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General => Archive => General Music Archives => Topic started by: Elite on March 25, 2016, 06:13:16 AM
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Back when I joined DTF, it seemed like the ultimate goal to write out your own top 50 albums thread and so I did, more than 4 years ago. I put myself on the waiting list and created a list of what were, to me, the best albums ever recorded. Of course, I hadn't heard a whole lot and as such, that list became outdated the moment I started listening to other music, more music. A year later, I created another top 50 albums thread, a list that contained 50 different albums from the first. While making that one I actually realised that one’s tastes really can’t captured by a list of any kind, because tastes change (drastically) over time and on different days I could fancy something else completely. The intention with the second list was to eventually merge both my first list (which is hugely outdated nowadays) with the second to create a 100-album list that would be the best account of my tastes. I didn’t do it in the end, because frankly, I completely suck at ranking stuff like this. This realisation has kept me from doing a third list for a long time – 3 years to be exact. But now the time has come to finish what I started.
This will likely be the last list I will make, at least for the next couple of years. As stated, I find it incredibly difficult to put together a list like this and I hope it actually does my tastes a little justice. It’s been three years since the last, I listen to different music now than I did three years ago, I’ve heard a lot of new stuff and all of that complicates composing a list like this one. Three years ago I was heavily into progressive metal, nowadays I’m not so much anymore, I prefer concise song-writing to the usual ‘prog-wank’ that is apparent in lots of bands from the scene. That said, there’s a bunch of albums on here I just could not leave off, for nostalgia’s sake, but also because they’re just too good.
Without delving too deep into the problems of creating a list like this, there’s a couple of things I need to get off my chest before I even start this. And those things are the following:
- selecting just 50 albums is an absolute crime. I have a library of over 600 albums to choose from and those are just the albums I own or have saved on Spotify. I have heard much more music I don’t even have saved.
- I listen to quite some different music, although my roots are in the prog/metal. How do you adequately rank an album that’s completely different next to a bunch of prog/metal albums?
- really, the ranks from, say #10 to #40 could almost always be interchanged. There’s no real reason why I like album #34 more than #35. It’s arbitrary and the difference between places is minimal. The top 12 is something I’m really certain about, but the rest can fluctuate from day to day. For that reason, if there’s bands or albums I have forgotten at the time of writing this, that’s a shame. This list is therefore not a perfect representation of my tastes, but I think it comes close.
- I love diversity in lists like these
This has led me to the following:
- doing 50 albums was too hard, I’m doing a main list of 50, with 10 honourable mentions
- one album per artist on this list. That’s right, 50 different artists
- no live-albums, compilation albums or EPs. What a shame, I had to leave some great stuff out
- no classical music
- all write-ups will be done in the same manner; I’ll write something about the artist, about the album and name my favourite songs from the album. I’ll also give a suggestion for my second favourite album by said artist
Random facts about this list:
- oldest album from 1966, newest from 2015
- almost all albums have lyrics in English, there’s a few exceptions
- decade representation:
2 albums from the 60’s (4%)
6 albums from the 70’s (12%)
9 albums from the 90’s (18%)
23 albums from the 2000’s (46%)
10 albums from the 2010’s (20%)
- best represented year is 2001, with 6 albums
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The list so far:
Honourable mentions:
Shining – Blackjazz (2010)
Protest the Hero – Fortress (2008)
Dan Swanö – Moontower (1999)
Royal Hunt – Paradox (1997)
Beyond the Bridge – The Old Man and the Spirit (2012)
Euzen – Metamorph (2015)
Theodor Bastard – Vetvi (2015)
60. Metallica - Ride the Lightning (1984)
59. Gojira - From Mars to Sirius (2007) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2131448#msg2131448)
58. Headspace - I Am Anonymous (2012)
57. Agalloch - The Mantle (2002) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2131709#msg2131709)
56. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced (1967)
55. The Fall of Troy - Manipulator (2007) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2131948#msg2131948)
54. Neal Morse - ? (2005)
53. Toxik - Think This (1989) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2132379#msg2132379)
52. Symphony X - V: The New Mythology Suite (2000)
51. Seventh Wonder - Mercy Falls (2008) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2132649#msg2132649)
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50. Beardfish - Mammoth (2011) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2133675#msg2133675)
49. Schizoid Lloyd - The Last Note In God's Magnum Opus (2014) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2134124#msg2134124)
48. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2134427#msg2134427)
47. Circus Maximus - Isolate (2007) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2134825#msg2134825)
46. The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2135120#msg2135120)
45. Boudewijn de Groot - Voor de Overlevenden (1966) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2135474#msg2135474)
44. Arcade Fire - Funeral (2004) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2135721#msg2135721)
43. Mastodon - Crack the Skye (2009) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2136220#msg2136220)
42. Caligula's Horse - Bloom (2015) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2136408#msg2136408)
41. The Dandy Warhols - Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (2000) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2136594#msg2136594)
40. Eisley - The Valley (2007) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2137295#msg2137295)
39. Sublime - Sublime (1996) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2138978#msg2138978)
38. Alice in Chains - Dirt (1992) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2139177#msg2139177)
37. Converge - Jane Doe (2001) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2139563#msg2139563)
36. Ayreon - The Human Equation (2004) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2139794#msg2139794)
35. Flaming Row - Elinoire (2011) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2140182#msg2140182)
34. Yes - Close to the Edge (1972) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2140409#msg2140409)
33. David Bowie - Hunky Dory (1971) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2140657#msg2140657)
32. Jolly - The Audio Guide to Happiness (2012 & 2013) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2140813#msg2140813)
31. The Ocean - Pelagial (2013) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2141106#msg2141106)
30. Karnivool - Sound Awake (2009) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2141365#msg2141365)
29. Spock's Beard - The Kindness of Strangers (1998) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2141828#msg2141828)
28. Steven Wilson - Insurgentes (2009) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2142076#msg2142076)
27. Wishbone Ash - Argus (1972) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2142505#msg2142505)
26. Thrice - The Alchemy Index (2007 & 2008) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2142781#msg2142781)
25. Shadow Gallery - Legacy (2001) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2143292#msg2143292)
24. Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle (1973) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2143530#msg2143530)
23. Devin Townsend - Terria (2001) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2143981#msg2143981)
22. Riverside - Anno Domini High Definition (2009) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2144225#msg2144225)
21. Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here (2010) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2144601#msg2144601)
20. The Dear Hunter - Act II: The Meaning Of, And All Things Regarding Ms. Leading (2007) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2144774#msg2144774)
19. Between the Buried and Me - Colors (2007) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2145036#msg2145036)
18. Agent Fresco - Destrier (2015) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2145223#msg2145223)
17. Pain of Salvation - Remedy Lane (2002) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2145535#msg2145535)
16. King Crimson - Red (1974) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2145748#msg2145748)
15. Haken - Aquarius (2010) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2146150#msg2146150)
14. Radiohead - OK Computer (1997) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2146374#msg2146374)
13. Transatlantic - Bridge Across Forever (2001) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2146765#msg2146765)
12. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (1973) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2147072#msg2147072)
11. maudlin of the Well - Bath (2001) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2147596#msg2147596)
10. Obsidian Kingdom - Mantiis (An Agony in Fourteen Bites) (2014) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2147866#msg2147866)
9. Porcupine Tree - Signify (1996) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2148441#msg2148441)
8. dredg - El Cielo (2002) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2148730#msg2148730)
7. Opeth - Blackwater Park (2001) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2149270#msg2149270)
6. Mr. Bungle - California (1999) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2149555#msg2149555)
5. Have a Nice Life - Deathconsciousness (2008) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2149970#msg2149970)
4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F#A#∞ (1997) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2150562#msg2150562)
3. Jeff Buckley - Grace (1994) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2151343#msg2151343)
2. Leprous - Bilateral (2011) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2153121#msg2153121)
1. Dream Theater - Images & Words (1992) (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=46598.msg2154256#msg2154256)
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Cool.
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Well, that's a start :lol
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A man of few words. :lol I'm curious so I'll be following. I'm slowly putting my own list together.
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Cool.
So is this going to be like your current top 50 albums, a merge of both your first and second list or what? I've read the whole thing but it's still not entirely clear to me.
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This is my current top 50 albums, with the restriction that it features one album per artist. It;s definitely not going to be a mix of the previous installations, because both top 50's I did aren't accurate at all now. There may be some albums from both lists, but there's a lot of newcomers.
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Following and shit.
Shall be interesting to see the evolution of your tastes.
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I've ignored so many of the recent top 50 threads; whereas when I first joined I used to look through the archived lists to find new stuff.
For your list, I'll definitely want to follow.
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I'll follow the shit out of it :tup
Since I finished my list recently, I'm looking for some new music.
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Following this shit.
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i will follow and criticize your every move
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I hope I can deliver! :lol
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Cool.
Following.
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Following.
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Alright then, here's the first batch of albums! Starting off with a couple of honourable mentions that I couldn't give a place in the top 50. I won't bother you with write-ups on these, as I could have left them out just as well, but since we're at it, here we go:
Shining – Blackjazz (2010)
Protest the Hero – Fortress (2008)
Dan Swanö – Moontower (1999)
Royal Hunt – Paradox (1997)
Beyond the Bridge – The Old Man and the Spirit (2012)
Euzen – Metamorph (2015)
Theodor Bastard – Vetvi (2015)
Then, let me start the countdown to the actual top 50 by giving you #60 & #59 now. I plan to get over #60-51 quite quickly, so the write-ups on those will be shorter than those in the proper top 50. I'm postkng them in groups of two, twice a day. This way I'll be done on Sunday night and I can start with #50 on Monday.
Without further stalling, I give you the first two entries.
60. Metallica – Ride the Lightning (1984)
(https://www.metal-archives.com/images/5/4/4/544.jpg?4439)
Included mainly for nostalgia’s sake, 'Ride the Lightning' was always my favourite Metallica album. I can’t really remember all too well, but I think this was the album that got me into metal the most. I had a friend in high school who was a huge Metallica fan (and who later realised Iron Maiden existed too) that got me into this. Countless hours I’ve spent playing the songs on this record on guitar. This is without a doubt my favourite thrash metal record and my favourite ‘classic’ metal album. Although I rarely, if ever, listen to this album anymore, it had to be included, because it was pivotal in developing my tastes.
Recommended songs: Ride the Lightning, Creeping Death, Fade to Black
59. Gojira – From Mars to Sirius (2005)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QS4YQSP8L.jpg)
One of the heaviest albums I’ve dared to listen to in full. From Mars to Sirius is a relentless grind of heavy distorted guitar, growls and anger. Gojira write songs about earth and nature and the anger they have for the fact that humans are slowing ruining this planet is shown on this record more than on any of their other records. The album tells a story of global warming and flying away to a different solar system to find refuge, because the earth is all but destroyed (made clear in the song ‘Flying Whales’, about the earth being flooded, humans living at the bottom of the ocean now, hence the whales fly). I included this album, because I thought this was the shit in high school. The first really heavy band I listened to and, frankly, one of only a couple on this list.
Recommended songs: Flying Whales, To Sirius, From the Sky
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I'll post two more tomorrow morning and two more tomorrow night. The same thing will happen on Sunday, so I can start the real top 50 on Monday. Let's hope I can stick to this schedule :)
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Beyond the Bridge isn't on the actual list? I'm out.
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Alright now it's my turn. WRONG SONGS :loser: Where the hell are Ocean Planet and Global Warming for FMTS?? I like The Way of All Flesh better but this album is killer too.
Ride the Lightning is a classic, and I'm slowly starting to gravitate less towards the 'classic' albums as I discover more new music, but RtL is a gem.
+1 for Fortress tho.
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RTL is probably the most consistent Metallica album but I'd say I like AJFA a bit more overall
Gojira has always seemed to me like a band I would despise tbh
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Beyond the Bridge isn't on the actual list? I'm out.
:lol
Alright now it's my turn. WRONG SONGS :loser: Where the hell are Ocean Planet and Global Warming for FMTS??
I'm doing only three an album. What a shame. Both Ocean Planet and Global Warning are killer, but I chose From the Sky instead.
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RtL used to be my favorite Metallica album. It's still good but I like few albums more.
Gojira is awesome, too, they were one of the bands that got me into heavier music. Some of the songs from that albums are just perfect blend of brutality and emotion (Flying Whales and Global Warming are my favorites).
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I used to listen to some Gojira and enjoy it, but haven't had a strong desire to listen more recently. Maybe I'll go back and give this one another go, soon.
Ride the Lightning isn't my favorite Metallica album, but Fade to Black probably is my favorite song and so at least it has that going for it...
And I'm only familiar with 3 of 7 in the honorable mentions, but what a strong three they are: Moontower, Paradox and Old Man and the Spirit. Paradox wouldn't touch my top 50, but the other two might come close.
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Beyond the Bridge isn't on the actual list? I'm out.
And I'm right on your six. Paradox is also a great album.
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Two bands I don't care for :D
Interesting you mention that Euzen album - was listening to it yesterday and it quite impressed me :tup
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Didn't you only hear like one Gojira song though?
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Didn't you only hear like one Gojira song though?
if this is at me, no; I'd tried listening to this album in the past and turned it off a few songs in
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For what it's worth, I think The Old Man and the Spirit is a really good album, but one that I don't return to very often. The main reason why it wasn't included in the list is that, while I really enjoy it, it didn't impress me as much as the albums that I did include. I also do not hold any emotional attachment to that particular album, while there are some albums on the list where I do. So, not a bad album by any means and I felt like I had to mention it considering how good it is, but there's too much other stuff that I either return to more often or hold closer to my heart, so to speak.
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RTL is pretty much where I'd put it. Solid album.
Gojira has always been a band where I don't mind the stuff I hear, but don't like it enough to explore further.
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Nice choice with RTL. That's about where it goes, quite possibly a little higher.
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Didn't you only hear like one Gojira song though?
if this is at me, no; I'd tried listening to this album in the past and turned it off a few songs in
Same as Parama, tried this one out of curiosity but bored me to tears. The song I received in the roulette just confirms this band ain't for me :P
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RTL is my fav Metallica album. Has more energy than the next two.
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I have 1 Gojira album, and it's pretty fucking good.
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Thanks for all the replies! I really like reading everybody's takes on these albums. I'm firing up the next two in a short while, both of which rather well-known albums here on DTF.
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As promised, two more this morning. I'm out all day, but I'll be back tonight to post two more.
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58. Headspace – I Am Anonymous (2012)
(https://www.nuclearblast.de/static/articles/208/208364.jpg/1000x1000.jpg)
This album came out at the peak of my love for progressive metal and it’s an amazing effort in every way. Damian Wilson is a beast on vocals on this album, but all the instrumentalists deserve massive credits here as well. This album has it all, catchy choruses, insane instrumental parts, good vocal hooks and a fantastic performance by the band overall. Seeing this album performed in full in the joint headliner tour with Haken (who performed their ‘Visions’ in full) is one of my concert highlights (and I got to see them twice!). It’s an album I don’t revisit often, but when I do, it’s that delicious progressive metal that has become a coveted ‘guilty pleasure’ of mine.
Recommended songs: Daddy Fucking Loves You, The Big Day, Die With a Bullet
57. Agalloch – The Mantle (2002)
(https://www.invisibleoranges.com/files/2012/08/Agalloch.jpg)
It seems like there is this ongoing debate between fans of Agalloch to determine which of their albums is the best. Whenever I see them mentioned in a list like this it’s always either this one, or ‘Ashes Against the Grain’. Both are really good, but to me ‘The Mantle’ edges it just slightly, because it contains more folky elements and atmospheric passages than its more metal counterpoint. The album as a whole feels more complete. ‘The Mantle’ is an album that doesn’t exactly show much showmanship, but dwells more on atmosphere. You can say that this is like shoegaze-influenced metal (including the occasional black metal shrieks and high-pitched vocals) with the inclusion of folky elements. If bands like Deafheaven are nowadays considered influential for the development of metal by doing ‘new stuff’, then certainly Agalloch could be defined as pioneers of that particular style. This album is a testament to that.
Recommended songs: In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion, ...And the Great Cold Death of the Earth, You Were But a Ghost in my Arms
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I Am Anonymous is :tup
As for Agalloch, "shoegaze-influenced metal (including the occasional black metal shrieks and high-pitched vocals)" sounds like really not my thing.
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Didn't you only hear like one Gojira song though?
if this is at me, no; I'd tried listening to this album in the past and turned it off a few songs in
Same as Parama, tried this one out of curiosity but bored me to tears. The song I received in the roulette just confirms this band ain't for me :P
Was originally aimed at Sacul but you both suck
I really liked I Am Anonymous, listened to the album twice. But I never got the urge to go back to it for some reason, neither did I check out the new Headspace album.
Agalloch is a bit too heavy on the black metal growls for my likings, but I can definitely see why people like them.
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As for Agalloch, "shoegaze-influenced metal (including the occasional black metal shrieks and high-pitched vocals)" sounds like really not my thing.
To be honest, reading that back it doesn't really do the album justice. There's also lots of instrumental passages as well as acoustic/folky bits. The vocals aren't always harsh either. Having said that, I don't really think it would be your thing anyway.
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I Am Anonymous is on my to-check for too long. I liked what I heard on Nick's WPaPU but I'm too lazy to listen to whole album.
Agalloch is one of my ffavorite band at the moment. Ashes Agains the Grain were on my #3 but The Mantle was close to be there, too. I think Evermind could like it or The White EP, both are full of great folky parts.
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I enjoyed Headspace, but - my love of Damian Wilson notwithstanding - I wasn't all 'gaga' over it like most people here were/are. Same with the new release. Enjoyable, but not something I turn to very often.
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The Mantle :tup
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Haven't listened to The Mantle despite owning it. I Am Anonymous is nice. Daddy Fucking Loves You is a great song, been a while since I checked it out.
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Wow what a great pair of albums.
The Mantle would be top 10 if I didnt limit myself to one album per band. Absolutely love that sucker; nothing else quite like it
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for all intents and purposes, the mantle has like 3 black metal songs between 9 tracks but yeah :lol
it's pretty good though, only got it last month
and that headspace album bizkit is sending me so i'll have any opinion on it eventually
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:corn
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for all intents and purposes, the mantle has like 3 black metal songs between 9 tracks but yeah :lol
it's pretty good though, only got it last month
and that headspace album bizkit is sending me so i'll have any opinion on it eventually
I replaced the disc with a pancake. Hah! Joke's on you
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Following.
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Headspace - I Am Anonymous
It was a pretty alright pancake. A little stale and old though. Needed some syrup.
6/10
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for all intents and purposes, the mantle has like 3 black metal songs between 9 tracks but yeah :lol
I know, but that's still enough to scare some people off :lol 'atmospheric' would be a great word to describe that album.
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I slightly prefer Ashes, but The Mantle is stunning all the same. Big :tup from me.
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Alight then, two more!
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56. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced (1967)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81RU0qZ-nTL._SL1500_.jpg)
However much I disagree with all the sentiments in the world that Jimi Hendrix was the greatest guitar player ever to have lived, there is no denying his presence and insane legacy he left the world of popular music, even as of today. As a guitarist, there's no going around Hendrix. Much like you can't walk through a large modern city without seeing at least one McDonald's somewhere, it seems you get slapped in the face with Hendrix's alleged 'genius' every now and then, whether it be through hearing his music, or simply seeing his name mentioned once again on some guitar-related website or magazine. I don’t know whether it’s justified, but I think it is, even though Hendrix’s greatest fame came from live performances and not studio records. Why then, did I decide to include this album? It's got groove, Jimi Hendrix's fantastic guitar playing, his trademark vocals and is simply electrifying throughout. Yes, it does sound outdated and yes, Hendrix's technical abilities are far from what we're used to nowadays (though I doubt many of those guitarists could play Hendrix like he did), but look back in time and you'll realise this particular album was a masterpiece back then. Thank you Hendrix, and your legacy. I suppose you'll forever be the 'greatest guitar player ever', it's a shame you overdosed.
Recommended songs: Purple Haze, Manic Depression, Hey Joe
55. The Fall of Troy – Manipulator (2007)
(https://www.equalvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/EVR140-Manipulator.jpg)
The Fall of Troy was the first band I ever saw live. It was 2 weeks before my fifteenth birthday in 2007 and the band had just released their third studio album, ‘Manipulator’. I was a huge fan of the band and their previous album, as well as this band’s infamous ‘Ghostship Demos EP’ were my favourite thing to listen to. Although this is wildly different than anything else in the top 50, this band’s experimental nature set the tone for my prog-addiction later on. This is probably not even this band’s best effort (that would be ‘Phantom on the Horizon’), but it’s the album I listened to most for a long time. I guess I still know it by heart.
Recommended songs: Ex-creations, Semi-Fiction, The Dark Trail
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i will get a Fall of Troy album eventually.
probably not a jimi hendrix one tho
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I probably prefer Ladyland to Experienced by a hair, but there's a handful of songs on Ladyland I don't like, whereas I at least like everything on Experienced. My favourites would be Manic Depression, Red House, I Don't Live Today, and Third Stone. So generally, the more out there shit.
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Yeah, my recommended tracks are boring choices here. Not necessarily my favourites, but meant to give a taste of the album. The songs you name are all great ones though. I prefer AYE over Ladyland, because it's more consistent to me. Ladyland is a little weirder, whereas AYE contains a lot of 'hits'. I don't know, both are great in their own right.
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Yeah, I think Ladyland's best stuff is far better, but when I listen to it, I start with Voodoo Chile and then skip straight to Come On. It's all great from there, but it's not a good sign that I just cut all but one of the first six tracks. Mind you, that's only about 13 minutes of a 77 minute album.
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I didn't have enough time this morning to post the next two. I'm on the road now to visit relatives, but I'll be back tonight, so I can post the next two then. #54 is an album that has seen certain praise on DTF, #53 is somewhat of a cult classic. That's all for now :)
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There are a couple of good songs on that Hendrix album, but I'm hoping Electric Ladyland appears later on. ;)
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A bit late to follow. Solid list so far though.
The only Fall of Troy album I've heard is Doppelgänger, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Will probably revisit that and give this one a listen.
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There are a couple of good songs on that Hendrix album, but I'm hoping Electric Ladyland appears later on. ;)
Since I'm doing one album per artist, I can confirm that it won't.
Here's two more though!
54. Neal Morse - ? (2005)
(https://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/712/cover_3536141232010.jpg)
Spoiler: this will not be the last time Neal Morse makes an appearance on my list. The man is simply too good at creating music. This is however his only solo album on the list, following the one-album-per-artist rule I imposed on myself. 'Question Mark' (let’s just call it that for the remainder of this post) is a concept album with recurring themes throughout, just like Neal Morse likes it. I’m not all too familiar with all his other solo stuff, although I’ve heard it all at least once or twice (save for his Jesus-albums) and where Neal tends to overdo things a bit sometimes with proggy bombastics, on 'Question Mark' there is this perfect blend of accessible songs, packed in a great concept album. If I listen to this album, it’s always in one sitting, there aren’t really any real standout tracks, it’s all just really, really good.
Recommended songs: In the Fire, 12, Outside Looking In
53. Toxik – Think This (1989)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ed/Toxik_-_Think_This.jpg)
Okay, I lied when I said Metallica’s ‘Ride the Lightning’ was the greatest thrash metal album of all time. It’s this one. A strange album of which the songs are linked together by random audio fragments of tv-shows, but the songs themselves are absolutely stellar. For the time when this was released, as far as I can tell, this band shows a technicality that was unrivalled by the greats of thrash metal back then. This band is often dubbed as ‘progressive thrash metal’ and the way their songs and riffs are constructed definitely suggest that moniker is valid. Listen to Technical Arrogance (yes, the name is fitting) to hear what I mean. This band unfortunately never took off commercially I think and broke up after this album (only their second). There were reports of the band doing a third album, but that has been postponed to this year. We’ll see what it brings, at keast they brought this impressive effort way ahead of their time.
Recommended songs: Shotgun Logic, Machine Dream, Technical Arrogance
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i've literally never listened to neal morse, tbh :lol
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Okay, well that's your loss then I guess :lol
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i will at some point. send him in my next roulette i dunno. apparently he's tagged as christian rock on rym?
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Lots of his solo albums have religeous themes and he has made some pure Christian Rock albums. I have never heard those, bit his progressive rock albums (like ?, Sola Scriptura or Momentum) are really good. They often contain religeous references as well, but that's not in an annoying way at all.
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I listen to a lot of Transatlantic, but I never really got into Neal Morse's solo music. Just doesn't click with me.
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Following, naturally. Good picks so far!
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Question mark is very good. :tup
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I listen to a lot of Transatlantic, but I never really got into Neal Morse's solo music. Just doesn't click with me.
That's weird, because I can surely hear the similarities.
Following, naturally. Good picks so far!
There's obviously more good picks coming :biggrin:
Question mark is very good. :tup
Yes, yes it is!
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52. Symphony X – V: The New Mythology Suite (2000)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81VFhrripAL._SX355_.jpg)
For long I was more than satisfied with Symphony X’s ‘Paradise Lost’. I also had ‘The Odyssey’, but that one contained a couple of filler tracks and ‘The Divine Wings of Tragedy’ always left me wanting more due to the album’s relative bad production. I never checked out the band’s first two albums for a long time and for some reason I never got ‘V’ either. That turned out to be a mistake, because from the moment I finally got this album I realised that it would become my favourite Symphony X record. It's got everything I enjoyed from their previous material, but with the reltive heaviness of 'Paradise Lost', without becoming too metal. Symphony X have now lost their way to some extent (I am not a fan of their latest two albums, especially 'Iconoclast' was a huge disappointment). I think this is some sort of concept album, at least in the story on the album. There's not really any recurring themes or such, but there's a couple of filler interlude-tracks. The proper music tracks are all golden though and I'd say this album is a must for any progressive metal fan.
Recommended tracks: Communion and the Oracle, Evolution (The Grand Design), A Fool's Paradise
51. Seventh Wonder – Mercy Falls (2008)
(https://www.metal-archives.com/images/2/0/2/9/202982.jpg?2034)
After I saw Seventh Wonder live at ProgPower Europe 2011, I slowly started to discover their back catalogue. Although the band had just released ‘The Great Escape’ a year before, they played a lot of songs from their 2008 album ‘Mercy Falls’. It was through this album mainly that I discovered the band. ‘Mercy Falls’ is a concept album that tells a story of a comatose man who visits the fictional town Mercy Falls in his comatose state. Part of the album is also set in the real world, beside his hospital bed. The two stories intertwine at the end, when the reason he is actually in a coma is explained. The story is actually a little weird, and the album contains some (very bad) spoken word dialogue in some tracks, but overall the song-writing on this album is ridiculously strong. What I like about this album and about this band is that they write these wacky riffs and has the singer sing almost polymetrically over the backing. That last sentence only makes sense when you losten to the album, I guess. This is just a very strong progressive metal album that I have listened to countless times. I had to include it here.
Recommended songs: Unbreakable, Hide and Seek, A Day Away
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And that concludes the 10 albums on the edge of the top 50. The general trend with the above 10 was that they're either albums that shaped my music tastes in some way, or albums that are very good, but failed to stay with me over time. I wanted to include them for how good they are, and that's why I did,mbut now it's time to start with the real top 50.
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Mercy Falls :tup
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I feel quite bad for placing it this low to be honest :lol
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This game is not for everyone
Like hide and seek but not as fun :metal :metal
Been meaning to try Symphony X's V. I agree about The Odyssey, great album but definitely some stuff I consider filler.
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Mercy Falls :tup
Incredible album, made my Top 30 I think. I'm not too big on A Day Away though, I consider it one of the weaker tracks, which means it's still pretty damn good.
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Maybe I should give Mercy Falls another listen. As for Symphony X, they were never really my cup of tea.
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2 great albums right there.
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Excellent choices. SyX is always expected in the list of a prog metal fan, but the Seventh Wonder is a pleasant surprise.
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2 great albums right there.
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Nice sig, Hath.
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:tup
I love that whole quote
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2 great albums right there.
Echo'd. Both made my Top 50 v2. And the spoken parts of Mercy Falls aren't just bad, their downright awful and make me cringe. Thankfully, the music over-compensates.
