Anyway kudos for being able to make a top 50 album list. I have no idea how you guys do it :lol
Awesome to see you in the General Music Discussion forums, never seen you before here, and yea, either Time of Dying or Gone Forever would be my next song, but I think the whole album is solid.
Oh and in terms of SOAD weirdness, yea Vicinity of Obscenity is pretty damn weird, but Prison Song and Bounce are also definitely up there!
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Anyway kudos for being able to make a top 50 album list. I have no idea how you guys do it :lol
You basically look at what your favorite bands are, and pick a few albums from each, and then write those down. Keep looking for records you love until you have 100 or so. Then, choose your personal #1, and then the top 10, and you go all the way back until you have somehow ordered all the albums. Then, I'd recommend putting a limit, like, no more than 2 albums per band or so. Keep trimming it until you get ~60. Now, listen to them all, in descending order (from #1 to the last one), and refine the album's positions as you go. And while listening to them, write down some thoughts - those are pretty useful when doing the actual writeups.
At least that's how I did it a year or so ago, and doing it now :P
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Anyway kudos for being able to make a top 50 album list. I have no idea how you guys do it :lol
You basically look at what your favorite bands are, and pick a few albums from each, and then write those down. Keep looking for records you love until you have 100 or so. Then, choose your personal #1, and then the top 10, and you go all the way back until you have somehow ordered all the albums. Then, I'd recommend putting a limit, like, no more than 2 albums per band or so. Keep trimming it until you get ~60. Now, listen to them all, in descending order (from #1 to the last one), and refine the album's positions as you go. And while listening to them, write down some thoughts - those are pretty useful when doing the actual writeups.
At least that's how I did it a year or so ago, and doing it now :P
Yea thats basically how I did this one, broke it down to about 100 albums and gave them all a listen, 50 weren't enough so I brought it down to 64 albums.
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Next three albums, and to keep up with the pace I'll probably finish one more write-up later on today when I have the time
#61: Shinedown – The Sound of Madness (2008)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d4/The_Sound_Of_Madness_-_Cover_Art.jpg)
Genre: Post-Grunge
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first ever mention of Shinedown in a top 50 album thread, albeit #61, let alone The Sound of Madness, which arguably isn’t even their most popular release (tied with Amaryllis), this is a clear example of my post-grunge love swinging by, mostly this genre doesn’t have entire albums of consistently good music, but this is an exception, it’s one of the most energetic albums in the genre, and from the first song all the way to the last, stays super energetic. Even the ballad-y songs are full of energy, and those are considerably the best. If you haven’t already met the greatness of Brent Smith,here you go, the singer of Shinedown. I wouldn’t say this is the best album to showcase his talent, but this is the album that brings all the instruments along with him to a perfect balance, thus being my favorite Shinedown album. The already mentioned ballad-y songs aside, we also have some very heavy guitar riffage that brings down the high pace this band usually keeps a bit. I would describe these guys as a band that makes mostly radio-oriented rock, it’s very accessible stuff, nothing overly complex, and Brent is definitely the highlight of this band.
Favorite song:
Second Chance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H25ORRgLxdA): Best example of that radio-oriented rock I was talking about, has a fine chorus, but the verses and pre-chorus are my favorite parts, also one of the best songs to showcase the beauty of Brent’s vocals.
Other recommendations:
Sound of Madness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H25ORRgLxdA): Arguably the heaviest song on the album, maybe tied with Cry For Help, but the latter is very quick-paced, while this title track is just a slow, heavy, simple headbanger.
The Crow & The Butterfly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uitBzi57PVE): Beautiful song, don’t bother too much with the lyrics because I’m pretty sure they don’t make any sense, but this is the one song I’d recommend listening to from this album if you’re mainly here for this guy’s voice, cause damn, just listen to him sing here.
I Own You (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_HgGADp9u0): I don’t think Shinedown fans agree with me on this one, this is just a plain fun song, nothing out of the box, but it appeals to me.
#60: Opeth – Pale Communion (2014)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/Opeth_Pale_Communion_album_artwork.jpg)
Genre: Unidentifiable
Sorry Opeth fans, I never managed to get into Opeth, I’ve been trying, but so far the only album that hooked me was this little gem. From what I’ve heard Pale Communion is the softest Opeth album (which seems obvious, unless proven otherwise), but this really opened my eyes, and made me realize that these guys do have it in them to create great music, it has just not been the music I was used to, so I’m hoping that this album will be the gateway to their classic albums. Enough about other albums, Pale Communion is a very laid-back (for Opeth standards) album with what almost feels like psychedelic influences, they created an album that just feels otherworldly or something. I’ve heard a lot about Mike Akerfeldt, and I never understood why people love his growls so much more than other singers with harsh vox, but his clean voice sure is interesting, he can sing alright. His voice fits the music style they’re going for here more than anything I’ve heard before, this should be a record you have playing in the background when you’re in a lazy mood and don’t really have anything going on. And yes, this means no Blackwater Park in my top 50.
Favorite song:
Cusp of Eternity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHq9yMXw3iA): This is the best :hat song I can imagine, the whole atmosphere is just so amazing, it also has an eastern-ish style going, which is my weak spot. Recommending this song to anyone who is having a :hat, aswell as people who enjoy groovy songs above anything, with cool guitar solo’s.
Other recommendations:
Voice of Treason (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO4-mXMbiy8): Out of everything here, this one was the easiest to get into, it has a strong chorus, fun drums and subtle guitar melodies.
Eternal Rains Will Come (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoW3Sywb5xQ): Not as groovy as Cusp of Eternity, but it is the perfect opener to this album, sets the mood, and maintains the proggy elements.
#59: Iron Maiden – Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son (1988)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/Iron_Maiden_-_Seventh_Son_Of_A_Seventh_Son.jpg)
Heavy Metal
So yea, of course I know my classics, there’s actually a lot of classics throughout the top 50 (not as many as I’ve seen on some other top 50’s though). Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, believe it or not, first caught my attention because of the cover art, because that’s how I learned about albums at that age, I picked out a CD with cool artwork and just tried it out. I can pretty much remember nothing from this album from when I was little though, but I still get a very nostalgic feel when listening to it. What makes this record so excellent is its consistency, it’s my #2 most consistent IM album, but its peaks aren’t as high as the other Iron Maiden features on this list. Still, #59 is pretty impressive, and a well-deserved spot for this classic Maiden album.
Favorite song:
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFLVSxc8nVA): This was a no-brainer, a ten minute song wasn’t like anything I’ve heard before, but strangely, it didn’t even feel like a stretch, this is by far the most grandiose IM song that I know. This is also one of the best Bruce Dickinson performances, so if good vocals appeal to you (which they should), check this out.
Other recommendations:
The Evil That Men Do (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E50QazmwP7M): Most fun song on the album in terms of singing along, I know this one was a blast live, and still gets me hyped when it comes up on shuffle.
The Clairvoyant (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh6QPg5BGsE): Again, just Bruce being a hero here, his vocal melodies are swinging like no tomorrow.
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I love Pale Communion
SSoaSS is so :metal
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Pale Communion is pretty great actually. My second favourite Opeth album, as I'm not a fan of growls. Have you heard Damnation yet? If you haven't, I strongly recommend it. It's a very laid back Opeth without any growls and with awesome melodies and clean guitar solos.
SSoaSS is great too. 8VM is alright; I couldn't sit through the whole SOAD album; don't know the other two.
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Yea I've heard a friend mention Damnation once or twice, so it was already kinda on my radar, I've also been listening to some tracks off Ghost Reveries, but this one's the album I kept returning to.
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I feel about Heritage (which is Opeth's actual softest album IMO) the way you feel about Pale Communion.
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I feel about Heritage (which is Opeth's actual softest album IMO) the way you feel about Pale Communion.
Maybe if you cut The Devil's Orchard.
Anyway, I think Damnation is the softest. It's dark, yes, and it's brooding and sad, but that's how I see it.
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I would say that The Devil's Orchard is no heavier than several songs on Pale Communion. It would be the heaviest song on Damnation, yes. But Heritage is also counterbalanced by having several very, very soft songs (Nepenthe, Häxprocess).
Regardless of what is the softest, though, :heart Heritage.
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ya Damnation be their lightest/softest.
I still haven't really given Pale Comminion a proper chance; I'll try to rember to give it a spin tonight.
anyway, I'll be following. :corn
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pale communion feels like an album i'll go back to in the future and really appreciate, but it hasn't done a whole lot for me yet. i like it more than heritage, though.
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Seventh Son is pure awesomeness. Favorite song personally is Infinite Dreams but the title track isn't too far behind. :tup
Gonna be following
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Seventh Son is pure awesomeness. Favorite song personally is Infinite Dreams but the title track isn't too far behind. :tup
I agree!
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pale communion feels like an album i'll go back to in the future and really appreciate, but it hasn't done a whole lot for me yet. i like it more than heritage, though.
I feel the same way about PC. But I adore Heritage.
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I couldn't get into PC - specially with the little expectations I had after the boring Heritage :lol
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Here's my promised bonus update for today, wangs!
#58: Porcupine Tree – Deadwing (2005)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Pt_deadwing.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Rock
I’ve had a hard time getting into Porcupine Tree and I still have, most of the songs I’ve heard did little to nothing for me, but this album stood out to me after hearing the title track. The album as a whole carries on a strange combination of energy and relaxation that I can’t really describe, maybe Mikael Akerfeldt is just my form of perfection when it comes to vocal harmonies. Anyway, even though this album is (as far as I know) pretty heavy for PT standards, correct me if I’m wrong because I’m not that familiar with Porcupine Tree’s discography, it also has immense amounts of swings in pace and heaviness, going from Shallow to Lazarus, kinda like the transition Octavarium has, going from TROAE to TALW. It doesn’t bother me, in fact, I think it improves the album when listened to in its entirety, which is why I think this is a great album from start to finish, and should definitely be listened to entirely. I’ve read through some of the older top 50 albums threads because they were pretty enjoyable, and couldn’t help noticing that there’s so many Porcupine Tree almost everywhere. Deadwing seems to be a pretty popular choice, but I really should start venturing deeper into the PT cave, because this one definitely hasn’t disappointed.
Favorite song:
Halo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcrWM1pHuJE): This song is just so groovy, especially love the chorus on this one. While I love the extended instrumental sections this album has, this one is great in its simplicity instrumental-wise.
Other recommendations:
Shallow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE_tMWD1QFo): Again, super groovy, and my introduction to Deadwing, also the heaviest song on the album, the main riff gives me Soundgarden – Spoonman vibes.
Deadwing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMEwM3YHiME): Awesome 10 minute opener, with amazingly done instrumental sections, and relaxing backing vocals, while still being a fairly energetic song.
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Told ya to get into In Absentia :P
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I know I have some new shit in my top albums and will even have one or two 2015 releases on here, but you sent me that song like 2 weeks ago :lol I've known Deadwing for about a year now.
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i mean you didn't mention any of the four best tracks off th album (arriving somewhere, mellotron scratch, start of something beautiful, glass arm shattering) but i don't mind seeing this album here, yes :lol
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I've known Deadwing for about a year now.
Shallow is the only song I know from PT, what are the odds.
:neverusethis:
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I tried Porcupine Tree a few years back, and it was with Deadwing. The only two songs that I thought were halfway decent was Arriving Somewhere and The Start Of Something Beautiful. The rest was so meh, I cannot believe how many like them.
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I've known Deadwing for about a year now.
Shallow is the only song I know from PT, what are the odds.
:neverusethis:
Kappa? I don't even know.
@TAC yea most I tried out didn't appeal too much either, maybe they're just not for me (Deadwing aside).
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Deadwing is like 50 spots too low.
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Really excited to see Three Days Grace and Shinedown on the list. Definitely following.
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I tried Iron Maiden a few years back, and it was with The Number of the Beast. The only song that I thought was halfway decent was the title track. The rest was so meh, I cannot believe how many like them.
Fixed for me :P
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I tried Iron Maiden a few years back, and it was with The Number of the Beast. The only song that I thought was halfway decent was the title track. The rest was so meh, I cannot believe how many like them.
Fixed for me :P
:lol
Well played! So wrong, but so well played! :tup
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I tried Iron Maiden a few years back, and it was with The Number of the Beast. The only song that I thought was halfway decent was the title track. The rest was so meh, I cannot believe how many like them.
Fixed for me :P
HALLOWED BE THY NAME? What the fuck. :flame:
Really excited to see Three Days Grace and Shinedown on the list. Definitely following.
Did not expect to get love for those.
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I tried Iron Maiden a few years back, and it was with The Number of the Beast. The only song that I thought was halfway decent was the title track. The rest was so meh, I cannot believe how many like them.
Fixed for me :P
:lol
Well played! So wrong, but so well played! :tup
I quickly skimmed thru the thread, saw this quote from TAC, and nearly lost my shit. Had to go back to the original post to bring me back to reality.
And Tim, I agree with you - except for the fact that I've tried different PT albums, to no avail.
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I guess we fans just love that unique, modern sound PT has :smiley:
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Really excited to see Three Days Grace and Shinedown on the list. Definitely following.
Did not expect to get love for those.
I guess you really took Parama's "Jake only knows 5 bands" to heart. :lol
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So you know 6 now :P
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I tried Iron Maiden a few years back, and it was with The Number of the Beast. The only song that I thought was halfway decent was the title track. The rest was so meh, I cannot believe how many like them.
Fixed for me :P
HALLOWED BE THY NAME? What the fuck. :flame:
My thoughts exactly. You may not like TNoTB (however wrong this is), but Hallowed Be Thy Name is amazing.
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Seventh Son is pure awesomeness. Favorite song personally is Infinite Dreams but the title track isn't too far behind. :tup
I agree!
awesome songs and awesome album
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I tried Iron Maiden a few years back, and it was with The Number of the Beast. The only song that I thought was halfway decent was the title track. The rest was so meh, I cannot believe how many like them.
Fixed for me :P
HALLOWED BE THY NAME? What the fuck. :flame:
My thoughts exactly. You may not like TNoTB (however wrong this is), but Hallowed Be Thy Name is amazing.
Well it was quite long ago so who knows, I may like it now if I relistened it :P
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I guess you really took Parama's "Jake only knows 5 bands" to heart. :lol
Not even, but I just didn't expect anyone to react to those, these type of bands aren't exactly popular around here.
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I guess you really took Parama's "Jake only knows 5 bands" to heart. :lol
Not even, but I just didn't expect anyone to react to those, these type of bands aren't exactly popular around here.
I love some modern rock. It's not something I listen to regurarly, but I used to listen to tons of TDG, Shinedown, 30 Seconds to Mars etc. when I was younger.
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#57: Disturbed – Indestructible (2008)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fd/Indestructible.jpg)
Alternative Metal/Christian Rock :neverusethis:
One of those albums I may or may not have overplayed, a few years prior I could have easily put this in the top 40 or something, but with these kind of albums, being an album with fairly short songs with no real connection between them throughout the album, it can be a tough grower, though #57 is by no means bad, it’s in fact my favorite Disturbed album! The famous self-titled single is very overrated although still worth listening to, but after that it’s all killer no filler, with some pretty innovative songwriting (while not straying too far from their standard song formula), they brought out a solid piece of alternative metal, a genre that doesn’t manage to amaze me all too often, but this is simply awesome. David has always had a very distinct voice which really made Disturbed what they are, but I feel like this album was more about the instruments than ever before. I have yet to give their newest album any attention, and even if I had, it would be too early to rate it, but I’m pretty confident that this one will remain my #1 Disturbed album.
Favorite song:
Perfect Insanity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7wo7D5ASMQ): I might be the only one here, but I think that intro is just one of the best things on the entire album, they set the mood and flow very well into the main riff, and afterwards it’s just David being awesome. This one’s a little more rock oriented than the others, but if you like Disturbed at all and don’t know this song, go listen to it right now.
Other recommendations:
The Night (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbwH5DADhDA): Their darkest sounding song on the album, which kinda makes it feel like a short epic, also having the most memorable guitar solo on the album, The Night is far superior to anything else along with Perfect Insanity.
The Curse (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptAA-Ap9aWA): What can I say? A simple but solid song, nothing complex, and a great chorus.
Inside the Fire (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxujAPhxlo0): This song is pretty damn depressing when you know it’s about the suicide of the frontman’s girlfriend, but it doesn’t take away from the greatness of the song.
#56 Native Construct – Quiet World (2015)
(https://www.metalinjection.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NativeConstruct-QuietWorld.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
Ever heard of Native Construct? Let’s fix that. I know they’re becoming pretty famous around the reddits but I don’t see them being mentioned too often here, Native Construct is a new progressive metal band that has just released their debut album back in April, I didn’t hear it right away, but it got through to me somewhere last summer. I would describe them as a combination between Haken and.. well, just Haken with some very odd but awesome moodswings, I’ve also been told that they’re heavily influenced by BTBAM, but I can’t confirm this, haven’t heard too much of BTBAM. Throughout the whole album this style of moodswings and switching styles is seen, but I feel some songs are standing out particularly in that aspect. Mute, which has a lot of those changes in pace (and even changes music styles pretty often), Come Hell or High Water, which is a very progressive piece of music, aswell as a whole lot heavier. I can’t really compare this album to other works by them as they only have this, but I can safely say this is a refreshing album for everyone that is interested to try out some experimental prog-metal, and even if it’s as experimental as can be, it still feels like a very accessible album.
For this album I’ll link you their bandcamp page (https://nativeconstruct.bandcamp.com/) instead of individual youtube links, since everyone is so crazy about bandcamp these days!
Favorite song:
Chromatic Aberration: The big closing epic of the album, although I recommend listening to Chromatic Lights before anyway, it’s a 2 minute interlude to this song. Aberration extends that instrumental to a very long intro, and in the end makes for one of the best album closers I’ve heard, and without a doubt the best album closer of 2015. (Be warned, a lot of growls near the end)
Other recommendations:
Mute (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v99dHD9oWfU): This song has a music video on youtube if you’re interested, so I decided to link this one anyway. This song I feel has the most outstanding keyboards, and like I mentioned, just a very fun song with the changes in music styles.
Passage: Even though Chromatic Aberration has by far the longest intro, this one builds up the best out of anything, making the best part, the trumpet solo, pop out in the best way possible.
#55: Seventh Wonder – Mercy Falls (2008)
(https://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/3210/cover_5844193102009.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
I found out Seventh Wonder through a friend who recommended them because he thought it would be fitting to Circus Maximus, whom I like. And sure enough I youtubed it, and asked if Mercy Falls would be a good album to start with, and of course he approved, by the way this is their third studio album. Here I am, bought the album almost right away, this really is an amazingly crafted concept album about a man who was in a carcrash (to remember :neverusethis:), after awakening from his coma, ends up in a place called Mercy Falls, throughout the album there’s some spoken word tracks to keep focus to the story, although the storytelling during the actual songs is excellent too (Be warned though, a lot of cheese in the lyrics to be expected). I can best describe it as happy sounding instruments, with a dark twist at some points in the album, topped with a singer who has the voice that would resemble a lot to power metal, but with very, very groovy vocal melodies, it fits very well to the music. The keyboards doing funky stuff in the background also helps set this very happy mood that continues throughout the album, definitely a highlight. I think the best way to describe this music is a happier sounding Myrath, then again, that’s probably not the most relatable band in the prog-world, but yeah, this album is a must.
From this album, I don't think I've ever listened to separate songs, so there's still recommendations, but I'll recommend listening to the whole thing over anything.
Favorite song:
Welcome to Mercy Falls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ0_FDhXutk): Has the most groovy vocal melodies on the album, also some great work on the keyboards here, but I can say that about any song off the album.
Other recommendations:
Paradise (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZQrGMvpQKI): Catchiest and coolest chorus on the album, besides, there’s a killer instrumental section included.
The Black Parade (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7BJzB2-XMQ): This one starts off with a bit of a darker sound, but comes around to the trademark Mercy Falls sound eventually, and makes for a good closer to the album.
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Indestructible is my #4 Disturbed album, and I would definitely put Inside the Fire as the top track with Criminal in close pursuit. Unfortunately this album's and Ten Thousand Fists' songs all sound kinda samey to me so I can't really separate them much even though I've listened to the albums many times.
Don't know the other two.
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That Disturbed cover is probably the most badass album cover ever.
Mercy Falls is brilliant.
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I listened to Indestructible for the first time just the other week. It made a better first impression than Asylum, so I definitely plan to revisit it at some point. Still, I don't see anything coming close to topping Immortalized for me as far as Disturbed is concerned.
Seventh Wonder is a band I've tried to get into a few times over the years but they've just never clicked.
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Yea I thought Indestructible wouldn't be the most popular Disturbed choice, but the problem I'm having with other albums is I usually know 4-5 tracks off the classic albums, and I know like 2-3 from Asylum, this one is the only one I like all the way front to back.
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That Native Construct album was on my list of releases to listen to this year but haven't gotten around to it yet. I'll find the time to get to it soon hopefully.
Oh man, I love me some Mercy Falls. Every time I feel I've gotten tired of the more cheesy side of prog, albums like this are still too irresistibly infectious to ignore. Those choruses man. :hefdaddy
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Mercy Falls is awesome, made my Top 50 and I spin it regularly. Fantastic prog album.
Don't know the other two, but I like the Quiet World cover.
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Interesting update for me: while Disturbed is one o my favourite bands to make fun of, Native Construct instantly became one of my favourite bands. Quiet World would be my Album Of The Year if it weren't for new BTBAM. Actually, I think if it were a tad longer, it would trump Coma Ecliptic.
And ya, Chromatic Aberrations is the Song Of The Year for me \m/
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To each their own :tup and I might've liked Coma Ecliptic more if I didn't wait until 2 weeks ago to check it out, still not a 100% comfortable with the growls but this album is a good transition I feel.
To endure the wait, here's a list of albums that didn’t make the list simply because they’re very recent discoveries of mine (some roulette stuff and some own discoveries), ranging from 3-4 months to stuff that I've only known for like a week but feel are going to grow really well on me:
Myrath - Tales of the Sands
Beyond the Bridge - The Old Man & The Spirit
Jolly - The Audio Guide to Happiness
Kamelot - The Black Halo
VOLA - Inmazes
Between the Buried and Me - Coma Ecliptic
TesseracT - Polaris
Leprous - Bilateral
A.C.T – Last Epic
Headspace – I Am Anonymous
Yea almost half of this is roulette stuff, thanks a bunch lads.
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Quiet World is amazing; it's one of the best prog albums I've heard in a long time. Mercy Falls is good, but The Great Escape is definitely my favorite Seventh Wonder album.
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Great to see you went and checked out Beyond the Bridge album. You won't be disappointed I'm sure, it's a great one.
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Hey :P Great start, I'm glad to see Opeth's PC in top 60, I think it doesn't get enough praise.
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Great to see you went and checked out Beyond the Bridge album. You won't be disappointed I'm sure, it's a great one.
Indeed. #5 on the jingle.boy Top 50v2.
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Great to see you went and checked out Beyond the Bridge album. You won't be disappointed I'm sure, it's a great one.
Yea was loving it, although I slightly remember there being one track that kinda bothered me, can't quite remember what it was called though.
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Great to see you went and checked out Beyond the Bridge album. You won't be disappointed I'm sure, it's a great one.
Yea was loving it, although I slightly remember there being one track that kinda bothered me, can't quite remember what it was called though.
Probably The Apparition (lots of pace-changes and harmonies), The Struggle (a weird one) or Where The Earth and Sky Meet (reasonably cheesy ballad).
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Definitely not the ballad, pretty sure it wasThe Struggle.
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Leprous - Bilateral be my 2011 AOTY. \m/
Discovered it right at the end of the year when looking through someone else's top 10 of the year list, and I pretty much immediately declared it the album I'd been waitin over a decade to discover.
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I'm not on the same level here but I do dig it!
Here's half of today's updates! The actual top 50 will start tomorrow.