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Double cheese, nice :corn
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:tup
I love that whole quote
That is the quote that caused me to start reading Nietzsche. Back when I was in high school, though, there was no Internet, and I didn't know anyone who knew who said that quote. I had to go to a local library and ask the librarian. Back when Google was an older woman in glasses and a skirt. :lol
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Double cheese, nice :corn
Your face is double cheese. Mercy Falls is amazing. :biggrin:
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For all the groaning people do about cheesiness in prog metal like in Mercy Falls, that album has a lot of legitimately infectious choruses, memorable riffs and solos, and incredibly tight song-writing.
The spoken word segments are pretty bad, but they make up such a small amount of the actual album, it's easy to gloss over.
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Yeah, Mercy Falls is hugely accessible for its choruses and song-writing, while the SymX album is a little more 'classic' progressive metal (for as far as that really is a thing). Regarding the song choices, for the runners-up (#51-#60) I just chose songs that relresent the album well, so those aren't necessarily my favourite tracks. The actual top 50 will have longer write-ups, recommendations for other stuff to listen to by the same band, as well as my favourite songs from the record.
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Alright then, here's the first entry in my top 50. I've set a goal to do two albums a day and depending on the day that could mean I either post both at once at the same time, or I will post one in the morning and another one in the evening. The latter has my preference, so I'll try to stick to that as often as I can. Here's the first, tonight there will be one more.
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50. Beardfish – Mammoth (2011)
(https://www.goldminemag.com/wp-content/uploads/Beardfish_Mammoth.jpg)
On the last spot in this top 50, I have this Swedish band’s sixth album. As of today, the band has released eight different albums, spanning 15 years; quite an impressive output. Stylistically, this band steers away from the traditional progressive rock and metal conventions seen in other contemporary bands, but blends certain aspects of both to create a sound that can be considered ‘retro’ (as in, similar to the progressive rock of the seventies), but when you listen to them, you can hear something is ‘off’. Althouth they have this retro-sound to them, there’s an apparent influence of progressive metal as well, as seen in for instance the track that’s my favourite of the album, the brilliant mini-epic And The Stone Said: “If I Could Speak”.
This band is primarily driven by Rikard Sjøblom, who handles the guitar, keyboards and vocals all at the same time and to say he does that rather well would be an understatement. Looking back through their discography, this band has surely seen some development over the years. I’m not saying that their previous work is bad by any means, but to me they reached their peak on this album. It’s the most distinct and best represents their overall style. Some might contest this and say their latest record is even better, but frankly, this is also a case of ‘Mammoth’ being the album I first heard of theirs.
What I like about this band and about this album in particular is that they have a really pronounced style, but they’re also not shy to try out new things, as the saxophone in a couple of songs on this album shows. Another recurring trope in progressive rock music is of course the frequent use of virtuosity (often for the sake of it, but that could be merely my interpretation) and this band will have nothing of that. To me, all they do serves the purpose of the song’s development. This album is a fine example of that, where all the songs are great in their own right. Give it a listen of you’re intrigued.
Favourite song: And The Stone Said: “If I Could Speak”
Other songs worth checking out: The Platform, Without Saying Anything, Tightrope
Other stuff by this band: The band have released a number of albums. While this is my favourite, the album ‘Sleeping in Traffic Part Two’ is also excellent and quite reminiscent of this one. Their album ‘The Void’ is a lot heavier and their 2015 album ‘+4626-COMFORTZONE’ generally received positive reviews as well.
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I've bought this one a few weeks ago but didn't delve into it yet because roulette.
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I know Comfort zone, one of my favorites from last year. There is only one song from Mammoth I checked on YouTube and it was weirder than I expected so I saved it for other day. I'll definitely check it when I'll be in right mood.
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Aw man.. reading the title I thought it was going to be Royal Blood's self-titled.. :emo:
Never heard Beardfish but I should
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Listen to The Void, Train :metal
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Yes, you would probably like that one better than Mammoth, it's more :metal
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I love Beardfish. Excellent choice out of all their amazing releases.
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Yes sir! :tup
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Could never get in to Beardfish.
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I think Mammoth is great but for some reason whenever I share it with anyone, it gets a lukewarm response.
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Could never get in to Beardfish.
I saw them perform live, which was my first encounter with them, and was very unimpressed. It's always difficult to be an opening band, but the music was pretty obvious, the melodies being their weak point.
Other than that, of course I'll be following, but you and I both know that it will be way to much metal for my tastes, Elite ;)
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I said I would do two albums a day, and so I will.
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49. Schizoid Lloyd – The Last Note in God’s Magnum Opus (2014)
(https://f1.bcbits.com/img/a1272578885_10.jpg)
Ah, my favourite album from 2014. It’s not anymore, but I discovered the album from 2014 that’s higher on this list in 2015. This was my jam in 2014 and I’ve listened to it countless times. Released on the obscure label ‘Blood Music’, known for their “preservation of extreme metal”, this album truly is the oddball in the label’s releases. The label was founded originally to repress maudlin of the Well’s masterpieces ‘Bath’ and ‘Leaving Your Body Map’, which is how I discovered the label, but the majority of what they release doesn’t really interest me to be honest (in fact, this is the only album I bought from the label, apart from the maudlin albums). This album however, did.
Enough about the label, the band is where it’s at. Schizoid Lloyd are a Dutch band I first saw at the 2011 edition of the ProgPower Europe festival. They were regarded as one of the most surprising acts of the festival, with their weird blend of Mr. Bungle-ish avant-garde metal. Although they had only released a short EP at that point, they managed to play a 50-minute set and basically left everybody in the audience who stayed to atch them rather speechless. Their eclictic performance, combined with the weird music they play made me keep track of these guys. I caught the, live again a year later and they were even better then. In 2014 word came out these guys signed a record deal at the label I knew from maudlin’s album re-issues and it seemed like a perfect match. The label slowly revealed a couple of tracks and I, curiously watching this band from a distant, instantly knew after hearing album opener Suicide Penguin that this was gonna be a great record. Finally I could hear the band I had enjoyed live twice in all its glory on a CD. I pre-ordered the album and haven’t looked back.
On ‘The Last Note in God’s Magnum Opus’, the band manages to blend a bunch of different music style, ranging from prog, folk and metal to classical piano, white-boy rap and psychedelica. In that respect, they are very much a modern Mr. Bungle, complete with alternating vocals between the band’s three or four singers. Because of the huge variety in songs, it’s also hard to choose a favourite among the album’s ten tracks, as every track has its highlights. From this album’s release I’ve pimped this band in numerous roulettes, sending either the aforementioned opener or the most badass riff-song on the album, Misanthrope Puppet, usually to great results.
That said, I do not think this band is for everyone. They’re labeled mistly as ‘psychedelic/progressive’, which seems an appropriate term to describe this band’s music. I saw them again at last year’s edition of the ProgPower Europe festival. They played this album, almost in full and it was fantastic. Reactions ranged from people saying it was the best band of the weekend to people moaning about the music being a ‘disjointed mess’. Granted, the live environment is probably not the best place to hear this band for the first time, but on the CD it’s glorious.
Favourite song: Misanthrope Puppet
Other songs worth checking out: Suicide Penguin, Avalanche Riders, Amphibian Seer
Other stuff by this band: Unfortunately, this is the only album the guys have released so far.
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I've heard one song from that Beardfish album, Green Waves, courtesy of Seneca. I thought it was pretty good. I may check out the full album.
I don't know #49, but it seems like probably not my thing.
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would agree that puppet and penguin are the two best songs here (though in opposite order) but a fair bit of this album didn't do as much for me as I'd have liked. Citizen Herd would be fantastic without its awful instrumental wankfest.
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Modern Mr. Bungle? I'm in! Listening to that one soon, I promise!
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Never heard of that album, but it sounds very good. Will check it out.
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Modern Mr. Bungle? I'm in! Listening to that one soon, I promise!
It might be 'too metal' for you though :biggrin:
But it's a good album and reminiscent of Mr. Bungle at least (think 'California', more so than 'Disco Volante'). It's basically fun avant-garde with weird lyrics.
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Next one!
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48. The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
(https://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2013/11/Sgt-Pepper.jpg)
In Porcupine Tree’s Time Flies, Steven Wilson’s first vocal line is as follows: “I was born in ’67, the year of Sgt. Pepper and Are You Experienced.” It’s funny how a vocal line from a song released more than four decades later can help you remember how old an album is. This is one of the two albums in the entire top 50 that’s from the sixties and it’s the younger one. I can’t say anything about how this album was received back then, but the fact that it’s one of the best known albums even today, with its iconic album cover, has to mean something.
For me, it was a toss-up between this one and ‘Abbey Road’, but ultimately I went with ‘Sgt. Pepper’, because of how cohesive this album is, but also because the songs on this particular record are simply too good to ignore. The Lennon/McCartney combination is known for writing great songs and on this album they reached their creative peak. This is coming from someone who’s heavily bkased towards this album and ‘Abbey Road’ though, so don’t take my word for it. It’s funny then, that my favourite tune on this album is the only one that’s composed by a different band member, the Harrison composition heavily inspired by Indian raga-music.
Thought to be the world’s first concept album (an assumption that is incorrect, by the way), this album marks the first time the Beatles started actively experimenting with the recording studio and the physical possibilities of effect-usage as a compositional tool. The result is an album that likely blew the fragile teenage minds of the Beatles’ fanbase, especially through the haunting album closer A Day in the Life (which almost feels as if it was sticked on at the end after the rest was already recorded). The album does not have any low point, so the tracks listed below could be swapped around entirely. It’s a fairly short listen, clocking in at under 40 minutes, especially by today’s standards, so I would recommended listen to the album in full, rather than just looking up individual songs. It’s an undisputed classic, one of the most influential albums ever and a must-listen for any music fan. And that’s saying a lot.
Favourite song: Within You Without You
Other songs worth checking out: A Day in the Life, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Other stuff by this band: The idea that these guys were the most influential group in recent popular music history says enough. ‘Abbey Road’ is a fantastic album, but I can heartily recommend ‘Revolver’ as well, for starters. After that, check out ‘The White Album’ if you like what you hear. Or just get a box set with all their music.
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That's an amazing album indeed :angel:
In Porcupine Tree’s Time Flies, Steven Wilson’s first vocal line is as follows: “I was born in ’67, the year of Sgt. Pepper and Are You Experienced.” It’s funny how a vocal line from a song released more than four decades later can help you remember how old an album is.
That line was stuck in my head and I didn't even now what Sgt. Pepper was at that time :lol
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I don't like Beatles that much, but this album is really good indeed. :tup
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Abbey Road is better, but Sgt Pepper is a classic!
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Fantastic album without a doubt. There isn't a single 'bad' Beatles song, and a lot of the greatest ones are on this album.
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Abbey Road is better, but Sgt Pepper is a classic!
I had a hard time choosing between the two really, I love Abbey Road as well.
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This album is 47 spots lower than it should be. ;D
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Love Sgt. Pepper. I don't think everything The Beatles did is great, or even good, but this is a classic record. As indeed is Abbey Road, most of The White Album and some of Magical Mystery Tour
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Next one coming in!
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47. Circus Maximus – Isolate (2007)
(https://www.metal-archives.com/images/1/5/5/7/155720.jpg?2200)
You didn’t really think I was spoiling all the progressive metal albums in the honourable mentions, did you? No, there’s still quite some to come. ‘Isolate’ is an album I hold dearly, because it’s one of the first progressive metal albums I discovered by myself, of a band that was relatively unknown (compared to big names such as Dream Theater, Symphony X, Devin Townsend and Porcupine Tree). I’m not sure that really makes much sense, but you’ll have to deal with it. This album is full of amazing songs, there’s not a single song I would like replaced and compared with the bands later output, that is an amazing feat.
I think the first song off this album I ever heard was Arrival of Love and it was by randomly going through Youtube videos that I found this band. The main riff of this particular song is melodic and driving at the same time and by the time the vocals kick in, you know you’re in for a treat of progressive metal goodness. The rest of the album is even better than this song and the list of recommended songs down below is a testament to that. It opens brilliantly with A Darkened Mind, a mini epic many a prog band could be jealous of. The second song on the album is probably my favourite; Abyss is a very solid rocking tune, packing all that Circus Maximus is about into a relatively short song; it’s got riffs, solos and great vocal lines in the choruses.
The album reaches another height at the end of the album, giving you a one-two-punch of two epics (Mouth of Madness and Ultimate Sacrifice), interrupted by what’s probably the weakest track on the album, From Childhood’s Hour. Overall, I’d say this is essential material for any progressive metal fan, as often this band gets mentioned at least. This is a very enjoyable album all the way through and one that I happily return to whenever I have the desire to listen to it once again.
Favourite song: Abyss
Other songs worth checking out: Ultimate Sacrifice, A Darkened Mind, Mouth of Madness
Other stuff by this band: Their debut album ‘The 1st Chapter’ is excellent and almost on the same level as this one. The follow-up to this one, ‘Nine’ went into more radio-friendly territory and although it’s good, it’s not nearly the same Circus Maximus as on this album. Their latest release, ‘Havoc’ I haven’t heard enough to form an opinion yet, but my first listens were disappointing, to say the least.
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I'm not sure why this is higher than Sgt. Pepper. :biggrin: Regardless, it's an awesome album. I have been listening to CM since their first release.
Abbey Road is better, but Sgt Pepper is a classic!
Indeed, it is.
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Lost me with The Beatles, won me back with Isolate :metal
I basically agree on everything. Mouth of Madness and Ultimate Sacrifice end off the album fantastically, it's just a shame From Childhood's Hour had to be inbetween, I'd rather have nothing at all or maybe a short passage song inbetween.
And Abyss is :2metal:
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I did say in my first post that the differences between these albums are minimal and are probably even a little bit random. Had I made this list on a different day than I did, the order might have been different. From about #20 on the order is more 'definite', so to speak.
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I still need to get a circus maximus album, never got Nine after my roulette tho I liked architect of fortune a lot
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To be honest, I think Architect of Fortune is by far the best track on Nine, though the last two aren't that bad either. Check out some songs from Isolate on Youtubeor something to get a taste of the band.
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Maybe it's more telling of how distanced I am from a lot of prog metal recently, but I always felt Circus Maximus to be just simply decent.
Sgt. Pepper's on the other hand is great.
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Isolate is pretty great, but I think the epics are actually the weakest part. The first four songs are the strongest, in my opinion.
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:corn
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Besides Havoc, Isolate is the CM I'm least familiar with. I definitely need to get on that, but seems every time I try I'm magnetically drawn to The 1st Chapter
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I see a lot of people that rank this above The First Chapter. I've always been partial to the debut, but just a slight edge over it - mostly for Glory of the Empire. Top 20 song of all time for me right there. Still, Isolate is an incredible album. In my books 1st Chapter>Isolate>Nine ... but the margin between each is very minimal. Havoc I'll pretend to pretend doesn't exist.
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Maybe it's more telling of how distanced I am from a lot of prog metal recently, but I always felt Circus Maximus to be just simply decent.
I can fully understand that. I've been distant from prog metal recently as well, but I've known this CM album for so much longer. Consider it a guilty pleasure if that justifies its place in the top 50 more.
Isolate is pretty great, but I think the epics are actually the weakest part. The first four songs are the strongest, in my opinion.
I can see why you say that. The first four tracks are all awesome rockers and more unique songs than the epics at the end. Regardless, they're all good in my opinion.
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@Nelson&Chad; it's a matter of random preference here. I really like their debut too as I stated in write-up. To me, the song-writing on 'Isolate' is a little more concise and to-the-point. That said, a huge downside of 'Isolate' is indeed that it does not contain Glory of the Empire, probably my favourite CM song as well.
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Next album coming up soon!
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I promise I'll recheck Circus Maximus today. When I was getting into prog metal, after discovering DT, I liked their first but somehow I stopped listening to them :huh:
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It's been more than 12 hours since the last update, so here's number 46.
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46. The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003)
(https://consequenceofsound.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/deloused.jpg)
Here’s an album that likely sounds like a jumbled mess of random instrument noises with a fat singing chipmunk on top of that if you’re not paying enough attention. In fact, I had a hard time digesting this album and to this day it’s still not an album I can enjoy at every moment. That’s not to say that it isn’t good, but The Mars Volta are probably somewhat of an acquired taste. This is also one of very few albums in the top 50 where I find it hard to distinguish between the individual songs. This is partly due to the weird song titles, but also because a lot of it sounds quite similar (or is at least in the same style). Of course there’s memorable parts (the weird anti-rhythmic chorus to This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed that’s strangely catchy for instance), but most of this album is very experimental.
For reasons stated above, I don’t really know which song is my favourite. I do however know that I think the weakest track, apart from the short segue-tracks, is the relatively dull Eriatarka. That track, as well as the weird noises and volume swells section in Cicatriz ESP are the only parts of the album I do not really like. Especially the latter seems out of place and almost unsettling on this record. Most, if not all of the rest of the album is really good, with my favourites being the obviously Queen-inspired Drunkship of Lanterns and the not-so-obvious ballad Televators which curiously enough fits very well on this album as the only songs that’s relatively down-toned.
Another highlight for me, and a moment of special craziness on this album, is the album closer, Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt and especially the guitar riff that starts around the 3:42 mark. It’s not often that I have no idea how a guitarist does stuff, but here I’m definitely clueless.
Last, but not least, I could not really mention this album without saying anything about the lyrics. As the (very weird) song-titles might suggest, the lyrics are definitely strange too. Although this album is supposed to be a concept-album of sorts, or at the very least supposed to tell a story, the lyrics leave you wondering what the hell happened. The first words of the album are therefore very fitting for the remainder of the album: “Now I’m lost.”
Favourite song: Drunkship of Lanterns
Other songs worth checking out: Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt, Televators, Inertiatic ESP
Other stuff by this band: I can recommend either ‘Frances the Mute’ or ‘The Bedlam in Goliath’. I must say I’m not overly familiar with the other three records the band put out, though I’m sure they’ll be good.
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I'm not huge on the 'epic' here, at least not as much as most seem to. My four favorites are the same as yours, Televators being the favorite. I just love how this album makes just barely enough sense for the listener to understand what's going on story-wise, while still keeping things very cryptic. Left me wondering a lot of stuff after first listens. Inertiatic ESP excels in this, indeed :lol I'm totally lost.
That said, for a completely fictional story, Televators is one damn crushingly emotional song, this song could aswell have been about a close friend who commited suicide or something, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Maybe my favorite vocal performance in all of TMV's catalogue, and a relatively simple one at that.
Also, apart from the album mentions, Octahedron rocks :metal
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I don't get the fascination with Mars Volta. It's borderline unlistenable music for me.
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It's borderline unlistenable music for me.
Prepare yourself for some albums later on in this top 50 then :lol
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I really love the lyrics, they are quite poetic I think, though they do borderline on nonsense sometimes :p
I don't get the fascination with Mars Volta. It's borderline unlistenable music for me.
Have you listened to Noctourniquet? I think it's their most accessible or focused album,
Here’s an album that likely sounds like a jumbled mess of random instrument noises with a fat singing chipmunk on top of that if you’re not paying enough attention.
:lol
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NNNOOOOOWW IIIIMMM LOOOOOOOOOOSSTTT :metal
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For some reason, I expected that reaction at some point :lol
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Mars Volta is definitely one of the better prog bands. De-Loused is awesome but Frances is slightly better IMO.
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On Sgt Peppers: I mentioned this in my Top 50 list, but that and The Wall are the two albums that have disappointed me the most in my life.
Which isn't to say I didn't like it at all. There are some good songs on there. But after hearing "SGT PEPPERS IS THE GREATEST ALBUM BY THE GREATEST BAND IN HISTORY" since I can remember, it fell miles short of the expectations I had. The experience crushed anything but a mild enthusiasm for the Beatles in me, and the masturbatory superlative-spewing of their fans is now one of my biggest musical pet peeves.
Within You, Without You is also my favourite on the album, and in fact my favourite by the band by a long way.
On Deloused: I prefer both Bedlam and Frances, but Deloused is still really really good. Tira Me... / Drunkship is my favourite part of the album (I originally sampled the album by downloading one song, and it was those two songs in one track, so I think of them as the same piece). After that, Cicatriz (I really like that ambient section) and the first two tracks.
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I have never listened to them, so maybe I'll check this out.
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i dunno, compared to their later albums there's still a strong song focus here and i found it easier to get into, also because it's their best
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Love this album. Inertiatic ESP and Televators are my favorite tracks.
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The Mars Volta are amazing and De-Loused is most definitely my favorite album of theirs, Frances the Mute not too far behind. The frenetic energy and borderline schizophrenic lyrics of theirs has always been appealing to me. Cicatriz ESP remains my favorite TMV track as well.
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I never had much patience to listen to the last two songs of Frances The Mute (I cut start and finish of Miranda and a lot of minutes near the end of Cassandra Gemini when I rarely listen to it), but I really like De-Loused and Bedlam, they are my two favourite albums of them. My favourite songs though are probably Tetragrammaton and Day Of The Baphomets from Amputechture. I quite liked also the last two albums.
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Good, keep the discussion going! Next album is one nobody on DTF has heard.
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I kinda want to be able to prove you wrong but you probably won't be
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Inb4 Images and Words
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Inb4 Images and Words
::)
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Imagio El Wordo
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I told you nobody would know this one. Here's an album of special sentimental significance to me.
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45. Boudewijn de Groot – Voor de Overlevenden (1966)
(https://www.indebanvan.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/voor-de-overlevenden-600px.png)
Here’s an album nobody on DTF has heard, with the exception maybe of a random Dutch person. This is not only the oldest album on the list, but also the only album that’s entirely sung in Dutch. Because I don’t expect many people will hold any interest whatsoever in checking this album out, I’ll keep the write-up relatively short.
Boudewijn de Groot is a Dutch song-writer who, together with lyricist Lennaert Nijgh created a bunch of hit songs and albums. Boudewijn started playing the guitar as a student in the Ducth city of Leiden and is compared to Bob Dylan in style. The ‘Dutch Dylan’ was very popular in his day and age and some of his songs are instantly recognisable to any Dutch person. This album is one of the most important in the history of Dutch music and De Groot’s soft folk/pop music must have appealed to many, for he is still quite popular today. Musically this album isn’t very special, the songs are just ‘nice’, lyrically they’re often brilliant, but this album is on this list mostly for its sentimental value to me.
I can’t imagine anyone apart from some Dutch people wanting to listen to this though, because it’s so much unlike the rest of my list. Add to the lyrics that are sung in a language you can’t understand (and unfortunately, they’re the focal point of this album) and I can imagine this not being something that interests you. Sorry for this rather boring write-up, but I just had to include this album here. So there we have it, apparently my favourite Dutch record.
Favourite song: Testament
Other songs worth checking out: Naast Jou (“Next to You”), Verdronken Vlinder (“Drowned Butterfly”), Lied Voor Een Kind Dat Bang Is In Het Donker (“Song For a Child Who’s Afraid of the Dark”)
Other stuff by this band: I don’t know everything by Boudewijn de Groot, but ‘Hoe Sterk Is de Eenzame Fietser’ (“How Strong is the Lonely Cyclist”) is another excellent record.
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I'd probably end up with a few Czech albums in my top 50 if I made one, so :tup.
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As I figured beforehand, no discussion on that album at all. Let's hope this album sparks some more interest.
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44. Arcade Fire – Funeral (2004)
(https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/blog/484/ba854ac2.jpeg)
My first encounter with Arcade Fire wasn’t very nice. I think I received the song Wake Up in a roulette was and in a round full of random experimental or progressive metal tunes, it didn’t stick with me. Except that I returned to this later and years after that roulette has ended, it would not surprise me if this song is the only track I received in that specific round that I still listen to. Whoever I punished with a low score that round, please take some consolation with the fact that this track is now my favourite on the album.
Arcade Fire were once hailed as a band that could make rock music true to form again and they succeeded to the extent that they are widely known among hipsters and festival goers. At least, that statement is true for where I come from. Dubbed as the second best album released in the 2000’s by Pitchfork (6th in Rolling Stone’s list, both had Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ as #1), this is a special album indeed and, if I may be so bold to state this, one of the best indie albums ever released.
Rather than quote from top-X-lists from websites I don’t read on a regular basis, I’ll try to explain what made me return to this album and what made me love it. There’s probably tons of albums out there that portray raw emotion and produce a sound that resonates as ‘pure’ or ‘authentic’, but this tends to be very hit or miss with me. The infamous Neutral Milk Hotel album many on DTF seem to love can’t seem to interest me at all, yet this album does and it’s not even that much different. ‘Funeral’ features slightly out of tune singing, deliberate ‘bad’ production (although not as apparent as on the NMH album) and not exactly the most showmanship in the songs. It’s those songs however, that make this album great, for they are so well-written.
I had a hard time choosing the other three songs apart from my favourite, but ultimately went with album opener Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels) because of its raw honesty, the album closer In the Backseat for it’s the most laidback track on the album featuring vocals by the only female member of the band and Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out), arguably the most rocking tune on the album. I can recommend not listen to individual tracks here though, but rather to the album in full. It’s a rewarding experience once it (finally) clicks.
Favourite song: Wake Up
Other songs worth checking out: Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels), In the Backseat, Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)
Other stuff by this band: I must say I’m not too familiar with their other stuff. I listened to ‘The Suburbs’ once or twice and I quite liked it. It wasn’t as good as this one, though.
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Never have and probably never will care for Dutch music.
I saw a performance of Arcade Fire on youtube and they seemed like a lot of fun, still need to check out this album.
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Well, that was the only album on my list that's sung in Dutch. To be honest, I rarely even listen to it anymore, but still.
Yes, check out Arcade Fire. And the rest of the top 50 as well.
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Never really got into Arcade Fire. I enjoy some of their songs, but they're nothing special to me, sadly.
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Yeah, that's basically where I am with them. When I checked them out, they sounded good. There's nothing bad I can say about them. But I wasn't interested either.
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A shame, I really like how honest this record sounds.
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You forgot Rebellion (Lies) :P
Great album, and The Suburbs is equally good.
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i gave this a few spins but Power Out was the only song that ever did much for me, still liked the album as a whole thouh
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Funeral is great. :tup Definitely my favorite from Arcade Fire.
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Here's number 43!
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43. Mastodon – Crack the Skye (2009)
(https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3300/3229505779_7deac1fcbb_o.jpg)
I bet that if you put six fans of Mastodon next to each other and ask them what their favourite record of theirs is, you could get six different answers. Although Mastodon’s sound has definitely changed over the years (you might also say ‘evolved’), there’s no denying that their output has always been very consistent. You could say the band’s debut is the weakest link, because back then the band was still finding their sound and experimenting with different stuff, although you can already here on the record the blueprints for what would become the Mastodon we know today.
‘Blood Mountain’ was the first Mastodon record I heard, thanks to a guitar magazine I read in 2007 that had a feature on this album when it was just released. It’s one of the first CDs I ever bought, and it sparked my interest in this band. Naturally I was excited when two years later the band released a new album. ‘Crack the Skye’ was highly regarded among music critics and generally received good reviews. This is the band’s most progressive and technical album to date and that’s probably why I like it the most out of their output.
This album has some sort of mystical vibe to it throughout every track, but is pretty heavy throughout. The album is based on a story, like ‘Blood Mountain’ and part of it has to do with the suicide of drummer Brann Dailor’s sister, Skye. There’s also some weird spacy stuff going on with Russia and astral travel (look it up on Wikipedia, the story makes no sense whatsoever). Musically though, this album is quite different from other Mastodon album. The first three tracks are relatively similar in style to the songs on ‘Blood Mountain’, but after that it gets different. On the two longer tracks, The Czar and the album closer The last Baron the band actively experiments with elements of other genres and different song structures. Especially in the latter, the band shows they can write an amazing progressive metal tune as well and as an album closer it works fantastically.
The heaviest song on record is probably the album’s title-track, which is a true exercise in sludge metal and arguably one of the heaviest songs the band has ever recorded. Paired with the space-rock section in The Czar or some parts of the album closer, this album shows a lot of variety, much more so than on their other albums. That’s probably why I like this one more than their other albums. This truly is a great album and one I can definitely recommend to any fan of heavy progressive metal, although they could be somewhat of an acquired taste.