#54: Gojira – The Way of All Flesh (2008)
(https://f1.bcbits.com/img/a3364033962_16.jpg)
Genre: Progressive/Death Metal
Can easily confirm that this is the heaviest album on the list (meaning all 64 included albums), and I normally wouldn’t even come close to this kind of music, here’s some background:
Last summer I went to a festival in the French part of Belgium, I went with two friends, neither of them being familiar with any of the metal-related artists (they had one stage dedicated to that type of music called ‘The Cannibal Stage’), fortunately I met a few guys over there who apparently grew up with similar artists that I’ve been listening to/growing up with, so naturally I started hanging out with them and joined them to this band called Gojira, they would perform 1 hour. This was the best experience I’ve had on any music festival ever, it was so mindblowing to see them live, I knew like 2 songs by the time, but the way they have these killer riffs during the verses in almost every song makes for such an energetic live show, and the vocals particularly in most choruses are hard to describe, because it's not the standard growling, it's more like 'singing with a really, really loud and husky voice' :lol again, hard to describe.
Now about this album, it was hard to pick one, because my favorite Gojira songs are spread across almost every album, L’Enfant Sauvage has The Gift of Guilt, From Mars to Sirius has Ocean Planet and Flying Whales, The Link has Dawn, etcetera. But this album is by far the most consistent from start to finish, and also has the best songs spread across the album very well. If you can’t stand harsh vox, don’t even try, but if you’re willing to give it a chance or are already somewhat familiar with them, check out this album. It should also be mentioned that this band is pretty fast with their instruments, but create a very slow/heavy sound, I can’t name another band that sounds similar to this one off the top of my head, maybe a less groovy Meshuggah, without the prog elements? Anyway here’s some songs:
Favorite song:
The Art of Dying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTr7bqKHvgE): Man this song is a masterpiece, favorite Gojira song and I don’t think it will ever be topped, it has an intro you have never heard before, kinda tribal sounding, but the best parts of this song are chorus, and the outro (which people think goes on for too long, but I personally dig it).
Other recommendations:
The Way of All Flesh (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO1a3LEgSn8):The closer of the album, has a lot of cool riffs, little more upbeat vocals than The Art of Dying, which isn’t nearly as good IMO, but still awesome. Oh and just like how SDOIT’s self-titled ends with like 2 minutes of the same note, this song has like 3 minutes of nothing in the end, apart from some atmospheric vibes you won’t care for unless you listen to the whole thing.
All the Tears (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dramdk2Bd4o): The shortest real song on the album, it’s quick, heavy, less melodic than some of the other stuff though but I like it in its simplicity.
#53: The Mars Volta – The Bedlam In Goliath (2008)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Agadez.jpg)
Genre: Experimental Progressive Rock (?)
If you didn’t know already, I love The Mars Volta, and here I present to you: The Bedlam in Goliath. Even though this band tends to take the words crazy and chaotic beyond anything you expect, the different albums still each have something that makes them sound very distinct. This one for instant starts off in the middle of the action, and even though I could see how people refer to this chorus as “the most annoying sound in the world”, but I dig it. In fact, the craziness remains throughout the whole album, and while there are one or two moments when the music is kinda settling down, they always come back to that very energetic sound that weirdly appeals to me. I’ll say it here and I’ll say it again: Cedric is a fucking beast on this record, you’ll never hear such a voice on anything else, and while maybe not being the most talented singer in the genre, he has this funky vibe in songs like Goliath and Askepios that just pumps you up! Last touch on this album before I move on to the songs here is the drummer, not only has he the talent to play his stuff excellently, the way he puts them together is just amazing, I love myself a drummer with a lot of fills in fast-paced songs, not to mention the offbeat-delayed snares, epic.
Favorite song:
Ouroborous (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzyd4Vx6afg): Talking about strong Cedric performances, going from smooth, to high-pitched, to just straight up energetic as fuck, I also like how they just throw in anything they can think of here, never heard such active drumming during a chorus.
Other recommendations:
Goliath (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrwMMF2QS14): Actually my introduction to The Mars Volta, pretty strange first impression I got here. How should I describe this.. the verses are like Rage Against the Machine on acid. The rest of the song is just crazy instruments, and Cedric almost acts like an instrument himself here with the yelling.
Askepios (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhxebfw7Wso): Probably the most accessible song along with Goliath, it starts off pretty mellow, and bursts into madness as the second half of the song kicks in.
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Not really familiar with either but I enjoyed the Gojira songs you recommended. Should probably check them out more when I actually have time to listen to some new music.
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Cool, definitely check out The Gift of Guilt too, not on the album but one of my favorites.
#52: TesseracT – Altered State (2013)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2f/Altered_State_(Album_Cover).jpg/220px-Altered_State_(Album_Cover).jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
This album was a lot of fun to discover, because it’s set up so differently from the usual studio album. And being a fairly new TesseracT fan, I haven’t really explored a lot further back into their discography than this one, but from everything I’ve heard, this one’s definitely the best thing I’ve heard from them. The way the tracklist is shaped up is actually about how I expected DT13 to be at first, this one being an album with four ‘themes‘ (Of Matter, Of Mind, Of Reality, Of Energy) over the course of 10 songs. It goes without saying that Ashe O’Hara is one of my favorite singers, this guy was a little difficult for me to comprehend at first, but I’m used to it now. I should also mention that 425 introduced me to his current band (Voices from the Fuselage) in which he sounded even better IMO! Anyway, TesseracT is a progressive metal band with clean, harmonic sounding vocals, so what I’m getting from this album is a combination between the sometimes all-over-the-place instruments and the peaceful as ever sounding Ashe, and though they have some heavier songs, it’s never that in your face type of metal, it’s either very harmonic, or very powerful in a fresh kind of way, not sure how to describe it any better.
For this album I decided to do it a little differently with the favorite song section, my favorite “theme“ of the album is Of Reality (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmQEoXca67Y), consisting of the three songs “Eclipse“, “Palingenesis“ and “Calabi-Yau“.
Every theme has its own flavor to it, we have the big opening scene with what I believe to be the best theme on a vocal level, then the second starts off a little heavier, but flows perfectly into the peaceful beginning of the third theme, which quickly changes pace and become a super powerful song, you could say it’s just Eclipse and Palingenesis that make this theme so powerful, but Calabi-Yau is basically a 30-60 seconds interlude followed by an EPIC saxophone solo, it may sound pretty lame but that’s one of my favorite parts of the album. Though as almost always, you should check out the whole thing, but if for some reason you don’t have time, I’d recommend “Of Reality“.
#51: Protest The Hero – Scurrilous (2011)
(https://www.rockfreaks.net/files/a/1300997552.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
Another pretty recent discovery of mine, not sure exactly how I stumbled upon this band, but when I did, oh man did it hit me. I think Rody comes off as one of the biggest hit or miss singers, because he has a very distinctive style of singing, quite obviously that was a hit for me, it popped right out of the music. In terms of instrumentals, everything’s just technicality to the max, I even heard Luke Hoskin talk about how they didn’t really think through what they were putting out on Kezia, so it made some transitions very hard to perform live, that was pretty easy to tell by the music, they would just go jam in some studio and play whatever thought comes to their mind, and creating songs like some randomly picked out puzzle pieces. They did work on that (hell, it isn’t even necessarily a bad thing to begin with), but we can still see this style back in their music here, in Scurrilous, and I personally love it. You’ll be caught off guard numerous times when listening to this record by all the crazy odd time signatures and tempo switching’s and whatever may come. Definitely not the most consistent of their discography, but it has some of my favorite songs. Oh and last but not least, they laid down the growls on this album, well almost no growls, but it’s by no means the most accessible album of
theirs.
Favorite song:
C’est La Vie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKZ-eKBJ9dw): The big single, I think this one’s generally liked a lot. It also reminds me a bit of a clean vocals alternative of the masterpiece that is called Sequoia Throne.
Other recommendations:
The Reign of Unending Terror (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jFDfmw1N4w): I feel kinda weird saying this, but it feels like there’s some Avenged Sevenfold influences in here, both musically and vocally, only way quicker and more technical, anyway it’s a short song with a lot of fun vocal sections, cool riffs, I guess it does feel a little disjointed but it’s one of my favorites regardless.
Dunsel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSJXjCjc7Fk): One of the less chaotic songs, this one is probably a lot easier to digest on first listen, oh and this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSJXjCjc7Fk#t=4m23s) moment up until the end is pure genius, love it.
#50,5: Aerosmith - Just Push Play (2001)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6b/Aerosmith_-_Just_Push_Play.JPG)
This album is great, unfortunately just missed the top 50 by a hair :neverusethis:.
Recommended songs: Just (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ5dAv3nuOs), Push (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ5dAv3nuOs), Play (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ5dAv3nuOs)
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Altered State is my favourite TesseracT album. Would definitely make my top 30 if I was to make an album list. Of Reality is my least favourite of the movements (I'm not that big on Calabi-Yau and Eclipse compared to the other songs, though Palingenesis kicks major ass :metal), that prize would go to Of Matter followed closely by Of Energy.
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Of Matter is a close second, I'm a fairly new fan, and Ashe has been standing most, probably being the reason I picked AS as my favorite album, and I feel Matter and Reality are his best two movements, also I love the sax.
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Reading the honorable mentions so far and I look at this part of the post.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first ever mention of Shinedown in a top 50 album thread.
I would be lying if I didn't say that I wanted to be the first guy here to put a Shinedown album in a top 50 album thread.
Other than that, and the fact that I was surprised to see a Three Days Grace album, I shall be following this thread then.
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You could still be the first to put a Shinedown album in the actual top 50 :tup
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#50: Rage Against The Machine – Rage Against The Machine (1992)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/RageAgainsttheMachineRageAgainsttheMachine.jpg)
Genre: Rap Metal/Rock (?)
It was very hard to pick between this one and The Battle of Los Angeles, went for their s/t in the end, it’s way more consistent. This music definitely isn’t for everyone, and has right and wrong moments to listen to IMO. RATM, to anyone that doesn’t know, is basically this: Every song has a fairly standard drum beat, very heavy bass oriented compared to other bands, and then has some sort of in-your-face guitar riff that they stick to for most part of the song. All of this topped off with a singer who combinates rapping with an MC-ish style of singing. Kinda like Nu-Metal/Rap Metal I guess? But less of the metal and more leaning towards funk. This is one of the most impressive works of the genre, and it’s their debut album. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure these guys were the ones to bring the genre alive. Also pay attention to Tom Morello's guitar when listening to these solo’s, he has a very unique way of creating guitar solo’s, very fitting to the aggressive RATM style. He has some crazy pedals to alter his guitar sound and pounds his whammy bar (:neverusethis: ) during the solo’s.
Summarized: Some very aggressive/angry music, for most people an anger outlet, for me, awesome background music.
Favorite song:
Know Your Enemy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4smim2MNvF8): I’m not usually one to love rapping, and I’m not exactly an anarchist or anything, but these verses do seem like very well-crafted stuff. But this song being my favorite is because well, it has the best RATM riff in all their discography, has a badass bass riff that returns isolated near the end of the song, this should’ve been the trademark #1 charts RATM song that Killing in the Name turned out to be.
Other recommendations:
Settle for Nothing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuGwk0VDYYQ): Darkest sounding song, that dark vibe makes the chorus all the more powerful, pretty simple but amazing song.
Killing in the Name (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNzIKoAy2pk): This one, even though being waaay too popular compared to the other songs on this album, has shed some light on RATM, and is still one of the best songs here, it has some cool riffs and a strong vocal delivery.
#49: Mastodon – Crack The Skye (2009)
(https://www.nuclearblast.de/static/articles/159/159043.jpg/1000x1000.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
This album sure was a great experience, being one of my newer experiences, I only knew Mastodon from their big hit single Blood and Thunder (NFS-MW), and expected this to be somewhat similar, well I was wrong. This album is full of epicness, heaviness, groove, you name it. In-your-face riffs are thrown at you numerous times in every song, but there’s something special about this album, and I haven’t checked out their other albums yet so I don’t know if this applies to the others, but if I’m correct, they have 3 lead singers, so that’s not the most diverse singer in the world, it’s 3 amazing musicians who all play their respective instruments and sing at the same time. I’ve tried drumming and singing at the same time, it’s not easy guys! (btw he’s not just playing standard beats, the drummer sings the verses, which are packed with crazy fills and shit) Track-wise, this album is very pleasant to listen to entirely, they have a few songs at the beginning which barely reach the 5 minute mark, building up to one of the big epics, only to build up to another one in the end, lovely. This is a great combination between heavy metal and progressive metal that I don’t see anywhere else (either that, or I’m not looking hard enough).
Favorite song:
The Last Baron (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pvfQtUhtNE): Starts off a bit relaxing, then slowly builds up during the instrumental break, and finally starts kicking ass. It has everything a song of this length needs to have.
Other recommendations:
The Czar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx2fp-kKOIw): Very close behind The Last Baron for me, I could’ve put any of these as my favorite. This one has different movements within the song, also starting off mellow, but I prefer the main section of this one to that of The Last Baron, it has more groove.
Divinations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxelXPg961M): Has a cool chorus and feels a lot more proggy compared to the other shorter songs. Start out with this one if you think 10+ minutes of Mastodon is too much at once.
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RATM :metal
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I'm not a fan of RATM at all, but I definitely enjoy some Mastodon. Don't know a lot of their material but everything I've heard so far was pretty good.
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Don't know the latest six albums. Well, I've heard about the bands, but that's it.
Mikemangioy sent me a track off Crack the Skye in my roulette and while it was alright, it didn't make me want to check the album further. I think it was Oblivion and it got 6.5 out of 10.
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I can assure you that you know the next album :lol
Oblivion wouldn't be my top choice but probably top half of the album, so I guess Mastodon is just not for you.
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I know most of the artists you've mentionned since I last came here, but I never really got to listen to them.
So all I can say is yeah for Protest the Hero (although I'm more familiar with Volitions, ''C'est la Vie'' is :metal) and Opeth! Also it was akward reading your comments about the Mars Volta because I share the same name than the singer. I especially laughed when reading this part
Cedric is a fucking beast
:lol
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I've been following the MS Paint thread so I stand by my statement.
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re: Native Construct: i probably will get this next year
re: Bedlam: i feel like am the only person who just doesn't "get" this album
re: PtH: i actually think this is their most consistent, but on the flipside none of the songs stand out from each other. kezia is probably their best though, pick any song from the back half of that album and it's top 10 PtH material, easy
re: Crack the Skye: the only Mastodon album I really like at all, Blood Mountain is alright, some good songs, some meh ones, The Hunter is boring, tried their latest on YT and was just so meh-verwhelmed by it
ok i caught up
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Your Scurrilous thoughts are actually how I think of Kezia, well except for Blindfolds Aside, I unknowingly heard that song for years and finally found it a couple of months ago :P
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#48: Haken – Aquarius (2010)
(https://www.metal-archives.com/images/2/6/7/7/267739.jpg?1738)
Genre: Progressive Rock/Metal
Ah, Haken. The band that every DT fan has heard of, and almost gets universally loved, which still baffles me, because it’s not even all that similar to DT. With heavy jazzy and groovy elements here and there, this first Haken studio album felt like an instant classic in the prog world. From the calm harmonic vocals of Ross Jennings, to the heavy-yet-groovy instrumentals. But what makes Haken so distinctive, especially in this album, are those little circus orientated moments, what I specifically like about this album is that it all starts to sound so big near the end, the harmony of Sun is a perfect setup for the big closing epic. So this band was a pretty late grower for me, why? Well the vocals repelled me from the music at first, but when the music started clicking, so did the vocals. I think a friend of mine showed me some stuff and I said it just sounded off, he replied by saying something along the lines of “just let it sink in, you’ll appreciate it eventually”, and that’s pretty much what happened, it’s true, this band is a must if you’re into prog-metal at all.
Favorite song:
Celestial Elixir (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZTkBdIlAaU) (by miles): While the best parts of this song are the intro and the outro, the main section of the song does a perfect job of maintaining the hype, pretty much it has every element this album has, combined into one song.
Other recommendations:
Drowning in the Flood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4sSh4M2SmM): Yeah I like heaviness in my songs, and if there’s one Aquarius song to showcase that (, well, the Streams devil section aside), it’s this song.
Aquarium (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQXfOiNwUrU): What first got me to listen to this album was that crazy groovy part in Aquarium, big ups! Still my favorite part, but the whole song is just great aswell.
#47: Muse – Origin of Symmetry (2001)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5164XM4R30L.jpg)
Genre: Rock
I’ve been starting off a lot of album write-ups with “wow, it sure was hard to pick the best album of (artist name)”. For Muse, that was absolutely not the case, Origin of Symmetry is by far my favorite album, even though some of my favorite songs are on Absolution. The first song I’ve ever heard from Muse was Plug In Baby, through Guitar Hero, loved everything about it, even though it’s a pretty simple song. Listening to the whole album for the first time I knew I had to get this, it has such a dark vibe throughout the album, starting with New Born should be enough of a convincement for that. Pretty obviously, Matt’s voice isn’t for everyone, it’s a very unique style that includes lots of high-pitched ooooh’s.
Not only does the singer have a very unique style, all of the music has this, it’s very chaotic sounding in a way, but well-structured nonetheless, kinda hard to explain. Anyway some lyrics may sound pretty stupid, but luckily a lot of it is pretty hard to understand, so you won’t notice it at first.
Favorite song:
New Born (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0uFakDj5D8): Far and away the best one, has a haunting piano playing in the background, building up to the amazing climax that is the chorus, only to break down and build it up to that chorus again.
Other recommendations:
Plug In Baby (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbB-mICjkQM): A song Matt wrote about his guitar, who cares? “My plug in babyyyyy” is hella fun to sing along to, and this main guitar riff has a very diabolic sound, I love it.
Citizen Erased (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlKW77GS8Jg): Okay, speaking of chaotic sounding music, this song’s up there, well it starts out as one, and quickly turns into a very clean, epic song.
Bliss (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMqsWc8muj8): A classic Muse song, it goes without saying this is a worthy followup of New Born.
#46: Pomegranate Tiger – Entities (2013)
(https://www.themonolith.com/wp-content/uploads/Pomegranate-Tiger-Entities.jpeg)
Genre: (Instrumental) Experimental Progressive Metal
One of my missions is to get as much people to like Pomegranate Tiger as possible, so hear me out.
So there’s this Canadian guy called Martin Andres, multi-instrumentalist of Pomegranate Tiger, he records his own guitar, drums, piano and bass for the music, and then he has guest musicians come over for some crazy featured instruments, on this album he hired some other guys to actually play the songs, but he did write everything. Martin himself played the lead guitar on Entities. The music throughout this whole album can be best describe as experimental progressive metal, fully instrumental by the way, no vocals. It’s pretty hard to create an instrumental album that feels more like a musical journey than just some songs put together on an album, but this album does that exceptionally well. Speaking of an instrumental progressive metal band obviously Animals As Leaders comes to mind, I feel that this band is a little less technical, but more than makes up for that in terms of melodies and catchiness, they just found the perfect balance in the instrumental prog-metal world for me. Lastly, I think some of the slower parts with the guitar leads are very similar to some of the parts on Metallica instrumentals, which are some of my personal favorite instrumentals of all time, each and every one of them.
Favorite songs (yes, I can’t decide):
Maxims (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mYqA-CclI8): I warn you, please do listen to the album in its entirety, because this song has a great intro to it on the album, but as far as separate tracks go, this is the best.
Mountains in the Sky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-e1iC9yEhs): This has either the best catchy melody on the album, or the most annoying one, depending on how you take it in, for me, best, it’s way less metal than Maxims, but still plenty metal.
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OOS sits behind Absolution and Resistance for me, but I love Citizen Erased to death. Nothing in Muse's catalogue will ever beat that song for me.
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yeah Aquarius is good
I -still- need to get OoS because i'm like 10 years behind the times
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Crack the Skye should be about 48 places higher :P
I still need to get into Aquarius. I like it but didn't hear it too many times in entirely (like other two by Haken).
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Maybe if I would've known it longer than I have, Crack the Skye is pretty awesome.
I'll probably be doing the updates like I have for the past 2 days, alternating between 2/3 updates a day until the top 10, which'll be 1 a day. That way the actual top 50 takes 26 days in total and I think the whole thing with the 14 honorable mentions included will take 1 month exactly, man I'm so punctual.
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#45: Metallica – Death Magnetic (2008)
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hF5YaGCL7dQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
Genre: Thrash/Heavy Metal
Growing up with all types of metal, I never really bothered to check out their release years, why would I care? I was twelve years old when this came out, so I didn’t get to hear it as much as a child as the Metallica classics, but I wasn’t nearly as active musically in the early years. Death Magnetic is pretty obviously harder to take in for someone who has been around for Metallica’s entire career, seeing them release something that very clearly goes back to that thrash-y sound, but a lot less memorable. As someone who was born after the release of the Black Album this was never the case because I wasn’t around during that Metallica transition period. This album is full of great riffs, fast-yet-memorable Kirk solo’s, and while not having my favorite James vocals ever, the way they’re phrased make them sound better. So all in all I can totally understand why fans don’t appreciate this as much, but goddamn this album is just full of fun and energetic moments. Not just fun though, I never realized how amazing and emotional Metallica’s lyrics were until I heard The Day That Never Comes, that one hit home with James real hard, and like many bands, I feel lyrics are sung miles better if it’s either written by the vocalist himself, or is about a subject that person can really relate to. Album does not excel in the “best full album experience” category, I could separate tracks of this album just as much, but there’s some of my all time favorite Metallica songs on here, so that’s why it still managed to reach #45.
Favorite song:
All Nightmare Long (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeE1Y8S6jVc): I remember drumming this up until the second chorus for a school assignment, it was pretty terrible looking back, but needless to say I’ve heard this one tons of times, and it never got old. Very dark atmosphere in the beginning, super energetic chorus, and an awesome instrumental section to top it off.
Other recommendations:
The Day That Never Comes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YinYm4mbpvQ): Being about his abusive father, these lines give off a very strong/emotional feeling. Musically, this sounds a lot like a more mainstream version of Fade to Black.
The End of the Line (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xltAabWlrD0): This one much like All Nightmare Long, is very energetic, but this one’s structure is a bit more interesting, with an awesome climax near the end.
The Unforgiven III (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1cfpR7cOgQ): I’m not sure if it has ever been confirmed that this is the last part in the Unforgiven series, but I wouldn’t mind if it were, cause this one’s terrific. I wouldn’t quite know how to describe it, musically it’s a very uplifting song after these first two, but the lyrics are still very real and of big impact to a lot of people.
#44: Circus Maximus – Isolate (2007)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61iNDb6w9oL.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
I mean, if there’s anyone who appreciates Circus Maximus’ latest effort ‘Nine’, it’s me. But it’s almost undeniable that Isolate is the better album on many levels. I still think Nine has the best melodies of the two, but Isolate has a bigger variety of songs for one, and just delivers with that raw/heavy sound. I’m sure this is an undeniable fact though: Michael Eriksen sings miles better on Isolate, not only technical, but also the way his vocals fit to the music. On Nine I still feel like musically they’ve done a better job than on Isolate, but the vocals just felt either too different from the music, or just had worse melodies which made for weaker deliv-ery. Anyway, with Isolate I can confidently say that it is an album of solid progressive metal, no question. The use of backing vocals here adds a lot to the music, it makes for more powerful lines. However, I have a pretty similar album to Circus Maximus’ more recent style of music that also has the balance I feel this album has, somehow they do follow some kind of formula in these songs, but they manage to be very different nonetheless. This band is growing out to be a DTF classic in the prog-metal scene, and rightfully so, but they’re not quite at the top yet.
With this I gotta say, Architect of Fortune from Nine is still my favorite Circus Maximus song, the album overall I just thought was weaker.
Favorite song:
Abyss (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qekjTc4d_HU): Man this song has everything, from powerful vocals layered over fast riffing to cool fast yet groovy solo’s (think of JP style), do check this one out.
Other recommendations:
Zero (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxJh8L7atYA): I love this power-balad like song. What makes the song so awesome is the choir in the end, makes it sound so huge.