Favourite song: The Last Baron
Other songs worth checking out: Crack the Skye, Oblivion, The Czar
Other stuff by this band: All their albums are awesome in their own rights. Though they never went as progressive as on this one, the previously released ‘ Blood Mountain’ comes closest, though that one isn’t universally liked (I love it, it’s my second favourite by them). ‘Leviathan’ gets the most praise, it’s probably their heaviest. I really love their 2014 album ‘Once More ‘Round the Sun’ as well.
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I've always liked Mastodon but never really loved them, this is definitely their best tho
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Really love Mastodon, but this has always been my least fav album from them along with The Hunter.
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Really? Why is that? I think The Hunter is weaker as well, but I love Crack the Skye.
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Without a doubt my favorite of theirs. I had it on #2 on my list, awesome album :tup
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That's a great album! I only like OMRTS more :azn:
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Without a doubt my favorite of theirs. I had it on #2 on my list, awesome album :tup
I know, I saw that :)
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Never really got into Mastodon. I enjoyed Blood Mountain and Leviathan alright, but everything else was fairly meh.
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Here's the next one! :)
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42. Caligula’s Horse – Bloom (2015)
(https://caligulashorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BLOOM-Teaser-V1-640x640.png)
Here’s a very recent record and I kind-of find it hard to justify its placement in this top 50, above albums I have heard and known for far longer. There’s also not a lot to say about this band, other than that they re-ignited my interest for progressive metal to a certain extent. This band uses aspects of other bands in such ways and proportions that the song-writing feels very concise. Caligula’s Horse are a band that have been on my radar for a while, mostly because of their insane output. The band was formed in early 2011 and released their debut in April of that same year. By now they have three albums out and they just keep getting better.
On this album, all of the tracks are simply very good. It’s hard to pick favourites, but the way this album opens with the amazing one-two punch of Bloom, segueing directly into [/i]Marigold[/i] is one of the best moments in recent progressive metal, if I may say such things. This band has got it all. Strong riffs (Marigold), great choruses, as the shorter track Rust showcases.
All in all, this album is a relatively standard progressive metal record, with not that much special stuff going on, to be honest. What makes this album good is that it for some reason feels fresh. There’s something about this album’s production that makes every sound really clear and defined. I don’t really know to be honest. On some record I have a lot to say, on other’s less, because I simply like them. This is one of those, check it out, it’s good stuff.
Favourite song: Bloom/Marigold
Other songs worth checking out: Rust, Turntail, Dragonfly
Other stuff by this band: Both ‘Moments From Ephemeral City’ (2011) and ‘The Tide, The Thief & River’s End’ (2013) are great albums and show roughly the same style. I prefer the latter, this band just gets better with every album.
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I heard whole album only once and I liked it. First two songs more than once, both are fantastic.
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Bloom/Marigold is easily my favorite. Honestly I can't even listen to them separately anymore, the transition between those songs is probably my favorite part of the whole album. After those two and Rust it's pretty hard for me to choose favorites, but it's a very consistent record.
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wouldn't rate this one over The Tide, The Thief, and River's End (which was like just outside of my top 10 on my first top 50 list to be fair :lol) but it's definitely quite good
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I still don't know the songs of their debut album, at first impact it seems to me not as great as the other two. The Tide and Bloom are fantastic, both of them would be in my hypothetical top 50. My favourites are Bloom + Marigold, Dragonfly and Daughter Of The Mountain
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:corn
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What does that even mean? :|
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Just me waiting for an album I know or like :P
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Just me waiting for an album I know or like :P
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Crack the Skye is pretty good. Not one of my all time favorites but very enjoyable.
I think I listened to Bloom maybe once or twice and thought it was fairly solid. It peaked enough interest in me to revisit it at some point.
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I said I would do two albms a day, and I'm a man of my word, so here's the next one:
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41. The Dandy Warhols – Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia (2000)
(https://cdn2.thelineofbestfit.com/media/2013/06/Dandy-Warhols-Thirteen_Tales_from_Urban_Bohemia.jpg)
The Dandy Warhols instantly rose to fame when their track Bohemian Like You was featured in a Vodafone advertisement. I don’t why or how, but the CD this song was on (this one) appeared in my mother’s CD drawer and I was exposed to the sounds of The Dandy Warhols. I’ll be honest that I can’t remember a thing about this though, but years later when looking for new music to listen to, I found this CD and ripped it to my computer to listen to this while on the road. And I loved what I heard.
This is not an album to listen to if you want to listen to some intense stuff, I have other albums on this list for that purpose. This is further amplified by the fact that the first three tracks, Godless, Mohammed and Nietzsche start relatively slow, although they get progressively ‘heavier’ for as far as you can even call it ‘heavy’. On this album most of the songs segue into each-other, and the full thing therefore feels like a journey through different parts of the weird world of indie-rock. Although I’m labelling it as such, it sounds in no way like the Arcade Fire record placed 3 spots lower.
To draw further comparisons to that album, since I suck at accurate describe what something sounds like in written text, the best thing I can do is to simply state that if you’re intrigued, that you should listen to this album. This album is a full experience, and although Bohemian Like You is an obvious radio-friendly single (hence its use in the Vodafone advertisement), I think it’s actually one of the weaker tracks on the album, so don’t be biased if you only know that track. This album opens very strongly with the aforementioned triple-punch, but there’s a bunch of gems further on in the album. Though I think this might not be everybody’s cup of tea here on DTF, I felt an inclusion was appropriate nonetheless, for I really like this album.
Favourite song: Nietzsche
Other songs worth checking out: Mohammed, Solid, Country Leaver
Other stuff by this band: This is literally the only album I’ve ever heard from them. I never had the incentive to check out more of their stuff, so I can't comment here at all.
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I can't update today, because my band is playing a gig (same festival as Leprous & Voyager :) ), so I'll be out all day. I'll be back tomorrow with my 2-albums-a-day schedule.
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I can't update today, because my band is playing a gig (same festival as Leprous & Voyager :) ), so I'll be out all day. I'll be back tomorrow with my 2-albums-a-day schedule.
That's awesome Rich. Knock 'em dead.
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Really? Why is that? I think The Hunter is weaker as well, but I love Crack the Skye.
Just never did it for me like their old stuff.
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Boudewijn de Groot :tup
Crack the Skye is amazing, one of my all-time favourites I think.
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Next one, sorry it took a while.
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40. Eisley – The Valley (2007)
(https://mezzic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/eisley_the-valley_cover-large.jpg)
Occasionally, I am a sucker for female vocals, especially in a poppy setting like on this album. This is one of the less diverse albums on my list, because most songs sound incredibly similar and are in the same style. That said, every song is unique, because this band has more than one vocalist.
Eisley is a Texan indie pop/rock band that consists of 5 family members, three sisters on guitars and keyboards and their brother on drums. They have their male cousin on bass guitar. All three girls sing in the band and write the majority of the songs. Most songs are based on catchy vocal lines and the occasional vocal harmonisation. What this band does isn’t all that interesting from a technical standpoint, but as an easy-listening catchy indie pop album it’s great.
Call this a guilty pleasure or whatever, for this sure as hell is not the most fitting album compared to the rest of my list, but I really like this album every once in a while. Although there’s probably similar material out there, to me this band has a pronounced style, however interesting or uninteresting it may be.
Favourite song: Mr. Moon
Other songs worth checking out: Kind, Sad, The Valley
Other stuff by this band: Both ‘Room Noises’ and ‘Combinations’ are albums I can recommend. The band follows the same style on all albums, choosing one over the other is simply a preference for the songs, as stylistically they are fairly identical.
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Great band! :tup
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Returning tomorrow with the usual 2-albums-per-day. Promised! I had a very hectic couple of days, but from tomorrow on, stuff should be smooth again. First now, number 39!
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39. Sublime – Sublime (1996)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/94/Sublime_Self-Titled.jpg)
This is the first album I ever got. It was given to me by a friend of my mother’s, who probably didn’t realise that some of the lyrics on this album were far too messed up for a 12-13 year old. The song Seed about, yes, seed, is a good example of this, as well as the hilariously correctly titled Wrong Way. I can understand not many people having seen this album before, or maybe never even having heard of the band Sublime. They were a ska-punk band and one of the most important bands in the development of that genre.
What you hear on this album is thus a combination of ska, reggae (to some extent) and punk-rock. The result is a fairly unique style of music that other bands of the scene have tried to emulate, but never came quite as close to. The band’s self-titled record is often regarded as their best and I have to agree on this. The album contains 17 tracks and all of those are awesome. The tracks range from straight op punk-rock songs (Paddle Out) to laidback ska (April 29, 1992 (Miami)) to Jimi Hendrix inspired rock (Under My Voodoo) and everything in between (Seed blends ska and punk geniously, as does Burritos).
There’s really no way to describe this album without giving every single track its own line, but in order to make this write-up too long, I won’t do that. The best known song on this album is probably Santeria, a track that even got some commercial success. It’s likely the most accessible track on an album that’s so different from track to track, even though none of the music is particularly ‘difficult’ to listen to. If you wanna try something else completely, I’d say you should give this album a try.
Favourite song: Seed
Other songs worth checking out: Get Ready, Wrong Way, Santeria
Other stuff by this band: I wanted to name 6 tracks above instead of just 3. There’s no way to do this band’s diversity justice by just naming a couple. This eponymous album is considered their masterpiece, but ‘ Robbin’ The Hood’ has some nice tunes on it as well.
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Here's number 38!
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38. Alice in Chains – Dirt (1992)
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PusQYuEhTBA/UaVj-NVRpFI/AAAAAAAAAag/lpJx4-oT9Vg/s1600/Alice_In_Chains-Dirt-Frontal.jpg)
‘Dirt’ by Alice in Chains is one of the highlights of the grunge era, if I may say so. Certainly it’s the band’s best known album, featuring some of their well-known songs, like Rooster, Them Bones and arguably their most popular tune Would?. This album has also been very influential to the subgenre of sludge metal, a fusion genre between doom metal and hardcore punk. You can for instance clearly hear where Mastodon took their inspiration from for their first couple of albums. My bet is that they’ve heard this record tons of times.
This is a very dark album, especially compared to other grunge-like albums released at the same time, like Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’, Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ and Soundgarden’s ‘Superunknown’. I’d say this album has more of a metal influence to it, apparent in the down-tuned guitar of the album’s opening track, but also in the way the riffs and songs are structured.
Every once in a while I get the intense urge to listen to this album, back to front. This albums sets a dark mood, through the sounds in the music, but also in the lyrics. With lyrics about mortality, anger, judgement, but also about stuff like drug usage, this album is brooding throughout. Considering the band’s singer Layne Staley would later die of drug overdose, this album could be seen as a dark foreboder of his death. Reading back on what I read, I think the music speaks for itself the most here, with the setting of a mood on this record being its major force of attraction.
Favourite song: Would?
Other songs worth checking out: Dirt, Them Bones, Rooster
Other stuff by this band: Their self-titled record is good, as is ‘Facelift’. After singer Layne Staley died, the band recorded two new albums with a different singer (10 years later), of those two I can recommend ‘Black Gives Way to Blue’ more than the other. I’m biased, but none of it really comes close to ‘Dirt’ in my opinion.
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I like this album :tup Down in the hole is my favorite song from Dirt but every song is great.
About influence on Mastodon, I think Melvins were their biggest inspiration and they are sludier version of AiC's grunge so I can see they liked AiC, too.
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I think you're right there, yes. I don't know the Melvins as well, but the point was mainly that this type of heavy grunge obviously served as an inspiration for sludge metal, including Mastodon.
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The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is the best AIC album by far.
Dirt is okay, because it has Would? and Them Bones. I never really liked the other albums much.
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Definitely the best AiC album, and a classic!
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Definitely the best AiC album, and a classic!
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Probably my least favorite album with Layne (AiC is my favorite, and great EP Jar of Flies)
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Dirt is the best album from Alice In Chains IMO. The self-titled and Facelift are not on the same level, and even if I did not listen to them much to judge, I don't think I will appreciate those two as Dirt. Instead, I liked both the two recent albums, their comeback was great, unlike the one of my other favourite grunge band Soundgarden!
Rain When I Die is another great song, plus the other mentioned in the thread and comments.
The titletrack Dirt has some really dark lyrics. I normally don't understand lyrics and fortunately I managed to do it when I listen to this song, and that is a reason why it's certainly one of my favourites.
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:corn
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^ what does that even mean? :lol
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sacul must obsessively comment on every album post but he's never listened to this one so he has nothing to say
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Sacul should just delete that enormous 'to-check spreadsheet' and listen to AiC's Dirt.
:corn
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Thanks for all the endorsements on 'Dirt'. Here's a completely different album, one that's much darker, even though it sounds brighter. An album with very poetic, albeit mostly unintelligible lyrics. The ultimate break-up record, the fantastic:
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37. Converge – Jane Doe (2001)
(https://fanart.tv/api/download.php?type=download&image=29400§ion=2)
Here’s a little secret that I probably shouldn’t be too proud of considering this albums placement in my top 50: the total amount of times that I have listened to this album in full, front to back, is probably less than ten. That is considerably less than all other albums on this list. The reason for this is mainly that it’s basically too much for me to handle. I think this is by far the most heavy album on the entire list and the most exhaustive one to get through. That said, I do not think I really need another album like this either, one is more than enough.
So, what is this then? ‘Jane Doe’ is the apparent masterpiece of post-hardcore/mathcore band Converge. Stating that feels rather weird, considering I can’t judge whether that is true, for I have no comparison material, but I’ll just assume it as it is. As stated, this album is heavy, and very much so, but it’s not heavy in a sense that it’s full of muddied guitars that play sort-of heavy riffs (‘Holy Mountain’ by the band Sleep comes to mind as an album that tries to be heavy, but fails in my opinion, even though it definitely grooves). In fact, this album sounds a lot ‘tinnier’, for lack of a better word, than a lot of other metal albums. The strangely titled Heaven in her Arms is a great example of that, containing riffs that would be mixed very differently were they played by a different band.
Partly the music this band plays adds a lot to this sound, the riffs they play are actually very technical and intricate and provide the perfect backdrop for the (often distorted) screeching vocals. Those vocals aren’t even layered on top of the instrumentation, but fit in perfectly with the angry guitars and drums. It’s almost as if vocalist Jacob Bannon does not consider his vocals to be above the instruments, but as an instrument in itself. The album opener, the blisteringly fast Concucine, is a great example of that.
To say that this album is heavy all the way through would be wrong, the album has relative ‘soft-spots’, with the verses of Distance and Meaning, the brooding and groovy Hell to Pay, the entire rather laid-back Phoenix in Flight and large parts of the album’s title-track and album closer Jane Doe. ‘Jane Doe’ (the album) mixes different aspects and different interpretations of pure musical anger into a very cohesive whole. One that could definitely be too much to handle at first – and granted, I can not listen to this album all the time – but it’s a perfect album to blow off some steam with.
Favourite song: Jane Doe
Other songs worth checking out: Thaw, Concubine, Phoenix in Flight
Other stuff by this band: Another secret; due to the nature of this band’s music and my satisfaction of already having one album like this, I never really gave any of their other albums a chance, apart from the odd song here or there, so I can’t really comment on this one.
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yeah I've tried listening to this but as someone who never really has a use for angry, constantly loud music it didn't do much for me
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Jane Doe should be much higher, would be top10 for me definitely
Also you need to check out their other albums. One of the most consistent bands out there
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I really have to be on that pissed off mood to enjoy this record, but when I do, it's :hefdaddy
yeah I've tried listening to this but as someone who never really has a use for angry, constantly loud music it didn't do much for me
Probably why you didn't like The Fragile :P
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i never even listened to the second disc iirc
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It's a bit calmer, more experimental.
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I never could finish the title track, let alone the album. That said, I never truly understood how people could enjoy certain music more if they're angry. I think of it more like high-energy vs. low-energy music, and the high energy stuff doesn't necessarily have to be angry for me.
as someone who never really has a use for angry, constantly loud music it didn't do much for me
Maybe this would explain it.
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Jane Doe should be much higher, would be top10 for me definitely
Also you need to check out their other albums. One of the most consistent bands out there
I can see why you would say that and I can also see this album moving up a lot higher later, but I couldn't justify a much higher placement, because it's not an album I'm overly familiar with. That said, I know it quite well, but there's albums up higher that have done more for me. I love what I hear though, so as I said, next time it would likely be higher. By the way, there's a similar angry/fucked-up album much higher in the list, I can give you that.
If I were to check out Converge further, what would be good records to start with?
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I never could finish the title track, let alone the album. That said, I never truly understood how people could enjoy certain music more if they're angry. I think of it more like high-energy vs. low-energy music, and the high energy stuff doesn't necessarily have to be angry for me.
as someone who never really has a use for angry, constantly loud music it didn't do much for me
Maybe this would explain it.
I relate to this perspective on music, though I can't say I'm familiar with this album. Certainly doesn't seem like my kind of thing, anyway.
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oh man you would hate it
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I don't think the Converge album is meant for everybody. Bu then again, what music is?
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I listened to Jane Doe maybe two times (in full) and my favorite parts were slower atmospheric parts. So, not really my thing...
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Perhaps the fact you rank Converge higher than Beyond the Bridge explains why got eliminated from my roulette so quickly. :D
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If I were to check out Converge further, what would be good records to start with?
I think their latest (All We Love We Leave Behind) or the one before that, Axe to Fall would be great albums to move forward with. But apart from their debut, everything from Petitioning the Empty Sky and forward is really good.
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Perhaps the fact you rank Converge higher than Beyond the Bridge explains why got eliminated from my roulette so quickly. :D
Nah. Here's an album you like though.
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36. Ayreon – The Human Equation (2004)
(https://www.revelationz.net/images/covers/mc/AyreonTheHumanEquation1321_f.jpg)
I can already hear Evermind screaming that this album is placed (way) too low, as well as contest the songs chosen as favourites below. On the first list I made, I had this album at #13 and the reason that it’s placed this much lower now is probably because it’s on its way out of the top 50. Not that I don’t like this album anymore, but I have kind-of grown out of progressive metal album, especially long-winded concept albums like this one.
That said, it’s not a bad album at all and I have heard this thing in full countless times, although the last time I listened to this was probably 2 years ago. ‘The Human Equation’ is a concept album with multiple vocalists, including James LaBrie, Mikael Åkerfeldt and Devin Townsend, portraying different emotions and characters. The result is a rather complex story, that can easily be summarised in two sentences: man is in coma. Man has psychological rebirth through revisiting important parts of his previous life.
This album contains twenty tracks, spread out over 2 disks, and every song-title is made up of three words: “Day (1-20): ‘word’”. Every single track contains more than one vocalist, with the exception of the album’s only instrumental piece, Day Nine: Playground. The vocalists are used pretty perfectly for what they do and as such, there’s a couple of growls in the songs Devin Townsend sings on (Day Three: Pain and Day Sixteen: Loser and the Åkerfeldt tracks (most notably Day Twelve: Trauma). The rest of the album is fairly ‘standard’ progressive rock/metal, which is kind-of an oxymoron in itself, but whatever.
Arjen Lucassen’s style is very distinct though and as such, this album can be very hit or miss; don’t like his use of flutes and wacky keyboard sound choices? Not your thing. Easily turned off by lyrics in ‘bad’ English (granted, on this album it’s not as bad as on others)? This will make you cringe. Can’t stand song-structures used in popular music? Look further. All in all though, I would say that this is a very solid effort, an album containing a bunch of amazing tunes. It’s a shame I have grown fond of other styles of music more, but I remember a time when I thoroughly enjoyed every second of this album. I had to include it here, because leaving it out would make me feel bad. Consider this album’s placement as a testament to great progressive music.
Favourite song: Day Three: Pain
Other songs worth checking out: Day Twenty: Confrontation, Day Eleven: Love, Day Twelve: Trauma
Other stuff by this band: As far as Ayreon goes, you can’t really go wrong with any album, although some might say ‘1011001’ is inferior to the rest. Personally, I’m a fan of both ‘Universal Migrator’ albums. Others swear by ‘The Theory of Everything’. Just go for it if you like what you hear, the man has a distinctive style that can be heard on all his records.
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I can already hear Evermind screaming that this album is placed (way) too low,
*ME* too. 34 spots too low in my opinion. But hey, dem's tastes for ya.
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I can already hear Evermind screaming that this album is placed (way) too low,
34 spots too low in my opinion.
Exactly.
And Pain is a nice song, definitely not my favourite though. Verses are great, but the chorus is one of those rare things I'm not too fond of on this album. I've got to say it was killer in a live setting though, with both growls and Mike Mills belting out those shrill incredible high notes.
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Great album! Pain is a fantastic song, it's chorus is probably my favourite part on the album. I really liked seeing this performed live in theatre :angel:
I don't know a lot of the other albums on this list so far, but I am definitely going to check some out, some sound really promising!
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i think ayreon is a pretty cool guy, eh make good music and doesn't afraid of anything
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Great album and for me Arjen's best effort under the Ayreon name.
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There was only one time that I could listen to Jane Doe and it was because I had gotten in a particularly bad fight with someone I cared for and I was really angry. I've never been able to understand the album like that again because I only ever get that angry about once every couple years. So I guess I'm glad to say that I haven't listened to it more than five times. :lol
Trying to listen, under normal circumstances, I think you're right--the album is way 'too much' for me too.
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i think ayreon is a pretty cool guy, eh make good music and doesn't afraid of anything
I love this meme. Arby 'n' Chief pulled it off perfectly.
This album is easily top 10 material for me, so yes, it is way too low. :biggrin:
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I'm ok with its position, and definitely agree with the first paragraph :tup
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Didn't even appreciate Ayreon at the peak of my prog fanboyness, but I expect a lot of prog in this list so not surprised.. :P
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Didn't even appreciate Ayreon at the peak of my prog fanboyness, but I expect a lot of prog in this list so not surprised.. :P
There is some more prog coming, yeah.
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I guess Ayreon is not for me, listened to THE three times but still.. nothing. And I'm a pretty big prog fan overall.
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I'm ok with its position, and definitely agree with the first paragraph :tup
but I have kind-of grown out of progressive metal album, especially long-winded concept albums like this one.
I don't think you can call it "growth". I mean, you started to like an excellent album less and less, it's not growth. :biggrin:
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I don't known then; my tastes changed I guess :biggrin:
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I used to like THE more... but it is still decent, especially first part.
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Of all the Ayreon albums, I've only heard THE, 01011001 and The Theory of Everything. THE is the only one I own and really like. Haven't heard the rest but 01011001 was cool but not really my style and pretty cheesy and I just never got into TToE. I have to say, although the lyrics are pretty bad the story as a whole is really cool.
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number 35 is incoming..
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35. Flaming Row – Elinoire (2011)
(https://images.cdbaby.name/f/l/flamingrow_large.jpg?v=03e2f465-1327-46a6-b48a-9a22a22eea73)
Two concept albums in a row!? Yes, we have reached the short prog corner of my top 50 and a brilliant one at that. ‘Elinoire’ is one of the better discoveries I had in 2013 (thanks a bunch, Chad! Don’t be mad at the ‘low’ placement) and an awesome album overall. Flaming Row is the brainchild of guitarist and all-round multi-instrumentalist Martin Schnella, who we know of.. nothing else entirely, but he manages to bring along a bunch of awesome people on this almost 80-minute, 17-track record. Among the people playing on this record are the amazing Gary Wehrkamp and Brendt Allman from Shadow Gallery and a bunch of people you have likely never heard of.
Similarly to the Ayreon album, this album features a ton of vocalists who all portray a different character. Where the singers on the Ayreon album all depicted a certain emotion, on ‘Elinoire’ the singers portray more abstract concepts, such as Spirit, Past, Liberty and Time, among some key characters in the storyline. There is a story to this album, but the lyrics leave it rather vague what actually happens, but it has something to do with infidelity, a mother dying at the birth of her daughter Elinoire and some background with a grandfather – I simply do not know.
That said, even though the lyrics are probably important to the story, in some cases they are unintelligible, because there are multiple vocalists singing at the same time (Initiation Fugato) and there’s a couple of screams here and there on the album. Also, this album features some very bad English, which I won’t share here (‘my camouflage is uncovered now’, sorry I did it anyway, but there’s more than just this line), so let’s just assume that the lyrics are not the focal point of the album.
On the music itself then! Yes, this is what we’re here for, because all of it is gorgeous. Featuring an abundance of different music styles, ranging from heavy metal, to rock, to jazzy parts and even funk and country, this album goes a lot of different directions without ever losing track of its core sound; a rather dark blend of relatively low-pitched vocals and clearly audible guitars. Among the album’s 17 tracks there’s so many highlights, that my picks for songs down here could differ the next day, because there’s much different stuff on there. Tracks like the brooding Lea’s Delivery or the powerful prog-tune Unearth the Truth didn’t even get a mention, but the truth of it is really that all of it is amazing. True to form, the album is held together by recurring musical themes, as well as the odd lyrics here and there. The highlight of this album’s music for me will have to be the amazing guitar playing throughout though; there’s not a bad note to be found and the sounds are huge. Massive props to Brendt Allman’s closing guitar solo on the album’s final song, my favourite song on the record as well, but Mr. Schnella knows his way around the instrument too. And he shows it. Looking for some very interesting, contemporary progressive metal that goes some unexpected places without losing its catchiness and likeability? Check this one out.
Favourite song: A Place to Review Your Soul
Other songs worth checking out: Time Mirror, Elinoire, Rage of Despair
Other stuff by this band: Flaming Row released ‘Mirage – A Portrayal of Figures’ in 2014, which is awesome as well. It’s got some songs on it that are better than some moments on ‘Elinoire’ (Journey to the Afterlife may well be my favourite Flaming Row song), but overall, it’s a little less consistent. Both albums are amazing though.
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:corn
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Yes... WAY too low. 35 spots too low. While THE is my #2 album of ALL-TIME, Elinoire (which is the name of my iPhone, btw :lol), is my #1 album discovery of the last 15 years, and topped my Top 50v2. I get what you say about the lyrics, and there's a 1/2 dozen or so of those moments, but I chalk it up to weak German:English translation skills.
Flawless album. Now I know what I'm listening to on my flight home tonight.
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:neverusethis:
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And Pain is a nice song, definitely not my favourite though. Verses are great, but the chorus is one of those rare things I'm not too fond of on this album. I've got to say it was killer in a live setting though, with both growls and Mike Mills belting out those shrill incredible high notes.
Really? That's quite interesting. The chorus to Pain is one of my favorite parts of the whole album. And I would absolutely pick it out as one of the top songs.
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evermind doesn't like it because of the growls :lol
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I think it doesn't fit with the dark atmosphere of the song.
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:corn
:neverusethis:
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Elinoire is great. :tup
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This album needs no intriduction.
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34. Yes – Close to the Edge (1972)
(https://soundbard.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/YES-CLOSE-TO-THE-EDGE-COVER-ART.jpg)
What can I say that has not yet been written on this album? This is one of the shortest albums on the entire list as it runs at under 40 minutes. With just three tracks on here, this is surely a progressive rock record, and a damn fine one at that. The album’s three songs are pretty similar in style and feature some of Yes’ finest moments. Often regarded as one of their best efforts, it’s certainly an album to be reckoned with.
Starting off the album is the centrepiece and by far the longest track on the album, the title track. Close to the Edge is probably my favourite Yes song and due to its length it contains this album’s finest moments. After a very weird intro of which I still sometimes wonder how the hell they composed that, the proper track begins, a very melodic and progressive masterpiece featuring outstanding performances from all band members. The second track, And You And I is another classic by Yes and is a little slower than the title track. The album closer is probably among the most under-appreciated songs in Yes’ catalogue. Siberian Kathru is a rather funky song, based on a couple of repeating riffs. It’s a very nice upbeat closer to the album,but considering the strength of the first two tracks, it’s easy to see how this track receives less praise.
So, that’s that. It’s undeniable that Yes had a great impact as a band on the progressive rock scene and this album is a great example of that. From the blistering bass lines by Chris Squire (RIP), to the fantastic guitar playing by Steven Howe, Rick Wakeman’s keyboard wizardry and Bill Bruford’s tight drums to Jon Anderson’s characteristic vocal lines, this is an album that will go down as one of the most important in the history of progressive rock, and rightfully so.
Favourite song: Close to the Edge
Other songs worth checking out: And You And I, Siberian Kathru
Other stuff by this band: While this one is my favourite, the band released other great stuff in their ‘classic’ period. I can definitely recommend ‘Fragile’ (my second favourite by them) and if you’re more into prog-wankery go for ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans’ or ‘Relayer’.
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:corn
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:corn
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Oh my god stop it :lol
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Yeah, this album's kind of one of the best ever made.
I don't really see how Tales is "wankery" though. To me, that suggests shredding solos, in which case it's about the least wanky of Yes' albums. Tales is all "how about keyboard soundscapes or tribal drumming and chanting for the next 5 minutes".
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You had this one in your top 10 right?
I said that about Tales mainly because it's so much less accessible and will probably be seen as 'wankery' or 'going nowhere' by both prog-fans and people not interested in the genre alike. I read that Yes got a huge backlash after Tales, just because the music was so outlandish for that time.
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Close To The Edge is a masterpiece, nothing more needs to be said.
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Yeah, I think CTTE was Top 10. If not, about there somewhere.
We're probably on the same wavelength with Tales. I like the idea of recommending people check out both a more accessible work of theirs, and one of their more out there experimental albums to get a taste of both. I just associate the word wankery with virtuosic shreddy solo sections, which are pretty much completely absent on Tales.
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Perfection. Top 10 material for me.
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Top 5 for me.
Hard to imagine anything in this world more beautiful than And You and I
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Really, really good. I'm becoming quite a big Yes fan, don't think Tales is that good either, I love The Gates Of Delirium, which doesn't seem to be a popular opinion, and I really love Close To The Edge, which is.
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i'm familiar with about 75% of this album and the title track is definitely fantastic
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This one's about 34 places too low.
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I can't please everybody I guess, sorry :/
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saying something is "X places too low" where X is its ranking implies that you want it to be #0 on the list btw, it's really getting on my nerves
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I can't please everybody I guess, sorry :/
It's all good bro. We all know that Overhaul will be #1.
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I can't please everybody I guess, sorry :/
It's all good bro. We all know that Overhaul will be #1.
:lol and it should! In a tanktop!
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I don't usually wear that though :lol
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33. David Bowie – Hunky Dory (1971)
(https://images.rapgenius.com/a3e30f7e7fa1b1bf0dbab2ae5ea7e730.1000x1000x1.jpg)
I was truly shocked when the news hit that David Bowie had died at the beginning of this year. I can’t really say that I’m huge fan of his, considering I haven’t heard all his records, nor did I know what the guys was up to lately, but there’s a couple of his albums that I really like and this is one of them.
Certainly one of the more ‘unique’ albums on my list, at least in the sense that stylistically this is rather different from all albums thus far, nor does anything from the remainder of this list sound alike. David Bowie proves on this album that he is a very good songwriter, as shown in the differences between the album’s 11 tracks. Featuring the great late Mick Ronson on guitar, Bowie’s go-to axeman, as well as Yes pianist Rick Wakeman behind the keys and David Bowie himself on lots of different instruments, including the saxophone, this album surely has some great musicianship.
Every track here is good, but my favourite track has to be Life on Mars?, in my opinion one of the better songs ever written. The chorus to Quicksand is also a highlight of the album, featuring a bunch of diminished chords that left young guitarists in the 70’s wondering what the hell happened when they tried to figure out the chords by ear. Furthermore, the album is quite diverse, with for instance the rocking Queen Bitch, but also containing the far more laid-back ballad Eight Line Poem.
While I would like to say that this is David Bowie’s masterpiece, that would not be fair, as I haven’t heard all of his material. Of the stuff I have heard though, the songs on ‘Hunky Dory’ are among my favourites. The album has great flow, though it might sound dated due to its oldness. Give it a chance though, the song-writer is nothing short of superb,
Favourite song: Life on Mars?
Other songs worth checking out: Quicksand, Song for Bob Dylan, Changes
Other stuff by this band: If you want stuff similar in style, go for either ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars’ or ‘Aladdin Sane’. Both are great records in every way. Later on in his career, Bowie released records in very different styles as well. I’m not the greatest Bowie connoisseur, but the chart on this page (https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/01/bye-bye-spaceboy) gives a good example of what to expect.
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:tup on the last 2 updates
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:neverusethis:
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Close to the Edge is really good but I might prefer Fragile. It's a coin toss but Fragile has Roundabout and Heart of the Sunrise which are probably the two best Yes-songs IMO, but also some filler tracks.
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Close to the Edge is a spectacular record. Groundbreaking and more massive than a 37-minute album really has any right to be.
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saying something is "X places too low" where X is its ranking implies that you want it to be #0 on the list btw, it's really getting on my nerves
Close to the Edge is just that good, bro.
Also, this:
Close to the Edge is a spectacular record. Groundbreaking and more massive than a 37-minute album really has any right to be.
As for Hunky Dory, that's a fantastic record. Life on Mars? might be my favorite Bowie track and honestly one of my favorite songs ever.
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As for Hunky Dory, that's a fantastic record. Life on Mars? might be my favorite Bowie track and honestly one of my favorite songs ever.
Yeah, that applies to me as well! :tup
Here's a double album!
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32. Jolly – The Audio Guide to Happiness (2012 & 2013)
(https://images.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/31450507/max_h-1000+max_w-1000/Audio_Guide_1_Cover.jpg)(https://images.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/91117142/max_h-1000+max_w-1000/Audio_Guide_2_Cover.jpg)
I know, this is borderline cheating, but I really view these two albums as one. They even share the same title and both continue in the same style. When I saw the band at ProgPower Europe 2014, they played the entire two discs front to back and it was glorious. So what is this? Basically, these guys get put in the same boat at progressive metal bands, but what they do is far more subtle. I wouldn’t really say they’re any more progressive than your average alternative metal band, although they are far better than that.
I think this band’s sound could be described best as ‘pop metal’, but not in the sense Devin Townsend does it on ‘Addicted’. It’s rather more straight-forward, without all the unnecessary extra layers. The core sound is mainly guitars, drums and bass, although the band puts the keyboards to good use as well. The result is a ridiculously catchy (double-)album, as tunes like Joy and Lucky showcase. Actually, I think the comparison to Devin Townsend’s music isn’t even all that weird; Townsend likes to create huge walls of sound and Jolly does that too, to a certain extent. Arguably the heaviest track on both disks, Firewell showcases this exactly, and brilliantly at that. The band shows they can be very subtle as well, on tracks such as Storytime and As Heard on Tape.
Overall, this is ‘just’ an album chock-full of very good tracks, all of which are very catchy. Driven mainly by the heavy guitar sounds and vocals of frontman Anadale, the album is definitely based on around the guitar. The result is an album that features tons of great riffs, backed by keyboard sounds to fill the sound spectrum, all while never losing catchiness. Oh, and I must say I love the seemingly random cartoon noises in some tracks. Very goofy, very jolly.
Favourite song: Where Everything’s Perfect
Other songs worth checking out: Firewell, The Grand Utopia, The Pattern
Other stuff by this band: I don’t think these guys have released anything but these two albums, but if they have, I haven’t heard it.
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They have released another album before that one but I didn't listen to it. It's called Forty Six Minutes, Twelve Seconds Of Music.
I totally agree on the "other songs worth checking out" and maybe one of those three could be my favourite
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I've never heard of this before, but it definitely sounds like something I should check out.
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this is on my "to get eventually" list so I'm not yet familiar with anything except the one song :lol
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Solid enough albums, there's just so damn much of it :lol
I freaking love Firewell, never heard anything quite like it.
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31. The Ocean – Pelagial (2013)
(https://pelagic-records.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/The_Ocean_Pelagial_cover.jpg)
In 2013, the albums I listened to most were this one, Karniool’s ‘Asymmetry’, ‘The Mountain’ by Haken and ‘Impermanent Resonance’ by James LaBrie. I think this one might actually have received the most plays, mainly on drives through the dark. For some reason, I recall borrowing my dad’s car all summer in 2013 and this CD was on basically all the time.
What we have here is an album that’s musically a journey into the depths of the ocean, with the music getting more and more intense, less melodic and darker with every subsequent track, whilst the lyrics tell a story of a journey into the psyche. A mixture of psychological weirdness and musical ocean-diving, apparently. The Ocean released this album in two versions; one version with vocals, and a completely instrumental one. To me, the version with vocals blows the instrumental one out of the water (ha. ha.), but I can imagine that if you’re not fond of growls, the instrumental one would be more to your liking. The band apparently recorded the entire album with the entire of leaving out the vocals, but the vocalist stepped in to deliver vocals anyway. The band then toured without vocals – and I even saw them live playing the entire album in full, instrumentally.
The Ocean play a modern blend of progressive metal, with lots of guitars, some atmospheric keyboards and many recurring themes. They don’t really do very much lead-playing at all, but try to shape moods in one way or another. The general recurring theme of the album, the descending into the ocean, is reflected very well in the music. Where the first tracks are very melodic and even uplifting to some extent (Mesopelagic: Into the Uncanny), the final track on the album, Benthic: The Origin of Our Wishes is based on a very heavy recurring motif, that probably depicts the weight of the ocean on top of you, with almost no melody left.
This album has some great flow to it, which is also a good reason why it could keep me up during the nightly drives in the summer of 2013. I can surely see why this album is not for everybody. If you’re intrigued nonetheless, I’d say my favourite track, Hadopelagic II: Let Them Believe, is a good example of what this album is about.
Favourite song:Hadopelagic II: Let Them Believe
Other songs worth checking out: Bathyalpelagic III: Disequillibrated, Benthic: The Origin of Our Wishes, Abyssopelagic II: Signals of Anxiety
Other stuff by this band: Of their other albums, I like ‘Anthropocentric’ the most, but a lot of their other material is heavier and less melodic. To be frank, this is by far the album of theirs I know best.
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this album was a grower for sure, thought it was alright when i first listened to it but now i kinda love it :lol
though benthic is a bit weak imo, doesn't feel "heavy" enough.
also yeah the instrumental version is a lot weaker than the vocal version
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:corn
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ok seriously at this point your posts are just spam :lol
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yeah, I was just about to say so. That to-listen-to-list of yours is clearly not large enough.
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Pelagial is a great album and The Ocean are pretty solid in terms of Post-Metal, even though they aren't as good as the holy trinity of the genre. (Neurosis, Isis and Cult of Luna)
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I wanted to check them since forever but now I'm putting it on my to-check list and I will check it :soon:
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I didn't know they were considered post-metal, but it does make sense :)
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That to-listen-to-list of yours is clearly not large enough.
I know Bowie (though not that album) and Jolly, and don't like Pelagial, so... :P
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Post-Metal is probably the best metal subgenre so if you like The Ocean you should check out more Elite.
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A million thumbs up. This is my absolute favorite album.
I didn't know they were considered post-metal, but it does make sense :)
I've never considered them to be pure post metal, but they've definitely got that feel to some of their music.
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Pelagial is a great album and The Ocean are pretty solid in terms of Post-Metal, even though they aren't as good as the holy trinity of the genre. (Neurosis, Isis and Cult of Luna)
neurosis has always been pretty offputting to me but i need to check out some cult of luna.
also i may spam this everywhere but if you want some more good proggy post-metal, east of the wall and intronaut are the way to go, especially the apologist and the direction of last things
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Great album, but I slightly prefer Precambrian. Definitely one of the best post metal bands though - not familiar with Neurosis, but I'd consider them a lot better than the other big two (that is, Isis and Cult of Luna), even though both have quite a few songs that I really dig.
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I've heard this album only once but it was definitely good from what I remember. If I had more time I'd definitely revisit it. :tup
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Awesome, awesome album. I think I heard Precambrian first but I definitely prefered this one.
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Maybe some day I'll get into post-metal, but what I've tried hasn't clicked with me :-\
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Maybe some day I'll get into post-metal, but what I've tried hasn't clicked with me :-\
well I put one of the tracks from this album on the EP you never listened to :neverusethis:
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I'll get to it soon, don't worry :tup
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I really did not expect that much discussion on The Ocean, frankly. Here's a similar thing, in the sense that it's quite easy to love this album.
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30. Karnivool – Sound Awake (2009)
(https://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/magblogs/guitarist/albums/karnivool-soundawake-650-80.jpg)
It was rather difficult choosing between ‘Sound Awake’ and ‘Asymmetry’, but ultimately I went with this one. Karnivool is a band that are mostly known for the interesting stuff they do rhythmically, but this Australian band knows how to write a progressive metal tune as well. On this album, the band shows in 11 tracks what one band can do with their instruments to do something different. A special highlight for me is the band’s drummer; holy shit, what he does is insane occasionally.
This album starts really strong with the double punch of Simple Boy and Goliath already giving a good impression of what this band is about. Building on wacky rhythmic changes, the next track called New Day is a fan favourite and the first highlight on the album. Stylistically similar, but an all-round better song to me is the slow and melodic Umbra, a song that at first might sound rather boring, but contains a bunch of layers all the way through. These different layers are what makes Karnivool have their own sound and they are most apparent in the three tracks that close the album; Illumine which is probably the heaviest track guitar-wise, Deadman which is one of the best songs featured in this entire list (yes, I’m serious) and Change closes the album in a great way.
All-round, this band’s music is mostly guitar based and gets quite heavy at some points, but most of the time it’s melodic, although not in the sense that it’s goes many different places. In fact, I don’t really know how to characterise this band’s sound without missing an important aspect of it. They have often been compared to Tool, but I feel like this comparison isn’t exactly valid. Certainly they’re a rather unique band and one that deserves far more attention than they currently get.
Favourite song: Deadman
Other songs worth checking out: Umbra, Change, New Day
Other stuff by this band: Of the two other albums they’ve released, ‘Asymmetry’ is easily my favourite and it’s almost on the same level as ‘Sound Awake’. Not that ‘Themata’, their first record, is bad, but it’s on a completely different level song-writing based.
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Sound Awake is a pretty nice album and definitely the best Karnivool album. Sometimes they can be a bit too "Tool light" for me, but this album has some gems.
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That's another amazing album! :hefdaddy I think Sound Awake is slightly better as an album, mainly because it'sway more consistent, Asymmetry has both more standout songs and more weaker songs (the title track for instance)I never really got the similarities with Tool, they are obviously influenced by them but the sound and atmosphere/feel is completely different.
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Set fire to the fucking hive, where is it
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meh.
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Great band and album.
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Set fire to the fucking hive, where is it
yeah, legitimately the only song on the album that does much for me, this album is "fine" overall but i've never been able to get that into it
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Something much lighter than the past few updates.
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29. Spock’s Beard – The Kindness of Strangers (1998)
(https://shop.napalmrecords.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/650x/040ec09b1e35df139433887a97daa66f/2/3/23882.jpg)
Yay, more prog! Spock’s Beard tend to be hit or miss among progressive rock fans, at least that’s true in my circle of friends. Spock’s Beard are best known probably as the band Neal Morse was formerly in, before he chased down a solo career and joined forced with Mike Portnoy (among others) in Transatlantic. This is a shame really, because even after Morse’s departure, the band continued to make great music and they still do to this day. That said, it’s good to see that Neal has absolutely no hard feelings with the current band members (including his brother, Alan, who is a beast on the guitar) as he regularly joins forces with them on stage.
So, here is ‘The Kindness of Strangers’, the Beard’s third album and it’s my favourite by them. This is for a large part because of Flow, the song I consider to be my second favourite Spock’s Beard tune, behind The Light from their debut. For what it’s worth, The Doorway from ‘Beware of Darkness’ would round off the top 3. Really, to me the first three albums are all great and I could have include any of the three here, but I went with their third, because it’s the most consistent to me and doesn’t contain any ‘filler’ whatsoever.
This album contains two great Spock’s Beard rockers, The Mouth of Madness and Cakewalk on Easy Street, but also the toned-down almost prog-rock classic June, a song Neal Morse likes to revisit often. Rounding off the track-list are my aforementioned favourite, two more prog-epics (The Good Don’t Last and Harm’s Way) and what’s probably the worst song on the album, Strange World. With the Beard being a prog-rock band, it’s would be weird to have this album listed as your favourite and then not mention the epics as your favourites from the album. That said, my favourite really is a level above the others. Here is a special mention for the first section of the song, but more notably that stunning ending guitar solo. A beautiful moment of almost ugly notes, against a great backdrop of progressive goodness.
This album is all that the Beard is wrapped into an awesome package. It’s got the melodies, it’s got the rockers, it’s got the epics and it’s got quirkiness. Lots of good stuff can be found on this record. Even though it might not be for everybody, this album remains a delight to listen to occasionally.
Favourite song: Flow
Other songs worth checking out: Harm’s Way, June, The Good Don’t Last
Other stuff by this band: You really can’t go wrong with any album by this band. Although the line-up changed drastically when Neal Morse decided to leave, the band has put out good albums exclusively (although there’s some duds on certain records). My favourites would have to be ‘The Light’, ‘Beware of Darkness’, ‘V’ and ‘Brief Nocturnes and Dreamless Sleep’.
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A very nice album. I've always been torn about June and Harm's way, but I love most of the other songs.
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The only album by Spock's Beard that I know and I love it :tup
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Check out more then!
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Not my favorite by them but certainly a good one.
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Funny; less replies on prog-albums than on more metal albums. Let's see if this next pick can stir up some discussion!
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28. Steven Wilson – Insurgentes (2009)
(https://stevenwilsonhq.com/sw/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/insurgentes.jpg)
I do realise this is a weird choice for a Steven Wilson album, but considering all four the man has released under his own name are equally fantastic, I went with the one that a) I listen to most and b) doesn’t get nearly enough attention. So, after Porcupine Tree the band’s frontman Steven Wilson started his own solo-project, initially to get some sounds out there heard, but now it has become a full-time career. On his last album, ‘Hand. Cannot. Erase.’ There’s even a couple of songs that definitely would have fit on a Porcupine Tree record, so you could say that he has gone a long way to get back where he started.
Why did I choose this album then, above the other masterpieces he’s written? Frankly, because this one was the first I heard, the moment it came out. It also contains my absolute favourite Steven Wilson song, but mostly because I love the experimentalism he showcases on this album. Especially the drones as found in Abandoner and Get All You Deserve are a highlight of the album. Then there’s some proggy goodness in tracks such as Salvaging (including that lovely wall of sound at the end) and No Twilight Within the Courts of the Sun, but also the straight-up rocking tune Harmony Korine. Topping that off with a couple of softer, almost ballad-like songs like Insurgentes and the underappreciated ambient track Veneno Para Las Hadas and this album is a joy to listen to in full.
The album loses some of its experimental steam about halfway through the album, with the only three tracks not mentioned yet that follow each other up. Significant Other, Only Child and to a lesser extent the instrumental Twilight Coda are the songs most reminiscent of Wilson’s Porcupine Tree days. That’s not to say those three are bad, but they kind-of pale in comparison to the more experimental tracks on this same disc. Wilson ends the album fantastically with me favourite song of his, Get All You Deserve, a great tune to completely immerse yourself in sound with. After the song’s final two minutes of static and drones, the album takes a soft turn for the album’s closing track, often considered among the best songs on the album and I have to agree. All in all, this is a very interesting journey through a bunch of Wilson’s influences. More so than on any of his other solo albums (although ‘Grace for Drowning’ comes close) does he mix this many styles of music into one cohesive whole. I am by no means saying that this is arguably his best solo work, but it is definitely my personal favourite.
Favourite song: Get All You Deserve
Other songs worth checking out: Harmony Korine, Abandoner, Insurgentes
Other stuff by this band: Any Steven Wilson solo album is pure gold. I think ‘The Raven that Refused To Sing (and Other Stories)’ is generally considered the favourite, but 2015’s ‘Hand. Cannot. Erase.’ is a stunning album too. ‘Grace for Drowning’ is the most similar to this one, but probably his least accessible album as well.
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Check out more then!
I will. Beware the Darkness will be next.
About Insurgentes, it's my least favorite Wilson's album. I didn't bother to listen it as much as others though because I couldn't get into it after few listens.
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I tries explaining in the write-up why it is my favourite, but tastes are personal I guess.
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I tries explaining in the write-up why it is my favourite, but tastes are personal I guess.
Yea, experimental rock is not something I can appreciate in few listens. However, I liked Grace for Drowning immediately.
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The first half of this album is absolutely brilliant, after that it looses a bit of momentum but it's still great. Wouldn't say that this is my favorite SW record but it's the one I can connect on an emotional level more than the others. I don't know why it is, but as great as Grace and Raven and HCE are, they are a bit sterile (for lack of a better word) for me. I can appreciate the songwriting, the sounds, the playing, the production, everything is top notch. But when I want feelings and emotions I reach for Insurgentes. Doesn't probably make sense, but that's my problem. ;D
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Big cudos for Insurgentes! Definitely my favorite SW solo album after Grace For Drowning, and I revisit Insurgentes very frequently compared to the last two, which I don't revisit much at all.
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An excellent record, yes sir :metal
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:corn
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ahh, the steven wilson solo album that i don't have :corn
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Go listen to PT, then get into his solo career, Train :P
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Amazing album by SW. Probably my least favourite of them, but it's still absolutely stunning. Great choice. I understand your pick over the other SW solo albums though. I think I listen the most to TRTRTS, but I think either GfD or HCE is the best.
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Yes, I knew this would be the most underappreciated Steven Wilson record. Glad to see at least a couple of people agreeing with my choice though :)
#27 will be up tonight, and I expect there to be a lot less response on that one, even though you guys surprise me by commenting a lot on albums I thought would get far less attention. I hope I can keep the momentum until the top 10, though I might lose everybody there :lol
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I actually think I agree with you on Insurgentes. Never really thought of which one would be my favorite SW solo album, and though I love to immerse myself in the deluxe edition of Hand Cannot Erase, I must admit that I've only done that two or three times. Raven dated quick, and I don't really care much for Grace.
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27. Wishbone Ash – Argus (1972)
(https://wishboneash.com/images/uploads/argus.jpg)
This one holds a special place in my heart, because it is one of the favourite albums of my former stepfather (if I remember correctly) and the first band I really got to see live. According to the myth, this is the band that invented the dual-lead guitars, found in so much music nowadays. It is also said the guitarists of this band were the first 'big' band to use Gibson Flying V guitars to accentuate their dual-lead style. The music is predominantly (hard) folk-rock, with elements of prog implemented. Expect very good guitar work, interesting vocal melodies and great overall flow.
Although the album runs at only 45 minutes, the time it takes to listen to this one in full feels much shorter. It’s as if the band-members were on fire on this record. From the opening arpeggios of the album’s first track Time Was to the ending solo in the closer Throw Down the Sword, there’s not a minute on this album that feels inferior to the rest. All of it is great and none of it can be left out. This album is full of great tunes and you can clearly hear the band took their time to create interesting melodic arrangements for two guitars throughout. Top that off with vocals by multiple band-members and this album is a journey in itself.
With lyrics drawing upon medieval times and myth in general (The King Will Come and Warrior for instance), the band solidified is position as a huge player in the English folk-rock scene of the seventies. They also know how to craft up-beat songs with lots of melody. My favourite song from this album, Sometime World is a great example of that. Blowin’ Free then, is other rather upbeat song, but a lot happier in nature. A sort-of love-song, made prefect by amazing lead-playing throughout. Probably their best known song, and certainly the song with the most instantly recognisable riff is Warrior – a song I would recommend first to anyone wanting to give this album a try.
Although the band is still around today, they don’t have nearly as much fame as they once had, which is a shame honestly. That said, only one original member remains in the group today, but they’re nevertheless still rocking somewhere. I saw them in the summer of 2007 I think and it remains one of my favourite concert experiences ever. Do yourself a favour and listen to this one.
Favourite song: Sometime World
Other songs worth checking out: Time Was, Warrior, Blowin’ Free
Other stuff by this band: I have this compilation CD of theirs called ‘Tracks 3’ that’s full of amazing songs. You can’t really go wrong with any of the first four albums (this one + their self-titled, ‘Pilgrimage’ and ‘Wishbone Four’), but this band has an extensive discography of over 20 albums (excluding live-material) and I haven’t heard all of it, so don’t take my word for it, I might’ve missed a gem here.
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Yes, it is that great :tup
Also, you got best song right :P but every song is amazing.
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I probably never listened to this album enough but I've spun it a few times, tis pretty cool stuff.
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It's now starting to get on my nerves that I haven't heard that album. It comes up quite often and it looks good.
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I have something on my list Fluffy doesn't know? :o
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26. Thrice – The Alchemy Index (2007 & 2008)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71DlcxE3rOL._SL1259_.jpg)(https://www.mediaboom.org/uploads/posts/2014-01/1389775764_alchemy_index_volume_album_2_by_scholarlybelgarath.jpg)
Like the Jolly album 6 spots back in this top 50, this album is borderline cheating, because it’s not one record, but rather two albums released it different times under the same name. That said, they obviously below together since it’s the two halves (or rather, four quarters) that make the whole. Released as two double albums, the full title of the first record is ‘The Alchemy Index Vols. I & II: Fire & Water’, while the second part was released a year later as ‘The Alchemy Index Vols. III & IV: Air & Earth’. On the physical edition of both releases, the different volumes were all released on separate disc, spreading this whole record out across four discs in total.
And that’s where the beauty of this multiple-albums-concept comes from. Every disc represents one of the classic elements and all the songs on that respective disc are in a different style. Every disc also contains exactly six songs and runs for approximately 25 minutes. Furthermore, every last track on the disc is lyrically based on a sonnet, with three 4-line verses and an ending consisting of 2 lines. It’s little touches like this one that give the album a sense of continuity throughout.
Stylistically, the ‘Fire’ EP is the heaviest, most frantic one, with ‘Water’ being more subdued and melancholic. The ‘Air’ EP is quite light in sound-structure, but with occasional sudden bursts of heaviness, reminiscent of the ‘Fire’ EP, but probably more melodic. The ‘Earth’ EP lastly is the most ‘authentic’ sounding, for lack of a better words. Recorded almost exclusively with acoustic instruments and apparently recorded live in a living room, it surely sounds the most honest out of all three.
Why should you listen to an album that desperately tries to mix different styles into a grand concept of elements with music ties to it? Because it’s amazing. As everybody who knows Thrice can confirm, this band has never been about a single style of music; the band has always experimented with different aspects of sounds, and this is just an elaborate consequence of that. I love this record because of its diversity, not despite it, and every disc has its own strengths. Though I would recommend listening to all of it, it’s a long record in full, running at over 100 minutes. Ask around for some good tracks first, before digging in fully.
Favourite song: Daedalus
Other songs worth checking out: Digging My Own Grave, Firebreather, Come All You Weary
Other stuff by this band: I can recommend either ‘Vheissu’ or ‘Beggars’. Parama would agree with me for sure, except that I didn’t choose one of those to begin with. I’m sorry, I just like ‘The Alchemy Index’ better.
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While personally I think Vheissu is their finest release, The Alchemy Index (both) would come in just behind, and it is a really fine work of art. I think all 4 elements are treated in interesting ways, and I don't really have a favorite EP since they're all so good.
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:corn
I never heard their one song but I think I should.
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I've heard a lot of praise about this album. Maybe I should give it a spin.
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Great album. Everyone should give this one a try, all four EPs are stunning in their own right.
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I have something on my list Fluffy doesn't know? :o
You'd probably be surprised how much stuff there is that I either know by name, but really nothing else. Or stuff that I have a pretty good idea I will like, have possibly sampled, but it's still just meandering on a list 5-10 years after noting it.
Like Thrice, for example. The last album of theirs I checked out properly, at the recommendation of an article in Metal Hammer about emo from about 2003-4, was The Artist and the Ambulance, which I wasn't too fond of. Since then, I've listened to a track or two from some of the later albums as they've come out and thought, should give that band some time of day. Still haven't gotten there yet.
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I can recommend either ‘Vheissu’ or ‘Beggars’. Parama would agree with me for sure, except that I didn’t choose one of those to begin with.