Mouth of Madness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmEjgep4tX4): 13 minute song alternating between some great slow guitar melodies and some upbeat prog-metal, definitely worth the mention.
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Never bothered with DM. Isolate, while an excellent album, is actually my 3rd favorite CM album. Not sure how Isolate has better melodies than Nine? I always felt that they softened things up with Nine, focusing more on the melodies than the metal.
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So far, lots and lots of great stuff. I need to follow this better tho. I will.
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Ups, kinda contradicted myself there, I did say at the start that Nine had the better melodies, but afterwards I said something about Michaels vocal melodies, I meant to say that I find those of Isolate superior in terms of vocal delivery, Nine has more of those softer catchier vocal stuff going on, while on Isolate Michael's voice just feels so much more powerful.
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Ups, kinda contradicted myself there, I did say at the start that Nine had the better melodies, but afterwards I said something about Michaels vocal melodies, I meant to say that I find those of Isolate superior in terms of vocal delivery, Nine has more of those softer catchier vocal stuff going on, while on Isolate Michael's voice just feels so much more powerful.
I'll grant you that.
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Aquarius is pretty cool, Death Magnetic is pretty meh.
I don't know about Isolate, I've checked Nine by Circus Maximus and I thought it was alright, but it didn't grab me. Need to give it another chance someday.
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Love seeing Aquarius and Death Magnetic on lists. Aquarius is one of the most brilliant debuts in the prog genre. Drowning in the Flood and Celestial Elixir are amazing songs.
Death Magnetic is underappreciated. I think I like it better than Master of Puppets. Not necessarily because it's a more skillfully crafted album, but because it's more melodic. I don't know, I don't listen to much Metallica anymore, but I never think about anything on Puppets while Broken, Beat & Scarred was in my head just yesterday. DM is a very solid album, barring production, and I'm happy to see that you have it rated here! :)
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Great to see some love for DM, but I don't think I could ever like it more than Puppets, though they're not too far apart :laugh:
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DM is such a boring album. The Day That Never Comes is the only song I like honestly.
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Great to see some love for DM, but I don't think I could ever like it more than Puppets, though they're not too far apart :laugh:
Yeah, I understand that. Puppets just doesn't have that sacred status for me that it seems to have for most people. To me, Puppets is a dip in quality between two superior releases. Lightning is the sacred one for me.
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DM is such a boring album. The Day That Never Comes is the only song I like honestly.
Dw I think you'll like at least 2/3 albums of tomorrows update :tup
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While being my least favorite Haken album, Aquarius is still great.
DM I could take it or leave it. It's not the worst thing in the world, but the only real memorable tracks for me on it are The Day That Never Comes and All Nightmare Long, which are legitimately great Metallica songs. It's not a bad album by any means, but a lot of the forgettable song-writing and most of all the horrible production are what really bring it down.
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#43: Dream Theater – Train Of Thought (2003)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7b/Dream_Theater_-_Train_of_Thought.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
If it wasn’t clear from some of the previous albums, yeah I like me some heavy music, and that’s actually how I started exploring Dream Theater music for the first time, just looking for some of the heavier songs a friend of mine recommended me, the first song was, wait for it, Endless Sacrifice, yeah that’s a terrible thing to recommend in the category of heavy songs if you have the entire Train of Thought album in front of you, but I loved it! I’ve always liked when songs have an ominous vibe and build up to a climax of some sort, and Endless Sacrifice’s chorus kicked my ass at the time (and still does some times). I feel like none of the band’s members at the time was at the top of their game, but it was all balanced so well, JP has one of his best solo’s on here, so does JR, MP proved that the outlet of his anger is the key to godhood on Honor Thy Father. I actually think ToT was one of the best albums in terms of JMX albums, so maybe he was at the top of his game here, but I feel like the next album had even better Myung moments. James goes without saying here, so many great moments, from the mellow vocals, to the powerful shit, and even pulling out the grills and golden necklace for Honor Thy Father. I believe this album was created in a very short period of time, about a month of studio time IIRC? That’s just crazy. This album does have some nostalgic value to me, probably the most out of any DT album, not only was it the first album I got a taste of, I also remember some of these songs being played at home by my dad, Stream of Consciousness mainly, I remember that main riff very well.
Favorite song:
Endless Sacrifice (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvYuTc2zW5c): To this day a top 10 DT song for me, might be weird, but I think it has everything I want from them, from the slow parts into the heavy chorus, the instrumental section with that trademark JR cartoony bit, but this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvYuTc2zW5c#t=8m3s) is still the best part.
Other recommendations:
In the Name of God (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSI3KSo9DjM): Classic riff, both amazing vocals and lyrics, I don’t think the solo’s do the rest of the song justice but they’re still good.
Stream of Consciousness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsoNl0MzDFA): Can’t say a whole lot about this, it has a heavier edge than most DT instrumentals and it’s probably my favorite DT instrumental.
Honor Thy Father (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGHXy9Fa45k): Very systematicly chaotic throughout, and I for one, love the part after the crooked step, with the samples and all, builds up tension towards that godlike JR solo.
#42: Avenged Sevenfold – Waking The Fallen (2003)
(https://alterock.ru/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Avenged-Sevenfold-Waking-The-Fallen-2003CD.jpg)
Genre: Metalcore
Awesome, my first taste of Metalcore, and with that, also one of my last ones. If I wasn’t sure why I had ever bothered with this genre this album would be the answer to my question. If it wasn’t by Avenged Sevenfold I would probably not even have checked it out though, but I’m glad I did. WtF is one of the best intro tracks I’ve heard on any album, like False Awakening Suite had its own aim to start off DT12, WtF creates this haunting vibe, with choir-ish vocals, I would’ve loved if they carried on that vibe, but I can’t complain, Unholy Confessions is a badass alternative. For anyone who’s not familiar with Metalcore, it’s a lot like Heavy Metal, but with mixed vocals, usually the chorus is 100% clean, and the verses are either mixed or completely harsh vox. What I like most about this album is not the vocals though, it’s Synyster Gates and Zacky. Literally every song on here has atleast one mindblowing riff, whether it’d be one of those very slow and heavy ones like on Eternal Rest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOMykgR4sAg#t=57s), or the famous Unholy Confessions riff, they never fail to amaze. I’m glad I have the resurrected (Reworked) version though, because at some times listening to the original could be a pain, vocals in the chorus actually being buried under rhythm guitars. I’m not one to bother too much with production but that was pretty tough. I’d recommend Avenged Sevenfold to a lot of people, but this album is pretty hard to do that with, they’ve taken a significant turn in their career and some say it’s for the best, this album however will always have a special place in my heart.
Favorite song:
Second Heartbeat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXbTtU252yM): This is a classic among A7X fans, while being way out of the comfort zone compared to their average type of song, it works goddamn well. Second Heartbeat is a typical Metalcore song, it has harsh vocals layered over cleans in some parts, it has a cool returning chant, melodic guitar solo’s, masterpiece.
Other recommendations:
Eternal Rest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOMykgR4sAg): Like I said, that riff is awesome, but this song also has one of the best outro’s on the album, if you’re familiar with Heretic from Hail to the King (lol) you will recognize that guitar in the background, because it’s basically the same thing.
Remenissions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tysmwGx7TNU): Catchiest chorus by far, that aside, its probably the most accessible thing they have other than the famous single.
Chapter Four (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv_go1xUyks): I think hearing it live broke the ice for me here, this song is awesome to sing along to, has some of the greatest melodies both vocally and musically of this album.
#41: Alter Bridge – One Day Remains (2004)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/20/Alter_bridge_one_day_remains.jpg)
Genre: Rock/Alternative Metal(?)
Finally I get to talk about Alter Bridge, geez that took too long.. This band, I’m pretty sure I found out about through a youtube video of Metalingus, and I was sure I recognized that song from somewhere, to this day I have no idea where it was from, ‘cause I lterally never watched WWE. I was stunned by this guy’s voice, who is this guy?? Myles fucking Kennedy, my hero. This album, compared to the others, is definitely less metal, it has a lot of classic rock sounding songs, sometimes even leaning towards pop, that you could very well encounter on the radio or something, think of songs like Open Your Eyes. Being the album that introduced the world to the Tremonti/Kennedy combo, it did exceptionally well on that level, you can hear that everyone’s very comfortable doing their thing on their own instruments, That’s why even when Mark Tremonti does these pretty quick solo’s like on Burn It Down, it still sounds both relaxing and badass at the same time. The coolest thing about this album though, is that throughout the whole thing, you get that ominous feeling, some pretty dark stuff on here, and I think Myles Kennedy excels at that, like his voice is made for that. While I think Scott and Brian do their job of drums and bass fine, the main attraction here is the combination of the guitars and vocals, though Metalingus has some pretty awesome drumming.
Favorite song:
Broken Wings (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CuK0MaWF8M): Such a beautiful song, it seems like a very depressing song, but it’s actually about the silver lining of the situation. Musically, expect some of the best Myles Kennedy performances of his career, along with very dark sounding instruments.
Other recommendations:
Metalingus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-I8ALlYxdY): My introduction to these guys, and a very energetic song on its own, starts out with a cool drum fill and is overall a very strong, melodic metal song.
In Loving Memory (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcQ3iegpZTc): This one hits very close to home for me, so I’m kinda biased towards it, but it’s super strong vocally either way, so if you like Myles’ voice you’ll probably like this too, a very vocal-centered song.
The End Is Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CGyk4_gHJY): Man, this is my favorite Alter Bridge closer ever (after Fortress), it starts off with one of the most sinister guitar riffs I’ve ever heard, and Myles fits perfectly to that style, as soon as that first chorus starts, I’m almost shaking.
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Love to see ToT on these lists - it made my original top 50 as well. Fantastic album, and I agree about Endless Sacrifice... it's probably a top 10 DT song for me as well. Love that 5 of these made L@B - all performed magnificently.
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Great new entries! Probably only Train Of Thought would be out of my hypotetical top 50, but I love In The Name Of God and I really like the first three songs of the album
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Love seeing Train of Thought in these lists - while it wasn't in my Top 50 mostly because of This Dying Soul and Honor Thy Father, it has three of my Top 10 DT songs on it - namely Endless Sacrifice, Stream of Consciousness and In the Name of God. Haven't heard the other two.
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One Day Remains is a superb album. I already made my thoughts about it on Accelerando's album thread so I basically won't repeat myself here. I will reiterate by saying this album was the start of something glorious for these four guys in Alter Bridge. Favorites from it. Open Your Eyes, Down to My Last, Find the Real, In Loving Memory, and One Day Remains.
A7X's Waken The Fallen is a decent listen, as well, and Train of Thought had some solid songs, especially Endless Sacrifice and Honor Thy Father (not so much the overall message, but how it is presented was nice).
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Oh right, Accelerando was the Tremonti guy right? Yeah I think I could see him have an Alter Bridge record or two on his top 50 :lol
Every album this update gets some attention, nice.
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ToT doesn't have any top 10 DT songs on it IMO but ES, SoC, and ITNOG are all top 20 songs
I rarely listen to the album in full, though
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TOT is a great entry, it consistently shifts in and out of my top 50. The other albums have some great stuff on them, though I don't listen to them completely.
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#40: A.C.T – Circus Pandemonium (2014)
(https://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/424/cover_5114151022014_r.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Rock/Metal
Hell yes, this should be a new entry, according to the spreadsheet, and for good reason, because this album is just so much fun! A.C.T has been around for longer than I could ever imagine, apparently they never stopped doing what they liked, and here they stand, in a new direction in their musical career with this 5th studio album of theirs. Really this distinct sound that they have reminds me of the kind of music you would hear in a musical, there’s a lot of 1-2 minute passages that give the story more shape, while in the end, they’re all songs describing different act’s that you’ll see in a circus. There’s Louis the tamer, a clown, an escape artist, etc.. While I don’t care that much for the story, these goofy lyrics just make the music more fun, and I rarely find myself in a situation where I skip anything on this album. I’ve had my doubts about this guy’s voice before, but definitely not anymore, he has such good energy that it fits perfectly with the music, and maybe their more serious sounding songs sound off to some, more than the goofy ones, but I beg to differ. In fact, that’s what keeps the album flow so good, from things like The Funniest Man Alive into A Failed Escape Attempt (that is if we don’t count the bonus track “Scared” inbetween). If you’re in for some prog/symphonic rock/metal with a happy touch to it, do try this shit out.
Favorite song:
A Failed Escape Attempt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T51KMAzTGxA): There’s nothing too crazy going on in this song, but it’s such a good closer, ominous vibe in the beginning, with a very strong symphonic chorus that strangely reminds me a bit of Alter Bridge’s The End Is Here.
Other recommendations:
A Truly Gifted Man (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS7NkDZ4u1o): Sort of has a Queen edge to it, a very uplifting song, with a lot of broadway musical style elements.
Everything’s Falling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5QMwHsjVME): Probably one of the more metal songs, still not really metal, but it has some heavy instrumentation going on, the prechorus is what I love most about this song (All alone in the dark…. etc.).
The Funniest Man Alive (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5sAPPXjEDU): Title pretty much says it all, this is a very funny song, in a good way.
#39: Linkin Park – Meteora (2003)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/MeteoraLP.jpg)
Genre: Nu-Metal/Alternative Rock/Metal
There’s quite some “firsts” I’m linking to some of my top 50 albums, this thing called Meteora, was the first album that pursued me to buy a live DVD, the ‘Linkin Park Live In Texas’, with one hell of a setlist (how could it not be, it was all Meteora and Hybrid Theory back then). But for now, let’s just focus on the second album, Meteora. It seems to be stressed a lot how Linkin Park switched to a different style after the first two albums, and that’s true, but even between the first two there are some great differences. You can already see some more radio-oriented stuff on this one, but there’s still definitely that nu-metal edge that actually made me love them in the first place. They also still stick to that very short song length that they had on the first album, never passing the 4th minute mark in either one of them. Oh well, I guess that’s why I had such a hard time getting into Dream Theater at first, growing up with 2-3 minute songs. Linkin Park was always that standard formula type of band, Mike rapping the verses, Chester usually singing the choruses (alternating between screaming and cleans) with Mike usually sharing one or two words, it worked just fine, though in Meteora, Mike started to be more laid-back when it came to vocals, focusing more on his guitar role. Some of the songs are even entirely sung by Chester on this album, though I can’t deny that the old style is the way I’ve always liked it, that’s why these Mike-heavy songs still appeal to me the most, that’s why songs like Numb, Easier to Run and Breaking the Habit don’t do nearly as much for me as the rest. Even though I don’t listen to Linkin Park as much as I used to when I was like.. 10-13 years old, they’re still one of my favorites, but I just don’t listen to them as regularly as before while still appreciating them to death, I think everyone knows that feeling here.
Favorite song:
Lying From You (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V4FLUOlMks): A little bit more towards that Hybrid Theory style, but still very unique, this song never got old over the years.
Other recommendations:
From the Inside (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLHpvjrFpe0): This used to be my favorite song ever! Loved the video, loved the music, it was really something different from the classic Linkin Park, but in a good way.
Nobody’s Listening (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh1ie_EvHPQ): Most rap-oriented track on the album, and probably in their whole discography, I can’t keep myself from singing along though. Also love the “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” soundtrack-alike sound.
Faint (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYU-8IFcDPw): One of the heavier songs, still some cool nu-metal edge to it, this one’s just a classic.
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I've heard Circus Pandemonium before and I know I liked it, but I don't remember it at all. I should revisit it.
I don't mind Meteora but I definitely prefer Hybrid Theory, though they're both good. I never got into what Linkin Park made after those, though.
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I've heard Circus Pandemonium before and I know I liked it, but I don't remember it at all. I should revisit it.
Ditto... I think I checked them out due to a submission from Prog Snob in my last roulette. Good album.
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I don't mind Meteora but I definitely prefer Hybrid Theory, though they're both good. I never got into what Linkin Park made after those, though.
I'm in the same boat regarding LP, and if it wasn't clear already Hybrid Theory WILL be on here.
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#38: Periphery – Periphery II: This Time It's Personal (2012)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/Periphery_II,_This_Time_Its_Personal_album_cover.jpg)
Genre: Mathcore/Progressive Metal
How did I find out about Periphery? It’s pretty easily my brothers favorite band, and I used to laugh off those goddamn growls, but slowly delving into the world of Periphery, I secretly checked out some Periphery stuff, because I was embarrassed to admit I started liking it :P. Picking a favorite album wasn’t that hard, as it doesn’t only have my favorite song, it’s also in my eyes the most consistent. Periphery is basically like experimental prog metal, with heavy mathcore influences, something like that. So expect (for the most part) heavy verses with a clean chorus, layered with some very busy instrumentals, PtH is probably the closest they come to in terms of musical style, but they’re very distinctive. The way the tracklist is shaped up here makes it feel way more like a complete album than their previous effort, having some good intro and outro tracks on the second one. I’m also a fan of the little breather moments spread out throughout the album, like on the end of Facepalm Mute, makes for a great album experience, although I don’t think it flows all that perfectly into Ji :lol. I never figured I would ever listen to this band like.. 5 years ago, but I'm glad I eventually tried.
Favorite song:
Ragnarok (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyHFVtgsCzI): It’s a fairly short track considering the last part is more of a transition, but for some reason I’ve loved this song for as long as I know Periphery, and I think the ending is just beautiful.
Other recommendations:
Scarlet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUltTV3t4OM): The most radio-friendly song on the album, and frankly, the catchiest. Still has some heavy elements to keep it “Periphery”, but it’s very accessible.
Erised (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khACKq23bC8): Alright DT fanboys, here’s the song with the John Petrucci guest solo, if you didn’t know, Jake Bowen is the nephew of JP, so they have teh connections (they also toured with Dream Theater). Anyway cool song as a whole, the solo is definitely not something to miss out on. But yea this song has catchy vocals, a cool not-over-the-top drum solo followed by the JP guest solo which ends the song.
The Gods Must Be Crazy! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHwchxc6wsg): Fun song with great melodies, also a little heavier than the two previous recommendations, although it’s kinda similar to Scarlet in some ways.
#37: Sum 41 – Chuck (2004)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0a/Sum41_chuck.png)
Genre: Punk Rock/Hard Rock
Sum 41, hell yeah! One of those childhood bands for me, and this was the album that started it all. It didn’t yet have the heavy punk-y influence that Sum 41 became famous for (although some songs already have this style), this album was way more on the hard rock/metal side of things. Maybe from a guy with Three Days Grace and Shinedown in the honorable mentions this wasn’t as unexpected, and I think Chuck has been in top 50’s before, which is great. No doubt there’s some very heavy influences from other bands that are almost identical in some ways, tell me you’ve listened to The Bitter End and did not think of Metallica’s Battery, same goes for Some Say, those verses sound an awful lot like Oasis’ Wonderwall. Some people can’t stand when a band does this, I just see it as tributes, in the end they’ve given both songs their own twists and made it ‘them’. Musically this band is definitely not as diverse as some of the other bands on this list, and they don’t need to be, because they have their own style going for them, and it works pretty damn well. The heavy songs are energetic and powerful, the mellow songs are moving and melodic.
Favorite song:
We’re All To Blame (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUultIb2pPc): My first Sum 41 song, and still in my eyes their best. It’s like a mix of everything on this album, the heavy aspects return in the verses, the slow parts return in the chorus. Well, if you need a summary of this album, listen to this song.
Other recommendations:
The Bitter End (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivhYJ8OONo0): Fuck yeah, I love Battery, and this is like a shorter version of Battery, a little more in your face. Only thing missing is the wonderful acoustic intro.
Pieces (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By7ctqcWxyM): Easily the most popular song, if you’ve ever heard a song off this album it’s probably this radio hit.
88 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvm3CwAQI44): Pretty similar style to that of Pieces, but this one’s a bit more uplifting, with the energetic chorus.
#36: Iron Maiden – A Matter Of Life And Death (2006)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/77/Iron_Maiden_-_A_Matter_Of_Life_And_Death.jpg)
Genre: Heavy Metal
No doubt the reunion era of Iron Maiden was a step down from their pre-reunion era time, but they still put out some of my favorite Maiden albums, this was by far their best album of the newer albums though! They developed a style that, while going back to their roots, sounds very fresh. Honestly I couldn’t be more happy when hearing Iron Maiden sounding this good once again. They have their smashingly heavy songs like Brighter Than a Thousand Suns, even some progressive elements in a few songs. And like always, they’re not afraid to tie together some ideas and create a few long songs. I’ve seen people say that Bruce did great on The Book of Souls, while I agree it’s impressive for his age, sadly I didn’t like his vocals on the new album at all, this one though, definitely my favorite Bruce performance of all the post-2k albums. I’ve always been returning to AMOLAD when I feel like listening to some heavy ass Iron Maiden mixed with cool melodies, and most of all, some of the best choruses in their career, even though they’re mostly the same repeating sentence. I’m glad I still had the chance to see them live, such a great experience, and a concert I’ll never forget, a bunch of songs played being from this album.
We've seen Seventh Son in the honorable mentions, and now this darker sounding album from the recent years, and prepare for some more Maiden in the near future! :metal
Favorite song:
The Longest Day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDCgvcH301A): This song just fits the mood of the album so perfectly, starts out very sinister, and has a very simple but catchy chorus.
Other recommendations:
The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYiVe2hQe68): Favorite overall song in terms of vocals on this album, and that guitar riff is simple, but just so good!
Brighter Than A Thousand Suns (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox0S0A3qt4U): Might very well be the heaviest IM song I know of, and for good reason.
The Pilgrim (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8yQJEoNolg): A little simpler and shorter song than most on this album, and probably not as loved, but this was my introduction to the album and I still love it to death.
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I know some songs from Periphery II and AMOLAD, they all kick ass.
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AMOLAD the worst Maiden album along VXI imho.
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yeah Periphery II is easily their best though I will never get the obsession with Ragnarok
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Fair enough, don't even get my own obsession with it.
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Love that Maiden album!!
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Missed the last few updates. Periphery II is the weakest album of the bunch, but I still enjoy it. TOT was a good addition the list too. :tup
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AMOLAD :heart :heart
2nd best Maiden album IMO
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Missed the last few updates. Periphery II is the weakest album of the bunch, but I still enjoy it. TOT was a good addition the list too. :tup
Knew you'd like TOT :biggrin:
And I knew AMOLAD would be a mixed bag, but I'll take it.
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#35: Tremonti – All I Was (2012)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Dwg0a9MRL.jpg)
Genre: Metal
Here we are, back with one of the two Alter Bridge members I can’t stop talking about, Mark Tremonti. After doing the Creed stuff and Some AB albums Tremonti decided to form a second group of people to express his more metal side of things with the band that is perhaps not known for its creative name, “Tremonti”. If you’re familiar with Alter Bridge you know Mark does backing vocals, and in very rare occasions lead vocals, we were already proven that he could sing. He’s not the most talented singer in the genre by a longshot, but he manages to make his voice work perfectly with the music in the sense that the songs don’t require mental vocal ranges, but remain very strong. I would say that compared to every album in short range of this one (say, #30-40), All I Was has the least outstanding songs of them all. I never go “wow, this Tremonti song is such a masterpiece”, this is a band you listen to for great, consistent music. The solo’s are rather quick, and less melodic than the Alter Bridge ones, which can be seen as a good or bad thing, for me it varies, but I’ll take the average AB solo over the average Tremonti solo any day.
Favorite song:
Wish You Well (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2NOSJ5TYCQ): Again, it’s a pretty consistent album, so this one doesn’t even sit that much above the others, but it’s just a very strong balance between heavy and melodic, both in the sung parts and the solo later on.
Other recommendations:
Brains (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ojFcMz9iAc): Has a more epic feel to it than the other songs, even though it’s only 4:30 long. I’m often not sure whether this or Wish You Well is my favorite.
You Waste Your Time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Me1ea4MkH0): Parama doesn’t like this song, meaning it’s probably good, I rest my case.
So You’re Afraid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtjrxhaDVo8): My first Tremonti song, was pretty damn impressed at the time, I still am though, the pre-chorus in particular, simple but awesome.
#34: The Mars Volta – De-loused In The Comatorium (2003)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/De-Loused_in_the_Comatorium.jpeg)
Genre: Experimental Progressive Rock
If I hadn’t already stressed enough how much I like this band and respect them for being unique, it’s gonna be pretty fucking clear after this write-up. I hate to say it, but Bedlam in Goliath, while being pretty awesome, marked the end of an era for TMV, but not to be feared, there have been plenty of Mars Volta albums in that period of time. If we compare these two, you’ll see that De-Loused feels way more like a continuous piece than Bedlam, which really sounds more like a bunch of songs (good songs though), but definitely takes away from the whole “complete album” feeling. This album has both the good individual songs and the continuity going, making it a very cohesive piece of music. I’d take it over Bedlam any day.
So if we look at the concept of this album, it’s based on the short story that Cedric wrote, being about a man called Cerpin Taxt, who is in a coma for a week because he OD’d on some morphine shit or something. I’m usually not really paying attention to this story when listening to the album as much as I am with other concept albums, but regardless, I still think it’s a cool story. The musicianship on this one’s just amazing, I think I’ve already mentioned it, but especially this drummer is craaazy.
Favorite song:
Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1vmmU2SFPM): What can I say, The Mars Volta knows how to close an album, whether it’d be in an atmospheric fasion, or like here, all over the place with a strong sense of closure.
Other recommendations:
Intertiatic ESP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neSQgkEy_xQ): A TMV song that works incredibly well as a standalone song, which doesn’t occur too often for me with them, but great if you don’t have the time for an hour long album because it’s a great showcase of what they’re capable of and what’s yet to come on this album.
Drunkship of Lanterns (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE6YN9VcPPA): What do you get when you mix Arctic Monkeys with Queen? Drunkship of Lanterns
Another 3 updates coming up tomorrow, of which every single one is an absolute classic that everyone here should (at the very least, by name,) know. Any guesses?
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Great to see you're updating the list quite often! However, out of the last three updates I know only AMOLAD and I'm not really fond of it either.
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Not a fan of either of these bands to be honest. I got through the Tremonti tracks but I had to turn the song you listed as your favourite song off the Mars Volta album off after a minute or two. :lol
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Not the Mars Volta again. At least you didn't mention Cedric's name too much so it's not too bad :lol
Also I'm one update to late but here it goes...
TAKE EVERYTHING LEFT FROM ME
*danananananana* ALL
*danananananana* TO
*danananananana* BLAME
danana danana danana danana
pa pa pa pa
I love that song :metal
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Cedric was a fucking beast throughout De-loused :neverusethis:
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Cedric was a fucking beast throughout De-loused :neverusethis:
:splodetard:
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NNNOOOOOWW I'M LOOOOOOOSSTT
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Y'all are crazy, TMV is amazing. :tup De-Loused isn't just one of the best prog albums ever, it's one of the best albums period.
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Great to see you're updating the list quite often!
I've written all of this beforehand and will be done in exactly 30 days IIRC if I update daily, I originally wanted to do this before the roulette but got carried away, so now I'm just hoping to get it out there before I regret the top 50 because of new roulette entries.
Y'all are crazy, TMV is amazing. :tup De-Loused isn't just one of the best prog albums ever, it's one of the best albums period.
I wish I knew it earlier tbh, was such a quick grower, and it gets better on every extra listen.
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Great to see you're updating the list quite often!
I've written all of this beforehand and will be done in exactly 30 days IIRC if I update daily, I originally wanted to do this before the roulette but got carried away, so now I'm just hoping to get it out there before I regret the top 50 because of new roulette entries.
I can't stress enough how much I approve of this approach. I did the same myself (I was doing one album in one update though, because I wanted to have different thread title for each one) and it worked wonders. I hate following lists that aren't updated for days.
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All I Was was fine. Was a solid outlet for Mark to get his ideas out that did not really fit with Alter Bridge and Creed and, with Myles committing more and more time working with Slash and his solo band, as well as Mark getting to working with good friends (Garrett Whitlock, Eric Friedman, Wolfgang Van Halen), it's a great outlet to fill his time waiting for Alter Bridge to be reformed.
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de-loused is great
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NNNOOOOOWW I'M LOOOOOOOSSTT
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No doubt the reunion era of Iron Maiden was a step down from their pre-reunion era time,
I wouldn't say that. At all. Mainly led by the strength of AMOLAD, I actually feel that the Reunion Era is on par with the Classic Era.
And I lived through the Classic Era, as Maiden was my favorite band as a kid.
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No doubt the reunion era of Iron Maiden was a step down from their pre-reunion era time,
I wouldn't say that. At all. Mainly led by the strength of AMOLAD, I actually feel that the Reunion Era is on par with the Classic Era.
And I lived through the Classic Era, as Maiden was my favorite band as a kid.
Yea true, it's highly debatable so I shouldn't just assume that.
Anyway I like the classic era better but I guess that was pretty obvious already
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No doubt the reunion era of Iron Maiden was a step down from their pre-reunion era time,
I wouldn't say that. At all. Mainly led by the strength of AMOLAD, I actually feel that the Reunion Era is on par with the Classic Era.
And I lived through the Classic Era, as Maiden was my favorite band as a kid.
Yea true, it's highly debatable so I shouldn't just assume that.
Anyway I like the classic era better but I guess that was pretty obvious already
Well, I was your age during the Classic era so I look forward to your thoughts on the subject!
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Tim is an Iron Maiden expert, so he would know best
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Tim is an Iron Maiden expert, so he would know best
:lol
I'm not the only one..but ..yes I am. :lol
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#33: Megadeth – Rust in Peace (1990)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dc/Megadeth-RustInPeace.jpg)
Genre: Thrashmetal
Well, Countdown to Extinction was my first Megadeth album, but this one apparently had always been closer than I thought, of course as the metal fanatic he was, my dad owned some Megadeth stuff. Rust In Peace was never a full album experience for me, I always listened to separate tracks because I got impatient at the time. A few years back I stumbled upon it on youtube as a recommendation, which reminded me of it. I honestly just forgot about the album, but now I’m more obsessed with it than ever. Mustaines vocals I feel are more of an acquired taste, but I don’t think anyone who even likes thrash metal the tiniest bit can deny that every single musician in this band has great talent. The thrash metal vibe is something Megadeth have maintained way longer than the likes of Metallica IMO, but I feel like Metallica probably wouldn’t grab my attention as much as a continuing thrash metal band as this band. Rust In Peace is an album that is packed with crazy riffs, every song is just all over the place with them and I feel like Megadeth have mastered the use of switching back and forth between the lead and rhythm guitars on this album, mainly referring to the end of Hangar 18. The endless debate of Peace Sells vs. RIP has never been a problem for me, RIP any day!
Favorite song:
Holy Wars… The Punishment Due (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBtYOI8U3Cc): From the eastern guitar passages to the fast thrashy riffing, this song is a mix of everything Megadeth is capable of, and like most of those type of songs, they tend to be the best.
Other recommendations:
Hangar 18 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-oU2xlViRQ): I think my love for this song returned through guitar hero or something, but I’ve always liked it alright, that is, until the ending, when “alright” turns into excellent.
Tornado of Souls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcm9qqo_qB0): That main riff used to be one of my all time favorites, and even though “all time favorite riffs” have reached a very high standard for me recently, it’s still up there. Oh and the rest of the song is great too, of course.
Take No Prisoners (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL752-bVgLs): More and more when listening to this song I keep thinking how much of this song I see back in PtH’s music, never thought of that connection ever before, but this song just stands out like that. (this is a good thing don’t worry)
#32: Queensrÿche – Operation: Mindcrime (1988)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Queensryche_-_Operation_Mindcrime_cover.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
I guess everyone’s perception of nostalgia is different, for some it may be the moment you spin an album you bought 30 years ago and recall playing on a daily basis, for me, going through some of my dad’s old CD’s and finding Operation: Mindcrime, immediately remembering the music only from seeing the artwork. This is not only my favorite Queensrÿche album (though Empire aint too far behind), this is the classic progressive metal record that is widely acclaimed among prog fans. Sure, the meaning of “progressive music” has taken quite a turn over the past few decades, but at the time this was such innovative music and to this day I’ve never really heard any Queensrÿche copies (if you have, please sharez). Most of the songs on O:M have a pretty similar structure, and it’s one I love very much.
The concept album is about Nikki, who lies in a hospital (goddamn how many concept albums are about someone suffering from an illness or some sort of injury), in the catatonic state he’s in, he recalls different elements from his past. I probably couldn’t care less what the story was about exactly, sure some good conceptual lyrics can complement a song, but the story as a whole never does this for me. Granted, it’s not the concept that makes this one of the best prog albums ever, it’s the music.
Favorite song:
Eyes of a Stranger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4duZjxusGM): And I raise my head and stare, into the eyes of a STRANGEEEER.
Other recommendations:
I Don’t Believe In Love (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32GsPfUnsRk): Powerful near-perfect chorus, above par everything else.
Spreading the Disease (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5wneY-Bayk): Very contagious chorus, it’s really what O:M does best as an album, although the verses have some pretty funky guitar/drums stuff going on too.
#31: Metallica – Master Of Puppets (1986)
(https://www.metal-archives.com/images/5/4/7/547.jpg?4520)
Genre: (Heavy/Thrash) Metal
You knew this would get a spot in the top 50 eventually if you’ve followed actively, honestly I thought it would end up way higher when I started compiling the data for this top 50, but #31 of all time is still amazing. I’m trying to discuss three albums that coincidentally ended up next to each other and are all in the same update without beating a dead horse, but you’re gonna get the same answer like it or not: NOSTALGIA. Although this album has always been a go-to album whereas the other two were more like the “revisit every once in a while” kind of albums, and that’s probably why I’m giving MoP the edge here. Not only do I like Master of Puppets for the ridiculously good song-writing, I like the fact that they did this after Ride the Lightning, who woulda thought, 2 albums of such impact in a row, only 2 years apart. Let’s start with Kirk, I thought his DM solo’s were good, but the things he does on Sanitarium, Master of Puppets, Orion etc. is just incredible. Every single MoP guitar solo feels like it holds a childhood memory or something, they go back pretty far (11-13 years). Lars, no matter how much crap he gets, has the perfect role in this, the slower parts even appeal more to me than the quick parts (at least for the drums), look at Leper Messiah, Sanitarium, Disposable Heroes chorus and stuff. And lastly, pretty similar to my thoughts about Marks vocals on All I Was, I wouldn’t be the biggest fan of James’ vocals as a single instrument, but he just blends in with the music perfectly. Piece of history right here at #31.
Favorite song:
Welcome Home (Sanitarium) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Dfo4zDduI): Metallica always gets it right with these semi-ballad songs that end up in an outburst of heaviness. The Day That Never Comes, Fade to Black, One, and this. One of the best songs ever, even compared to the upcoming 30 albums.
Other recommendations:
Battery (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md3B3I7Nmvw): Man I wish they played the acoustic intro live, that’s one of my favorite parts of this song, the rest is awesome too though, my feelings for Sum 41’s “The Bitter End” mentioned above are similar, only this song is about 10 times as good.
Leper Messiah (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm71Khu5-Lk): Classic Metallica, very slow and heavy song along with powerful singing. BOW TO LEPER MESSIAH!
Master of Puppets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnKhsTXoKCI): Everyone knows this one, this song finally got big after the famous Dream Theater covered it :neverusethis:, but yeah great song.
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That just might be the single best 3 album update in the history of Top 50 threads! :metal :metal :metal
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Now that's an update I can appreciate. Both Mindcrime and MoP are awesome. :tup
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That just might be the single best 3 album update in the history of Top 50 threads! :metal :metal :metal
Perhaps... but if so, why are we only in 30s?
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That just might be the single best 3 album update in the history of Top 50 threads! :metal :metal :metal
Perhaps... but if so, why are we only in 30s?
Excellent question. One I was pondering myself.
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I guess Nickelback doesn't have 30 albums so yea you might be in for one or two out of the ordinary albums.
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Two albums I don't care one bit for and MoP that I know but don't consider myself a fan of. :lol
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Metal classics!!
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I quite like Rust in Peace, love O:M, but MoP bores me to tears :lol
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RIP is excellent, best of these three IMO.
O:M is another classic, I'm not over the moon about it but it's a good pick.
I've already expressed my feelings on MOP: I think it's a solid album but it's actually a dip in quality for Metallica as the preceding and following releases are definitely stronger. It would rank #4 for me among Metallica albums after RTL, AJFA and DM.
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Nice to see some classic thrown in here.
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#30: Distorted Harmony – Chain Reaction (2014)
(https://www.distortedharmony.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Distorted_Harmony_Chain-Reaction_Cover.jpg)
Genre: Modern Prog-Metal
When these guys released their debut album I didn’t hear much of it, but as soon as Chain Reaction was out, this Israeli prog metal band caught my attention, and the music didn’t exactly strike me as unique. In fact, it kinda sounds like a combination of Haken and Circus Maximus with other influences in some songs, like Hollow, where they sound a lot like Tool aswell. But I’m not really bothered with this approach if the music is top-notch, and that’s the case here. Most of the songs start out with something typically prog-metal, followed by isolated vocals, and a lot of sung parts are repeated. So if you’re into catchy songs that do tend to repeat the chorus a lot at all, this is the right place you’ve come to. The instrumental sections differ between eardrum assaults and calm harmonies, and while some songs have the best of both worlds, most work best within the album as either a breather or an anger outlet. I’m stunned by the things new bands are capable of within the first 2-3 albums of their career, let alone the shit they will be able to create 10 years from now.
Favorite song:
Natural Selection (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MASP7ryzTr8): This is currently the peak of Distorted Harmony, they do everything right in this song, and left me stunned and satisfied after my first listen, it’s everything you want from an Israeli prog-metal band.
Other recommendations:
Misguided (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtGYjHDHTSk): God damn it Tom, I love this song!! Although I can see how it could be a little stretched out and repetitive. This is the perfect showcase of both their soft side, their heavy instrumentals, and a damned catchy chorus that’s stuck in my head at least a day every single time after I listen to Chain Reaction.
Hollow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swsWYTj_73g): If you like Tool, aren’t turned off by obvious similarities, check out Hollow. Very powerful verses, and like Misguided, very contagious chorus.
#29: Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn Of Events (2011)
(https://www.metal-archives.com/images/3/0/9/6/309671.jpg?0735)
Genre: Progressive Metal
I became a Dream Theater fan pretty recently, but it wasn’t until quite some time that I checked out their most recent album at the time, “A Dramatic Turn of Events” at the time. Like no other DT album has ever done this for me, Dramatic Turn of Events literally feels like a journey to me. The whole atmosphere throughout this album, I always like to say, feels otherworldly. Take it or leave it, I love recent DT material, I love old DT material, but Dramatic Turn is already one of my favorite DT albums and is even growing out to be (next to) my absolute favorite. My god, JP’s guitar on this album fits perfectly to the theme of otherworldly I was trying to describe, that’s just one of the reasons that many songs on here have some of the best guitar solos: Lost Not Forgotten, Breaking All Illusions, On the Backs of Angels, whatever you get the gist. I’m not too baffled by the drums but whatever, while Black Clouds & Silver Linings had one of the coolest drum moments ever, this album is way too focused on the orchestral not-so-dirty organs and godlike guitar for that to happen, oh and yea, new drummer of course. For me of course, I already had access to (almost) all DT albums at once, I didn’t experience new releases apart from DT12, so that makes me less biased towards older material I believe, and being a fan of a lot of modern music also plays a part in it. This album will never cease to be on my to-go albums list.
Favorite song:
Breaking All Illusions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUE3_h9Opio): Almost tied for favorite DT song ever, I could literally listen to this song whenever, I’m always in the mood. It’s very uplifting in a spiritual kind of way, first half is great, second half is stellar.
Other recommendations:
This is the Life (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkeXOEVfEu0): Very close to BAI actually, this is like my favorite ballad ever, and easily my favorite DT ballad, such powerful notes, and great singing performance.
Bridges in the Sky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1fNCc_whtU): Just a phenomenal chorus and amazing instrumental section, and a kickass intro. (not talking about the Shaman)
Outcry (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH-I3x5GocU): I like the chorus and instrumental section a lot, but the best part is when the chorus returns in the finale in the song, such impact.
Now that we're (almost) halfway through the top 50, here's the list from 50 up until 26, the upcoming three will remain anonymous until tomorrow, but for easy reference I decided to count the amount of albums for each decade they were released in (again, just from the first half):
#50: Rage Against The Machine – Rage Against The Machine
#49: Mastodon – Crack The Skye
#48: Haken – Aquarius
#47: Muse – Origin of Symmetry (2001)
#46: Pomegranate Tiger – Entities (2013)
#45: Metallica – Death Magnetic (2008)
#44: Circus Maximus – Isolate (2007)
#43: Dream Theater – Train Of Thought
#42: Avenged Sevenfold – Waking The Fallen:
#41: Alter Bridge – One Day Remains:
#40: A.C.T – Circus Pandemonium (2014)
#39: Linkin Park – Meteora (2003)
#38: Periphery – Periphery II
#37: Sum 41 – Chuck (2004)
#36: Iron Maiden – A Matter Of Life And Death:
#35: Tremonti – All I Was (2012)
#34: The Mars Volta – De-loused In The Comatorium
#33: Megadeth – Rust in Peace
#32: Queensrÿche – Operation: Mindcrime
#31: Metallica – Master Of Puppets
#30: Distorted Harmony – Chain Reaction
#29: Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn Of Events
#28: :huh: 2000's
#27: :huh: 2010's
#26: :huh: 1980's
1980's: 3
1990's: 2
2000's: 12
2010's: 8
Yea that's pretty much what I expected, a lot of recent stuff, though most of the 2000-2010 albums were closer to the 2k mark.
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i can't really ever get too into ADToE because it has BMUBMD and LNF as a double-whammy before any of the really good tracks
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Never heard of Distorted Harmony.
Nice writeup on ADTOE. A classic DT alum for sure. I honestly cannot believe it has its detractors because it really captures the essence of what DT is all about.
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if ADToE cut out BMUBMD and LNF and went straight from OtBoA to TiTL it'd be top 4 DT ~easily~, maybe even top 3
but such is life
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if ADToE cut out BMUBMD and LNF and went straight from OtBoA to TiTL it'd be top 4 DT ~easily~, maybe even top 3
but such is life
OK, I'm with you on BMUBMD. But LNF? That's DT gold, man.
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Never heard of Distorted Harmony.
Gotta have some Tel Aviv prog metal in my life man. :hat
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if ADToE cut out OTBOA and LNF and went straight from BMUBMD to TiTL it'd be top 4 DT ~easily~, maybe even top 3
but such is life
FTFM
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ADTOE :tup
My #2 DT album (ahead of Awake, SFAM and SDOIT). Come at me.
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Your tastes on DT are all over the place, 425 :tup
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I mean, kind of. But it shouldn't be too strange given that my favorite by far is Images and Words, that my second favorite is the one that is most similar to Images and Words.
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That DT album is awesome stuff!
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Yes, yes it is.
Another update of three, this time with an album from this decade, one from the last decade, and a classic, in that order.
#28: The Sums – Screaming Bloody Murder (2011)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/Screaming_Bloody_Murder.jpg)
Genre: Hard Rock
Here we go again with Sum 41, though this is the last we see of them, and this time, it’s their most recent effort, being after Brown Sounds left the band. Brown Sounds was probably my favorite band member, but after hearing this album I knew it was no problem at all, as we see Sum 41 go back to their Chuck roots (would ya believe it, The Sums release 2 heavier albums and they just so happen to be the only ones on this list). Sven is absolutely owning this studio performance, live IDK, but this album is a pure anger outlet for Sven it seems, which makes for great songs both on the heavy side and the sad/slow side, sometimes they like to do both in one song. As an album this works entirely well, because we continuously have like 1-2 hard rock songs melted down with a song that’s more on the pop-rock side, and one of the songs which is Time for You to Go, we see their punk side return. It’s basically an album with 14 songs that all range from about 3 to 4 minutes, not that hard to digest, but it’s gotta click like it did with me in order to rank it so highly.
The Led Zeppelins (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO-mSLxih-c) approve of this post.
Favorite song:
Screaming Bloody Murder (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEbemsHuB-4): Very simple song, which makes you wonder how they haven’t covered this ground before, it’s very much like a standard song from The Sums, only a bit heavier. The drums in the chorus are so freaking powerful and catchy even though they’re standard as ever.
Other recommendations:
Scumfuck (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNqePZZgnlU): It starts off slowly, but soon enough the piano of doom kicks in and Sven kicks everyone’s ass on the mic. The chorus is the best moment of the album IMO.
Blood In My Eyes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdI6CQK6F4Q): This song goes out to Mr. CDrice, it is very Billy Talent-esque instrumentally, though I’m not sure how you’ll feel about the vocals.
What Am I To Say (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSlc0P-pCVA): I hear a huge influence of a certain band that I just can’t put my finger on, maybe Green Day, anyway it’s a great slower song on the album.
#27: Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Whatever_People_Say_I_Am,_That's_What_I'm_Not.jpg)
Genre: Alternative/Indie Rock (?)
What better way to start talking about Arctic Monkeys, than where it all started, the album with an overly long album name and crappy song names that don’t even fit the youtube search bar, like “You Probably Couldn’t See for the Lights But You Were Staring Straight At Me”. Here's some guidelines: The third studio album Humbug is the perfect album for the classic hungover Sunday morning, Favourite Worst Nightmare is the perfect album for rebel kids who like to break the rules and be dangerous. And then we have Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, which is simply 4 guys creating some great rock music, famous for their in-the-face guitar riffs, many backing vocals, and a singer that is at times hard to understand if you’re from anywhere that’s not England. Sadly I got introduced to this album with their all-time best song, so they never impressed me more than that moment, I think it’s a pretty bad choice for a single too, but it’s such a good song that the inferior songs were still great. While most Arctic Monkeys songs are relaxing/hungover mood songs, this album is full of energy, and excellent party material if you ask me. A bit of an odd choice for someone with my musical tastes, but this is just that one odd album in my collection that I’ve always liked despite the differences.
Favorite song:
When the Sun Goes Down (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii2_ALLufQA): Not only is this by far the best song on the album, it’s one of my favorite songs period. Has every single aspect of Arctic Monkeys molded into a 3-minute song.
Other recommendations:
I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PVdnld2gSo): Maybe a bit overplayed at parties and stuff, but it’s still a great song, love it to bits. Most energetic song of the album.
The View from the Afternoon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQnjjcmH0sY): Great song that I would consider the heaviest, even though that’s not really what AM are about.
From the Ritz to the Rubble (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=givRh52Ic3A): Alex tries rap, seriously this song is funky as hell, if there’s any song that’s worthy of following up When the Sun Goes Down, it’s this one.
#26: Iron Maiden – Powerslave (1984)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/Iron_Maiden_-_Powerslave.jpg)
Genre: Heavy Metal
No doubt I had a hard time ranking the Maiden albums included in this list, but what was for certain was that Powerslave could definitely not be lower than #30. 1-50 all feel like albums I will never forget, but from this point on it’s all legendary stuff, even the newer ones (I think there’s even 1 or 2 2014 releases coming up which have already clicked that well with me). What these guys have been able to put out over the course of 5 years is just inhumane, Iron Maiden, Killers, The Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind and Powerslave all have one year between each other. A stunning album that does not only succeed at fulfilling the proggy needs of a DTF-member, there’s also the eastern/egyptian vibes in self-titled for instance, that I always love. McBrain keeps the drumming a tad simpler than the likes of TNoTB and PoM, but they’re still very present at all times. The nostalgia factor on Dave Murray’s solos is great, but that aside, I still appreciate them a lot for what they are, very melodic guitar solos, fast-paced when they need to be, actually something I noticed they like to do, is crank up the speed of all the instruments the moment the solo reaches its climax, like in Rime of the Ancient Mariner about 10 minutes in or something, such an awesome approach. Iron Maiden are geniuses regarding the sales department, they give you a first taste with the epic album covers, and they keep their customers hooked with the music, BestBuy, won’t you hire the IM crew already?