:tup
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25. Shadow Gallery – Legacy (2001)
(https://www.magnacarta.net/shadowgallery/images/legacy.jpg)
How the mighty have fallen. ‘Legacy’ held the #2 spot in my first album top 50 and has now been placed at just the half-way mark. How come? Well, just like the Ayreon album at #37, this one has dropped not because I don’t like it anymore, but because I rarely listen to it these days. Shadow Gallery used to be one of my favourite bands, back in the days that I didn’t really known all that many bands. They were unique, in the sense that apart from Dream Theater, they were the only progressive metal band in that style of prog-metal that I knew. They were special to me, this band not many people knew about. Their music spoke to me and I enjoyed their every output.
I was introduced to Shadow Gallery by my mother, who in turn got it from the same step-father that loved Wishbone Ash. I reckon this is the Shadow Gallery album that she would have on in her car most of the time, occasionally swapping it with either Dream Theater’s ‘Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory’ or ‘Images and Words’. You could say that long before I even knew what progressive metal as a genre was, I had heard some of the very best the genre has to offer. Of course this didn’t leave me cold to this style of music. Years later, when I began developing my own preferences, I would turn to this CD and revisit the songs I had heard many years before.
Shadow Gallery is, at its core, a progressive metal band, consisting of the classic line-up of drums, bass, guitar, keys and vocals. All of the band-members are excellent at their respective instruments and they’re all genuinely nice people too. I’ve had the honour to not only meet them twice when they played ProgPower Europe in 2010 and 2013, but also to have lunch with them on the latter edition.
‘Legacy’ consists of 6 songs, the opening mini-epic Cliffhanger 2, three rockers, including my favourite Destination Unknown, the ballad Colors and the magnifiscent closing epic First Light. Shadow Gallery showcases on this album not only their instrumental prowess, but also their ability to create memorable vocal hooks & harmonisations, great song-structures and headbang-worthy riffs. What they do is by no means revolutionary, but the strength at which they pull it off counts for something. Give it a try, you might actually like it a lot.
Favourite song: Destination Unknown
Other songs worth checking out: First Light, Cliffhanger 2, Colors
Other stuff by this band: Any album by this band is a safe choice. My personal favourites are probably ‘Carved in Stone’ and ‘Digital Ghosts’, but ‘Tyranny’ and ‘Room V’ are great as well. The bands self-titled debut album is good, but is lacking in production quality.
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wtb an album I've listened to
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Meh.
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seriously can we stop spamming the thread :lol
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Really like your last four picks. Hard not to.
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seriously can we stop spamming the thread :lol
But I don't really like Shadow Gallery :P
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Oh, that's a shame. I don't think you will like the next pick either.
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24. Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle (1973)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1f/TheWildTheInnocent.jpg/220px-TheWildTheInnocent.jpg)
After seeing David Bowie on the list and a couple of other admittedly weird picks, K think it would be safe to say that this particular Bruce Springsteen record is truly the odd one out in the list. Knowing what comes next, I think it’s safe to say for me that the top 23 are all rather logical choices, but this one doesn’t really fit in with the remainder of the list. Or does it?
I think it does. ‘The Wild (...)’ is not your average Bruce Springsteen album. In fact, it might very well be safe to say that this album is actually the odd one out in his own discography. I’m not exactly a fan of Springsteen’s, so how I got to this album is another story entirely, but it has something to do with my mother having me listen to the album closer, New York City Serenade. All my prejudice and presumptions about Springsteen’s music were destroyed at hearing this almost 10-minutes masterpiece.
I may actually come across like an idiot, because I have so little knowledge of Springsteen other musical endeavours (except for a bunch of his hit songs, I know them), but I like to believe that this album is very different from his other work. This is evident not only in the aforementioned album closer, but also in the very groovy and funky Rosalita (Come Out Tonight). I think ‘groovy’ is actually a good description for the entire album, as every song is very funky. I think this is a perfect example of an R&B album, where ‘R&B’ actually means ‘rhythm-and-blues’. You can clearly hear Springsteen’s influences, in the way his voice sounds, the way the saxophone is utilised on the record, and by the overall feel this record have. Springsteen before he went all-out rock-and-roll, I think that’s the best description I can give here.
Favourite song: New York City Serenade
Other songs worth checking out: Rosalita (Come Out Tonight), Kitty’s Back, The E-Street Shuffle
Other stuff by this band: I’m not a fan of Bruce Springsteen’s other stuff, to be honest, so I can’t really comment here. It’s just this particular album that I hold dearly.
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Bruce's 70s stuff is mostly gold.
Shadow Gallery isn't a band I go to regularly, but (like many others - Savatage comes to mind), I wonder why I don't whenever I listen to them.
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Bruce's 70s stuff is mostly gold.
Shadow Gallery isn't a band I go to regularly, but (like many others - Savatage comes to mind), I wonder why I don't whenever I listen to them.
Good to know, I wouldn't mind hearing more of his stuff. Any recommendations for albums in a similar vein to The Wild(..)?
Savatage is an excellent example of a band I like whenever I hear them, but never listen to on a regular basis at all. Pretty the much the same as for you then.
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Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town are absolute gold. Teh River and Nebraska are a notch below in my books - with the former being a bit of a chore to get thru sometimes.
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Saw Springsteen live two times and can see the appeal and why fans go nuts about his concerts. I was the odd one out there that didn't really enjoy his music and his performance. Left me mostly indifferent. Same goes with the records I've heard of him.
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Never seen the big hype for Bruce Springsteen and I feel kinda bad for it. He is huge over here in Sweden and whenever he comes, he sells out stadiums with 60 000 people going and the concerts always go on for 3 hours and gets 5/5 in the newspapers. I enjoy some of the music but something about his vocals just pulls me out. Which is a shame because I feel like I'm left out of a party where everyone is having fun, and I don't "get it".
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One that's well known here.
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23. Devin Townsend – Terria (2001)
(https://www.metal-archives.com/images/3/6/1/9/3619.jpg)
Another case of an album that has dropped down dramatically in the last 3 years. Like the Shadow Gallery album, this is not a case of me not liking this album anymore, but a case of me not liking this album nearly enough to warrant it a place in the top 10, like on my very first list. ‘Terria’ is still an album I hold dearly, but I don’t really listen to Devin Townsend that much anymore. This has a little to do with me not liking his last couple of albums, at least compared to his earlier album they felt very stale and boring, but mostly due to this album not exactly conforming to me tastes anymore. That's not to say I don't like it, there's just 22 albums I like better.
In order to not write this write-up about albums I do not like, let’s focus on ‘Terria’. Townsend’s 2001 album is absolutely a masterpiece, at least in my own opinion. All of Townsend’s trademark sounds can be found on this album. Where he deconstructed his core sound on later albums, on ‘Terria’ a lot of variation can be found. Compare the frantic Earth Day with its polar opposite Deep Peace for instance, amd you’d be hard pressed to find the stylistic similarities. A part of his core sound has always been the huge walls of sound he creates and the multiple tracks he layers. This can be heard on virtually every track on this album, but perhaps either Mountain or the proggy Tiny Tears is the best example of this.
Devin Townsend gets labeled as ‘progressive metal’. While I do not think this label is wrong, his music is certainly not comparable to the standard prog-bands. More likely the label given to his music is based on the fact that the textures he creates in his music are refreshing and to a certain extent ‘progressive’, in the word’s actual meaning. Where this album used to be one of my all-time favourites, I have definitely not written this album off. In fact, I still like it very much and listening to it every once in a while still remains a pleasure. That said, there have been a number of albums that have stayed with me better than this one, hence its placement.
Favourite song: Canada
Other songs worth checking out: Nobody’s Here, Mountain, Earth Day
Other stuff by this band: This is too difficult, because this man has made so many different albums (with different line-ups as well). I like them all, but my favourites are ‘Ki’ (released under the name The Devin Townsend Project), ‘Deconstruction’ (same) and ‘ Ocean Machine’. Hit me up, or any of the Devin fans here for more detailed descriptions of what his vast catalogue sounds like.
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a great album :tup
though I disagree with your picks for the best tracks :lol
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Amazing album. Thank you for introducing me to it, at least I think it was you. It now sits proudly on #2 of my favourite albums.
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I'm not a huge Devy fan, but Terria (along with Ocean Machine) is a really good album. I got the green vinyl of it in my collection. :)
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A pretty good Devin album, but one I have to be in the mood for it, otherwise it bores me :P
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One of my least favourite Devin albums to be honest.
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i continue to be convinced a jakepriest roulette would be the worst roulette in site history :tup
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Even worse than mine? Damn, I should play that one :P
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you were right about 50% of the time, jake would be around 10%
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My favorite Devin album. Can you do both heavy and beauty? This album answers that.
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Very good album by Devin, not my personal favorite (nothing can touch Ocean Machine), but really good.
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Terria is one of the best albums ever made. Absolute masterpiece.
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a great album :tup
though I disagree with your picks for the best tracks :lol
of course you do :lol
Amazing album. Thank you for introducing me to it, at least I think it was you. It now sits proudly on #2 of my favourite albums.
:D
I'm not a huge Devy fan, but Terria (along with Ocean Machine) is a really good album. I got the green vinyl of it in my collection. :)
That's awesome. I remember only seeing that when it was already sold out. Coloured vinyl is very cool :)
A pretty good Devin album, but one I have to be in the mood for it, otherwise it bores me :P
:( you love my #22, though
One of my least favourite Devin albums to be honest.
You are weird :p
My favorite Devin album. Can you do both heavy and beauty? This album answers that.
I should have written more about the music. This is basically the album in one sentence, though Mountain's first line kind-of says the same thing.
Very good album by Devin, not my personal favorite (nothing can touch Ocean Machine), but really good.
Ocean Machine is likely my second or third favourite.
Terria is one of the best albums ever made. Absolute masterpiece.
Yes!
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22. Riverside – Anno Domini High Definition (2009)
(https://www.insideoutshop.de/images/products/large/0IO00694.jpg)
I admit that I did never really listen to the separate instruments in Riverside’s music until guitarist Piotr Grudzínski died very unfortunately less than two months ago. When I heard that news, I thought that their 2015 gig at the Night of the Prog festival was the last time that I got to see them live. To be honest, I’m not really sure how the band will continue without a founding member, guitarist and friend.
It might seem silly and at least a little undeserving that I only really started paying attention to the individual instruments (including the guitar lines) after his death. This is partly due to this band’s music. All of the instruments tie in together greatly, creating one sound, rather than hearing four different guys playing at the same time. Some of Dream Theater’s latest albums have this problem, where one of the instruments is clearly more in the forefront than the In Riverside’s music, this never seems the case
This makes it difficult to say that Riverside’s members aren’t really as proficient as some of the more well-known prog musicians, it just that Riverside has absolutely no ambition, nor the need for over-the-top virtuosity. In fact, basically all of the guitar solos in their music are far more melodic than fast per se. I read a comment by someone, after Piotr died, who claimed that his guitar playing is not to be remember for his virtuosic ability, but for his craft to weld melodic lines into the framework of the rest of music. A perfect example of this is the fantastic guitar solo in Hybrid Times at around the 7:30 mark. Coming from a completely unexpected point, the solo starts off brilliant with that first note. The rest is pure melodic greatness.
This album is, for me, Riverside’s high point. Although all their albums have a very distinct sound, I think ‘Anno Domini High Definition’ mixes all of Riverside’s elements in exactly the right amounts. It’s probably one their heaviest albums, if not the heaviest, but it’s very accessible and groovy throughout. Don’t let the track-list fool you either; this album contains only 5 tracks, and each subsequent track is longer in length. That’s not to say that they’re full of proggy detractions, although some songs do contain such moments occasionally, but all the songs are very to-the-point and have great flow.
Without a doubt my favourite song on the record would be the album closer Hybrid Times, one of the best prog-songs written in recent years as far as I’m concerned. Among the song’s highlights are the aforementioned guitar solo, but also the great riffs that make up the first half of the song, including its chorus. The penultimate track Left Out is also a mini-epic that’s actually more of a song even than Hybrid Times, since the latter ends in chanting noises after about 9 minutes. Of the first three tracks, the album opener Hyperactive is a great mood-setter, whereas Egoist Hedonist is (or was?) a staple in the band’s live set-lists. The only song not mentioned here is Driven to Destruction, which is not a bad song at all, but probably the weakest link on an album full of gems. Seriously, this is great stuff.
Favourite song: Hybrid Times
Other songs worth checking out: Left Out, Hyperactive, Egoist Hedonist
Other stuff by this band: I feel bad for leaving out Driven to Destruction, as the only track not featured above. All of Riverside’s albums are great. My second favourite is probably ‘Love, Fear and the Time Machine’ and after that it’s all even. If you’re more into heavier stuff like this album, you could go for ‘Shrine of New Generation Slaves’. The remaining three albums, ‘Rapid Eye Movement’, ‘Second Life Syndrome’ and ‘Out of Myself’ are quite alike. Each one of those has great moments, but to me also moments of filler songs. Every album of theirs is very enjoyable nevertheless.
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i continue to be convinced a jakepriest roulette would be the worst roulette in site history :tup
:lol
Anno Domini is next on my list right after I finish digesting Second Life Syndrome. The band is absolutely amazing. Love, Fear And The Time Machine is probably my favourite album of 2015.
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Yes, absolutely agreed - I've always preferred them for their very melodic nature, and lack of wank and instruments clearly outstanding above the others. And you're right, I love this record and actually agreed on the best song :2metal: :tup
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Not my favorite of theirs but still amazing album. They are one of those bands with perfect discography.
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Great pick! I've always had a hard time picking a favorite album with Riverside but honestly ADHD might be it.
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way way way too low :tup
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Hopefully this one's a grower, couldn't really get into it the first few times, I seem to lose more and more attention as it goes, can only remember Hyperactive and parts of Driven to Destruction but they were good.
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Train, listen to it more often then!
The rest; glad we agree :)
way way way too low :tup
okay :tup
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you make me feel so low, so low
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you make me feel so low, so low
Thanks.
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No, this was not a Porcupine Tree album, get your shit straight.
Thanks.
what? :lol
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Sent!
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Last three artists would be in my top 50 as well. Not those albums, but you've made good choices.
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Last album before we enter the top 20. Exciting times lie ahead! Any guesses for what will yet come? We can also save this game for the top 10 of course :)
Number #21:
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21. Anathema – We’re Here Because We’re Here (2010)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/710QuRAFw0L._SL1000_.jpg)
I discovered Anathema because of this album getting insanely good reviews back when it was released. You can probably guess that this is the main reason that this is my favourite album by them. Never had I heard (of) this band before, but the reviews it got made me want to check it out – and I was floored. The beauty of this album’s music was something my taste-developing ears had not gotten used to yet.
Because of my initial reaction towards this album being so positive, I found it very hard to appreciate their older material. For those unfamiliar with Anathema, the band has had quite its history in different music styles; starting off as a doom metal band, they moved through various styles of alternative rock before settling on their current sound. For those who haven't heard this record, nor any of the two that followed this (since they’re in a similar style); this is beautiful atmospheric progressive rock, mixed with mesmerizing instrumental passages, awesome female vocals and sparingly using elements of pop music. The album starts with one of the best songs on the record (Thin Air) and takes about two thirds to reach its highest moment for me. A Simple Mistake is a lesson in how to build-up a song the right way; easily my favourite track on the record.
Anathema shows they are very capable of making light, peaceful and happy music. In fact, the album cover is very reminiscent of what this album sounds like. If I had to show, physically, what this album sounds like, a sunset like the one on the album cover would be excellent. Musically a lot of tunes are piano-driven, with relatively little use of distorted guitar. Both male singers and their female band-member take turns as vocals, which gives their music another interesting aspect.
All in all, you could say that this is most of all an atmospheric record, which keeps concise song-writing in high regard. There is absolutely no unnecessary parts on the entire album, every part has a purpose. A lot of the songs on this record build up towards a grandiose ending, adding little pieces of the puzzle as the song progressing. Constructed of relatively simple melodies and rhythms, all songs do manage to be interesting throughout. I would like to say that this album has no weak point whatsoever. Looking back in hindsight, I understand not only why this album but such great reviews, but also why the press was so relieved at Anathema releasing an album again. After many years of silence, this is the album that ultimately defined their current style of music.
Favourite song: A Simple Mistake
Other songs worth checking out: Thin Air, Universal, Dreaming Light
Other stuff by this band: I might get flamed for saying this, especially for those who like ‘Weather Systems’ or ‘Judgement’, but this is to me by far Anathema’s best album. None of their other records come close, especially since everything before this one is so different. If you like what you hear on WHBWH, you’re bound to like ‘Weather Systems’ and ‘Distant Satellites’ as well. I’m personally more of a fan of ‘A Natural Disaster’ than ‘Judgment’, but both are quite fine. ‘Alternative 4’ isn’t half bad either. I could never really get into the doom metal influenced albums from the beginning of their career.
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Probably my second or third favourite Anathema album, fantastic record :hefdaddy
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My favorite Anathema album as well :tup
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Judgement is my favorite but WHBWH is almost on par, and is easily the best out of their phase 2 albums (WHBWH and forward). Talk about an amazing set of songs with two top 5 Anathema songs in Universal and Thin Air, and then other gems like A Simple Mistake and Hindsight. WHBWH is pretty much as close to perfect as modern Anathema will come IMO. WS was a shadow of what WHBWH was, and DS was a bit different but also like WS, a level below WHBWH.
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I've always liked Anathema, this album especially, but never really "loved" them. still a great album tho :tup
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Thanks.
what? :lol
What? That's how the track and the album ends! :lol
In other news, I prefer Weather Systems to WHBWH. It's not even close.
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This and Weather Systems are probably DTF's most overrated albums. Not bad, their just both sooooooo bland from start to finish that it's almost an accomplishment.
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This and Weather Systems are probably DTF's most overrated albums. Not bad, their just both sooooooo bland from start to finish that it's almost an accomplishment.
I'll agree on WS but WHBWH has some of Anathema's best songs
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I tried to get into Anathema through Weather Systems but didn't succeed. Should I try this one instead?
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I prefer this one over Weather Systems from the little spins I gave both, and it wasn't even close. Definitely try this one.
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A little earlier than usual and I'm in a bit of a hurry this morning, so I can't reply to all your comments, but thatnk for reacting and responding to my picks :) here's the album starting off the top 20:
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20. The Dear Hunter – Act II: The Meaning of, And All Things Regarding Ms. Leading (2007)
(https://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/3330/cover_11122492009.jpg)
The Dear Hunter is a band I discovered thanks to DTF. I have no idea who it was that posted about this band and made me wanted to listen to them, but it certainly was someone from here. The first track I ever heard by them was Red Hands. I can’t recall if that songs was recommended specifically or that it just happened to be the first track on Youtube I could find. Red Hands made me fall in love with this band and their sound immediately. The singer’s voice, but also the way the band using a choir, their guitars and keyboards to create interesting sounds really spoke to me in a way.
Casey Crescenzo’s almost grating voice forms the core of their sound, although a lot of it is also either based on the guitar or keyboard. They have this ‘indie’ sound to them, but with touches of progressiveness, drawing in influences from all sorts of other music genres. Although I wouldn’t classify The Dear Hunter as a hard-rock band, they have their moments of heavier music, as in for instance Dear Ms. Leading and the album opener The Procession. Most of the album consists of very well-written songs, as if the band has put a story to music that moves through various musical styles.
This story is what forms the driving force behind The Dear Hunter. This album isn’t called ‘Act II: …’ for no reason; it’s part of a double trilogy the band’s frontman has yet to finish. After 2009’s ‘Act III: Life and Death’, the band took a break from this concept, only to return triumphantly last year with the fantastic ‘Act IV’. I won’t bother with the details of this story, but the gist of it is that it follows the life of a boy (‘the dear hunter’) who was born to a prostitute. In ‘Act II’ specifically he grows up, looking for his father (whom he finds in ‘Act III’) to get to know how he got to fall in love with a prostitute. The dear hunter ends up falling in love with Ms. Leading, a prostitute as well.
Is this a love record then? Yes, partly, although it’s all fictional. That said, especially the songs The Bitter Suite 1 and 2: Meeting Ms. Leading and Through the Dime and The Bitter Suite 3: Embrace are very ‘sensual’, for lack of a better word and, despite their cheeky lyrics, among the best songs on the record as far as I’m concerned. Clocking in at almost 80 minutes, with 15 tracks this is quite the album to get into. I must admit that it loses some steam towards the ending, especially when you’re not used to albums this long. Compared with the other ‘Acts’, one might say that this record contains some filler, but to me that’s not the case. I’ve heard this album so many times, I can attest that it is a great record.
Favourite song: Red Hands
Other songs worth checking out: Dear Ms. Leading, The Bitter Suite 1 and 2: Meeting Ms. Leading and Through the Dime, The Lake and the River
Other stuff by this band: I’m a big fan of all four ‘Act’ albums by them, more so than their other release, ‘The Color Spectrum’. Although everybody ranks them different, this one here is my favourite, followed by ‘Act IV’, released last year. Both ‘Act I’ and ‘Act III’ are great as well though.
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I tried to get into Anathema through Weather Systems but didn't succeed. Should I try this one instead?
Yeah you should, I also thought Weather Systems was a little bit bland compared to the praise it gets here, but I liked WHBWH a lot better.
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i literally just heard a song from this album a few hours ago :lol
i'll get a dear hunter album eventually, probably act 3, dunno
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Fucking can't go wrong with either of TDH's act albums, although I wpuld be slightly surprised if it was act 1 on your list.
I love Act 2, yes, but I think I like 4 the best. 3 has a lot of my favorite songs by the band but as an album I think it works slightly worse than 2.
Noticed you didnt list Migrant, dont like it? Im not a huge fan, but Shame is probably one of the best TDH songs IMO.
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Oh god, I forgot that that album exists :lol
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Got Act II in the mail yesterday. I'll check it out after I'm done with my roulette.
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The Dear Hunter! :tup Not sure if I like Act II or TCS the most, but Act II is most certainly awesome.
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I just wrote my write-up for #11.. Just the top 10 to write out now. Such excitement!
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Act II is fantastic and still remains my favorite DH album. :tup
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I just wrote my write-up for #11.. Just the top 10 to write out now. Such excitement!
i'm trying to do all the writeups for my upcoming list in advance so i can be sure of the order and have a fast posting pace like my last one
anyways hype intensifies etc corn corn corn neverusethis corn
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Maybe one day I'll get into this band or when I check Act IV :P
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Maybe one day I'll get into this band or when I check Act IV :P
Why put it on hold? Just do it. Just put aside re-listening to Weather Systems one night for the 906th time and spin Act IV or Act II.. or any TDH album ;)
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i listened to act 3 in full, i think, i'm not actually sure whether or not i did though since i don't remember actually doing it? i probably didn't but i feel like i did
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I just wrote my write-up for #11.. Just the top 10 to write out now. Such excitement!
i'm trying to do all the writeups for my upcoming list in advance so i can be sure of the order and have a fast posting pace like my last one
anyways hype intensifies etc corn corn corn neverusethis corn
I didn't have all done before I started, but I gave myself a big headstart. I'm writing them out as I go along, but this means writing stuff that I will only post two to three days later. It works out really well,mand the headstart I gave myself was a great help and is basically the only reason I can keep this pace.
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Maybe one day I'll get into this band or when I check Act IV :P
Why put it on hold? Just do it. Just put aside re-listening to Weather Systems one night for the 906th time and spin Act IV or Act II.. or any TDH album ;)
WS is a very personal album for me, so I only listen to it every few months :P
And I have literally more than 50 roulette albums to get through before Act IV, but first I must finish exploring the discographies of my favorite artists, so... it could take a while, but I'll let you know when it happens :smiley:
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I know it wouldn't matter too much coming from me since I had like 4 or 5 songs that scored 4/5 or higher (not counting finals), but nothing I sent you is worth prioritizing over Act IV, apart from maybe Lechuga but I think you already did that. Oh and Toxicity, but you don't like Serj Tankian boohoo :neverusethis:
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There will be no System of a Down on this list.
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i'm so depressed that i'm gonna wake up grab a brush and put a little makeup
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Long write-up incoming for #19, an album that's definitely not for everyone..
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19. Between the Buried and Me – Colors (2007)
(https://musicgleaner.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/660f815b1d93.jpg)
Well, where do I start with this one? Probably not at the first three tracks, because those three would turn off anybody who is not fond of growls whatsoever, especially those who have no idea what to expect here. Foam Born: (a) the Backtrack starts off innocently enough, with light piano and clean singing, but soon erupt into a wall of noise and growls. The two tracks that follow are probably even more relentless. (b) the Decade of Statues is a constant pounding of heavy riffs, only letting go a little at the end of the song. Informal Gluttony opens with tribal drums, but soon turns into BTBAM’s trademark progressive death metal sound as well. The same formula applies to this track too; at the end it gets a little calmer, but only ever so slightly.
Now that I got the first three tracks out of the way, I can talk about where the album really takes off. The album actually reaches its high points at the fourth track, and from there on it is smooth sailing until the end. Earlier in this top 50, I spoke about Converge’s ‘Jane Doe’ probably being the heaviest album in this list. I won’t correct myself on that, but compared to this record, I think ‘Jane Doe’ is a lot easier to listen to. Not that this is so much heavier, because I don’t think it is, but ‘Colors’ can be very tiring on your ears. Perhaps this is due to me not being used to listening to this type of music a lot, but the constant heaviness, growls and rhythmic and tempo changes really can become too much. That’s probably why I don’t really enjoy the first three tracks all that much, because there’s barely any dynamic subtleties, barring the beginning and ends of the tracks. That said, the remaining tracks are all nothing short of excellent, and the first three aren’t all that bad, otherwise this album wouldn’t be here. All is relative, but still.
It’s probably not surprising that the four longest tracks on this album are my favourite. It seems to me that the band actually though to themselves that because the track is longer, they could experiment within the track more. Sun of Nothing is the first of three tracks clocking in at over 10 minutes, and almost right from the start (alright, about 2 minutes then) it becomes clear that the band takes more attention to dynamics and melody in this track. Lots of interesting melodies can be found, as well as a very long passage of clean singing at the end. Ants of the Sky continues this trend, mixing even more melody than the previous track, and like Sun of Nothing contains a lengthy clean passage. A highlight on the album for me is the moment everything goes quiet around 11:20 and the band introduces a hoedown country section, having that explode into some of the album’s finest instrumental passages. Amazing stuff right there.
The track Prequel to the Sequel that follows is probably my favourite. That track manages to perfectly blend everything that makes BTBAM sound the way they do into one cohesive track. Viridian follows, the album’s only instrumental track and the last really peaceful moment before the album heads into the insane album closer White Walls. This last track starts off with one of the most instantly recognisable riffs on the album, it soon heads into a flurry of rhythms and lots of growls. Like the other tracks over 10-minutes though, White Walls is very much melodic in the sense that all of the instrumentalists provide a very nice backdrop for the growled vocals. Going through a lengthy quiet passage and multiple trademark BTBAM-sections, the vocalist shouts the words ‘White wall!’ four times and the song ends with a long melodic instrumental passage, including some great guitar solos, ending the album on a very high note.
What makes this album interesting is the ridiculous technicality of all instrumentalists. Furthermore, the melodies, whenever they are there are usually outstanding, and the band doesn’t shy away from using very wacky influences at places you don’t expect them (the hoedown section in Ants of the Sky is but one of many such instances). Overall, once you get past the brutality of the first three tracks, there’s a lot of beautiful stuff on this album, even though the growled lyrics are for the most part incomprehensible. What doesn’t really help the album is that every track flows directly into the other. This way, the only resting points are the places the music takes a softer turn and there are relatively few of them. It certain is an enjoyable ride, although it may be a little tiring on the ears at some points.
Favourite song: Prequel to the Sequel
Other songs worth checking out: Ants of the Sky, Sun of Nothing, White Walls
Other stuff by this band: It’s kind of weird, but I’m not that much of a fan of this band to actively like all their other albums. None of it is really bad, but on this one they just did something magical. I think my second favourite by them would be the one they released in 2015, ‘Coma Ecliptic’. Their first two are too much noise for me, but ‘Alaska’ contains some nice songs.