Favorite song:
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7zk4as9kzA): If this song has taught me anything it’s that 13+ minute songs can be good, even better than the songs I used to listen to, it doesn’t even need an overly long intro, just gets right to business.
Other recommendations:
Powerslave (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4U07_4rvbM): This riff man, it’s like Murray was in the studio trying out some stuff, and then this shit came out, and everyone simultaneously agrees that there has to be a song built around this riff.
Flash of the Blade (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur8l3qDVr84): Very simple song, actually, I heard this song first from Avenged Sevenfold, then realized I must’ve known this song before, and sure enough it was a cover. Not too shabby but the original is miles better.
Aces High (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-U9VYALAQ): I love the way the intro bursts out into this very fast beat, then carries on this fast-paced style throughout pretty much the whole song, didn’t get to see them perform this song live sadly, 2 Minutes was the only Powerslave song they did when I saw them I think, but it was still great.
Oh btw I shortened the official title so I have more space for my ever so catchy titles.
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It doesn't get much better than Powerslave
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I will never complain about the inclusion of Iron Maiden. Powerslave is not one I would have in my own top 50, but I will never complain about the inclusion of Iron Maiden.
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Damn right, and like jj said it doesn't get much better.
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I will never complain about the inclusion of Iron Maiden. Powerslave is not one I would have in my own top 50, but I will never complain about the inclusion of Iron Maiden.
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It doesn't get much better than Powerslave
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#25: Deftones – Diamond Eyes (2010)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8b/Deftones_-_Diamond_Eyes.jpg)
Genre: Nu-Metal/Hard Rock (?)
This is a band I could listen to for days, but not really be too that passionate about. They have tons of albums, I think about 8, and I still listen to like half of them pretty regularly in a single day if I’m in the right mood, they’re that consistent. But one album sticks out as the album I always return to, Diamond Eyes. You may think of Nu-Metal as repetitive or predictable, but Deftones have always had their own sound, regardless of the genre they’re classified as. It’s a mix between very heavy distorted guitar rhythms, with very sinister yet often relaxing vocals. Some songs ditch this soft style of vocals and go all the way with the heavy style, like Rocket Skates. My love for Deftones started not so long ago, though my drum teacher gave me a copy of White Pony, one of the trademark Deftones albums, told me to just jam along to these songs. The direction of that album was still pretty crazy for my taste, but I learned that Deftones are about the best “sandbox jam band” you could think of, so much space to improvise with some slow drum fills and cool polyrhythm’s and whatever. That said, that’s definitely not the reason I love them, but it was how I became interested in them so easily. Porbably a few years after the time he gave me White Pony I revisited it, along with some other Deftones albums, and pretty recently I actually bought Diamond Eyes and have been playing it non-stop, amazing stuff. I honestly never thought music like this could compete with the likes of Master of Puppets, Powerslave etc. but it definitely takes the upper hand in my eyes.
Favorite song:
Diamond Eyes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qksTlo_1Tpw): This album opener/single manages to take the classic Deftones style that is raw guitar riffs, powerful clean vocals, and a harmonic chorus, and put it in a very accessible single that I managed to convert non-metal friends to Deftones with. Oh and the owl in the video from the album cover is beautiful.
Other recommendations:
Rocket Skates (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woR6ohiFeYE): This song is pure anger, lots of screaming *fair warning*, lots of “whoo!”, fast grunge-y guitars, you name it.
CMND/CTRL (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUS3ZQzYWJg): This song just kicks ass, no other way to describe it, punching guitar riffs, strong vocals in the verses, mellow chorus.
#24: Machine Head – The Blackening (2007)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0f/Machine_Head_-_The_Blackening.jpg)
Genre: Heavy/Groove Metal
Machine Head has always been a mixed bag for me, they never stray away too far from the original formula, but the songs are still all very different, as are the albums. This little beauty called The Blackening was the first Machine Head I heard. I bought tickets to a Slipknot concert, both Children of Bodom and Machine Head opened for them (I now realize how odd it is that a band like Machine Head opened for Slipknot). Preparing for the concert, I listened to the new album “The Blackening”, Halo immediately caught my attention, and everything else was great too. Seeing these guys live was such a treat, and eventually, seeing Beautiful Mourning on guitar hero reignited my love for The Blackening after a few years of forgetting about it. Some of the best Robb Flynn moments are on Davidian, and a lot of stuff on Unto the Locust, but he’s not to be forgotten here, great songwriter, lyricist, but most of all, frontman. The thin line between heavy ass verses and harmonic choruses is something Machine Head does best, just look at Clenching the Fists of Dissent, Halo, Beautiful Mourning, etc. Here’s how I feel about the album musically as a whole: They manage to get all the heaviness that bands like Gojira have, but with such great harmonies and melodies that I don’t even get that “overly aggressive” feeling that I tend to have with some of the Gojira songs. One fun thing I noticed in the Machine Head songwriting is how they give the classic harsh verses clean chorus, which is mostly used in the metalcore scene, their own little twist. They have these short guitar passages that are chockfull of melody either during or right before the verses, it makes every song very unique without being over the top crazy. Summarized: Quite possibly considered the fan favorite among MH albums, this thing is full of cool anthemic choruses, slow breakdowns, strong verses, you name it.
Favorite song:
Halo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcibSVfwsYM): It’s heavy, it’s soft, it has a beautiful instrumental section, and a badass breakdown in the end. Pretty much anything you want.
Other recommendations:
Beautiful Mourning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j09AsYqoJZo): Strongest verse in all of The Blackening, pretty standard, but so damn powah.
Aesthetics of Hate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0uNhebClgE): Talking about these short guitar passages at the start of a verse, obviously this song came to mind first, beautifully done, but this song is just an all around masterpiece.
A Farewell to Arms (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_EHrIu_w3w): Beau. Ti. Ful.
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Diamond Eyes is fucking amazing. I still prefer Koi No Yokan, but I'm glad to see Deftones on the list. :tup
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Koi No Yokan was actually pretty close to making the cut, it's still my #2 favorite, #3 is probs White Pony or s/t.
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#23: Avenged Sevenfold – Avenged Sevenfold (2007)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/76/Avenged_Sevenfold_cover_2007.jpg)
Genre: Alternative Metal/Heavy Metal
This feels more like an album full of great songs than a really well-written album, hence having a ton of songs that didn’t make the album. The songs however, are so great that this album made it all the way to #23. Up to this point I thought Avenged Sevenfold always had amazing ballads: Seize the Day, I Won’t See You Tonight pt. 1, Dear God wasn’t nearly as great. This album has aged incredibly well, I used to not think too much of those lesser known songs on the album, and the singles were IMO, nothing more than just good. After revisiting about 5 years ago I fell in love, lots of amazing songs, and still not really an actual album feeling, but you notice right away how incredibly good some of the standalone songs are. This band is known for the way they change their sound every album, this album definitely had a few City of Evil tendencies, but it’s definitely some original songwriting, even throwing in a choir of children at one point (so awesome). M. Shadows is consistent as ever, I like him on every song on the album, instruments aside. Synyster Gates might’ve even overdone himself on this album, he even said that the reason they barely ever play Scream live is that he never figured out how to actually play the solo live properly, being too fast. It was on Live in the LBC, but you can see he had a hard time mimicking the studio version, though it’s not a fan favorite so I don’t think people have a problem with it anyway. Gates’ performance on all of the album is just ridiculous though, he has put so much groove into the solos and other melodies.
Being the last album with recorded Rev drumming, I got to remind you all of not just his amazing drum skills, Mike Portnoy being his idol you can see a lot of him back in Jimmy’s drumming, he also had some vocal parts on this album, and was just a great guy overall to experience in live concerts for his personality.
Favorite song:
A Little Piece of Heaven (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VurhzANQ_B0): The most notable Rev vocals on the album are right here: “Must’ve stabbed her 50 fucking times!” The whole song just feels like a Broadway Musical, everyone should at least have heard it regardless of your view on A7X. Best song out of their entire discography IMO and should easily make the top 3 in the survivor finals, if not #1.
Other recommendations:
Critical Acclaim (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThwSWIXhiRw): A pretty close second, and easily in my top 5 songs by the band. After Shadows’ dirty organ this song is just a hail of heaviness and aggression, way to open the album guys.
Gunslinger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y58xMOx-qsQ): This one seems to not be so popular according to the just finished survivor, oh well I love it, the transition from the acoustic intro into the heavy assault of instruments along with Shadows yea’yea’in is great. I see where they’re coming from though, it can get kind of repetitive, I personally don’t feel that way though.
Afterlife (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNpy2K27PKU): That harmonic intro makes it all the more epic when the guitar joins in, transitioning into a groovy as fuck bass passage to open up the song. Personally I don’t think the vocals live up to the instrumentals on this song, but they’re still good enough to make this my #4 song on the album.
#22: Haken – The Mountain (2013)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9c/Haken_The_Mountain_cover.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
Who could possibly be lurking the DreamTheaterForums and not know about The Mountain, I feel this was a HUGE step up from Visions, even though that album was pretty amazing on its own. Haken found their own place in the prog world with this album it seems, they still have those whacky moments that Aquarius introduced us to, but the overwhelming atmosphere of epic-feeling keyboards make the majority of this album feel like you’re standing on the mountaintop of an actual mountain, good choice for a title. This was definitely a grower, especially because I was never into Haken until very recently, something about Ross’ vocals really made it hard to get into, but I’ve come to love ‘em, they blend so well into the whole epic style of the instruments. At some points there’s just so much weird shit going on, followed by the most funky guitar solos ever, that I just like to forget that I’m listening to a progressive metal band and slowly fade into my own imaginations. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how big of an entrance Haken have made into the progressive metal scene, and I’m pretty sure they will continue impressing me. Until then, I think I’ll be good with the material we currently have.
Favorite song:
Falling Back to Earth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ox__xk3uho): This is one of the songs where I can safely say that length played a big part in me liking it so much, the song continues to amaze me every minute, it just keeps getting better as time progresses. With a pretty sudden beginning, the song builds up tension until the chorus, which is super melodic and relaxing, the balance between dreamy instrumental sections and atmospheric vocals is just superb here though, that’s what makes it so damn good.
Other recommendations:
Cockroach King (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjrcXCAeNe4): Now this is probably the biggest hit or miss song on the album, it’s a very odd song, but the band embraces its wackiness so well that it doesn’t bother me. The chorus is beautifully done too, and is not a weird one either.
Pareidolia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr_gROZmTtA): SUCH a great main riff, it’s got tht desert-type feeling, foreshadowing the melodies of the chorus, a great way to structure this amazing song.
Atlas Stone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITpreXvEq-0): This song has so many great elements, from the funky keyboard solo into the soaring guitar solo, the verses are complemented by very subtle background keyboards the entire time. This song is every single band member at their peak (:neverusethis:).
#21: Megadeth – Countdown to Extinction (1992)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81FHrSbtPFL._SL1300_.jpg)
Genre: Thrash Metal/Classic Metal/Hard Rock
This album often gets shit for being more commercially oriented, the FII of Megadeth so to say, but I don’t get it, the only logical explanation I could see is that they’re all fairly short tracks, but this album is still has some strong thrash metal tunes, like Skin O‘ My Teeth and High Speed Dirt, and if anything I’d say their “commercial” songs were a great success. This was both my first Megadeth album and the first album I ever bought at an actual music store without being a “random purchase”, I’ve heard a friend play Symphony of Destruction in his car while driving to a football game or something, and it was the first time I actually wanted to buy an album for more than the music, I still have a lot of those CD’s that bring up great memories, and the newer purchases, which have mostly been prog metal, feel like a new chapter, but Countdown to Extinction will never be forgotten. Rust in Peace had a lot of great songs, some miles better than others on the album, Cryptic Writings and Youthanasia (which are my folowup faves, Peace Sells album never clicked with me) have a few killer songs but have some that drag it down a lot. Countdown to Extinction doesn’t let down at any point.
Favorite song:
Symphony of Destruction (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFgky2nUGws): Like I mentioned this was not only my introduction to Megadeth, but the start of a new love for music. Screw the explanation, you should all know this one.
Other recommendations:
Skin O’ My Teeth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePSR7gFt7s4): Megadeth have gone commercial? The hell they have, here’s a short, cool thrash metal song that starts out the album.
Sweating Bullets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZtiaEeqyFA): The intro is pretty standard but I love it. But the real reason you should listen to this is because you need to have heard Megadeth try blues.
Countdown to Extincton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8g-lugXGBQ): This Was My Life flows so well into this song that I used to think they were one song, but yeah this title-track doesn’t let down. Great vocal melodies in the verses, and a damned good anthem-ish chorus.
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Holy shit yes, the Mountain :2metal:
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The Mountain was one of those albums that I listened to and immediately fell in love with, it absolutely dwarfs Visions and it's even a fair step up from Aquarius as well. i feel like whatever they release next has a lot to live up to
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Two albums I love and one I don't care for.
But yeah something is terribly wrong with your recommended songs for The Mountain :lol
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But yeah something is terribly wrong with my tastes :lol
Fixed :P
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The Mountain is great, though I'm still so-so on Ross' voice. He's great in quiet moments (like the beginning of, say, Nocturnal Conspiracy), but I don't think he's that great on epic choruses with loads of stuff going on.
I also think one of my problems with Cockroach King is that I can't remember the lyrics at all. I do remember the vocal melodies, but when the song pops up on the album, in my head all the lines in the beginning go like "I sympathize... with a cockroach... and a cockroach" and I also seem to remember that in the end the insects have multiplied, and that's all. :lol Still, a fun song, but really, every other song on the album is better.
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So... I'm the Billy Talent guy now :lol
The Mountain and Avenged Sevenfold are both pretty good. However, my knowledge of older albums being almost non-existent I can't comment on the Megadeth one.
But yeah something is terribly wrong with your recommended songs for The Mountain :lol
Yeah, he should have put Because It's There instead of Falling Back To Earth.
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Nocturnal Conspiracy
is
a fun song, but really,
Cockroach King is
better.
Yep, agreed.
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Nocturnal Conspiracy is better than anything on The Mountain, in my opinion.
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If you just gave me some more Haken song names in your comment to work with we could've made a better arrangement. :coolio
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I sympathize... with a cockroach... and a cockroach
omg :rollin
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Holy shit yes, the Mountain :2metal:
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Like mentioned earlier, from here on it's 2 updates a day for the next 5 days, and 1 a day from there on. We're still on track to complete this in 1 month!
#20: Protest the Hero – Volition (2013)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ac/Volition_(Album).jpg)
This has got to be my best discovery of the year, by a country mile. PtH are known as the circle jerk of the whole progressive metal genre, people will not stop talking about them, and here I am, talking about them. Volition was their latest album, released just over 2 years ago, when I heard this album I immediately fell in love during the first song, something that has never happened to me with music this immediate. Rody “Choady” Walker has a very distinct voice, which seems like a huge hit or miss to me, and of course it was hit for me. The vocals in Clarity had more energy than anything else I ever heard before, and this was just the first song, not even being the best. The moment you start paying more attention to all the shit that happens in the background musically though, you’ll realize how crazy these guys are, these are some of the most wild instrumentals I’ve heard in any song, and they damn well make it work. Volition along with Scurrilous, when compared to the other 2 studio albums by Protest, are without a doubt the softer albums of the bunch. The instruments feel a little more uplifting, but more importantly, Rody barely growls anymore on these albums, apart from a few moments. So anyway, if you’re interested in some super energetic instruments with over-the-top instrumentals, very few yet very well-placed growls, some relaxing female vocals here and there, check out this album! I honestly couldn’t give any real guidelines of what band they sound like because I don’t know a band that sounds like them at all.
Favorite song:
Drumhead Trial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMPd_WEMrLM): Standing before the heavens, screaming.. BRING ON THE STORM, BRING ON THE STORM!
Other recommendations:
Skies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar15p6AFR8A): This is the all-around Volition song, it has the softer parts, it has the incredibly technical instrumentations, my favorite instrumental breakdown of the album, and a catchy chorus.
Plato’s Tripartite (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wu1HuMhEk8): It’s a pretty simple song compared to the others really, but the instruments here allow Rody on vocals to shine more than on any song, what a performance he pulls off here!
Clarity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEamIjOiKCs): This will remain one of my favorites, it introduces you to new parts of the song like every half minute, super diverse, energetic song.
#19: Alter Bridge – Blackbird (2007)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/13/Alterbridge_blackbird.jpg)
Okay, I promise I will almost shut my mouth about Alter Bridge and any Kennedy/Tremonti related projects, almost.. but allow me to talk about Blackbird, the second studio album of Alter Bridge, after the amazing One Day Remains they manage to put out an even better album, that not only shows a better metal-oriented performance, it manages to stick to the style of ODR as much as possible while doing so. I gotta be honest though, I still think ODR is the more consistent album (by a hair), but the title-track on this one is just Myles better than anything on that album. It’s clear after hearing the first few songs that this album has a more uplifting approach, with songs like Brand New Start and Come To Life. I mentioned earlier how One Day Remains had that ominous vibe throughout the album, this one replaces those really dark and mourning-themed ballads with uplifting power-ballads like Rise Today and Before Tomorrow Comes. To balance it all out, in the exact middle of the album, Blackbird (title-track) begins, and it’s the very best creation of Alter Bridge to this day and possible the best I will ever hear from them. More of that coming up in the song write-up. I wouldn’t say this album has the best individual performance of the band members out of the 4 studio albums, but I can safely say the song-writing on Blackbird was the best.
Favorite song:
Whaddya think? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz_j7nVCJJ0): From the haunting guitar intro into the vocals mourning over a dead friend, straight into an aggressive medley of instruments that introduces the most powerful Myles vocals on any chorus ever. Not to speak of the guitar solo. I usually don’t like praising a song as extremely as I do with Blackbird, but it just deserves it.
Other recommendations:
Come To Life (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhsf2TmbIBw): Great riff, strong chorus, whatever you get the gist.
Rise Today (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYG3BPvFOgs): Beautiful power-ballad, yet has a very distinctive sound that hadn't been explored on either of the albums.
White Knuckles (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3BaEYh8FPg): This is like a better version of Ties That Bind, very aggressive, heavy riffing, and of course a top-notch vocal performance.
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Skies is easily my favorite PtH song, though Drumhead Trial is probably #2 on the album, it's great
and i'll check out Alter Bridge one day some day
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I really like Blackbird, though I feel that when it comes to AB, Fortress wins everything.
White Knuckles tho :metal
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Yay so I finally got my recommended songs right
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Hell yeah Blackbird :metal
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Listened to your top recommendations and nothing really clicked for me. Sounds kinda generic.
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That A7X album is really strong stuff there. Digged Afterlife, Gunslinger, Lost, Dear God, and of course, A Little Piece of Heaven.
As for Blackbird, this is when it all finally comes together for Alter Bridge, after being compared to Creed for no other valid reason other than having 3/4ths of the band members, after buying out of their former record label contract (that costed them millions that they are still paying for today). Blackbird was a strong statement album to make to show that they can stand on their own individual brand. If only it sold really well, but that was released during the time where albums were not starting to sell like hotcakes anymore.
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That A7X album is really strong stuff there. Digged Afterlife, Gunslinger, Lost, Dear God, and of course, A Little Piece of Heaven.
As for Blackbird, this is when it all finally comes together for Alter Bridge, after being compared to Creed for no other valid reason other than having 3/4ths of the band members, after buying out of their former record label contract (that costed them millions that they are still paying for today). Blackbird was a strong statement album to make to show that they can stand on their own individual brand. If only it sold really well, but that was released during the time where albums were not starting to sell like hotcakes anymore.
Couldn't have said it better, this was a very important step in their career.
Glad you liked A7X :metal
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Oh God i have somehow missed the last update :lol
A7X is good, bit I'd never pur it this high.
And I'd never pur The Mountain this low.
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#18: The Dear Hunter – Act II: The Meaning Of, And All Things Regarding Ms. Leading (2007)
(https://resources.wimpmusic.com/images/19641548/136b/4809/9c51/47beffd1aab0/1280x1280.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Rock
I have far from experienced all of The Dear Hunter’s discography to make a well-formed statement about album rankings or whatever, but what I am sure of is that this second album in their act series was by far my favorite. Act 1 started out the series in a great fashion, Act 4 was my favorite album of 2015, and honestly I’m very new to this band, so I would be able to justify putting Act 4 on this spot just as much as I do now with this album. What makes Act 2 superior to everything else is I never feel the songs drop in quality, while some of their albums are consistent but don’t have any real standouts; others are amazing for the first half and seem to kinda drag on too much near the end, this one though, is perfect. The Dear Hunter do not have 1 vocalist, not 2, no, they have 5. Having various multi-instrumentalists, TDH can adapt to a lot of different styles while staying very much them, nothing sounds copied. Of course there is a lead vocalist, but the others join in at various points in the songs more so to create an atmosphere with backing vocals than really singing. The Lake and the River would be the best example to showcase that. Of course, this wouldn’t be a top-notch progressive album without crazy pace-changes within one song, recurring themes, kickass keyboards and a ton of upbeat drums.
Favorite song:
The Lake and the River (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MHd28VJo_M): The chorus just blows me away every time, the vocal lines are strong, and the backing vocals make it even more enjoyable. That aside, it has a lot of cool instrumentals and a fun ending.
Other recommendations:
The Oracles on the Delphi Express (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yABRtv_Qtbg): This is such a FUN song! As a professional shower singer I can approve of this.
Smiling Swine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT7LFLgrQuw): Very uplifting song that’s perfectly placed in this album, proves once again how well-structured the whole thing is.
Dear Ms. Leading (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEVnVRxyDj0): Groovy as ever, gives the listener a final blast before slowing down and wrapping up.
#17: Royal Blood – Royal Blood (2014)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/Royal_Blood_-_Royal_Blood_(Artwork).jpg)
Genre: Rock
I definitely did not think Royal Blood would end up as my #17, even though I’ve known it since release, that’s just a little over a year. Think of this though, you’re listening to some great old-school sounding garage rock, you like what you’re hearing and go to check out their band members, ends up they’re only two guys! I have so much respect for these guys, Ben (drummer) makes everything look like it’s the easiest thing ever, on top of playing some technical stuff, he hits the drums so hard that it forms that energetic/heavy garage-rock sound even better. Mike, using some pedals to make his bass sound a little bit more like an electric guitar, is an amazing multi-instrumentalist. Not only does he do lead vocals exceptionally well for this type of music, he also plays some crazy stuff on the bass. So yea, with only two band members, that means they do not have a lead guitar, but Mike Kerr kind of fills up that hole with the bass.
It should not go without mention that this impressive piece of rock is Royal Blood’s debut album, I think they’re planning on releasing a new album next year, but for a first effort this is crazy work. It may not sound like a very cohesive album, because it isn’t, it’s just two guys jamming together and creating a bunch of separate songs, though that’s exactly what I like about it. If you’re Muse/Queens of the Stone Age etc. you might just like these dudes. I’ve already liked what they put out so far, and I’m very very excited to see what they will put out in the future.
Favorite song:
Loose Change (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYcHM_3DzEE): The riff on this is great, this song I’d almost say has some blues-rock going on. It’s the bass-heaviest song on the album, and has an amazing change of pace near the end of the song, kind of like a breakdown, that’s not only the best moment on the song, but on the entire album.
Other recommendations:
Come On Over (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuKwBdUHubs): I don’t know why, but Out of the Black (the opening song) always gets me in a very slow mood, then this song comes up and it’s 100% ENERGIA, verses building up tension for the excellent chorus: SO COME ON OVAAAAH, YEAH!
Figure It Out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHX3lWJxQPA): This has become their trademark song that they play at all the MTV shows, EMA awards and radio shows w/e you get it. I really think this is the best song for casual rock fans to get into Royal Blood, it keeps you interested with the ‘normal’ part of the song, and then BAM! ending it with some crazy guitar work in the last minute.
Ten Tonne Skeleton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrbkZDAf8k8): That main riff annoyed me to bits when I first heard it, but it got better in time, and this is my favorite vocal performance by Mike on the album, and it has a crushing chorus.
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Loose Change was definitely the best song on the album, which is probably why the album as a whole didn't do a lot for me, unfortunately :lol
only listened to it once though so ehh
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So I guess I did a pretty shitty job sending Figure It Out to the biscuit, I figured that out very soon aswell.
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#16: Avenged Sevenfold – City Of Evil (2005)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7b/City_of_Evil_album_cover.jpg)
Genre: Hardrock/Heavy Metal
There we go again with Avenged Sevenfold, but yea, not only was this one of my favorite childhood bands, their music throughout their whole career has been so consistently good that I never got bored by their material, even though it’s just four albums (I don’t really listen to the first and the last that much). City of Evil, by the vast majority of hardcore Avenged Sevenfold, is considered the very best. I personally found out about this band through Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Blinded In Chains was one of the soundtracks, and is still one of my favorites from the album. What Blackbird did for Alter Bridge, this album did for A7X, Waking the Fallen was an outcast among popular metal bands, City of Evil fixed those ‘problems‘ and distributed their sound to a broader range of fans. With a mix of Hardrock, Heavy Metal, this was a big stp away from the Metalcore sound from WtF, and you bet it was a good one. Not to say the Metalcore direction was bad, but this direction allowed for a better showcase of M. Shadows‘ range, showing The Rev could do very creative things on the drums, and not just play fast, and on top of all of that, Gates doing what he does best: Creating guitar solos that oddly remind me of childhood lullabies. There was a pretty serious consideration of putting this in the top 10, but that would just not be able to be justified seeing the upcoming albums. City of Evil is one of my all-time favorites, and probably will always be remembered, but that goes for everything from this point on.
Favorite song:
M.I.A. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8SWV5FsCd8): Every song on the album was great at worst, but this album closer simply blew me away from the first listen, the intro is some of the best Avenged Sevenfold stuff ever, the solo is awesome, Shadows has that really high-pitched husky voice in the end that I really love for some reason. Well, I can point out a whole lot but let’s just keep it at ‘best song off the album, ‘nuff said‘.
Blinded In Chains (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPpLVdbVXFI): Like I said, first song I heard of this band, and the chorus was just the most amazing thing I had heard up until then, had to check out more of them after hearing this.
Bat Country (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ6i2_vUoHQ): Amazing single full of energy, mixed with some mellow parts after the chorus to balance it out, best introductory track to A7X in my experience.
Sidewinder (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5cxp6J10oM): Is a pretty catchy song overall, but the real reason that this song is so loved by everyone is this acoustic guitar outro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5cxp6J10oM#t=6m2s), that is, if you ask me, what the definition of legendary is, and everyone should have at least heard it.
#15: Slipknot – Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses (2004)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9/Slipknot_-_Vol._3-_(The_Subliminal_Verses).jpg)
Genre: Nu-Metal
After hearing nothing of Slipknot from the very beginning up until now, this band makes its first and only appearance in the top 50 albums. Having only 1 album (not counting MFKR) by the time I found out about them, and 3 albums by the time this band was an obsession of mine, Subliminal Verses for sure caused that obsession. Everyone knows Slipknot for their very odd pure anger + chaos twist to the nu-metal genre, probably the best song to indicate my thoughts is Spit It Out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPUZwriSX4M) from the self-titled album (warning, very childish lyrics). Although the previous albums had some great songs when taken separately, but I feel this one was the first where the guys seriously sat down to create a great album, instead of just some songs. I still think the amount of band members they have is ridiculously unnecessary, but given the fact that it was probably a group of friends that wanted everyone to be in, maybe it improved their songwriting. Of course, the 2 percussionists on top of a drummer sound a little redundant, but they do make it worthwhile, with some strong percussion moments. Corey Taylor may or may not appeal you as a singer, on Stone Sour his voice is way more presentable though, because with Slipknot I feel he had to adapt to the chaotic music style and put more anger to his delivery, whereas Stone Sour has some brighter songs with beautiful vocal melodies. He still has some beautiful vocal performances on this album though, some of the songs express real deep feelings about loneliness and stuff, mainly voiced by Corey. At the end of the day, this album is some really deep shit, but I used to love it solely for the music, and I still love it to bits.
Favorite song:
Vermillion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-VuiI_NP68): No doubt about it. This song is painfully dark, but in an epic fashion, the section starting with “I am a slave and I am a master” is mind-blowing.
Other recommendations:
The Nameless (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9jsELTA3AM): Another one in the series of energetic Slipknot songs, with fun vocal switch-aroo’s between Chris and Corey.
Duality (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GWwohI5h1w): The anthem that every Slipknot fan could dream by now, awesome riff too, going all post-hardcore breakdown in the end.
Before I Forget (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw2LU1yS7aw) / Danger/Keep Away (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSjUb-aRloY): I’ve kept my limits to 1 favorite and 3 other recommendations so far, but since they’re all so close I could not justify keeping either of these out of the recommendations, and I’m still leaving some out that I prefer not to. Before I Forget has a very cool opening riff and catchy vocals. Danger/Keep Away is an amazing closing song that I’d expect to be on some crazy concept album with that atmosphere, the album starts with a very dark vibe, and ends it just like that.
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City of Evil is alright, not my favourite A7X album by any means.
Vol. 3 is my second favourite Slipknot album. :tup But I prefer Vermilion Pt. 2 and consider that the top track of the album.
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(https://www.distortedharmony.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Distorted_Harmony_Chain-Reaction_Cover.jpg)
Why is methylene blue on the cover? The organic chemist in me really wants to know.
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Listened to your top recommendations and nothing really clicked for me. Sounds kinda generic.
Alter Bridge might not be the most original band out there, but their songs are crafted with excellence. And that makes them special.
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(https://www.distortedharmony.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Distorted_Harmony_Chain-Reaction_Cover.jpg)
Why is methylene blue on the cover? The organic chemist in me really wants to know.
Methylene Blue is the closing track, I don't know why they made it the cover though, haven't been checking out the background story of the album.
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#14: Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory (2000)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Linkin_park_hybrid_theory.jpg)
Genre: Nu-Metal
My second and last mention of popular nu-metal act Linkin Park, this time around with their debut album! I’m already just going to go ahead and reveal that this is the highest debut album on this list. Hybrid Theory is easily my most played album from middle school years, I think my cousin sort of introduced me to them. I was in his room once and I saw a poster of the Reanimation robot and thought it looked cool, so then we listened to some Hybrid Theory tunes and I found out my dad already had a Hybrid Theory CD at home, so I was musically satisfied for years. At the time I loved the more popular tracks on that album, think of Crawl-ing, In the End, One Step Closer. More recently I’ve been loving the less known songs, they give this album the heavy nu-metal sound, which then got balanced out by these singles where Chester keeps his calm and refrains from screaming (not including One Step Closer here). Like mentioned in my Meteora write-up, this band has that unique twist to separate them from the standard nu-metal scene. I guess I have a weak spot for Mike’s vocals, because I could never keep myself from singing along, even when I was like 8 years old I would just try to mimic the melodies in gibberish as I knew barely any of the words he sang :lol. Like the Royal Blood record, I don’t feel like this is an amazingly well flowing album (though I’ve heard the album a million times and can basically dream every single transition), it’s more about a few fairly young fellows rocking it out in some studio, making some great songs without any real guidelines or limits.
Favorite song:
Papercut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjVkXlxsO8Q): Opening this by now legendary album in an extremely powerful fashion, Papercut is a very clear Linkin Park song, rapping in the verses, strong vocal lines in the chorus, and that damned catchy Mr. Hahn intro. Did I mention the best bridge ever? (“The sun goes down…” etc.)
Other recommendations:
A Place for My Head (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t2WkCudwfY): Pretty much with a similar style to that of Papercut, this one also has a badass break-down and very simple-yet-cool guitar riffing though. Could probably tie this with Papercut as my favorite off the album.
By Myself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWBp-nlGX1o): A very heavy tune, even for LP standards, has very cool switch-offs between Chester and Mike in the chorus.
Points of Authority (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoCD5wZEgo4): A little more Chester-heavy vocally, but Mike has some rapping parts in this aswell, which makes it a super diverse song, and that in only a bit over 3 minutes.
#13: Dream Theater – Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence (2002)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91lwDts-HOL._SL1437_.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
And we’re back with Dream Theater, already being their 3rd mention in my top 50, we have the 2002 creation Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. Consisting of two discs, one being a 42-minute song that goes a lot of places, this was DT’s answer to the audience that wanted something they could honestly call worthy of following up Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory. With crushingly heavy moments in almost every song flowing into some great melodic moments, this disc is an unstoppable force. Out of their heavier albums, Dream Theater have managed to balance it out by far the best on Six Degrees. It’s often called ‘the experimental DT album’, well yea, they tried out a lot of different stuff on here. We’ve seen the 14-minute balls-to-the-wall metal song, and another near 14-minute metal song that was one or two steps down in terms of heaviness, a song that separates the verse and chorus by going super-heavy in the chorus, and of course the very depressing/melancholic song at the end of the first disc. The 2nd disc took an awfully long time to grow on me, and when it did, man did it hit me hard. Similar to the first disc, it has a great balance between heavy and soft, also mixing in some classical influences. Is this the most flawless album? No. Are any of the upcoming albums objectively better? Certainly not. But Dream Theater, you came hella close, this albums is near-perfection from start to finish, with every band member at their technical peak.
Favorite song:
The Glass Prison (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2ImxfctL4M): Gotta be this monster of a song, I got hooked by that epic intro, which marks a great beginning for the 12SS. The way this whole song is crafted though is just phenomenal, when you’re new to this song it may seem like tons of random bits stitched together, but the flow of this song is amazingly good given the random elements used.
Other recommendations:
The Great Debate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfNgB1P8LCk): I guess I’m just a sucker for the heavy DT songs, TGD is no exception, great listen :tup
Misunderstood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdpCnRSeshU): I love how this song builds up from this slow melancholic piece into this gloomy and at the same time powerful song. Could’ve done without about 1 minute off the outro but I still like it a lot.
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIsQyhfS-YI): Crafting a 42 minute epic seems hard enough on its own, but when there’s so many recurring riffs and themes and the song doesn’t even sound one-sided in the slightest, I think you have a hit.
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Six Degrees is :metal
I especially adore the first disc. Such a great succession of songs.
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6DOIT: good but it would be one of their best albums if they'd not had the title track
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6DOIT: good but it would be one of their best albums if they'd not had the title track
Agreed.
You also didn't mention my two favourite tracks from SDOIT: Blind Faith and Disappear. :lol
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6DOIT: good but it would be one of their best albums if they'd not had the title track
Agreed.
You also didn't mention my two favourite tracks from SDOIT: Blind Faith and Disappear. :lol
Dangit, 4 outta 6 and I missed your faves, what are the odds.
I still love Blind Faith a whole lot, Disappear, while being great, is a step down from the others for me.
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disappear: the best song on the album actually
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6DOIT: good but it would be one of their best albums if they'd not had the title track
Agreed.
You also didn't mention my two favourite tracks from SDOIT: Blind Faith and Disappear. :lol
Dangit, 4 outta 6 and I missed your faves, what are the odds.
I still love Blind Faith a whole lot, Disappear, while being great, is a step down from the others for me.
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6DOIT: good but it would be one of their best albums if they'd not had the title track
Agreed.
You also didn't mention my two favourite tracks from SDOIT: Blind Faith and Disappear. :lol
Dangit, 4 outta 6 and I missed your faves, what are the odds.
I still love Blind Faith a whole lot, Disappear, while being great, is a step down from the others for me.
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No, The Great Debate is the best track on SDOIT, but I'm one of the few who actually thinks this.
Also Hybrid Theory brings back memories of my teenage years, though that album would never make a top XX list nowadays.
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For what it's worth it's a close #2 for me :P
And it was actually until a few years from now that I revisited Hybrid Theory and realized how much I still ike it.
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Six Degrees is awesome, both discs equally, so screw you guys :P
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The last minute or so of Misunderstood is still one of the best and most memorable moments on the album. That track and Blind Faith are probably my two favorites on it in general.
I mainly listened to Linkin Park back in middle school, but going back, Hybrid Theory and Meteora are still very solid albums. Their newer stuff doesn't do a whole lot for me, however.
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Nice DT album. :tup
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6DOIT: good but it would be one of their best albums if they'd not had the title track
SDOIT: decent but it would be not their worst album if it was just the title track. :P
Title track is very good. Blind Faith is good. The Glass Prison and Disappear are solid. Misunderstood is good until it has the worst two minutes in Dream Theater history, including Your Majesty. The Great Debate is shockingly mediocre.
Good album. Not a good DT album.
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Nah, Misunderstood's ending is DT' most insane moment ever. And one of their best imo :P
TGD is awesome D:
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I'm neutral on the end of Misunderstood, it doesn't bring the song down at all but it doesn't really make it better for me either.
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Nah, Misunderstood's ending is DT' most insane moment ever. And one of their best imo :P
Remember the drums I didn't like in Ommadawn? Misunderstood's ending is like 100 times more grating for me.
TGD is awesome D:
I mean it's got some good stuff, but it just never goes anywhere. It's like an endless barrage of repeated verses that never builds to any sort of climax or really changes tone at any point. For 14 minutes.
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No, The Great Debate is the best track on SDOIT, but I'm one of the few who actually thinks this.
It's my favourite one too. Then I would place one among Misunderstood, TGP or Disappear and my least favourite of the first disc is Blind Faith, but it's still good. Instead, I never appreciated much the second disc..
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#12: Protest The Hero – Fortress (2008)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f6/Protest_the_Hero_-_Fortress.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal
I promise, last mention of Protest the Hero on this list! Just give me one more chance to praise them. Like I mentioned before, I’m a very recent PtH fan, and maybe it’s odd to have 2 of their albums in my top 20, and another one in the HM’s. But this band just clicked, it’s not a fluke, I will continue to like these albums for sure. Fortress accordingly, is the best of them all, and probably the most popular release. You could say that they change their sound slightly with every album, but there’s always a very distinctive PtH sound, which I would describe as chaotic and groovy at the same time. The best tracks on this album are some of their absolute best, but their worst tracks aren’t even close to being bad. With the perfect balance of what “old” fans liked about Kezia and what newer fans love about Volition and Scurrilous. What’s even more stunning though, you have these amazingly talented musicians, and people still hate on Rody for “not being good enough to match the music”, listen to the isolated vocals on Bloodmeat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoa_avgI-ds), I don’t see how you could ask for a voice more fitting to this song than Rody’s. Anyway, this is my favorite Protest album, followed pretty closely by Volition, I’ve heard some snippets from the upcoming EP and it sounds pretty great. Can’t wait to hear more of these guys.
Favorite song:
Sequoia Throne (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWig9FwqWpk) (Don't mind the quality, just wanted to link the video for this one because I love it so much): It’s not even close with this one man, Sequoia Throne is my favorite Protest the Hero song and I think I’ve listened to it at least once every day the past couple of months. Statistics prove that this song makes me ride my bike twice as fast.
Other recommendations:
Bloodmeat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzIWVFOLvLk): Like I said, phenomenal vocals, and this song has that whacky PtH edge to it that makes it so great. Very aggressive/energetic song just like Sequoia, but just.. not as good.
Limb From Limb (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Q4x112dAU): Dream Theater fans, do you want Jordan “The Wizard” Rudess to guest solo on a PtH song? Listen to this. (Disclaimer: Not really JR)
The Dissentience (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfgvsHn7Odw): So, Damn, Groovy. It has crushingly heavy moments, but then has these incredible swinging guitar and vocal melodies.
Exclusive Elite/Richard recommendation of the month:
Goddess Bound (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIUaU2sWteU) + Gagged (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKFrgt2QDQ0): Simply THE best song on the album, can't miss out on this one folks :neverusethis:
Seriously though, I did think of combining these two and replacing Limb From Limb with them, they're great.
#11: System of a Down – Toxicity (2001)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/SystemofaDownToxicityalbumcover.jpg)
Genre: Nu-Metal
Well, I don’t see a whole lot of SOAD on these top 50’s, but when I do, it’s almost always this beauty of an album. Explaining SOAD to someone who doesn’t know their music is pretty hard, though I think showing this album is the best way to describe their trademark sound. It has all the SOAD elements, from crazy songs with no real thought behind them (POGO POGO POGO POGO) to the still not so seriously sounding songs that do have very deep meanings. With a total of 15 tracks in 44 minutes, I think this album has the lowest average song length out of all the albums listed, even surpassing the LP albums. You have to give credit for SOAD’s ability to create the weirdest shit ever and make it work like no one else can, to the average fan some of the music seems very odd and random, but most of these songs (see how I say ‘most’ and not all) are really well done and well thought out before making, no matter what kind of song you pick off the album. Take Toxicity, the title track, as an example for a more organized song, this song is without a doubt a one-of-a-kind. For the more chaotic side of things, take Deer Dance, a seemingly simple/standard song, but it’s something I only see these guys create. Granted, they still have a lot of misses in their discography, but this album was entirely ‘hit’ for me.
Favorite song:
Toxicity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64FrYGRrKVY): The chorus is pure SOAD gold, period. Everything around it is great aswell, from the weird lyrics in the verses sung in a very harmonic way to make them sound meaningful to the energetic and very creative intro, this song has it all.
Other recommendations:
Aerials (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-iepu3EtyE): I remember being creeped out by that kid in the video when I was young. What’s so fun about this song, beyond the great vocal melodies and the amazing riff that gets heavier near the end, people still aren’t sure what it’s exactly about, there’s so many ways to interpret the lyrics.
Deer Dance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkkOQjK71Ss): Plain fun song, full of energy and systematic chaos. Pushing little children is of course the purpose of all our lives.
Forest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgP_2zf0NV8): I love the chorus on this one, overall great song but that chorus stands out most.
Chop Suey! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSvFpBOe8eY): I have 4 recommendations for this album, since 1. It’s an album with 15 songs of which most are really similar in quality, and 2. I figured I’d get quite some hate if I excluded Chop Suey!. I definitely still think this is an over-rated song, but that doesn’t take away from the quality, beautiful chorus, erm.. cool.. verses? But the finale of this song is the most amazing of all, it sounds so epic.
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P.S. This was the last bunch of 2 update days, I'm still perfectly on schedule if I do one a day from 10 up until the last one.
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Ahh, my least favorite PtH album :lol
Sequoia Throne is fantastic though.
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Yea kinda figured since it wasn't on your top 50, anyway my least favorite is Kezia but it still has a lot of killer tracks.
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So, Fortress is there without a mention of either Goddess Bound or Goddess Gagged? Such a shame.
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yes, also that re: Fortress
the last two honorable mentions are two of the songs I care least about on the entire album really :lol
Spoils is the most forgettable tho, i actually had to go look up the song name bcuz i forgot it
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Dissentience is amazing >:( but I can see where you're coming from with LFL.
Also edited the post with an exclusive Elite recommendation
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Toxicity just rocks :metal
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Toxicity just rocks :metal
:metal
#10: Fates Warning – Disconnected (2000)
(https://www.metal-archives.com/images/3/4/1/7/3417.jpg?0522)
Genre: Progressive Metal
I actuallt have no idea what people think of Disconnected in general, I know Pleasant Shade of Grey is generally liked around here but I'm not sure about the other albums. I have to be clear though, I have not listened to a lot of Fates Warning albums enough to rate them, and I should probably check out more of them seeing how much I liked this album, and I will. For now, this remains my favorite FW album, and I doubt there will be anything by them I like better. This album, boys and girls, straight up gives me the chills from the very first second, I love how the atmosphere plays with the music so much on the album. I mean, you have these powerful prog metal tunes which I would classify as some classic Fates Warning stuff, but then you have these obscure sounding sirens and the chilly piano melodies in the beginning and end. For me, the album is full of crazily good vocal performances by Ray, amazing riffs and numerous other features that I enjoy very much, but whatever happened during the listen, it’s all forgotten when the final soundtrack kicks in, and it leaves me with nothing but awe. The entire album is focused more on the mood than the flashy instruments that most progressive metal is focused on, this is what makes the album so unique, and probably a big hit or miss album. I guess it’s not just a very nostalgic album that I enjoyed even more hearing it after such a long time, but also an album that’s always stuck somewhere in the back of my head, this album I’ll never forget.
Favorite song:
Disconnected Pt. 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_2ckU1Wet4): Pretty obvious after that write-up, but yeah, this is atmospheric gold! On first listen, I thought it was a pretty disappointing closer as there’s not too much happening, but like I said, this song just gets to me, it feels like a soundtrack of a broken man, someone who has lost it all. (This would also be terrific movie soundtrack material)
Other recommendations:
Still Remains (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7qbBtXULOQ): This 16-minute epic has it all, it carries the dark vibe I love about this album throughout the entire song, even when the song reaches its climax. There are powerful vocals on this song, but once again, atmosphere is the name of the game.
One (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFQO0b7jkx0): Enough with the sadness, here’s a powerful 4-minute rocker.
Something From Nothing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU7u5hMdyEA): A little shorter than Still Remains, but I still consider this to be an epic, and it has all the elements to make it a great one.
A bit of an earlier update today, kinda busy with the roulette stuff today so I wanted to get this out a bit earlier.
Oh, here's the list from #50 up until this point:
#50: Rage Against The Machine – Rage Against The Machine
#49: Mastodon – Crack The Skye
#48: Haken – Aquarius
#47: Muse – Origin of Symmetry
#46: Pomegranate Tiger – Entities
#45: Metallica – Death Magnetic
#44: Circus Maximus – Isolate
#43: Dream Theater – Train Of Thought
#42: Avenged Sevenfold – Waking The Fallen:
#41: Alter Bridge – One Day Remains
#40: A.C.T – Circus Pandemonium
#39: Linkin Park – Meteora
#38: Periphery – Periphery II
#37: Sum 41 – Chuck
#36: Iron Maiden – A Matter Of Life And Death
#35: Tremonti – All I Was
#34: The Mars Volta – De-loused In The Comatorium
#33: Megadeth – Rust in Peace
#32: Queensrÿche – Operation: Mindcrime
#31: Metallica – Master Of Puppets
#30: Distorted Harmony – Chain Reaction
#29: Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn Of Events
#28: Arctic Monkeys – Whatever You Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
#27: Sum 41 – Screaming Bloody Murder
#26: Iron Maiden – Powerslave
#25: Deftones - Diamond Eyes
#24: Machine Head – The Blackening
#23: Avenged Sevenfold – Avenged Sevenfold
#22: Haken – The Mountain
#21: Megadeth – Countdown to Extinction
#20: Protest The Hero – Volition
#19: Alter Bridge – Blackbird
#18: The Dear Hunter – Act II: The Meaning Of, And All Things Regarding Ms. Leading
#17: Royal Blood – Royal Blood
#16: Avenged Sevenfold – City Of Evil
#15: Slipknot – Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses
#14: Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory
#13: Dream Theater – Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence
#12: Protest The Hero – Fortress
#11: System of a Down – Toxicity
#10: Fates Warning – Disconnected
Actually should've asked this before I started cracking the top ten: Any guesses for the top 9??
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A7X - Nigtmare, DT - SFAM, IaW, Awake ?
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Also edited the post with an exclusive Elite recommendation
To be honest, Sequoia Throne is my favourite as well, but Goddess Gagged is a close second and Goddess Bound is a nice song leading up to that track. Bloodmeat is awesome as well, I had not much problems with your recommended songs as such, because this album is fairly consistent as a whole and would probably make my top 50 as well (either this one or Volition), though probably not as high as in yours.
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Fantastic Fates Warning album
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Finally something I'm familiar with aside from Metallica, IM, DT and Haken.
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Yea, pretty impressive how well you're doing in my roulette to be honest, those songs are nothing like anything I listen to but it's all pretty great.