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WHIIIIITEEEE WAAAAAALLSS :2metal:
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As a newer fan of this band this album currently sits in the #4 spot, but I still really like it. That said, Parallax II and TGM are the only ones I actually own. Ants of the Sky is probably a top 5 BT-BAM song for me, and White Walls ends the album with one of the best instrumental passages I've heard in a damn long time. :hefdaddy
TGM is the best them tho
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i like this album a lot but i don't think i've ever fully "loved" this album. it has some of their best moments for sure but if i'm gonna be honest a lot of the metalcore stuff here never really appealed to me, the metal on TGM is a ton better anyways, for some reason or another
that being said still a pretty damn good album and they'll never top the outro of Sun of Nothing or the entire second half of White Walls
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This should be higher!
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This should be higher!
Just checked the latest list you did again (in 2013), and you had it at #6. I don't know how accurate that would be nowadays, but yeah.. you had it higher. That said, I also think I have some stuff coming up that you will appreciate :)
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i like this album a lot but i don't think i've ever fully "loved" this album. it has some of their best moments for sure but if i'm gonna be honest a lot of the metalcore stuff here never really appealed to me, the metal on TGM is a ton better anyways, for some reason or another
that being said still a pretty damn good album and they'll never top the outro of Sun of Nothing or the entire second half of White Walls
All of this.
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This should be higher!
Just checked the latest list you did again (in 2013), and you had it at #6. I don't know how accurate that would be nowadays, but yeah.. you had it higher. That said, I also think I have some stuff coming up that you will appreciate :)
Since I'm on the waiting list I don't want to give too much away. :biggrin:
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Colors is amazing.
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Since I'm on the waiting list I don't want to give too much away. :biggrin:
I see. Your list should be good too, I'll follow when the time comes.
Number 18 will be up soon, a record released not long ago.
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18. Agent Fresco – Destrier (2015)
(https://toxiconline.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Agent-Fresco-Destrier.jpg)
An album by this band should have been expected at this point. They are one of my favourite discoveries of the last couple of years and I have made it a habit to pimp this band in any and every roulette am I in. I have sent my favourite track See Hell a bunch of times, and before the full album came out, I resorted to the album’s first single Dark Water. Before that, I would send their debut album’s title-track. Even though ‘Destrier’ is only this Icelandic band’s second album, they are certainly going places, having played not only numerous metal and prog festivals, but also being among the country’s best selling artists. As far as I’m concerned, that’s well-deserved.
Agent Fresco’s music is very hard to categorise. They are not the band you would expect at metal festivals like ProgPower Europe and Euroblast, yet they were there regardless and at ProgPower Europe 2015 they blew everyone away. Basically, the only thing that’s metal about this band is the awesome rhythmic changes they do, the fact that the guitarist uses distortion to some extent (which of course isn’t exclusive to metal) and the singer screams (or rather; shouts very loudly) occasionally. Considering the fact that this album’s conception came from an incident the singer had after being beaten up and feeling angry for a long time, it’s surprising that the amount of songs he screams in on this album is far less that on their debut, namely just one.
As said before, it’s hard to classify this band, but I’ve seen them labeled as ‘progressive indie rock’, a description that seems fitting. A song like Angst though, would be far too heavy for that description. Being the aforementioned only track singer Arnor Dan screams on, it’s almost like the climax of the album. Built on an anti-rhythmic breakdown, the song explodes into an all-enclosing wall of sound around halfway. It’s by far the shortest song on the album, but considering its explosiveness in an otherwise quite peaceful record, it surely has its impact.
So what does this band sound like? They are mostly guitar driven, but use piano and synthesisers occasionally. Most of the interesting stuff they do have either got to with weird sounds (as in the breakdown-part in title-track Destrier, among the most interesting parts on the album sonically), or with weird rhythmic changes (the ending to The Autumn Red). The band experiments a lot with different styles and sounds and is not afraid to try anything new, even stuff that wouldn’t usually have its places in the music they write. That said, there is probably no other band that sounds like Agent Fresco, so in that sense they truly have a unique style they exploit on this record, even more so than on their debut-album. What makes this band sound the way they do, is probably mostly due to the singer’s voice. I can imagine that his voice might turn you off, but I believe it actually it’s the music very well and is a great addition to the amazing underlying stuff the rest of the band does.
The three singles the band released prior to the release of this record, Dark Water, See Hell & Wait for Me (and later, Howls) are actually a very good show-case of the stuff this band does. This record has everything, from very heavy (Angst), to very atmospheric (Bemoan, Death Rattle) to everything in between. I suggest you try out the aforementioned singles and decide whether this is for you. It’s an enjoyable ride and without a doubt my favourite record from 2015.
Favourite song: See Hell
Other songs worth checking out: Angst, The Autumn Red, Wait For Me
Other stuff by this band: So far, Agent Fresco have only released two albums. Their first one, titled ‘A Long Time Listening’ is almost as good as this one and contains some tunes that are easily better than the weaker tunes on ‘Destrier’. It’s slightly heavier and contains more screams, but if you like this one, their first should be right up your alley as well.
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That sounds cool, I'll have to check it out sometime.
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Man, I love this album. You once recommended their first album to me, and although I really really liked it, somehow I didn't become a big fan of the band back then. But once you mentioned that Destrier had come out I listened to it on Spotify and wow.... what an amazing album. Great pick. The music is so uncatorisable, like you said. I'd recommend this album to everyone as well.
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With you sending out See Hell in almost every roulette, I've got to check it out.
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To comment on Colors, I tried really hard to get into it, but I just can't stand the vocalist. Instrumentals are pretty amazing though.
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see hell is pretty good and i listened to the rest of the album but it didn't do much for me, might check it out again at some point tho
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I am listening to Destrier for the first time right now, it's really good so far :angel:
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Good :)
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In hindisght, I would have maybe placed this album a little higher. This is amazing stuff.
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17. Pain of Salvation – Remedy Lane (2002)
(https://www.insideoutshop.de/images/products/large/0IO00304.jpg)
Having to choose between all the Pain of Salvation albums was, admittedly, rather difficult. On my first list I had ‘BE’ (at #42), ‘The Perfect Element’ (at #29) and ‘One Hour by the Concrete Lake’ (at #10) and while I do not regret those choice at all, I think nowadays I can truly state that neither of those three is my favourite Pain of Salvation album, but ‘Remedy Lane’ is. I probably didn’t really get ‘Remedy Lane’ back then, which is why it missed my list. On the band then; Pain of Salvation (or at least, their ‘classic line-up’ are among my favourite bands. They are the artist with the most plays on my last.fm account and I either like or love all of their albums. In fact, the only album of theirs I’m slightly indifferent to is ‘Scarsick’, all the rest ranges from great (both ‘Road Salt One’ and ‘Road Salt Two’) to excellent (all the rest).
‘Remedy Lane’ is pretty much a flawless album, as are all the rest of the albums coming up basically. Pain of Salvation are a progressive metal band, drawing influence from the big bands, but they have this weird thing about them that makes them sound unique. What makes Pain of Salvation such a good band, is the way they show emotion in all of their songs. There’s something about the way they play and sing, that makes you really believe what’s happening in the story-line. I realise their sound might come across a little too extreme at some point, especially Daniel Gildenlöw’s singing could probably turn people off. Not me though, I legitimately love their every sound on this record.
Most of the tracks on this album are guitar-driven and you can really see that the band writes music that should sound good, not necessarily fitting into a previously constructed form. As a result, the song structures on this record (and on all their records) aren’t that standard. Furthermore, the riffs they play don’t necessarily have to fit in common meters either. A great example is the main riff to Fandango, which is quite wacky. The band also experiments a lot with rhythmic changes, as can be heard on Rope Ends or Beyond the Pale. The band actually released an expanded edition of this album, which I have on vinyl and that one includes the original track-list and the bonus-track Thorn Clown. I really do not understand why this track was not released on the album at all, because as far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the best tracks to be found on the record.
Although the album is predominantly heavy, the band has a great underrated soft and emotional side too. Songs like Undertow, This Heart of Mine and even Second Love are heart-wrenching as ballads, even though they’re not your standard tear-jerking. Relating to the band’s lyrics is also very easy – I really believe Gildenlöw to be a great lyricist. You can actually hear his feeling of loss and guilt in A Trace of Blood, a true story about a miscarriage his wife once had. Perhaps the best known song from this album is Chain Sling, a live staple for this band and the only track on which Gildenlöw shares lead vocal duties with now-ex-member Johan Hallgren.
I think the best introduction to this album would be to just fire it up from the start and listen to it all the way through, with or without the fantastic bonus track. While I ultimately chose this album as my favourite Pain of Salvation album, there’s honestly barely any difference in quality between their records. The consistency with which Gildenlöw writes music and the band plays it is almost unheard of in this entire top 50. Check this one out; Gildenlöw is one of my favourite vocalist, the song-writing is superb and the overall album is nothing short of amazing. It was nice seeing the entire album played live once.
Favourite song: Rope Ends
Other songs worth checking out: Thorn Clown, Chain Sling, A Trace of Blood
Other stuff by this band: I’m a huge fan of Pain of Salvation and choosing one album over the others was living hell. On my previous top 50 list I had ‘One Hour By the Concrete Lake’ as my favourite, followed by ‘The Perfect Element’ and ‘BE’, but ‘Entropia’ is fantastic as well. Their latest three releases are probably my least favourite ones, but both ‘Road Salt One’ and ‘Road Salt Two’ contain great tracks. A great start for anyone new to Pain of Salvation would be the live DVD ‘On the Two Deaths of Pain of Salvation’.
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TPE is sliiiightly better than Remedy Lane, but TPE is also still probably my favorite album, ever, so i'm going to be mad at you for putting this too low :tup
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Yes!!! Awesome album, awesome band, and another discovery that I have to thank you for. :P If pressed, this would probably would be my favourite of their albums too, though Entropia and TPE are tough competition.
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Incredible album, though my favourite tracks are quite different from yours. I think my favourite is Beyond the Pale, followed by Second Love, followed by either Ending Theme or Trace of Blood.
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Sooooooo good. I didn't realize how much I loved this album until I got to hear it live and it completely blew me away. While I like Perfect Element and Entropia quite a bit, this is definitely my favorite PoS album, as well.
I only just recently got the LP and I was surprised by how much I liked Thorn Clown, as you mentioned. My only surprise is that Beyond the Pale isn't in your top 4 tracks.
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*multiple popcorn quote*
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Also good call on recommending On the Two Deaths of Pain of Salvation, that's a great live DVD (even though the setlist is slightly too Scarsick-heavy, and not even with the good Scarsick songs imho).
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I had it on #17, too :tup It is album that deserves :heart from me.
Anyone else love their version of Hallelujah on that live album? It used (nuggets) to be my favorite version of the song, now I like Cohen's original more.
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Hallelujah is ridiculously amazing, definitely one of my favourite covers.
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My only surprise is that Beyond the Pale isn't in your top 4 tracks.
hmm, that would probably come fifth. I like it slightly less than the other epics, because it's a little less cohesive and the riffs and vocal melodies aren't as awesome as the ones in the songs I mentioned. But seriously, every track on this record is amazing. Undertow is good too, This Heart of Mine has a great solo section and Second Love is a great ballad, Ending Theme is a very good album opener. Even Fandango and Waking Every God, probably the most overlooked tracks are great in their own right.
Also good call on recommending On the Two Deaths of Pain of Salvation, that's a great live DVD (even though the setlist is slightly too Scarsick-heavy, and not even with the good Scarsick songs imho).
It really shows the band at their peak I think, even though they play too much Scarsick material. The DVD is a great way to view their awesome stag-performance. Watched it a lot of times.
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Hallelujah is ridiculously amazing, definitely one of my favourite covers.
Oh yes! That one is indeed awesome
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Remedy Lane is a great album but PoS has done better IMO. I'd put BE, TPE and Entropia over it without hesitation.
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Fucking incredible album right there.
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Hallelujah is ridiculously amazing, definitely one of my favourite covers.
Oh yes! That one is indeed awesome
I hadn't seen this DVD and so just checked out the version of Hallelujah. Wow.
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Remedy Lane is a great album but PoS has done better IMO. I'd put BE, TPE and Entropia over it without hesitation.
Oh, yes, 'BE' has my favourite PoS song (Iter Impius), but also contains quite some filler as far as I'm concerned. TPE contains tons of great ones. Entropia is also a great album. I think that every Pain of Salvation fan has their own reasons for having a favourite. Like I said in my write-up; on my first list I had OHBTCL as the highest, but nowadays Remedy Lane speaks to me more.
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#16 will be up after I've had a shower. It's another one of those classic albums.
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16. King Crimson – Red (1974)
(https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2611/4315016904_cab4abaec1.jpg)
Here’s a bold statement: Starless is the best song ever written. I’m not entirely sure whether or not I agree with this myself, because while qualifying albums is difficult enough as it is (this list didn’t just magically come to life), the difference between my favourite songs is even less apparent. That said, this particular track would be up there and it’s hand-down, without any doubt my favourite song from King Crimson and likely my favourite song released in the seventies. Giving boundaries to claims, I like that.
On to this album. Another one of those classic records, one that has had its praise throughout history and an album that shouldn’t really need much introduction among progressive rock or metal fans. What King Crimson does on this album can very much be classified as proto-progressive-metal. Had King Crimson existed in a later day and age, they would be heavy. Every single track on this has its own stylistic differences, even though there are only five.
Naturally, merely containing Starless would not be sufficient to warrant this album a spot on my list. The other tracks are all magnificent in their own right. Album opener and title-track Red is an exercise in odd time-signatures and an instrumental many a contemporary progressive metal band could be jealous of. Next up is Fallen Angel, arguably the most laid-back track on the album (not counting the first five minutes of Starless). Great vocal lines against a backdrop of great instrumentalism, with nice saxophone melodies to boot. One More Red Nightmare is pretty much a proto hard-rock song, with instrumental passages in odd time-signatures. Providence then is an instrumental improvisation recorded at a live-shows. It’s the most oddball track on this record and is easily my least favourite, due to lack of cohesion. It’s weird and in some way unsettling, but it’s a good track nonetheless.
On to my favourite. Starless is a composition in three parts. The first part contains lyrics and is tonal all the way through. After about 4.5 minutes, everything disappears, with only a bass-line sounding after that. Over the course of the next minutes, the band gradually expands on this bass-line, building up to one of the most amazing climaxes I have ever heard, including that saxophone, again! Like on Providence, it sounds like the band is jamming, but this is in fact a very well composed track. The vocal lines return in the saxophone melody, as everything comes crashing down in the last minute, reaching an amazing finale. Wow.
I must admit that I do not revisit ‘Red’ very often, nor do I listen to King Crimson on a regular basis. In fact, there’s a bunch of their material that I have not even heard yet. From what I’ve seen though, ‘Red’ usually gets listed among their greatest albums and it’s not difficult to see why. This album has got it all and you can see how this album must have influenced a whole generation of progressive musicians. The progressive (jazz-)rock & proto-metal this trio delivered will surely be remembered as a highlight of its respective style.
Favourite song: Starless
Other songs worth checking out: Red, One More Red Nightmare, Fallen Angel
Other stuff by this band: I love ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’. I’ve heard lots of other stuff by this band, but I’m not too familiar with most of their albums to give a solid opinion on those.
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And with this record, I'm really at 75% of my list (of you count the 10 albums that preceded the top 50). With just 15 left to go, are there any guesses as to what may or may not come next?
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Never really gotten into King Crimson apart from enjoying ItCotCK actually. I should spin some of those albums, but I haven't had much interest in 70s prog rock until more recent years. Just got into Yes this year for example.
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Red is one sexy album.
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I actually really like Providence. Of those live "compositions" they included on their albums, that was my favourite from memory.
Starless is more or less their best song. You have to hear the song Lizard if you haven't though. One of the better prog epics of the 70s. The album itself is pretty bad, but that song is one of the only serious contenders to Starless.
If I had to pick an album of theirs to call a favourite, it'd probably be Islands. I love the atmospheric, sometimes creepy jazziness of Islands. The Letters is another of my very favourite songs of theirs, so dark and fucked up.
I still haven't given anything post-Red a proper chance though.
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Awesome, that definitely helps, yes. Oh, I do not think Providence is bad, it's actually a really good improvisation, but it's definitely the weirdest track on here and the one that's stylistically the most different from the others. It's not as weird as album #11 though :neverusethis: speaking of which, have you guys no idea what will come next or is guessing what albums come next a boring game in itself? :p
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I wanted to dive into King Crimson last sunday, but had a ton of work to do. I believe I own 4 albums (Court, Poseidon, Red and Discipline), and love all four. I desperately need the ones in between those two couples.
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Excellent record :tup
I think you'd like their last album, The Power to Believe, which is quite heavy and metal at times, but also dark and experimental.
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Two really great records here. I love love love Pain Of Salvation and Remedy Lane is up there among the best, but maye The Perfect Element is a little bit better. Undertow and Chain Sling are my favorite songs from RL.
Red is a classic, nothing more to say here.
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Never got into either PoS or KC. Maybe I should try again.
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Number 15 is coming online in about an hour. Expect a silly write-up.
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A DT album I'm sure :tup
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Not DT, but you're close. Here's a DT rip-off band :neverusethis:
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15. Haken – Aquarius (2010)
(https://www.generation-prog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/haken_cover.jpg)
On my first list, I had Haken’s ‘Visions’ up slightly higher than ‘Aquarius’. I have back from that original assessment and genuinely consider ‘Aquarius’ to be the better album nowadays. Also their third record ‘The Mountain’ can’t top the band’s debut for me. This might probably be seen as heresy to some of the newer Haken fans, but (fanboy alert) I got into these guys when they released ‘Aquarius’, have seen then live more than any other band and I was there at their first gig outside of Europe. I’ve caught them live on every tour they have done through Europe so far, and I’ve met the guys multiple times (singer Ross Jennings would come up to me after gigs to have a chat, always surprised to see the face at his gig. Even weirder story; Richard Henshall’s father came up to me after a different gig, telling me he ‘has a picture of me on my wall’. Turns out that it was a photograph of the audience at the Night of the Prog festival, I was in the middle on the first row. He proceeded to hand me all of his tokens, because he didn’t fancy any more drinks. Yes, this really happened).
By no means do I want to suggest that I’m good friends with the band or that I know them personally, but I have a history of seeing them live. Now that I got that out of the way, I can discuss this album. Containing only seven tracks, this album has the shortest track-list out the three albums they have released thus far. The album contains their third longest song, Celestial Elixir, which is also their best (and not, as Ross Jennings once said at a gig “we will play our last song now. It’s also our best song”, proceeding into Visions from their second album), as well as six other amazing tunes, of which quite a bunch would probably show up in my own personal Haken top 10.
Why did I pick this album as my favourite when the general consensus is that ‘The Mountain’ is their best work to date? Am I doing this really to get attention? No. I think this is their best album, because what you hear on this record is a young band experimenting with music, hitting an absolute jackpot and creating such a unique sound that is unrivalled to date. Truth be told, ‘Visions’ and ‘The Mountain’ are great albums in their own respect, but if I’m honest, they don’t really do much for me now that some time has passed. Those records are fairly stale, almost boring even, in sound. Both the band’s second and third album sound too much like other contemporary progressive metal bands do. Granted, they’re good, but that’s beside the point.
‘Aquarius’ is a unique gem in my top 50. A debut-album that managed to deliver not only a great set of music, but also a style I wish the band would have expanded more upon and the fame they needed to get heard. It’s hard to think probably, that only 6 six years ago Haken were virtually unknown. This is the disc that started it all. It’s ambitious, it’s bold, it rocks, and most of all: it’s tons of fun. Do listen to the opening of Streams, the wacky section in the middle of Celestial Elixir, the fun guitar solos in Aquarium or most of album-opener The Point of no Return, and tell me that it’s not tons of fun. That’s what makes this album great. A young band on fire, shooting for the moon and hitting it. Gloriously.
Seriously, excuse the rather silly write-up for this one.
Favourite song: Celestial Elixir
Other songs worth checking out: Aquarium, Drowning in the Flood, Eternal Rain
Other stuff by this band: Most people here know this band and most Haken fans prefer ‘The Mountain’, I think. To me, their second album ‘Visions’ is better. Like with so many other bands on this list, you can’t really go wrong with either. I’m really looking forward towards their new album, due released on April 29.
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Aquarius is top notch. Visions is easily the weakest Haken album imo.
(I only really dig Nocturnal Conspiracy tbh, the rest is decent but not stellar).
I agree on Celestial Elixir being their best. Visions (the song) is incredibly boring and stale to me.
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I don't know if I'd rate this one higher than Visions, but I'd rate it above The Moutain. Funny, for some reason I always thought The Mountain was your favourite Haken record. Don't know why.
Anyway, fantastic album. I've only seen Haken live once (Night of the Prog 2011, oh boy that was good) but I'd sure see them anytime they play anywhere near me. I heard this back in 2010 when it had just come out and loved it on first listen.
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aquarius: the weirdest
visions: the most tame
the mountain: the most refined (also best)
but aquarius is great too so i can't complain
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Regarding Red, it's more or less one of the best KC albums, which is already saying a lot. Starless is IMO close to being the greatest closer in rock music. Anyone who hasn't listened to their post-Red stuff needs to really do themselves a favor and listen to Discipline as well.
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Finally got ahold of this one recently thanks to the flying biz. For some reason Aquarius wasn't available anywhere I checked.
Great pick :tup The Mountain is my favorite but this one isn't too far behind, and I agree on all the favorite song picks.
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My least favorite Haken album. I tried hard and still I like both Visions and The Mountain much more.
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Yeah, The Mountain seems to be the favourite here, but I've known them since Aquarius and I still think that's the best :) and Parama, I like weird.
Also, with #14 coming up in an hour and a half or so, I'll be overtaking Anguyen92, who is the only other person running an album top 50 right now.
And nobody has guessed any albums yet to come :|
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Images & Words, El Cielo and that Mr. Bungle album
and Opeth maybe, Ghost Reveries/Blackwater Park?
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You'll probably have something by Porcupine Tree, I'm guessing In Absentia.
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Meh, never got the huge love for Haken. Thought Aquarius was way too wanky and had similar flaws to the modern DT albums, but after seeing them live I got a little bit more admiration for them, and there are some decent songs on The Mountain. I don't think I'll ever be a huge fan since I've kinda left that "appreciating technical prog metal" phase of my life though.
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Here's an album that people might a) like, b) disagree with, c) find boring or d) haven't heard at all, yet don't like beforehand.
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14. Radiohead – OK Computer (1997)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81ni71zIxIL._SL1406_.jpg)
Here’s the album that’s been listen as the ‘best album ever’ on rateyourmusic, for as long as I can remember. While I do not agree with that sentiment, nor with basically the rest of their chart (obviously, or else my list would be copy of theirs), I can certainly agree on the picks in the list and I can understand why this album has the collective highest rating.
So, this is almost my favourite alternative rock album and I can probably already hear some people cringing, for Radiohead seems to be the cause of much disdain amongst many music fans. I am actually not really fan of their electronic period either and consider their rock albums to be a lot better, because I can identify with them much more. I’m a guitar person, more than a bleep-person and this album satisfies me to a very great extent. Radiohead is amazing at making pretty complicated music sound so natural and correct, even though what they’re doing is so weird really. Listen to all the stuff that’s going on in basically every song and it’s only at the moment you really pay attention that you can truly grasp what they’re doing.
One source of hate is usually singer Thom Yorke’s voice and… yeah, I can really understand why his nasal voice would be off-putting. It took me a while to get into him, but I’m usually not the one to moan about a singer’s timbre or accent. Yorke’s voice just isn’t the nicest, but it fits the music very well, you’ll have to admit that. Listen to the “You don’t remember” part in Paranoid Android for instance to hear not only how the band utilises their instruments in pretty innovative ways, but also how his voice is just right for the music. Also the guitar solo at the end of that song is amazing. And what they’re doing with all those random egg-shakers, very imaginative. Great stuff.
‘OK Computer’ is very much an alternative rock album by a band that has such a unique style that it can’t be mistaken that this is a Radiohead album. Every song has some sort of melancholic feeling to it and that’s probably the most in either Karma Police, Climbing Up The Wall or Exit Music (For a Film). Seriously, I can’t choose, but that’s not really the point. In terms of accessible, melancholic, ‘sad’ music, this album is absolutely great.
I feel like I’ve come at a point where I don’t really know what to write about anymore; there’s so much I’ve already written about for other bands. Like with every other album on the list though, I believe this is some of the very best music I have ever heard. It’s really late as I’m typing out this write-up, it will only come online in a couple of days. Tomorrow I can have a lie-in. “No alarms and no surprising, please. Silence.” This will look very silly when this write-up will be published in the morning. “Arrest this man.” That’s all for now, I’m out of stuff to say really.
Favourite song: Paranoid Android
Other songs worth checking out: Karma Police, No Surprises, Airbag
Other stuff by this band: Everybody holds a different opinion on the best Radiohead albums. I’m a fan of ‘The Bends’ more than of any album that comes after ‘OK Computer’, but you have those who swear by ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’. Your best bet is to simply try them out.
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I heard it only few times in full and I think it's ok but it didn't really clicked with me yet. However, No Surprises is one of my favorite songs ever.
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I think it's ok
:neverusethis:
I'm in neither of those categories, I haven't heard the entire album yet but I thought I heard enough songs off this band to determine they're not for me. Don't know how many of those were OKC songs, but I definitely heard Karma Police and Paranoid Android before.
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I think OK Computer is a good album that is massively overrated. Kid A, Amnesiac, In Rainbows and The Bends are all superior.
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To me, this is one of those life-changing albums. It got me into alternative, Brit-pop, indie, even avant-garde. Essential and amazing.
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I think OK Computer is a good album that is massively overrated.
Oh, I'll agree with you that it's overrated. In fact, I fully understand lots of people not wanting to like Radiohead because they're idolosied this much. However, OK Computer is to me more than simply a 'good album', which is where your next comment comes in:
Kid A, Amnesiac, In Rainbows and The Bends are all superior.
I don't 'get' Kid A and Amnesiac, but I'll give you this: I almost had The Bends up here instead of OK Computer. I like them about equally I suppose, but OK Computer has just that little touch of extra experimentalism that makes me enjoy it slightly more.
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speaking of which, have you guys no idea what will come next or is guessing what albums come next a boring game in itself? :p
Well, it's kind of obvious.
1: Burt Bacharach
2: G G Allin and the Scumfucs
3: Engelbert Humperdinck
4: Cher
5: Dying Fetus
and so on.
I don't like it quite as much as Kid A, and it is a tad overhyped, but OK Computer is a pretty stunning album. The Bends is great too, though I don't think it's on the same level as those two.
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Crap, my whole top 5 has been guessed.
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ahh, okay
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In Rainbows is my favorite Radiohead, but I haven't listened to most of their albims very carefully. I should.
As for predictions--Signify (or some other PT) album will be somewhere up there.
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prediction: dream theater
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OK Computer is a great album, but it's not in the league of records that I'd call "the greatest of all time". Kid A is most definitely better IMO.
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I never got the love for Kid A, I find half of the tracks quite boring. OK Computer is fantastic tho :metal
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Funny thing about Radiohead is that I rarely think that I really like them. Until I look in my CD collection, and there's The Bends, OK Computer, In Rainbows and The King Of Limbs which I all really really like, and I'm really interested in their more electronic work. So I guess I should check out Kid A and Amnesiac then. And then there's only two albums left. I guess you could say that I'm on the verge of liking Radiohead.
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Aquarius is an excellent choice. I think I boringly like The Mountain best, but Aquarius is a very close second. And Celestial Elixir is their best song, Visions fans can fite me irl.
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Aquarius is an excellent choice. I think I boringly like The Mountain best, but Aquarius is a very close second.
I agree. Visions is decent, but nowhere near those two. Nocturnal Conspiracy is awesome though.
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I always forget I should listen to them more as I really enjoy Radiohead when listening to them (but I somehow never do). OK computer is the only album of them I have listened to a lot so far and it's great indeed :metal
The Bends is great too, though I don't think it's on the same level as those two.
The album cover of The Bends is almost preventing me from listening to it, wow that is one of the most horrible covers I've seen :lol
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Radiohead is okay. I don't love or hate them.
OK Computer is easily their best album though. Paranoid Android is a classic and Karma Police is equally as good.
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13. Transatlantic – Bridge Across Forever (2001)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71U5ImQPEJL._SL1050_.jpg)
A third (fourth, if you count ‘?’ at #54) album Neal Morse appears on and the one I rate highest. Transatlantic are a well-known band on these forums, not only because of Mike Portnoy being the drummer in the band. They’re a progressive rock supergroup, consisting of four respected musicians from different bands. Althouth this might be seen as a ‘side-project’ of sorts, I believe the band takes their music very seriously, as they make sure they can tour after releasing an album. With the four band-members having other duties music-wise, it’s easy to see why they have only released 4 albums over the 16 years they’ve been together.
I think that this band tries to stay true to progressive-rock philosophy; jam a lot, write some riffs, arrange songs from tons of material and release an album consisting mostly of epics and one or two shorter tracks. True to form, three of their album contain two lengthy epics (most being far over 20 minutes in duration) and some other songs, usually a rocker, or a ballad. Their third album is different, but that one follows a different progressive rock standard. ‘The Whirlwind’ is one 78-minute song (a concept album of sorts), divided into 12 tracks. With regards to quality, this band is excellent, amd all four of their records are amazing in their own right. The band can play as well; their numerous live releases show that they can pull off their songs flawlessly. It is said, that the entire ‘Kaleidoscope’ record was written and recorded in under 5 days. That’s ridiculous, for a 75-minute album that includes two 25-minute plus prog epics.
Why ‘Bridge Across Forever’ then, if all their stuff is great? Because this one their best. Both Duel With the Devil (26 minutes) and Stranger in Your Soul (30 minutes) are amazing epics with recurring themes (even between the songs) that bookend both sides of the record. In between we find the 17-minute long Suite Charlotte Pike, an amazing tune that obviously came forth from a jam-session. On fact, the whole vibe of the song on record makes me believe it’s actually recorded live in the studio. Awesome stuff. Rounding off the album is the title-track, whoch is by far the shortest song on the record at less than 6 minutes. I would argue that this is one of the best ballads Neal Morse has ever written. It’s a heartfelt tribute to the loss of a loved one (if I interpret the lyrics the right way).
Now, this record is clearly not meant for people that can’t take progrssive wank and long song structures. In fact, I would say that Transatlantic actively abuses all the tropes and characteristics of progressive rock in general. In that sense, they are very much a modern-age Close-to-the-Edge-era Yes, with the modern sound we are used to. One might say this band sounds too mich like Neal Mose, and while I agree that the man has a signature sound of sorts, this is absolutely not a bad thing per se. You can really hear all influences from the four band-members and their respective contributions to this album. This is most definitely a fun album – and like with the Haken album, I’m inclined to say that this band was at their creative peak here, creating an album from nothing by jamming on the various parts every band-member brought in. The result is a great piece of work and a modern classic for the progressive rock scene.
Favourite song: Duel With the Devil
Other songs worth checking out: Stranger in Your Soul, Bridge Across Forever, Suite Charlotte Pike
Other stuff by this band: You can’t go wrong with any album. Both ‘SMPT:e’ and ‘Kaleidoscope’ are similar in structure to this one (long epics with one or two shorter songs), while ‘The Whirlwind’ is one long song, divided in 13 different tracks.
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And Celestial Elixir is their best song, Visions fans can fite me irl.
:hifive:
I guess you could say that I'm on the verge of liking Radiohead.
You have more of their records on CD than I do :lol
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2prog4me
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2prog4me
I thought so, but it's a good record nonetheless. Guess what, it's one of the last prog albums on the list (at least in terms of prog-wankery and long songs).
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Bridge Across Forever is spectacular. I'm a big fan of Suite Charlotte Pike, and I hope that next time they tour, whenever that is, they break out the full Suite Charlotte Pike, not cut through with anything else, just the full song.
I'd be hard pressed to name my favorite Transatlantic album. I rank all their last three pretty much equally.
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I prefer both The Whirlwind and Kaleidoscope to Bridges. But it's still a fantastic album. :tup
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I quite like this one, and I'm not so sure how much that tired "prog wank" criticism applies here, but I'd venture to say very little. Duel With the Devil and Stranger in Your Soul are both riddled with so many great moments, it'd be hard to pick only a few.
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Good to see some people agreeing on this pick (even though it surprises me that this album gets few responses, compared to some albums in here tht I thought would get none).
Duel With the Devil and Stranger in Your Soul are both riddled with so many great moments, it'd be hard to pick only a few.
Indeed, it was pretty difficult to do a cohesive write-up, without overselling the record :lol
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#12 is a classic and it's well-known. It will be up shortly.
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12. Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3b/Dark_Side_of_the_Moon.png)
Maybe you can spot the recurring trend in this list. Whenever a classic album pops up, my write-ups tend to be significantly shorter. This is due to a couple of reasons, but most notably because I believe that whenever an album is a ‘classic’ I should not have to defend its placement in my top 50 and because a lot has been said about the album already, so the amount of stuff I can add isn’t substantial at all. This is exactly the case with Pink Floyd’s masterpiece, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’. Probably the most undisputed classic I have in my list, for reasons everybody who has heard it will likely know.
‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ is a concept album, but not in the way that the lyrics tell a story or anything. Lyrically, there’s some overlap, as the album is held together mostly by its continuous music and conceptual, philosophical lyrics. All the tracks flow directly into each other, with the exception for the two tracks in the middle of the record. This is obviously because on a vinyl LP the maximum amount of time was reached halfway through the album. The album contains three songs that are significantly longer than the others. These would be Time, Money and Us And Them.
It’s easy to see these aforementioned tracks as the ‘centerpieces’ of the album, but that would be a misconception. In fact, the whole album flows really well, in such a way that it would be hard to pinpoint exactly where the most interesting stuff on the album happens. That said, a highlight for me would be David Gilmour’s fantastic guitar solo in Time, Clare Torry’s amazing singing in The Great Gig in the Sky and the whole ending of the album. The complete sequence of three songs, starting at Any Colour You Like through to the last moments of the album is probably my favourite part of this flawless record.
Boring write-up? Yeah, I thought so. Feel free to disagree with me on this particular choice of album. I could have written a similar thing on any of their big four records, but to me this one remains their magnum opus. This being one of the best-selling albums ever made is at least some sort of testament to its legacy. It’s seriously that good.
Favourite song: Any Colour You Like/Brain Damage/Eclipse
Other songs worth checking out: Time, Money, Us and Them
Other stuff by this band: The four albums from their classic period are all golden. I’m talking about this one, ‘The Wall’, ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘Animals’. On top of those, I’m a big fan of ‘Meddle’ and ‘The Division Bell’ as well. For any newcomer to Pink Floyd, I’d say the live-CD ‘Pulse’ is a great start, with the only downside to it that Roger Waters doesn’t play on this one
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Overrated. WYWH is much better (I'm 100% objective, right :P)
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Animals > WYWH
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Good album, but definitely my least favorite out of the big 4. I'd rank them The Wall > Animals > Wish You Were Here > Dark Side. It's a good classic album though.
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WYWH > everything.
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Bridge Across Forever is my favorite Transatlantic record.
Dark Side falls behind WYWH, Animals and maybe The Wall but it's still a classic and rightfully so.
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Why is nobody supportive of DSOTM? :lol
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Why is nobody supportive of DSOTM? :lol
I may be completely wrong, but my understanding looking at it from my perspective, DSOtM, while regarded as one of the most classics ever is generally more the favorite among people who might not be hardcore PF fans, and the people who really like the band (or listen to them a bit more) hold one of the others as the best.
Again, just my observation. But the friends I know who listen to PF have either WYWH, The Wall or Animals (or even Meddle) as their nr1, whereas I hear a lot of people who might not necessarily listen to the band talk about DSotM.
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I know, it was partly in jest to say that. I also realise that DSOTM is generally more liked by non-PF fans than most (if not all) ther other records. That doesn't stop me from enjoying it a lot though.
Most PF fans I know prefer either The Wall or WYWH as well, so that's definitely not an anomaly. If I had to name my three favourite PF albums they would be DSOTM, Animals and Meddle. While I really like The Wall and WYWH a lot, I could never really get into either of them as much as into DSOTM. That's not to say I don't like them. Hell, I wrote my bachelor thesis on The Wall :lol
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If I had to name my three favourite PF albums they would be DSOTM, Animals and Meddle.
WYWH, The Wall and The Division Bell for me. But I really like all six of these.
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I prefer both The Whirlwind and Kaleidoscope to Bridges. But it's still a fantastic album. :tup
Please, stop smoking crack. Kaleidoscope is by far the weakest Transatlantic album.
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I prefer both The Whirlwind and Kaleidoscope to Bridges. But it's still a fantastic album. :tup
Please, stop smoking crack. Kaleidoscope is by far the weakest Transatlantic album.
I smoke only weed and I ain't planning on stopping anytime soon. :hat :chill
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Why is nobody supportive of DSOTM? :lol
I am! Virtually flawless album - only song I'm not as fond of as the rest is Brain Damage, but it's still an excellent track. Us and Them is my favourite here; experiencing it live was mesmerising to say the least.
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i prefer both WYWH and Animals, but this is still a good album
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I'll agree with DSOTM, Elite! The Wall and Wish You Were Here are really good albums, but neither is consistently as enjoyable to just sit down and listen to as DSOTM. I'm not crazy about Money, to be honest, but side 2 after Money is a spectacular ~17 minutes of music.
I prefer both The Whirlwind and Kaleidoscope to Bridges. But it's still a fantastic album. :tup
Please, stop smoking crack. Kaleidoscope is by far the weakest Transatlantic album.
That would be the debut, actually. Every song on Kaleidoscope is better than Mystery Train, and both epics are better than My New World. Half the time I just listen to All of the Above and We All Need Some Light and call it quits, while Kaleidoscope starts strong, ends stronger and has the great Black as the Sky in the middle.
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Good, I was hoping to get some credibility before posting #11 later tonight :lol
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Dark side of the moon is fantastic, I also prefer it over WYWH and Animals. The Piper at the gates of dawn is in a completely different league though, that's just the best.
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Here's an album that might receive some backlash, either that or people don't know it. This is also the longest write-up in the entire top 50, so bear with me (do you guys actually read this stuff?). Without many more words, I present you the final album before the top 10.
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11. maudlin of the Well – Bath (2001)
(https://f1.bcbits.com/img/a4275038733_10.jpg)
This is a classic in the avant-garde metal genre. That sentence alone is probably more than enough to scare off some people, but that really shouldn’t have to be the case. Still, I’m 100% convinced that this album was not meant to appeal to everyone. I also think that motW mastermind Toby Driver does not care in the slightest. He just creates music as he sees fit, as both the outputs from motW and his other band Kayo Dot show. (By the way, Kayo Dot will not be featured in this list, because while I think ‘Choirs of the Eye’ is a really good record of theirs, I’m not too confident about liking it as of now. It might slip in at a later iteration).
maudlin of the Well is (or was?) an avant-garde metal band and all they have released a total of 4 albums. Of those, the most well-known are ‘Bath’ and ‘Leaving Your Body Map’, both released in 2001 and both quite similar in style, although the latter is probably less heavy and less insane. That said, ‘Bath’ really isn’t really the insane heavy album this write-up might make it seem. In fact, there’s only a couple of moments on this album where stuff really gets heavy. They happen to be some of the best moments as well. A lot of this album is really atmospheric and strangely atmospheric in a very weird way, for the lyrics sung are often slightly out-of-tune and they’re down-right messed-up as well. “I am the swan’s wings, bloodied at the joint. And pasted to a boy’s back, like in those stories”. Imagine that being sung in a hyptonising voice against a backdrop of soft acoustic guitar playing. In the same song, things take a turn when the drummer starts playing blast-beats and the guitarist plays these very fast arpeggios. No growling or anything in the entire track, just pure madness. “Slowly insert the dagger again.” (This was Heaven and Weak by the way).
The album comprises a total of 10 tracks, of which two are short instrumental interludes (which are conveniently named Interlude 1 and Interlude 2 as well). Among the remainder of the tracks are two shorter ballad-like songs; Marid’s Gift of Art, which is nice and Geography, a great closer to the album). Then there’s the instrumental album opener The Blue Ghost / Shedding Qliphoth, which is stylistically similar to the interlude tracks. What’s left is the five long weird avant-garde tracks. I’ve already said a little about Heaven and Weak, but the general trend of what I wrote there applies to the others as well. They Aren’t All Beautiful is practically the song that opens the album, because even though the first track is almost 8 minutes long, it feels almost redundant to have had that nice soothing atmosphere; the moment They Aren’t All beautiful kicks in, you’re supposed to be floored. It’s easily the heaviest track on the album and frankly, also my favourite. Featuring a bunch of riffs after each other, an abundance of harsh vocals, blast-beats and very fast guitar playing, it’s pretty amazing. It also wouldn’t be avant-garde without random stuff happening, so there’s a weird breakdown in the middle featuring trombone and tuba; why the hell not?
The Ferryman is the third long song on the album and it might well be even weirder than that song about pasting swan wings to the backs of boys. Seriously, it opens with a church organ, then stops, then there’s song random hitting on cymbals, the song then kicks in with harsh vocals and heavy guitars, the church organ makes a return in a chorus where there’s suddenly a woman singing as well (where did she come from?), then it slows down and ends in what sounds like tormented people suffocating and people dropping bricks in water. This all flows into Marid’s Gift of Art, the first ballad of two on the album. Again, featuring some of the weirdest lyrics I have ever read. But you seriously believe him when he says “I could make everyone so happy, beautiful like you.” It’s an oasis of silence and rest before the next songs kicks in. This one probably has the most standard structure out of all the songs on the album and features some nice trumpet and acoustic guitar.
Girl With a Watering Can is up next and opens with a clarinet playing the intro melody from the album’s first track, before the rest of the band kicks in. Another highlight of the album really, this one isn’t any less weird than the other longer tracks. Featuring a heavy dose of that woman singing again, the song takes off only about half-way through. I think it’s actually the least heavy song of the five big ones. It’s certainly the slowest, but it’s also by far the most beautiful. (They aren’t all, but this one is). There’s a short part at the end that’s kind-of disjointed from the rest of the song that’s slightly heavier, but overall this one has nothing on the beast the follows. Birth Pains of Astral Projection gets the prize for being the most fucked-up song on the record. It has a very long build-up and gets quite heavy in the end, with weird growls over clean parts in the instruments somewhere in the middle and again, very weird lyrics all the way through. There’s honestly a lot more to say about this track too, but I feel like I’m writing too much already.
Right, last track then. Geography is a great highlight at the end of the album. The circle is complete as the album goes back into soothing, relaxing territory with this ballad song. Again though, what’s up with those weird lyrics? “Breath is real, anger’s real. Sleep on your birthday and cry. Cry, my baby. Let me wash you, I have no ears for my lady.” You could probably write a whole write-up just about how silly all lyrics on the album are. Geography is based on pretty simple melodies and at the ending the song actually takes an unexpected turn, with the electric guitar playing the underlying melody all of a sudden. The chorus lyrics get repeated a couple of time, and despite their weirdness, this might genuinely be the album at its most catchy. Avant-garde is not really my thing, but this album hits all the right spots. And so I end what has become the longest write-up on this list by far.
Favourite song: They Aren’t All Beautiful
Other songs worth checking out: Girl With a Watering Can, The Ferryman, Geography
Other stuff by this band: This album always gets paired with ‘Leaving Your Body Map’, because they were released at the same time. LYBM is very good, but Bath is slightly more distinguished. The band’s two other albums are either inferior (‘My Fruit Psychobells…A Seed Combustible’), or so vastly different (‘Part the Second’), that comparing them is very difficult. I can also recommend the band Kayo Dot, if you like this stuff. It’s fronted by the same guy.
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I got leaving your body map but never got too into it, was just alright imo but oh well, I'll probably get this too someday if I can get a physical copy of it
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You will never find a physical copy of this unless you go on eBay/other second-hand sites. The Bath/LYBM vinyl box I have from Blood Music is probably the rarest vinyl item I own.
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MotW! :tup Bath is a really good album, but I have to say I've always liked Kayo Dot more than Maudlin. As great as Bath is, if I were to pick Toby's 3 best albums, they would all be Kayo Dot albums. But MotW has a really great discography. All their albums are great or better!
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You will never find a physical copy of this unless you go on eBay/other second-hand sites. The Bath/LYBM vinyl box I have from Blood Music is probably the rarest vinyl item I own.
I got a physical copy of LYBM thru a friend in Australia and I'm just going to hold out until I get that insanely lucky again
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I like this album, but it's probably too "out there" or just plain chaotic for me. But The Ferryman is fantastic, so I'll revisit this album every once in a while as my tastes get weirder and weirder :tup
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Posting this early, because I'm out all day.
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10. Obsidian Kingdom – Mantiis (An Agony in Fourteen Bites) (2014)
(https://newnoisemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Obsidian-Kingdom-Mantiis-An-Agony-In-Fourteen-Bites-cover.jpg)
Honestly, this might very well be the most twisted, messed-up and fucked-up album on the entire list. Musically, it’s not that difficult or ‘avant-garde’ so to speak, but the subject matter of the lyrics and the overall brutality and relentlessness of this album makes it so. Please, to not be turned off by these first two lines, because obviously this is not some sort of ear-raping album, as I do not like that stuff myself either. If you look through the harshness, the music is actually very beautiful and subtle – the entire album a (rather sick) work of art in itself. The ‘Mantiis’ splatter-vinyl I own is among my most prized music-related possessions, because it’s a complete beauty with all the additional art-work.
I like to think that Obsidian Kingdom, hailing from Barcelona, Spain, took inspiration from all sorts of avant-garde artists, but mixed that with some of the more extreme sub-genres of metal to create cohesive, yet very bleak music. I’m saying this, because this is probably the darkest album on my list. Relying heavily on dark timbres all around (in voice, guitar sounds, keyboard noises, even the trumpets in Last of the Light), the music on this album can definitely be called dismal or gloomy. The singer isn’t exactly the most skilled singer in the history of music, but he gets the job done, alternatively singing in clean voice and in his black-metal-ish screams. This is true for all other instruments on the album as well, really. Nothing they do is highly technical at all, but it works very well in the context of the music.
With lyrics in both English and Spanish (though only in Awake Until Dawn), ‘Mantiis’ is an album that tells a story, although the lyrics do not make clear exactly what happens. What I do know though, and what the band practically confirmed when I saw them live, is that the lyrics are rather insane. “We’re Obsidian Kingdom from Barcelona, and we sing songs about really fucked-up stuff.” From what I gather from the lyrics, they tell a story of abduction, rape, murder and necrophilia. Take into account the song-title from the album opener, Not Yet Five, and it becomes even more screwed up when you realise the subject matter is actually a child. I do not think the band does this simply to shock; that would be way too boring. I think it is an artistic statement, that even though the subject matter is quite brutal, the lyrics do not really portray it as such – and the underlying music is actually quite beautiful here and there, and then devastating the next moment.
Not all songs on this album have lyrics. In fact, of the album’s fourteen tracks (see where the title came from?), four are instrumental. I do not see this album as fourteen separate tracks though. Every tracks segues into the next and as such the whole album is to me a single piece of music. Musically what these guys do is actually not all that avant-garde; they build up their music and then become super heavy and then go back to a softer part, although they do use other influences here and there as well. A good example of this is the combination of the album’s first four tracks. Not Yet Five is an instrumental based on a rather simple guitar melody, but in the background you hear brooding noises, as if there’s an storm upcoming. Oncoming Dark follows, and the melody gets a context – the very first song on the album is actually quite relaxing with clean singing and a defined structure. It gets heavier at the end of the song, segueing into Through the Glass, an instrumental barrage of heavy guitars. Cinnamon Balls is the first moment the band truly erupts, and at the start of the song you hear Rider G Omega’s black-metal voice; definitely a characteristic of their heavier side. Through these album’s first 10-minutes the listener is already exposed to various aspects of their music and everything gradually builds up. This build-up is a characteristic of the entire album really, as the most messed-up moment musically happens in the album’s final track And Then It Was, arguably the heaviest track on the album that finishes where the album started. The weird noises from the intro track are back, but with ferocious guitars supporting them. The lyrics leave not a lot to the imagination; our protagonist has clearly been killed.
I definitely do not want to discuss every song on this album in detail, because I think this is an album that needs to be experienced in full by listening to it. I was initially wary of the descriptor of ‘extreme metal’ for this album, but looking back I think this is not the right way to describe this album. In fact, the moments where the band really gets ‘extreme’ are relatively heavy, but they do not come out of nowhere. This whole album is structured so well, that every build-up and every song leads to something. The transition from clean singing to full-blown black-metal is very natural everywhere. With regards to the subject matter, dare I say that this is even a beautiful, albeit haunting album. This album had a great impact on me – I think that’s the best way to describe why it’s this high up in my top 50.
Then to close off, I think this last statement, taken from the band’s bandcamp page sums up the album rather well: Taking part in the long-lived tradition of rock operas, ‘Mantiis’ embarks the listener in an eerie musical trip, noted for the coherent exploration of a wide range of styles and emotions. The band spares no sound resources in order to portray the most varied scenes; from quiet despair to utter violence.
Favourite song: Last of the Light
Other songs worth checking out: Cinnamon Balls, And Then it Was, Oncoming Dark
Other stuff by this band: Although I can definitely recommend this band’s second album ‘A Year With No Summer’, it’s definitely a different record. It’s less heavy (and thus less fucked-up), but more experimental. It almost sounds like a different band playing and that makes it hard to compare the two. Still a damn good record, but I prefer ‘Mantiis’ for its insane over-the-topness.
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yeah i don't think i'm quite as into this one as you but it's still great
i was pretty disappointed by a year with no summer though :-[
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MotW! :tup Bath is a really good album, but I have to say I've always liked Kayo Dot more than Maudlin. As great as Bath is, if I were to pick Toby's 3 best albums, they would all be Kayo Dot albums. But MotW has a really great discography. All their albums are great or better!
I haven't listened to Kayo Dot enough to make a correct judgement, although I like what I hear. I own 'Choirs of the Ete' and I've heard it a couple of time. Same thing goes for the albums they have on Spotify. I want to hear their stuff more often, but they're not exactly a band you can listen to at any time.
yeah i don't think i'm quite as into this one as you but it's still great
i was pretty disappointed by a year with no summer though :-[
Really? I think AYWNS was a pretty sweet release, even though it's very different from Mantiis. If you don't compare it to Mantiis directly,maybe you can appreciate it more. It's got the same dark, melancholic vibe/mood, but through more atmospheric music, rather than extreme metal.
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I actually got into Obsidian Kingdom this year through their new album. Both of their albums are really great, Mantiis might be slightly better. It's a really good album.
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i dunno, i find the songs all too drawn out and directionless, and i don't like the vocals on the album much either. i legitimately have no clue what they were going for on the album. it's like, post-metal-ish but only kinda? i really don't know. it's been a frustrating album tbh.
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I listened to this album a couple of times last year, but I probably should have given it some more time.
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I have to check out both maudlin of the well and Obsidian Kingdom. I see them quite often here but never ever heard their one song.
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Both bands have more than one song :neverusethis:
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Both bands have more than one song :neverusethis:
And I didn't hear any of them :P (I meant a song, not their only song)
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i dunno, i find the songs all too drawn out and directionless, and i don't like the vocals on the album much either. i legitimately have no clue what they were going for on the album. it's like, post-metal-ish but only kinda? i really don't know. it's been a frustrating album tbh.
The change in direction is really refreshing IMO. It's a more atmospheric album and most importantly it's different than their first. Away/Absent is probably even my favorite song of theirs. It's not AS consistent as their first album, but highs are as good IMO.
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That Obsidian Kingdom cover makes me feel really sad, but I can't put my finger exactly on why that is......
And by your writeup, it seems like the music would evoke a similar response. I'm curious to hear it, but nervous as well.
MotW is always nice to see, but I agree with Zantera on Kayo Dot>MotW, particularly Choirs of the Eye, Hubardo and a third album which I'm having an impossible time choosing.
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That Obsidian Kingdom cover makes me feel really sad, but I can't put my finger exactly on why that is......
And by your writeup, it seems like the music would evoke a similar response. I'm curious to hear it, but nervous as well.
MotW is always nice to see, but I agree with Zantera on Kayo Dot>MotW, particularly Choirs of the Eye, Hubardo and a third album which I'm having an impossible time choosing.
Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue ;)
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Yeah that's a great one, but.... Blue Lambency Downward, Coffins on Io and even Coyote.... *shrugging emote*
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Yeah that's a great one, but.... Blue Lambency Downward, Coffins on Io and even Coyote.... *shrugging emote*
Not to derail Elite's thread completely, but relevant:
1. Choirs of the Eye
2. Hubardo
3. Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue
4. Coffins on IO
5. Blue Lambency Downward
6. Coyote
7. Gamma Knife
(Gamma Knife a notch below the rest)
Elite can use this list for his future Kayo Dot exploration. :hat
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i dunno, i find the songs all too drawn out and directionless, and i don't like the vocals on the album much either. i legitimately have no clue what they were going for on the album. it's like, post-metal-ish but only kinda? i really don't know. it's been a frustrating album tbh.
This. Mantiis is on my top 50, so I had high hopes for this new one, but I just don't get it.
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it's not that I don't get atmospheric metal, I've gotten a crapton of atmospheric metal in just the last year alone, and this one is the absolute worst of them all tbh
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it's probably too "out there" or just plain chaotic for me.
When it's Sacul saying this, I can pretty well be assured that the album in question isn't for me.
Neither of the last two seem to be up my alley at all :-\
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Just droppin in to say that the maudlin album is incredible, though I think I prefer Part the Second by a bit.
Also I would love to get my hands on a physical motW album, but alas. It is not to be. :(
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Bridge Across Forever is pretty good but I like the Whirlwind way more I think. DSOTM is of course amazing. Never could get into Maudlin and I've never heard the Obsidian Kingdom album, so I need to check that one out probably.
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Jeebus you update fast. :P
Going back to DSOTM, while I still much prefer Wish You Were Here and Animals comes really close, Dark Side is still a fantastic, timeless album that deserves every bit of praise it gets. I wouldn't call it overrated at all. It's a completely holistic and cohesive album experience that's still a perfectly good benchmark for what the definite "album experience" should be. And I say this while Dark Side isn't even a top 30 album for me.
That maudlin album is great, as well as Leaving Your Body Map. Hard to pick a favorite of the two for me honestly.
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And by your writeup, it seems like the music would evoke a similar response. I'm curious to hear it, but nervous as well.
Try it, I think you hav the right mindset beforehand. It's not really an easy-listening album anyway.
Elite can use this list for his future Kayo Dot exploration. :hat
Thank you! I actually own Choris of the Eye, so I'll start by giving that more spins.
it's probably too "out there" or just plain chaotic for me.
When it's Sacul saying this, I can pretty well be assured that the album in question isn't for me.
Time for Sacul to already remove that nice signature of his :lol
Jeebus you update fast. :P
2 albums a day is what I'm doing, roughly around 11 in the morning and evening, my time. In fact, #9 is coming up later tonight (probably in less than an hour or so, since I'm tired). I was toying with the idea of doing 1 a day for the top 10, but I figured that this is a good pace anyway. Maybe I'll do one a day for the top 4 (since the even numbers are the ones I post in the morning).
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To all other people who responded, thanks for keeping the discussion going! :)
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Posting this now, because I'm dead tired. Probably not the albuk you expected by this band..
You'll probably have something by Porcupine Tree,
Yes.
I'm guessing In Absentia.
Nope:
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9. Porcupine Tree – Signify (1996)
(https://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0002/020/MI0002020920.jpg?partner=allrovi.com)
Here’s a band that was obviously bound to show up at some point in this top 50. I had my favourite Steven Wilson solo record already and the only reason I knew of his existence back when he released this solo record was basically because he was once in a band called Porcupine Tree. This band was my go-to band during my last year in high-school. I think that I honestly know all their songs by heart and can sing the lyrics to almost all of them. I barely listened to anything else during that year. To think about that now is very weird, as there are a couple of their records I have not heard in a long time.