I think LordCost is the participant with most similar tastes to mine out of everyone, not counting Oceansize and Unexpect :biggrin:
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I could never get into FW, not even this album, so :P
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Still Remains and Something From Nothing are both fantastic, though I feel they could each use a little trimming. And I'm not sure I have ever sat through Disconnected 2. To me, as soon as Still Remains ends, I'm usually ejecting the disc. :D
To me, Disconnected feels a bit short and I'm not even sure of its running time.
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Still Remains and Something From Nothing are both fantastic, though I feel they could each use a little trimming. And I'm not sure I have ever sat through Disconnected 2. To me, as soon as Still Remains ends, I'm usually ejecting the disc. :D
To me, Disconnected feels a bit short and I'm not even sure of its running time.
Pretty understandable, I still think SFN should've been trimmed down a little, but I wouldn't miss a second of Still Remains. Disconnected 2 appeals to me in a very odd way that I will not expect anyone to understand.
#9: Dream Theater – Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From A Memory
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/Dream_Theater_-_Metropolis_Pt._2-_Scenes_from_a_Memory.jpg)
Progressive Rock/Metal
Pff, if you’re looking for a fresh write-up with convincingly strong arguments that will make you listen to the album (you won't find it here :neverusethis:), don’t even bother, everyone knows Scenes From a Memory. First time getting a taste of this album, I think I was on spotify browsing through some separate songs, that was absolutely the wrong approach, I barely liked anything at all, the exception being Beyond This Life. So I listened to BTL in full and it was wonderful, they went back to that really old school progressive sound, the instrumental section still gives me a crazy Kansas vibe. But yea, soon enough I got the album and listened to it in its entirety, what a road. This was really the first time I could say this about an album, but it really did feel like a journey, following fictional characters as an enhancement to the music was something I never looked for in music, but I think it was somewhat of a gateway to my taste for progressive music, as in the fact that I like to kind of analyze music in my head when listening to it (mainly drums) instead of only absorbing the sound. At this point I knew it, Dream Theater would not just be a onetime fluke, this band makes pure gold, and the creativity they all possess will push them to do even more amazing things in the future. I can’t say I disliked their later work either, because ADTOE is one of my favorite DT albums, and DT12, while not up there, is still an excellent album. Extremely hyped for the upcoming album.
There’s no way of not messing this up for you guys, so here’s to sheer luck:
Favorite song:
Finally Free (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALWllFyzLrg): This is probably my favorite DT closer, and DT have some very amazing closers, so that means a lot. MP drums in the outro are phenomenal, as is the riff that leads it. Singing performance by James is stunning, especially loved his vocals on the BTFW DVD.
Other recommendations:
Home (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqHSrJ2mLo0): There’s so much suspense going on in this intro, and it builds up to a fantastic song! This one’s a very close second to Finally Free, the intro is one of the best moments ever in all of DT, vocals are great, gotta say I would’ve liked it to be maybe one minute shorter or something, the best hit edit was definitely too short though.
Beyond This Life (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vcyVDkRv3E): Like I said this was the only song that really hooked me on first listen, very groovy instrumentals going on, and also great energetic vocals.
Fatal Tragedy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vq6NevcLOQ): That second half is just straight up killer, of course it wouldn’t be my #4 if I didn’t think the entire song was great, but that’s what makes it so classic.
As mentioned I’ve already written most of these but I’m just getting it out there fairly early. I turned 20 today, begone, teenager years! I’ll be away for the day, but I’m still staying on schedule :biggrin:. Just letting ya know that this will probably be the last you hear from me today.
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:2metal:
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Wrong favourite songs :neverusethis:
Also, why are you recommending tracks when everyone clearly knows this album? :lol
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:P
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Worthy top 10 pick. :tup
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wtf is a dream theatre
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I think LordCost is the participant with most similar tastes to mine out of everyone, not counting Oceansize and Unexpect :biggrin:
I hope you wrote that after listening my round 7 submission!
And if I had the possibility to send again Oceansize I'll do it, changing completely the genre of the song.
I can only guess A7X - Nightmare, maybe Fortress by Alter Bridge but I don't remember your write up on Blackbird, and I'd say another DT album on the top 10
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Well I'm still waiting on 3 more songs to start listening, but judging from the description it does indeed sound like something I would enjoy.
I'll post another update today, but will postpone the remaining 7 albums until christmas is over, most people have other things on their mind than checking out a top 50 albums thread, also I like to 'polish' the writeups a bit before posting them and I probably won't get to that during christmas.
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Great to see Act II by TDH in this list. Hoping to see another one soon :biggrin:
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Wrong favourite songs :neverusethis:
Also, why are you recommending tracks when everyone clearly knows this album? :lol
:neverusethis:
Yea I have this standard format going for every writeup, I never thought of changing it, but I guess something like "Honorable mentions" or something would be a better fit.
Great to see Act II by TDH in this list. Hoping to see another one soon :biggrin:
Another update? Another TDH album? Another TDH feature on the list? Make up yo mind
Gonna do two updates today to make up for the christmas postponing.
I think #8, about 90% won't care for the band, and the people that do, probably wouldn't care enough for said album to even have it near the top ten. #7 on the other hand, could've easily been in the top three if I did this 5 years ago, and I believe everyone has at least heard of it.
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i dislike all bands and every album they've put out
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#8: The Mars Volta – Frances The Mute (2005)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/06/Frances_the_Mute.png)
Genre: Progressive/Experimental Rock
Here we are with yet another The Mars Volta album, this time around, with probably the most controversial album of theirs. It is said by some critics to be one of the sloppiest albums in their career. Well, this album has tons of what people would call ‘overly long’ transitions, but in general, just very long songs that seem long for the sake of it. I personally like to think that this craziness was all intended, of course I’m kinda biased, but I think the range of talent that each individual member in TMV possessed is immeasurable; the musicianship in this band is undeniable. Whether you like the music or not, is another story. I think with Frances The Mute it stretches that big or hit factor about the band even more out of proportion, it’s not even close to their craziest of works from what I’ve heard, but this is one of the albums where I felt they wanted to be taken seriously more than anything. A creative concept with likeable characters, Cedric (who is a fucking beast :neverusethis:) at times has sung in Spanish, and it always makes me happy when he does, but on this album it’s all the more enjoyable. The weirdness of this album does not lie in the instruments, it’s the odd vibe that all the transitions deliver, like some psychedelic trip. Even though Cedric is one hell of a singer, yet an in my opinion acquired taste, The Mars Volta is usually best when it comes down to those extended instrumental jams. This album however, it’s balanced out a lot more. I’ve seen the worst review on the internet about this album, and honestly it kinda frightened me to listen to the album, but I love it to bits now, and nothing in the world could convince me otherwise. A killer TMV album, my personal favorite (I only know about half their discography, but still), it’s a shame that they’re no longer together, but I’ll surely check out their other stuff when I have the time.
This album only has 5 songs (unless you count the title-track that is on the Japanese bonus DVD), so the only song not mentioned is Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore, which honestly, would still be worth checking out, but the following have my priority:
Favorite song:
L’Via L‘Viaquez (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg6svO2AQHw): Too often, my idiot friends assume that I’m crazy about reggaeton and that kinda stuff just because I’m Spanish. Well, when I first heard this song I was just stunned by how crazy it was, starting off with a killer groovy guitar solo, vocals are super fun to sing along to, the tango section is awesome. Yea, my favorite TMV song, easily.
Honorable mentions:
Cassandra Gemini (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyUMHEua7-A): Most of the time I like to just do some productive stuff that doesn’t require too much attention when I listen to this 32 minute epic. It has the amazing epic-closer vibe, great experimental jams, but alternates between those and some very relaxing/psychedelic background music.
The Widow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUBQLnEGHNk): Out of album context, I like this one better than Cassandra, it’s one of the most accessible TMV songs probably, and something I would probably not even be surprised with to hear on a rock radio or something. I decided to link the music video, since the extended outro doesn’t really offer anything out of the context of the album.
Cygnus.. Vismund Cygnus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqWqedEaD0I): This is exactly how you should expect a TMV album to begin, utter chaos. This is the song Cedric really shines on, in terms of energy, he is literally all over the place.
#7: Metallica – Ride The Lightning (1984)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/82/Metallica_-_Ride_the_Lightning_cover.jpg)
Genre: Heavy Metal/Thrashmetal
Man, actually every Metallica album brings back memories, this one has less of a nostalgia factor than Master of Puppets, this one’s a little older and has more of that thrash sound that they had during their debut, MoP being more melodic, also a bit more memorable IMO, but this one still stands out as the better album, but why?
The lows on this album are better, and while Escape and Trapped Under Ice have gotten a lot of shit, I think they’re great tracks. The highs are phenomenal. Although I strongly believe that for the die-hard prog fans who are not too familiar with Metallica, this can be one of the toughest albums to digest, very thrashy vocals. This album has some pretty straightforward tracks on it, which are all pretty different on its own, there’s the heavy ass For Whom the Bell Tolls, the softer Escape and the fast-paced thrash metal tune Trapped Under Ice. From soaring guitar solos to balls-to-the-wall riffs, I can’t emphasize how great Ride the Lightning is when it comes to the guitar work. Bass is something that I tend to overlook way too often, but with this album, no way. There’s the simple-yet-awesome bass in the main title-track riff, but can we just all agree on the fact that the Cliff’s bass work on Call of Ktulu was out of this world? I mean it’s not the most complex shit ever, but this is the most unique use of a bass in heavy metal I’ve heard to this day. Overall, this album was a pretty safe output from where they were at after Kill ‘Em All, as it had some similarities, while doing nothing new that seemed out of the ordinary, the new things they did try were rewarding to say the least. This record is a guaranteed killer start to finish. I do think this album gets overshadowed by Puppets a bit, but maybe that’s just me. Ride the Lightning for me, is the clear superior album in that regard.
Favorite song:
Fade to Black (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEQnzs8wl6E): This song has everything, good mellow beginning switching back and forth between verses and what I’d say is the closest they get to a chorus (without vocals? apparently), but the second half of the song is what makes this from a top 20 Metallica song into the absolute favorite: catchy riff, killer guitar solo while fading out. It’s like a better version of One.
Honorable mentions:
The Call of Ktulu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1RTgznup5c): If I wasn’t sure about it before, this album ranking has made me entirely sure, this is the best Metallica instrumental, and is the closer to this amazing album. Like I said, killer basslines, great ominous guitar intro (Stream of Consciousness says hi)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg92QpjRcJk): Very heavy little song, with lots of creative riffs and powerful James performance.
Creeping Death (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO_84C3fpuI): I LOVED playing this on guitar hero, oh well. This song has some of the most memorable guitar leads, as well as some very heavy chant-able vocal lines. My favorite moment of this song is that heavy instrumental breakdown (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO_84C3fpuI#t=3m38s), just a very simple, headbanging riff.
Merry Christmas to all! Stay tuned.
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I need to get that album :metal
Might give this another chance, but Metallica bore me so :lol
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Frances is good but probably my least favorite of the three TMV albums I have
RTL had a lot of songs in guitar hero and yes Creeping Death was super fun to play :lol
Generally I liked the stuff I heard off this album more than MoP but less than AJFA but i only listened to the actual album front-to-back like once or twice ever
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Fade to Black is one of my favourite Metallica songs. :tup
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Fade to Black is one of my favourite Metallica songs. :tup
My nr 1 :tup
2. Welcome Home
3. One
4. Master
5. Fight Fire with Fire
6-30 ? don't remeber
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your second favorite Metallica song is a Coheed song? :loser:
and yeah Fade to Black is awesome, I need to get back to trying to learn the solo 'cause it rules
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Ride the Lightning is definitely Metallica's best album, so I will say that this is a fairly good pick. :tup
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Frances is just absolutely insane, I love it. Second only to De-Loused for my favorite TMV album.
Ride the Lightning is similarly my second favorite Metallica record. Really only marred by Escape, which I find pretty much forgettable. Fantastic album other than that. :tup
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Sorry, I haven’t been around to follow the list, so I will now bombard you with impressions.
I find it amusing that people seem to like making updates of these threads within a year or two of their last. A few years of musical exploration is pretty small, in the greater scheme of things.
There are a good number of bands/albums on here that were also on my (incomplete) list:
- You don’t say anything about it, though I guess you might know, but in case you don’t: Steal This Album was literally the B-Sides from Toxicity, though a few were older. They leaked, and the band wanted to be able to profit from them, and for people to hear them in better quality, so the album was rushed out. As you say, the album doesn’t have much flow, but the material is generally still really strong. My favourites from that album are Chic’N’Stu, IEAIAIO, and Highway Song. Oh, and Toxicity was on my list too, for good reason.
- I like Opeth, but don’t care for their post-growl albums.
- The Mars Volta are one of the best bands since the year 2000. And yeah, Bedlam has some of the best drumming ever on a prog album.
- Rage’s s/t is awesome, and was on my list when I made it yonks ago. I prefer Battle of LA these days though.
- Origin of Symmetry is far and away Muse’s best album. Aside from the odd song, the only thing they’ve ever done that has interested me. It’s incredible how much better they were on that album than all of their others. To me, they came to suffer from Queen Syndrome: all style and faux-pomp and flamboyance, no substance.
- I like St Anger and Lulu better than Death Magnetic, but I realise I’m in an ultra-minority on that one. And I agree with what a lot of people said that Puppets ain’t all it’s made out to be. Ride the Lightning, however, is.
- If Waking the Fallen is the Avenged Sevenfold album with I Won’t See You Tonight (Pt 1), I love that song.
- Rust in Peace tears strips off every other Megadeth album. To me, that album’s the only one you need. I have this weird thing where even if I like a number of albums by a band, if one album encapsulates what I most like about them, the others I like will just fall away and become obsolete until there’s really only one I care for. That definitely happened with Megadeth.
- Dramatic Turn is the best DT album since SFAM, and the only one since 6DOIT I listen to these days. Six Degrees is also great, but most of the songs on there could use trimming, IMO. Glass Prison in particular should be about two or three minutes shorter. And Blind Faith may be their best song.
- While I’ve seen people raving about them since they first came out, I’ve still never even heard the Arctic Monkeys.
- Machine Head were one of my favourite metal bands 5 or 10 years ago, and The Blackening is an incredible album. A Farewell to Arms is a better, more cohesive epic than most prog bands can write.
- I really want to hear that Royal Blood album, it’s literally in the 10 or so albums I plan to buy next (which is really quite far up the queue).
- I loved Slipknot back in the day. These days, I’d say their albums still have about six or seven songs I could play the shit out of, but I could leave the rest aside. Although I was more or less “out of them” by the time it came out, Volume III probably is the best one overall, and when I finally heard it, I was really surprised how much they’d grown.
- SFAM is aight, I guess.
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The fact you're catching up on the entire thing is pretty awesome.
I'm fairly new to the whole 'music obsession' if you get that, probably half of my list is made of explorations from the past 5 years, if not 2-1 years. I'm discovering tons of new bands currently and my library will probably multiply over the next 2 years or something so by then I'll probably do a v2 (likely with limited albums/artist).
Did not know about the STA! fact, that's pretty cool thanks!
Great to see some love/curiosity for Royal Blood, they're the most inspirational modern rock band out there, don't see that too often anymore.
Lastly, I Won't See You Tonight both parts are from WTF, yes, and pt. 1 is the superior one (90% of the fans will agree).
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#6: Alter Bridge – Fortress (2013)
(https://www.motherlovemusic.be/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/alter-bridge-album.jpg)
Genre: Alternative Metal
We’ve arrived at the last chapter of Alter Bridge, and any related project for that matter. But man, they managed to do it, they managed to make one of the best returns in a metal career I’ve ever seen. Me personally, I didn’t like a whole lot of ABIII, and coming after a record like Blackbird I was actually pretty disappointed, but they follow it up with the very best album so far, and one of my all-time favorites! I don’t think I’ve ever said that of a band’s newest release. I realize that Myles’ voice is a mixed bag, but Fortress has the best vocal performance by him on any of the albums in Calm the Fire, whether you like the intro or not, you’ve gotta admit that is impressive as hell, and IMO, beautiful. Fortress has heavy songs that resemble Blackbird in a way, Fortress has dark songs that resemble ABIII and ODR. On top of a mixture of all their previous work, they add a few progressive elements that you wouldn’t expect at all from AB, but they seem to work out better than expected. There’s also a single song which has Mark Tremonti on lead vocals, Waters Rising, I suppose people who don’t usually like Alter Bridge but do like Tremonti could enjoy that song, it has an amazing pre-chorus and a pretty uplifting sound overall, in contrary to the darker/heavier sound of Tremonti So it’s pretty much everything the guys are musically capable of, add to that the creativity that came into this album.
Favorite song:
Fortress (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVItMBAfaCI): You could call this the epic of Fortress, like Blackbird was the epic of that album. It has a huge sounding chorus. The instrumental break around the middle of the song is one of those “This is nothing like Alter Bridge at all………………… but I like it.” moments. Really, this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVItMBAfaCI#t=4m8s) is pretty badass.
Honorable mentions:
Cry of Achilles (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFSP_n3llTU): This is my personal The Root of All Evil of Alter Bridge, instrumentals on this song are amazing, maybe the best in AB’s discography, and even though the vocals don’t live up to that, they’re still wonderful, this folks, is a top 5 AB song along with Fortress.
Addicted to Pain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAYrAu-jnMY): That opening riff is pretty dark. The song continues to be pretty fast-paced overall, kinda reminding me of something that would be on the Tremonti project. I particularly love the change of tempo from verse to chorus.
The Uninvited (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQDJ4fh9bAQ): A pretty progressive song even for this album’s standards, I like the pre-chorus especially on this one, and the transition into the chorus.
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:hefdaddy :hefdaddy :hefdaddy
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With Calm The Fire or Waters Rising instead of Addicted To Pain I would totally agree on your recommendations :tup
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They were both very close to making the cut for HM (as was Farther from the Sun), so I decided to write some stuff about them in the main writeup
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Holy shit, are you my long lost twin or what? I don't think I've ever agreed with so much on a list. Pretty much all the bands on this list are favourites of mine (a little too few growls to perfectly encapsulate my tastes, but still, it's mighty close).
Huge props for having Disconnected in your Top 10, it's definitely one of my favourite FW albums. Also much love for System of a Down, Toxicity is in my top 5 as well and Hypnotise is still my favourite album of all time.
Looking forward to the remaining updates.
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Awesome to read that, though after the fact I think I would've wanted an album/artist limitation after all, I feel there's a little too many bands with like 3-4 albums on here. If I do another top 50 albums it'll probably be something like 2/artist max.
Disconnected is out of this world. While Hypnotize has always been pretty good for me, I can never enjoy it fully front to back.
I'll say this much about the top 5, one of them is probably very unexpected, even I didn't expect it to be this high.
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Stil waiting for a band I care about except for DT in the top 10 :neverusethis:
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That happens when you know like 5 bands :neverusethis:
Fortress is excellent :metal
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That happens when you know like 5 bands :neverusethis:
fuck off Parama :neverusethis:
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1. Periphery
2. Coheed and Cambria
3. Avenged Sevenfold
4. Deftones
Yeah fuck off Parama it's only 4 :neverusethis:
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:jamaritard:
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Not into TMV, but good call on Scenes.
Ride The Lightning is fantastic, but I actually rank it last of the first four Metallica albums. Kirk has some great and memorable solos.
I'm a recent but casual fan of AB, but Fortress is all kinds of awesome. The title track absolutely slays.
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I never expected you to even know Fortress, that alone is pretty awesome.
Honestly all of the first 4 Metallica albums could be ranked differently and I wouldn't care too much, they're pretty close and they all have gems.
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#5: Iron Maiden – The Number Of The Beast (1982)
(https://nme.assets.ipccdn.co.uk/images/gallery/Iron-MaidenNumberOfTheBeast600.jpg)
Genre: Heavy Metal
Well, it is time, we’ve arrived at the final Iron Maiden album, and what an album it is. Outlasting AMOLAD, Powerslave and SSoaSS in a top albums list should already be plenty of explanation for its awesomeness, but let’s get into it a little more. As much as I love several tracks from the pre-Dickinson days (take Phantom of the Opera, beast of a song), Bruce was quite a radical change in the course of Maiden that just made the songs from good to great. To be fair, this album never grew a lot on me since the first listen, but I doubt that will devalue the album, because that first impression was beyond anything I could’ve imagined. What they managed to do with not just this release, but pretty much their entire career, is take a direction of music that is incredibly unique (I don’t hear any heavy metal bands sound like IM), and excel at it to the point where pretty much everyone, even people who don’t even listen to metal, associates Metal/Heavy Metal with the name “Iron Maiden”. This band for some reason just knows how to make music last, every second is so damn memorable, this makes the listens after I’ve stopped listening to Maiden for a while so much more enjoyable. TNotB was no exception – in fact, it was the best at doing just that out of the bunch.
Favorite song:
Hallowed Be Thy Name (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J51LPlP-s9o): This just might be my favorite song ever by any band, this is actually more than a song for me, this song was pretty much the end of a chapter in my life, but I won’t go into it too much. Let’s just keep it at: Best introduction to a song ever, crazy good riffs, one of the best vocal performances. If you’re into huge sounding stuff, this is pretty much an epic trimmed down to 7 minutes.
Honorable mentions:
Children of the Damned (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b91rSw4xuYY): They make it sound so easy… there’s actually a lot going on in the background, but the main attraction of this song is Bruce. Though the guitar during the chorus is also a pretty big highlight.
Run to the Hills (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZlDZPYzfm4): Couldn’t let this one slip, great drumming work, trademark IM chorus.
The Number of the Beast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9kT37eIkaY): I really used to be annoyed with that spoken intro, ever since I saw it live I’ve loved it! It’s a perfect introduction. Oh and the rest of the song is awesome.
Hope I don’t piss anyone off with these mentions, 5th would be Acacia.
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Looking forward to the top 4 :tup
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Well I can't argue with this at all. Hallowed Be Thy Name is my favorite IM song, narrowly beating out Phantom of the Opera.
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TNOTB is indeed a classic.
Fortress is brilliant too, AB's best album by far.
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This is actually the only Iron Maiden album I like, so :tup.
Hallowed Be Thy Name was the first song I learned on drums and remains my IM favourite.
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This is actually the only Iron Maiden album I like, so :tup.
Is it the only one you've heard also?
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When TNOTB is good, it's brilliant (case in point: 22 Acacia Avenue, Children of the Damned, Hallowed Be Thy Name), but it has, by Maiden standards, quite a few tracks that I don't care for at all, like Invaders, Run to the Hills or Gangland.
Because of that, it ends up being a lower tier Maiden album for me. It's still good though, just very inconsistent imo.
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This is actually the only Iron Maiden album I like, so :tup.
Is it the only one you've heard also?
:lol
When TNOTB is good, it's brilliant (case in point: 22 Acacia Avenue, Children of the Damned, Hallowed Be Thy Name), but it has, by Maiden standards, quite a few tracks that I don't care for at all, like Invaders, Run to the Hills or Gangland.
Because of that, it ends up being a lower tier Maiden album for me. It's still good though, just very inconsistent imo.
I have always loved Gangland. Bruce is fantastic in the prechorus. It's easily my favorite Maiden album and remains the standard bearer to all that have followed.
Good call TON! :tup
I believe I had TNOTB at about the same spot in my Top 50. Maybe higher!
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Gangland and Invaders are boss. RTTH and the title track I'm actually not that keen on. It was good that Total Eclipse was eventually included also in the reissues, killer track.
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Honestly, while I have always loved Gangland, I've never been in love with Invaders. It's managed to grow on me over the years.
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One of the defining metal albums of the genre. All songs on the album are top notch.
I'm glad that Total Eclipse was included on the remaster edition. Great song!
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One of the defining metal albums of the genre. All songs on the album are top notch.
I'm glad that Total Eclipse was included on the remaster edition. Great song!
This man knows his metal. Listen up kids.
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This is actually the only Iron Maiden album I like, so :tup.
Is it the only one you've heard also?
I've heard most of them, but I usually get really bored after a while. Their music doesn't do that much for me.
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This is actually the only Iron Maiden album I like, so :tup.
Is it the only one you've heard also?
I've heard most of them, but I usually get really bored after a while. Their music doesn't do that much for me.
Honestly if you like TNotB youll probably like some Powerslave and Piece of Mind stuff.
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maiden will continue to be a "they're alright and important historically but i have never been too interested in them" band for me
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Good album, but not my favorite :
Maiden is my 2nd love after DT :>
My fav songs on this album : Children, The Prisoner, 22 AA, TNoTB
I don't like RttH and prefer live version HBTN, To Tame A Land or Infinite Dreams are my fav Maiden songs probably.
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maiden will continue to be a "they're alright and important historically but i have never been too interested in them" band for me
omg I agree with Parama the fuck is happening :dangerwillrobinson:
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I agree, Maiden have this 'nostalgic power' to them. Each song sounds like a classic to me. TNOTB is a great album :tup
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I agree, Maiden have this 'nostalgic power' to them. Each song sounds like a classic to me. TNOTB is a great album :tup
That's cause each song is a classic.
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maiden will continue to be a "they're alright and important historically but i have never been too interested in them" band for me
omg I agree with Parama the fuck is happening :dangerwillrobinson:
You guys have really missed out. (Not trying to sound like a dick.)
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This is actually the only Iron Maiden album I like, so :tup.
Is it the only one you've heard also?
A reasonable conclusion. :lol
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TNotB, my favourite Maiden album and certainly a classic. Awesome pick. :tup
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maiden will continue to be a "they're alright and important historically but i have never been too interested in them" band for me
omg I agree with Parama the fuck is happening :dangerwillrobinson:
You guys have really missed out. (Not trying to sound like a dick.)
Well I'm neither fond of their style nor they were one of the first metal bands I got into - I never went through that metalhead phase (started with prog lol) so when I came to check them, they didn't really grab me or anything. They're just not my cup of tea, and I prefer modern metal by a long shot, so... :P
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maiden will continue to be a "they're alright and important historically but i have never been too interested in them" band for me
omg I agree with Parama the fuck is happening :dangerwillrobinson:
You guys have really missed out. (Not trying to sound like a dick.)
Well I'm neither fond of their style nor they were one of the first metal bands I got into - I never went through that metalhead phase (started with prog lol) so when I came to check them, they didn't really grab me or anything. They're just not my cup of tea, and I prefer modern metal by a long shot, so... :P
All good.
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I know I know.. redundancy, but come on, having 4 Metallica albums in my top 50 is more than Justified (:neverusethis:)
#4: Metallica - …And Justice For All (1988)
(https://www.metalinjection.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Metallica-and-Justice-for-All.jpg)
Genre: Thrash Metal
If you’ve read my other Metallica write-ups you’d see that I deliberately avoided saying that said album is the best, and if you know me well enough (which is pretty unlikely given the time I’ve been around on this forum) it’s clear …AJFA is in my eyes the best of Metallica, ever. Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, though terrific, I feel are not as unique. Justice has the pure anger with Hetfield’s vocals that doesn’t come across as fake or poorly written, which is how I feel about St. Anger. I don’t which of Kirk/James does exactly which guitar solos, but 99 out of 100 times it’s easy to hear, so I will say this: The solos that James does on this particular album are completely out of this world. The To Live Is to Die solo by him is one of the best things in Metallica history IMO, they’re all great though. I don’t think they realized at the time how big this was going to be, being the follow-up to the big Master of Puppets. But most of all, that a song like One became such an iconic song of theirs, yea it has the mellow verses and touching intro, but eventually it does return to the AJFA style. Regarding the bass on this album, I never thought there really was a very noticeable lack of bass, but I guess I can kinda see where people are coming from. At this point it looked like Metallica were going to have an instrumental song on every album, which would’ve been more than fine to me, there’s not a single instrumental by them that I find remotely bad. Anyway, I hope I don’t mess up the honorable mentions on this one, but it’s pretty much inevitable.
Favorite song:
Blackened (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU_ggFovJNo): Opening an album with Blackened? Hell yes. LOVE the drumming on this one, I can’t say that about a lot of Metallica songs, they usually don’t stand out as very unique. The chorus is fucking amazing. And finally, dat guitar solo.
Honorable mentions:
To Live Is to Die (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7_hwgD1ugg): Call of Ktulu may be my favorite instrumental, but this one is very close. It does repeat itself a lot, but the repeating riff is killer so I don’t mind it. Like I said, James’ solo on this one is beautiful.
…And Justice For All (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfg0_FbIqqw): They just make it look so damn easy.. 10 minute song with a great buildup to the chorus, but most of all, sick instrumental break with some very groovy soloing.
One (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8M9bwFrOfo): Couldn’t pass on the famous power-ballad (if I can even call it that). I called this a weaker version of Fade to Black, but that’s only slightly, and competing against a song like Fade to Black is a lost cause. I like the intro and the chorus a lot, but the second part of the song is truly where it’s at.
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A phenomenal album. Saw them 5 times on that tour. Felt like I played that album 3 times a day for about 6 months, and then some..
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Justice was my favourite Metallica album for years, and would still be 2nd or 3rd.
I have much bigger issues with the repetition in the title track than To Live Is To Die. They could have cut several minutes off of it and lost almost nothing.
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Not really a huge Metallica fan, but this is my favourite record they've put out. I kinda like the dry production.
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Looking forward to the top 3 :tup
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I like some Maiden songs quite a bit, but overall they don't impress me all that much. Definitely a more filler than killer band, to me.
I've never been able to get into AJFA.
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I like some Maiden songs quite a bit, but overall they don't impress me all that much. Definitely a more filler than killer band, to me.
I've never been able to get into AJFA.
I would mostly agree with that. My appreciation for Maiden is probably the highest ever at the moment (and I still have some albums I haven't checked out) but I don't get the giddy reaction to almost anything they do. I thought the recent album was solid but that's about it.
As far as Metallica go ............IMHO AJFA isn't in the same class as MoP.
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Justice was my first Metallica album. It's still probably my second-favorite behind Ride the Lightning (which is by far my favorite from 'tallica).
Fluffy Lothario is right that the title track is too bloated. If that and a couple of others were trimmed down and the album featured an actual bass player who could be heard, I would have no complaints at all and would rank it really close to RTL.
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Justice is also my favorite 'Tallica :metal
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My second favorite Metallica album behind MoP. Good pick.
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AJFA is my favorite Metallica album, and Frayed Ends of Sanity is my favorite song of theirs, so excellent choice!
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AJFA is my favorite Metallica album, and Frayed Ends of Sanity is my favorite song of theirs, so excellent choice!
Love that main riff, reminds me of Black Album a bit. But yeah every song beside the 4 mentioned is a small step down for me, but still fantastic, hence the #4 spot
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I love that riff. I wish I had seen them play it live at least once.
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I love that riff. I wish I had seen them play it live at least once.
I haven't even seen Metallica live, ever.. I had the chance to see them at Pinkpop festival 2 years ago but I had to work the day the ticket sale started, my friends messed it up as tickets were sold out in only a few minutes. (which by the way was because of the Stones performing on another day of the festival, I don't even like Rolling Stones apart from 2 or 3 songs :censored)
#3: Dream Theater – Images and Words (1992)
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Mh3c0eys-8o/maxresdefault.jpg)
Genre: Progressive Metal/Rock
You all saw this coming, didn’t you? With a total of 5 Dream Theater mentions in the top 50 and 1 in the honorable mentions, this might be one-sided as fuck. But how could someone with half the DT discography in his list not include the famous Images & Words. Far from the album that introduced me from DT, but I bet that was the case for many of you, and it must’ve been one hell of a ride. James taking over the Charlie’s spot of lead vocalist was definitely the game changer for me, WDADU had some incredible potential instrumentally. Needless to say, James fits the band more than any other vocalist, which makes him such a great contribution. Moving on, I can’t name a single song flawed, while I used to think Surrounded and Another Day were weak links to the album, I now call myself crazy for that statement. Kevin Moore I feel did tons better on Awake, but he does play his part on I&W incredibly well. John Petrucci of course nails his solos, Learning to Live, Under a Glass Moon, Another Day, you name it, but his overall creativity in terms of songwriting is what made him such a key factor to the success of I&W. And most of all, the atmosphere of this whole album is just... well you guessed it, dreamy. I hate when people compare ADTOE to I&W, but I honestly love both albums for a lot of similar reasons, the atmosphere being one of them. I started out with Dream Theater as a simple metal fan, Train of Thought, Black Clouds, Systematic Chaos, etc.. This band made me a prog fan, this very album being the reason.
Not doing this section for Images and Words, just going to stir up the discussion with my top half I&W songs :corn
1. Metropolis
2. Take the Time
3. Learning to Live
4. Another Day
:corn
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take the time is the best actually
anyways nice :corn
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Overrated album imho. I love Learning to Live and Wait for Sleep but I rarely listen to the other tracks.
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Wrong songs chosen, my #1 album, even though I don't really know why anymore, as I rarely listen to it.
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Two spots lower than I would have it. :biggrin:
And I like it and ADTOE best for pretty much the same reasons you said.
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Agreed. Rating is too low.
Flawless album. Absolutely flawless.
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Which is exactly why #2 and #1 will be very interesting. I'm pretty sure most of you will be disappointed in me for picking this album as my #2 because it's believed to not even be the best album by that band, either that or you don't even know the album. It's also a band that has already been mentioned once in this list.
#1 I won't go into yet.
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Images and Words is two spots too low. :lol
I love that riff. I wish I had seen them play it live at least once.
I haven't even seen Metallica live, ever.. I had the chance to see them at Pinkpop festival 2 years ago but I had to work the day the ticket sale started, my friends messed it up as tickets were sold out in only a few minutes. (which by the way was because of the Stones performing on another day of the festival, I don't even like Rolling Stones apart from 2 or 3 songs :censored)
I have seen Metallica live five times, and at neither of them did they play FEOS. The last time I saw them was when they did the show with the orchestra and it was probably the worst show I've ever been to, excluding Pearl Jam during which I fell asleep.
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i'll go against the trend and say "images and words is a fair bit too high"
i forgot where i put it on my top 50 list tbh was it somewhere between 20 and 30? i think
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Flawless album. Absolutely flawless.
My #1.
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perfect album
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Of course I like I&W, but I seem to prefer other albums to it.
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My #2 DT album.
The truth on this though:
1. Metropolis
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I have seen Metallica live five times, and at neither of them did they play FEOS. The last time I saw them was when they did the show with the orchestra and it was probably the worst show I've ever been to, excluding Pearl Jam during which I fell asleep.
A shame, S&M seemed killer on DVD but probably wasn't for everyone. I'm on the same page regarding Pearl Jam probably, I like a few of their more energetic songs like Animal, but most of it really bores me.
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Ma fav album of all time, so :
Images and Words is two spots too low
Nightmare is one of these 2 albums i think.
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I have seen Metallica live five times, and at neither of them did they play FEOS. The last time I saw them was when they did the show with the orchestra and it was probably the worst show I've ever been to, excluding Pearl Jam during which I fell asleep.
A shame, S&M seemed killer on DVD but probably wasn't for everyone. I'm on the same page regarding Pearl Jam probably, I like a few of their more energetic songs like Animal, but most of it really bores me.
It just didn't sound like what I thought it should. I think some bands can pull off the orchestra thing like it was actually part of the band like Dream Theater, Anathema, and Yes. It just didn't seem to fit, but that's just my opinion.
I was extremely disappointed that Pearl Jam was so...dull. I forget which tour it was but I had gone because they made Ten, which is a brilliant album from start to finish. After that, the music started to disappoint me for the most part, but I went to see them anyway.
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I was never huge on early DT, and can barely listen to much of any of it now, but Images and Words is good, by far the best thing from their early days. I think my favourite songs would be
1 Surrounded
2 Pull Me Under
3 Learning to Live
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Of course I like I&W, but I seem to prefer other albums to it.
This. It isn't even on my top 3 DT albums :P
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I was very stoked for this update, curious how many :tdwn, :censored and :tup I'll get.
#2: Machine Head – Unto the Locust (2011)
(https://www.metalinjection.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Machine-Head-Unto-The-Locust.jpg)
Genre: Heavy/Thrash Metal
Yep, that’s right, my #2 album is the album that followed The Blackening, which is considered to be their best, and easily their most popular one. Why does Unto the Locust get overshadowed by The Blackening? I honestly don't know, I do think that if there’s one album to come close it is Blackening, but come on, Locust is just fantastic, every second of it. You may or may not be a fan of MH, and I know plenty of people who are turned off by Flynn’s voice, but as a Machine Head fan I can easily state that I like this better than The Blackening. This album is packed with a heavy/soft contrast which I absolutely love. I Am Hell (Sonata In C#) for instance, starts off very atmospheric, as an opener on an album like this should, and after the heavy part makes a great transition back into an acoustic riff which ends off the song on a very powerful note, this is only the opening track, and far from the best. There’s only 7 songs on this album (if you don’t count the special edition, which has Rush and Judas Priest covers (Which Hunt and The Sentinel respectively), along with an acoustic version of Darkness Within) and they range from power-ballads like Darkness Within to very heavy songs with a slight progressive edge to them like Pearls Before the Swine. The single (Locust) though, is what got me to get this album, it was the first song I heard from them since I saw them in Amsterdam and I was just blown away. The drums, bass and rhythm guitar of Machine Head songs are basically a sonic assault to your ears, the beats are very tight. Which leaves us with the lead guitar, which is basically the main reason I get drawn into this band as much as I do, so many enjoyable guitar licks and riffs. I find it hard to rank very new albums/discoveries higher than some of my all-time most played albums like these, and I can’t see this MH album being knocked out of the top 5 very soon, but I’m not entirely sure yet whether this is going to remain as classic as it is to me now. I mean it’s been over 4 years, but I feel like I’ve known this album for a lifetime.
Favorite song:
Darkness Within: Well Shadow Ninja didn’t like this song :(, this one may be pretty one-sided for Machine Head standards, but the melodies are beautiful, chorus is catchy as fuck. Heavy breakdown near the end is absolutely killer, making the final chorus even better. Robb said in an interview that he wrote this song in like half an hour, fucking magnificent.
Honorable mentions:
Pearls Before the Swine: Like I said, this might just be the heaviest song on the album, it’s one of the faster songs on this album, something I’d consider thrash-y, with also some progressive elements. Oh and this has a lot of those cool guitar licks I was referring to.
This is the End: Some more amazing acoustic shit, this time, the intro. Not to worry though, very quickly this turns into a crazily fast-paced metal song. Love the backing vocals in the chorus.
Locust: Just freaking classic.. when that drum fill transitions into the main riff, heads are a’bangin’. Whatever you do don’t watch the music video, because just like with Halo, they cut out way too much cool parts of the song.
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I've never even listened to them so I can't give an opinion on this choice, except that Images and Words is better. :lol I'll check it out though, because I've always been a fan of thrash, but I'm sure it's no Overkill or Testament. We'll see. I'm checking YouTube now.
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Yeah it's nothing like Overkill, I feel this is not as fast and has more feel to the guitar and vocals, just my interpretation though.
Never listened to Testament tho
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Yeah it's nothing like Overkill, I feel this is not as fast and has more feel to the guitar and vocals, just my interpretation though.
Never listened to Testament tho
I'm checking the album out now and I wouldn't really consider it thrash but maybe it's what newer thrash sounds like. It has some decent melodies and reminds me of Fear Factory in some instances, but the vocals are a bit much for me.
You should check out Testament one day. Start with Practice What You Preach and Souls Of Black, then go to the first two, The Legacy and The New Order. Then if you're still curious work forward after Souls of Black. The first four are the best in my opinion though.
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Maybe thrash is a bit too forward of a label, at most theres some thrash elements, but not entire sothem.DaIkness Within is probably the easiest song to digest if you're not into his usual vocals.
I'll see how Testament suits me sometime, heard good things about them.
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I only gave it a few listens, but I was pretty unconvinced with Unto The Locust, and that’s coming from someone who had Burn My Eyes in my top 25 or so albums. It wasn’t bad, but it just didn’t seem overly great, even more so after some of the things they achieved on The Blackening and Through the Ashes of Empires.
I think based on this, I’ll give it another listen though.
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Well yea I think this is probably similar to someone ranking ADTOE #2 in their list, something that's not really too new by the band's standards and arguably less popular than the similar albums. So I won't be too shocked if you're still not too much into it, very much a personal favorite that I got into by no one else than myself.
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I really liked The Blackening, like a lot, and that's an album I wouldn't even consider for a place in my top 50. I got bored of thrash metal quickly, so I've never heard this one.
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That's a great Machine Head album.
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:corn
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That's a great Machine Head album.
My only wish for this brand new year was to get some love for Unto the Locust, thank. you.
I can already confirm that I won't be able to redeem myself with my #1, at least for the majority I won't
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Alright, let's get this over with. I didn't expect to actually complete this within a month, but I'm glad I did. No hassles or anything, daily updates, so I'm pretty happy about that.
Number one.............................
(https://images.rapgenius.com/b49790bfeebea5616e3b733886cc2be0.934x928x1.jpg)
Nightmare is one of these 2 albums i think.
Charles knows his shit, this might've been predictable, but whatever:
#1: Avenged Sevenfold – Nightmare (2010)
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SFfrthBpqQA/maxresdefault.jpg)
Genre: Heavy(/Alternative) Metal
No words can actually describe how much I’ve been in love continuously with this album, ever since the release (which was about mid 2010), but I’ll try anyway. I’m fairly sure this will be my favorite album forever, but of course that’s pretty hard to say at this point in my life. I feel these guys were going through the exact same thing in their lives as me, they lost a dear friend. Someone they were used to seeing and being around every single day of their lives. These songs are all so relatable, even though I’m not religious and A7X tend to have a lot of preachy lyrics. The outlines were all already written before The Rev died, but you can see the passion that went into these songs and how his death made the feeling behind the songs so much stronger. I gotta admit that the song that was written by The Rev 3 days before he was found dead, Fiction, is one of my least favorites of the album. Sometimes the simple songs with kind of a depressing vibe to them do a lot for me, like Disconnected Pt. 2, but this was not it. Synyster Gates’ solos will never stop to amaze me, they’re always one of the highlights of A7X songs, even on Hail to the King where most of the songwriting was kinda sloppy. The guitar solos are always a mix between great melodies and fast picking when it suits the song well. Need I remind you that Mike Portnoy replaced The Rev for the recording of this album and the upcoming tour? Probably not, but if I did, I don’t think it’d be necessary because The Rev had MP as one of his idols, and the drums for this album had a lot of that MP style return. Of course when Mike actually did play drums on the album he threw in even more of those MP influences in there. We see an amazing drumming performance throughout the album, really fitting to the mood of each song. The very best drum section is at the very end of the album, that’s right, the outro of Save Me, which very much reminds me of the Finally Free ending drums. Anyway, no matter what year it is, how my music tastes might change some day, I will never forget Nightmare, this thing was a life changer.
Favorite song (but goddamn, listen to the whole album):
Save Me: The intro is simply beautiful, mainly the guitar, mastering the wah-wah’s. There’s also the small details that create such an ominous vibe, like the *THEY ALL KNOW* whispering (I swear to god I thought they said “Save me now” for more than a lifetime). The pre-chorus is so powah, the chorus being even better. The very best part though, has to be the climax that section with the soft vocals was building up to, returning to the chorus one last time, followed by the “Tonight we all die young” part. It’s still the best ending to any album for me, albeit for personal reasons.
Honorable mentions:
Buried Alive: Amazing acoustic guitar intro, it’s pretty simple but I love it. It’s the 2nd best acoustic A7X guitar bit (Sidewinder outro is by far #1). The contrast between soft and heavy is ridiculously good here, it’s kinda like a power ballad, but the heavier parts I feel aren’t particularly ballad-y.
Natural Born Killer: This song is so damn consistent, it’s Avenged Sevenfold’s heavy side at its best and I wish they’d return to this type of thing when making pure metal tracks. The main riff entering after that cymbal love-tap is my favorite A7X riff, it’s amazingly groovy.
So Far Away: Yea, The Rev wrote Fiction, but I feel like this is the song that is the actual tribute to him, this was written by Synyster Gates about his grandfather, but after The Rev passed away they decided to dedicate it to him. I think it’s actually the first and only song he wrote entirely by himself. The first part of the song is great, but the second part is miles better.
Thank you all for following, 't was a fun ride, hope this kinda clarifies my music tastes which where seemingly unknown before.
Maybe I'll post an aftermath thingy in a bit.
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i'm sorry for giving what has to be one of your favorite songs of all time a 7.5 in my roulette
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For what it's worth I think you gave it a bonus ,5 point later on, or was the 7,5 with the +,5 included? It's whatever, to each their own
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I've never actually listen to them, so I don't know what to say. If MP played on it, I'm sure it was good. Well, except for A Mob.
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I love Nightmare. Not sure it's a no. 1 album, but it's definitely the strongest A7X album, so :tup.
I enjoyed following and not knowing bands on your list :neverusethis:, thanks for putting it together Train of Naught.
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good job on the list
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Thanks guys!
Here's the full list once more:
#50: Rage Against The Machine – Rage Against The Machine
#49: Mastodon – Crack The Skye
#48: Haken – Aquarius
#47: Muse – Origin of Symmetry
#46: Pomegranate Tiger – Entities
#45: Metallica – Death Magnetic
#44: Circus Maximus – Isolate
#43: Dream Theater – Train Of Thought
#42: Avenged Sevenfold – Waking The Fallen:
#41: Alter Bridge – One Day Remains
#40: A.C.T – Circus Pandemonium
#39: Linkin Park – Meteora
#38: Periphery – Periphery II
#37: Sum 41 – Chuck
#36: Iron Maiden – A Matter Of Life And Death
#35: Tremonti – All I Was
#34: The Mars Volta – De-loused In The Comatorium
#33: Megadeth – Rust in Peace
#32: Queensrÿche – Operation: Mindcrime
#31: Metallica – Master Of Puppets
#30: Distorted Harmony – Chain Reaction
#29: Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn Of Events
#28: Arctic Monkeys – Whatever You Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
#27: Sum 41 – Screaming Bloody Murder
#26: Iron Maiden – Powerslave
#25: Deftones - Diamond Eyes
#24: Machine Head – The Blackening
#23: Avenged Sevenfold – Avenged Sevenfold
#22: Haken – The Mountain
#21: Megadeth – Countdown to Extinction
#20: Protest The Hero – Volition
#19: Alter Bridge – Blackbird
#18: The Dear Hunter – Act II: The Meaning Of, And All Things Regarding Ms. Leading
#17: Royal Blood – Royal Blood
#16: Avenged Sevenfold – City Of Evil
#15: Slipknot – Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses
#14: Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory
#13: Dream Theater – Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence
#12: Protest The Hero – Fortress
#11: System of a Down – Toxicity
#10: Fates Warning – Disconnected
#9: Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory
#8: The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute
#7: Metallica - Ride the Lightning
#6: Alter Bridge - Fortress
#5: Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast
#4: Metallica - ...And Justice For All
#3: Dream Theater - Images and Words
#2: Machine Head - Unto the Locust
#1: Avenged Sevenfold - Nightmare
Once again, thanks for following and making this easy to update daily without feeling like no one cared ;D. I liked doing this, but in the end I wish I had put a limit to the albums per artist, it did get a bit samey towards the top 20, multiple PtH, DT, A7X, Metallica and Alter Bridge albums. Truthfully every single one of them deserved to be in the top 20 but it would’ve been more fun if I put a cap to it, just to show a broader range of the music I listen to and enjoy.
Potential v2 (definitely not before 2017, if not later): I’ll probably mix it up so that there’s a fair amount of different genre’s and different decades, as well as a cap of 2 albums per artist or something, that’d make it less repetitive.
All in all, I’m happy with my list but there’s a lot of repeating artists, probably would’ve done it a little less repetitive if I would’ve done it again.