Why did I choose this album as my favourite? Well, to be honest I’m kind of kicking myself in the head for setting the rule not to include any live albums. The choice would have been very obvious and I would have put ‘Coma Divine’ in here as my favourite Porcupine Tree album. That would also be the true answer; not only is ‘Come Divine’ my favourite release by Porcupine Tree, I also believe it’s the best live record I have ever heard. It contains their best work from their old days (more on that later) and they adapted some stuff to make it sound better live. The only downside to ‘Coma Divine’ is that it does not contain the song Dark Matter, my favourite Porcupine Tree song and quite possibly the best song Steven Wilson has written in his extensive career.
Musically, Porcupine Tree have gone through quite some different phases. Starting out as an atmospheric/progressive rock band, they can be heard to imitate Pink Floyd (among others) on some of their earliest releases. Featuring relatively few vocals compared to later releases, the band relied for a large part on instrumental soundscapes, as can be heard on ‘Up the Downstair’, ‘The Sky Moves Sideways’ and ‘Signify’. Around the year 2000, the band starts experimenting with more pop-structures on the albums ‘Stupid Dream’, ‘Lightbulb Sun’ & ‘In Absentia’. The three albums that follow are considerably heavier than the first seven. ‘Deadwing’, ‘Fear of a Blank Planet’ and ‘The Incident’ see the band moving into almost metal territory, vastly different from their first years, 20 years earlier. I deliberately did not mentions the band’s debut-album, nor any of the many EPs and extra releases they have made, for they would detract from the overall storyline. I can heartily recommend everything the band has done though, at least to get an idea of how they evolved.
Having divided the band’s history into arbitrary ‘phases’, I guess you could say the first one is my favourite. Yes, I realise ‘In Absentia’ is generally considered their best and I even had that one at #5 at my first list, but truth be told; I think ‘Signify’ is all-round a more interesting album (read the ‘other stuff by this band part’ below as well) although it’s very close. Like I said, ‘Signify’ contains my favourite song by them, but there’s also a bunch of other amazing tunes on here. By no means do I include this album ‘for the hell of it’, choosing between some of their albums is very tough and I honestly think that this is their best. If not, then it’s at least my favourite.
The album starts with the instrumental title-track, followed by the amazing Sleep of No Dreaming. The first time I ever heard this tune, I was listening to the aforementioned ‘Coma Divine’ while having a shower. I actually got out of the shower to check what song the CD was on, because the chorus is so good. Up next is Pagan, a short interlude track, which is followed by the two-part Waiting. The first one includes some lyrics, while the second part is instrumental and almost feels like a jam based on drum-rhythms and spacey keyboard sounds. Next up are Sever, perhaps the most standard song on the disc and Idiot Prayer, another instrumental full of keyboard sounds that’s clearly been inspired by house music. Every Home is Wired is vocally the most interesting song on the album, with layers upon layers of vocals in the chorus. Intermediate Jesus then is my favourite of all the album’s instrumentals; it’s groovy and even a little funky, yet experimental at the same time. I would not be surprised if this song is the result of a jam session of sorts. “Light Mass Prayers” come next, which is a very weird interlude track consisting of keyboard choirs and actual vocals fading in and out. Dark Matter then finishes off the album. I already spoke about how this is my favourite Steven Wilson song, but I dare not try to explain why this is the case. I might fail completely. It has to do with the song being unpretentious, yet progressive, featuring a great chorus and the ending guitar solo is simply glorious.
I know this album doesn’t really appeal to everybody and I don’t think you should force yourself to like it either. I’m a great fan of Porcupine Tree (and Steven Wilson in general), and hold a lot of their material dearly and even love quite a bunch of it. If anything, making me have to choose between a couple of albums of theirs just shows how consistent their discography is, even though there is quite a difference in style. I would not say this is their most accessible album and I must admit it took me considerably longer to fully get this one, but once it clicked and once I could appreciate this… it has since been one of my favourites ever.
Favourite song: Dark Matter
Other songs worth checking out: Sleep of No Dreaming, Intermediate Jesus, Waiting
Other stuff by this band: God, where do I start? I can’t really imagine someone reading this who hasn’t delved into Porcupine Tree at all. Based on my placement of this album, you could say I prefer PT’s earlier work, but the fact is that I find most, if not all of their albums great. My second favourite by them would be ‘In Absentia’ (and I curse the one-album-per-artist rule specifically for not being able to include that album here), but I also love ‘Up the Downstair’ and ‘The Sky Moves Sideways’ (two earlier albums that are stylistically similar to ‘Signify’). Of the band’s later work, I think ‘Deadwing’ and ‘Fear of a Blank Planet’ are his best (after the aforementioned ‘In Absentia’, of course). Porcupine Tree are another band with way too many good records and I can’t give an accurate account of all their stuff in this short write-up, so ask me, if you want.
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I love PT (and SW's solo work even more) and I really like this album but I've always liked Gavin-era PT albums way better than the rest.
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I can’t really imagine someone reading this who hasn’t delved into Porcupine Tree at all.
Why hello there. :loser:
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I can’t really imagine someone reading this who hasn’t delved into Porcupine Tree at all.
Why hello there. :loser:
Why would you do that? (or why wouldn't :P)
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Actually, I was planning to relisten some of PT albums and I put Signify on my smartphone first because I know I like it but I don't know it well as albums after it. Will relisten soon.
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I can’t really imagine someone reading this who hasn’t delved into Porcupine Tree at all.
Why hello there. :loser:
Why would you do that? (or why wouldn't :P)
I unfortunately don't really have the time to check out a band that doesn't immediately strike me as something I really want to listen to. The stuff I've heard I thought was okay, but not stellar enough to convince me to check out entire albums of it.
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been spinning this one recently, I like it and dark matter is great but it's not one of my favorite PT albums
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Definitely one of the best PT albums! I think FOABP might be my nr1, but Signify and Stupid Dream are close.
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Great record, up there with the best. Might not be my overall favorite but it's definitely the best from their earlier phase.
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I thought this one would get mixed reception. Good to see many people liking this record as well though :) I think a top 5 by me would have Signify, IA, FOABP, TSMS and Up the Downstair in it. For some reason, I could never really get into both 'Lightbulb Sun' and 'Stupid Dream'.
jake; based on the music you listed to, I think PT would not be enough metal for you.
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Lightbulb Sun and In Absentia are my favorites by PT, followed by Deadwing I think.
Signify is alright though.
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FoaBP, Deadwing, Lightbulb Sun, Stupid Dream, In Absentia. Don't know the rest well enough to rate them (and I consider myself PT fan ugh).
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El Cielo
How did you know? :eek
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8. dredg – El Cielo (2002)
(https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51BChVRoFUL.jpg)
Based on the remainder of this list, I think I can say that this is my favourite rock album ever. If you look how this album gets categorised, you can find various genres that correspond with the music on this album, although neither ‘alternative’, ‘experimental’ or ‘progressive’ is truly fitting in my opinion. In fact, ‘art rock’ might very well be the best term to describe the music heard on this album. dredg are predominantly a rock band, as their line-up is that of a rock band, but at times they sound very much different from what you would expect from a rock band.
‘El Cielo’ is Spanish for ‘the sky’ or ‘the heaven’ or a word for a loved one like ‘sweetie’. The album is often regarded as a concept album, because it focuses on one theme mainly in lyrics. In fact, the main inspiration from this album came forth from a painting by Salvador Dalí titled Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. This painting, in combination with sleep paralysis formed the backbone of what would become this album. The album booklet contains letters written by sufferers of sleeping disorders with descriptions of various experiences with or relating to sleep paralysis. These letters have been incorporated into the album’s lyrics. Furthermore, the band has been quoted to say that this album should be listened to while looking at the Dalí painting, as the band have described their album as ‘drawing music’. Arty-farty much? A bit, probably.
The album contains 16 tracks, of which five are short interlude tracks with the word ‘Brushstroke’ in the title. The other 11 tracks vary in length from a little over 3 minutes to almost 7 minutes and are quite different in style, although all of them make very clever usage of instruments and sounds. A good example of this is the interlude track Brushstroke: Walk in the Park which starts with snapping fingers, followed by almost classical piano and violin. About halfway through, the violin starts making deliberately out of tune glissandos. The last minute of Sorry But It’s Over, a ballad earlier on the album, consists of weirdly distorted voices, but in such a way that it sounds very musical and it actually ties in very well with the rest of the album. On Triangle, a favourite of mine from this record, the band mixes different songs into and come close to recording haunting verses, but not before you hear the almost out-of-place intro of the track.
Out of placeness (or rather; trying new things and not being frightened by whatever the result may be) seems like a recurring theme on this album; because even though the band throws a lot of stuff around your ears musically, never is there really anything that doesn’t fit on the album at all. Not even the only time the band gets very heavy in Of the Room does it feel out of place. Some of the most experimental stuff happens on the second half of the album, starting with Brushstroke: Reprise, an almost literal reprise of the album’s first proper track, only now the sound has been muddied. By the way, speaking about the album’s first track, listen how awesome the drums sound while panning from left to right and having slight volume changes throughout the song, it’s these small things that makes this album such an amazing listening experience. Of the Room contains some of the strangest lyrics on the album, but the instrumentation behind the vocals might even been weirder, especially in the verses. Those drums and guitars are not doing what you’d expect them do to – and who ever used sighs as percussive ‘instruments’? Brilliant! Brushstroke: An Elephant in the Delta Waves has singing in an unintelligible language (apparently something that is common to people experiencing sleep paralysis). While It Only Took a Day is a good track and one of the few driving rock tracks on the record, it’s the last two tracks that are definitely highlights of the album. Whoa Is Me is arguably the catchiest song – and it has a saxophone playing along as well – on the record, but it’s the final track on the album that is my absolute favourite. I will not even try to describe The Canyon Behind Her at all, because this is one of the rare instances where I don’t think words can do a song justice. Probably my favourite piece of music ever, that’s all I can say about it.
Although the band states in Eighteen People Living in Harmony that “art is dying”, them releasing this album proves otherwise. Although I have no idea how I should listen to this album whilst watching the Dalí painting and what transcendental experience I should get from that, the whole idea that this band went to lengths creating this record says enough probably. Having this album tie in with sleep paralysis and using this sleep disorder as an inspiration is also quite creative and makes from some unique tracks and sounds. I think for an art rock album, dredg have succeeded not only creating something that is actually catchy and listenable, but also one that can be listened to for years to come, with there always being something new to discover. There’s tons of stuff happening on this album that I haven’t even mentioned here. I love this one, and even though it dropped down from #3 on my very first list, there’s no way this album is leaving the top 10 anytime soon.
Favourite song: The Canyon Behind Her
Other songs worth checking out: Whoa Is Me, Triangle, Same Ol’ Road
Other stuff by this band: Of the band’s other records, ‘The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion’ comes closest to this one stylistically. I can also recommend ‘Catch Without Arms’, a more pop-oriented record. Whatever you do, stay away from ‘Chuckles and Mr. Squeezy’.
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Yes! :hefdaddy absolutely loving this album (thanks to bizkit for selling it to me). As soon as I saw the album name I knew it'd live up to its name, it really has that 'heavenly' sound.
Definitely going to check out the albums mentioned. My favorite songs are the same except for Triangle, would swap it with Sorry But Its Over.
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Amazing album and definitely the best Dredg album! Unfortunately Chuckles killed off most of my enthusiasm for the band and I haven't listened to them in years, but El Cielo is definitely a great one. I don't know, maybe they were more of a phase-band for me, but like I said, haven't felt any major pull to return to their albums lately.
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A good album by a good band, although a very challenging listen sometimes. Catch without arms, on the other hand, is very accessible, and I find The Pariah also listenable.
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Anyone else think the riff in the chorus of Sorry But It's Over a LOT like Muse? Can't quite put my finger on the exact song but it's from OoS (Feeling Good maybe?), it's not a complaint though, I love it.
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Feeling Good is not originally a Muse song.
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Very good album, one I should listen to more often - such gorgeous choruses.
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Feeling Good is not originally a Muse song.
I know, that's not my point though
And I just came home and checked it, Feeling Good was indeed the song I was talking about.
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What will #7 be?
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California, or Bilateral.
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:eek
Not exactly, though its slightly in the same vein!
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7. Opeth – Blackwater Park (2001)
(https://www.metalsickness.com/tl_files/images/pochettes/o/opeth_blackwater_park.jpg)
‘Blackwater Park’ is, like ‘El Cielo’ probably here to stay in the top 10. There’s no doubt that this album is here to stay in the top 10 for quite some time to come. Though I lump this album In the same sentence as the previous one, my love for ‘Blackwater Park’ goes much farther back than that for the dredg album in the previous update. Plus, where the dredg album is simply a bunch of great music tracks linked together on the album (yes, I’m trivialising, read the previous update to know how I feel about the album), this album by Opeth did something I would not have thought would ever be possible in my music preferences up to that point: it made me tolerate, appreciate and later love growls. This might be insignificant to some, for me this was a turning point in the music I could listen to.
I must have been around fifteen or sixteen when I first heard Opeth. It was before ‘Watershed’ was released, so definitely before 2008. Although I don’t know how old I was exactly, I remember very well my first listening experience with Opeth. I was browsing new music, and came across this band. On Youtube, the track The Drapery Falls was recommended, and, being the curious music explorer I am, starting listening. I loved what I heard, and I was surprised I never heard this band before. The beauty of the song struck me and… then the growls came in. I was distraught, turned it off almost immediately. How could they do this to this beautiful track? It ruined the song, or so I thought. Something happened then and there, because I would return to the same song not much later and I’m 100% sure that it was mainly through this track that I got to appreciate growls. I understood what they were doing with the growls, that the band had multiple facets and that growling would be one of them. The best music-related lesson I ever learned is that there can be no ‘heavy’ if there would be no ‘soft’ to contrast the heaviness; The Drapery Falls is a fantastic example of that. It would turn out to be not only favourite of the album, but also my favourite Opeth track. It’s funny how one track can switch your stance on growls forever. Although I can’t really stand bands that do nothing but growls (for there has to be something to contrast the heaviness), this is the track – and later the album – that turned out to be a turning point.
Despite being my favourite, I doubt that it’s actually the ‘best’ track on the album. In past survivors on DTF, Bleak would come out as the album’s best track and honestly, I agree. Composed very different than the almost ethereal ‘Drapery’, Bleak features singer/guitarist/mastermind Mikael Åkerfeldt growling in the verse, and him singing clean in duet with no-one other than Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree in the chorus. A lengthy middle section finds the band departed from the progressive death metal sound heard in the beginning of the track to acoustic clean guitar playing with clean vocals. The chorus returns once again, and the song comes full circle at the end with a return to growls.
Opeth are pretty much a metal band (you could contest that nowadays, considering their last two releases, but on this album there’s no question about that), but despite this, they do not often write songs that are based on riffs. And when they do, the riffs as such are not really that obvious. A lot of their material is based on chord progressions and melodies. Actually, most of their songs feature at least one section of acoustic guitar playing, which is also the thing that made them stand out from all the other (progressive) death metal bands when they started out. Harvest is a track that has no distorted guitars or growls whatsoever, and Patterns in the Ivy is a completely acoustic instrumental. Dirge for November starts with an acoustic passage with vocals, erupts into heavy metal goodness and ends with a 2-minute clean guitar passage. As these examples should exemplify, Opeth are good at doing multiple things – but the thing they do best is combine stuff that’s seemingly incompatible.
I’d say Opeth has a very distinct sound to them, one that is the most apparent on this particular record. They’re heavy, but they are melodic as well. They can easily switch between calm serenity and pure brutality where needed and this is made possible mostly by Åkerfeldt’s great aptitude as both a clean singer and a grunter. Opeth is a band that relies mostly on repeating sound textures in the shape of chord progressions, rather than on concrete building blocks in the form of riffs or extreme technical parts. They have guitar solos, although they’re very situational, nor ever overly virtuosic.
Basically every song on this album is fantastic, or else it would not stand a chance against the rest of their excellent discography, but apart from the two tracks I’ve ignored completely (here’s a shout out to both The Leper Affinity and The Funeral Portrait!), there’s one more track I feel I should highlight in particular and that’s the closing track from this album. Blackwater Park, the album’s title-track contains everything there is about Opeth packed into 12 minutes. Let’s just leave it at that, this write-up is long enough as it is already. I don’t really have much to say anymore on this particular record to be honest. Opeth were such an important discovery for my musical taste development and I still listen to them quite often. Like with pretty much every album in this top 10, I could theoretically go into detail on every single track, but it would be better to just listen to the actual album.
Favourite song: The Drapery Falls
Other songs worth checking out: Bleak, Blackwater Park, Harvest
Other stuff by this band: My other favourites by them are ‘My Arms, Your Hearse’ and ‘Still Life’. Generally ‘Ghost Reveries’ is considered a fan favourite, an excellent album as well. The band adopted more of a prog-rock style on their latest two albums, the growls are absent there. The band’s first two albums feature heavy black metal influences. Overall, you can’t really go wrong with any album, if you know what to expect beforehand.
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Sacul is probably looking at your old top 50s
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is he now?
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Meh, never got the huge love for Haken. Thought Aquarius was way too wanky and had similar flaws to the modern DT albums, but after seeing them live I got a little bit more admiration for them, and there are some decent songs on The Mountain. I don't think I'll ever be a huge fan since I've kinda left that "appreciating technical prog metal" phase of my life though.
Listen to "Bound by Gravity" from their newest album. I think you'd love it, actually.
Anyways, just read through the list so far and it's great, but I've always thought you had great music taste, Elite, pretty similar to mine overall. I'd put Ghost Reveries over BWP, but still such a good album. Looking forward to the finish!
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For some reason I can't get into heavy Opeth, most of the songs sound either the same or too dragged out and long for me :justjen
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Anyways, just read through the list so far and it's great, but I've always thought you had great music taste, Elite, pretty similar to mine overall. I'd put Ghost Reveries over BWP, but still such a good album. Looking forward to the finish!
I hope what's left of the list (the top 6) will be liked :lol
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was never huge on this one, ghost reveries is the only opeth I really love though so :lol
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My favourite Opeth album as well. It's just brilliant.
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Brilliant album.
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My second favorite of theirs, after Ghost Reveries. But I'm loving BWP more and more.
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BWP was my first Opeth album, got it shortly after release. I almost never listen to Opeth these days, and honestly, a good part of that is probably the death vocals. My favourite now is Deliverance, so if I put them on, it's normally that, but BWP and GR are both still awesome as well.
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Watershed is probably my favorite, but Blackwater Park is pretty fantastic. The title track is my favorite.
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Blackwater Park is so good.
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Blackwater Park is so good.
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Good to see so many people enjoy BWP! It's always funny to see that everybody had their favourite Opeth album. Despite their genre(s) they are so versatile in what they do and their output over the years has been consistently great. There's not a single album of theirs that would benweird to have as a personal #1.
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Blackwater Park is just one of the greatest albums ever :metal
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BWP is a great album, but I feel similar to In Absentia it's gotten overrated among fans. Personally I would put Still Life, My Arms Your Hearse, Deliverance and Ghost Reveries over it. To me, BWP is about 60% awesome sauce and 40% OK. The first four tracks and the title track are all awesome, but Dirge For November and The Funeral Portrait are both bottom tier Opeth songs IMO.
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For what it's worth, MAYH and Still Life are my second and third favourite Opeth albums. Number 6 will be up in a bit, I'll post in my break.
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California.
You were right, only a spot too early.
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6. Mr. Bungle – California (1999)
(https://modern-vinyl.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Mr_Bungle-California-Frontal.jpg)
This might well be the most musically polarising album in my top 50. Whereas with basically all other records, there could be one term I could describe the album with (‘Bath’ is difficult, but avant-garde does it), there is no way to describe this album, other than by saying ‘very varied’. Even Wikipedia, always so good at giving music the labels they deserve, could think of nothing better than ‘experimental rock’, couple with the following subtext: “in keeping with much of the band's output, the album incorporates a wide variety of musical styles, including Hawaiian music, Eastern music, electro-funk, doo-wop, folk music, pop music, surf rock, circus music, psychobilly, kecak, thrash metal, lounge music, jazz rock, avant-garde music, piano ballads and music influenced by science fiction, spaghetti western and horror film scores.” Look how that quote says ‘including’!? That’s not even all.
What’s probably a good introduction to this band would be to listen to this album without expect anything at all (even though that would be impossible right now, after having read that opening paragraph) and being utterly amazed at all the stuff that will inevitably get thrown around your head. In a sense, it’s also quite frightening to hear what this band manages to throw together on one album, without losing focus or sounding too awkward. I think, if many bands would try to do what Mr. Bungle did on this record, they would fail and the results would likely sound terrible. What I believe is that Mr. Bungle tried to actively the boundaries of what could be constituted as popular music, by throwing so much different style together on one album, that it’s very weird to consider that a major label (Warner Bros) actually released this album.
That said, this is not their most experimental album and the whole is actually quite accessible, despite the many genres found spread out over the album’s 10 tracks. The album the band released before ‘California’ is actually far more experimental and messed-up, featuring moments that leave you completely clueless as to what the band was thinking (especially in tracks such as The Bends, Ma Meeshka Mow Skoz and Merry Go Bye Bye). This makes me believe that the band wanted to try out their insanely experimental approach on music to fit song-writing that could actually be catchy as well. As much as I may like ‘Disco Volante’, the fact that it’s barely unlistenable at point and features little to no hooks at all makes me not want to listen it all too often. ‘California’ is not only cohesive, the songs are structured in such a way that they all resemble different aspects of popular music in one way or another.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a Mr. Bungle without complete insanity, and anyone thinking this would be an album to listen to at ease is simply wrong. Although this is definitely not as messed-up as the maudlin of the Well album, this album features plenty of weirdness, and this isn’t only because of the genre-blending this band does. Featuring basically any western instrument, as well as a couple of ethnic instruments, the band is not afraid to try out new things. Random noises get transformed to instruments as well – and this is all made even better by Mike Patton’s vocal diversity. Where the opening paragraph states that the band explorer all kinds of genres, this is not entirely true for every track. Most have a base that they work out of. Opener Sweet Charity is in the same vein as your laid-back surf-rock (Beach Boys style), whereas the second track None of Them Knew They Were Robots is like rock-‘n-roll on acid, with various breaks of random-seeming genres in unexpected places. The list goes on and on basically, and I do not want to spoil every single track on this album, but there’s a couple of tracks I want to give special attention to.
Ars Moriendi is my favourite track from this record, and probably a track that could serve pretty well as not only an introduction to Mr. Bungle, but also as a way to scare off everybody. I once used this track in a jazz improvisation course I was in at university, as I compared this track to how a jazz musician would solo of changes. If you hear this piece for the first time, I’m sure you’ll be hard pressed to find many recurring theme, and the thing actually sounds like an insane improvisation on all instruments, but it’s composed so ridiculously well, that it’s likely my favourite Bungle track. Arguably also the most technical song on the album, the melodies based on Arabic/Egyptian music flow very well into disco music, but also into almost the heaviest they do on this record. Amazing track. Pretty much the other side of the spectrum is RetroVertigo, a song that’s the most toned-down ballad-like the band will ever do. Is it really a ballad? Probably not, but for their doing it might be. Pink Cigarette is also a ballad, but one that’s far more twisted and ends unexpectedly.
Two other songs that also explore how far a band can go in combining genres and style are The Air-Conditioned Nightmare and Goodbye Sober Day. The first of these combines psychobilly with lounge-music and overall weirdness. Probably one of the more upbeat tracks on the record, it’s predominantly driven by guitar, something that is actually not standard for this band at all. The album closer Goodbye Sober Day is the most evil track on the record (that last 30 seconds is just downright scary – almost as if a gateway to hell has been opener), and also one of the most experimental. In fact, this one would have been a good track for their previous record as well.
Probably the weirdest track on the album (and that’s saying a LOT) is Golem II: The Bionic Vapour Boy. Based on what seem to be keyboard sounds coming from children’s toys and wind-up music-boxes, combined with heavy usage of vocal effects, this song is as strange as its title suggests. A similar thing can be said about The Holy Filament, a song that features Patton singing in ridiculously high falsetto voice. The only track that I have said nothing about yet is Vanity Fair, by far the ‘happiest’ track on the record, that also sounds positively sarcastic – just read the lyrics. Which is also an aspect of the band I haven’t even mentioned yet; even though the music is weird, the lyrics always seems to fir with the theme of the song. All of it works together splendidly.
You know, I could write a 1000 words more about this record (this write-up is over thousand already) and not have everything covered. ‘California’ is one of the records I have heard most in my life – at least over the last 5 years and there’s just so much to hear on this album, that it never gets tiring. This is not a flawless album, I really think the production could have been a little better to make it even more awesome, but this comes damn close.
Favourite song: Ars Moriendi
Other songs worth checking out: Goodbye Sober Day, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, RetroVertigo
Other stuff by this band: The band released two other albums; ‘Disco Volante’ is even more fucked-up, to the point of being barely unlistenable at points, while their self-titled is relatively accessible. Of those, I’d say ‘Disco Volante’ is the better album, but you might have to struggle to get through it, especially if this album is hard on your ears already.
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Disco Volante is my favorite but California is a close second. Amazing album! Really hope Mr. Bungle would unite again and make another album.
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I'm pretty sure you had California in your last list.
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I'm pretty sure you had California in your last list.
Yeah I think I did! It's a really good album
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I've decided to have the top 5 spread out over 5 days for multiple reasons. This means there will be no update tonight, but I will post #5 tomorrow morning.
Enjoy your saturday night :D
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purest torture
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Here's number 5, with a write-up that might not do the record enough justice. Anyway, this is the longest write-up in the top 50 (I said that about 'Bath' too, but that was the longest up until that point. This one here really is the longest). There are few albums that leave a long lasting emotive impression, but this is one of them..
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5. Have a Nice Life – Deathconsciousness (2008)
(https://theflenser.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/fr421500x1500.jpg)
And here we are, at number #5 in my album top 50. The last 10%, starting off with an album I guess many who are reading this thread have not heard. And that’s a shame really, because this is one of the most beautiful albums I have ever heard, and simultaneously it’s ridiculously dark and depressing as well. ‘Deathconsciousness’ is one of those albums that need many spins before you can fully appreciate them, but also one that’s just such a rewarding experience when it does click. Back when I first heard this album (which honestly, was only August last year), I never thought that this album would end up in my top 50 at all, let alone this high. Though I said it needs many spins before it can truly be appreciated, ‘Deathconsciousness’ had me intrigued at the first listen and sucked me in.
‘Deathconsciousness’ is not an easy album to listen to. Its title is quite fitting actually, in the sense that it kind of makes you wonder what’s behind the word. The band name Have a Nice Life also has this kind of sarcastic tone to it, a bitter or dark underlying tone that can’t really be portrayed by mere words. The music on this record is dark, depressing, haunting and overall pessimistic. That the music from this album came forth from depression is pretty obvious when you listen to it. This might in fact very well be the saddest album I have in the whole list, but like with any good art, it does not convey only one emotion, for the music is absolutely beautiful at the same time.
‘Deathconsciousness’ is best described as an album that mixes shoegazing with ambient, post-punk, adds industrial traits and drones and is overall mixed in relatively lo-fi standards. The music has been written by two Connecticut guys that randomly tried to use a bunch of different instruments, allegedly using ‘whatever they could find’. The result is a unique sounding album, that isn’t the most technical or musically brilliant album that has ever been recorded. In fact, I might even say that of all the artists featured in my top 50, the two guys that recorded these album are the least proficient musicians. What these guys did however is create something that resonates, something that is full of emotion and actually very, very varied throughout. The duo constantly flirts between styles on this 90-minute record. Divided into two discs, the album explorers some lyrical themes that have to do with either fiction or reality, but seem focused around one aspect: coming to terms with one’s own mortality and approaching death.
The band titled the two discs rather differently. Disc 1 has the subtitle ‘The Plow That Broke The Plains’ and features 7 tracks. Disc 2, titled ‘The Future’ contains 6 tracks, that are all more upbeat in tempo (not so much in mood). With a total running time of 1.5 hours, this isn’t an easy album to digest, like I said. Also, for folks desperate to hear either good singing or audible vocals, this album is not for me. The guys are not that bad singers at all, but they’re not exactly brilliant either. The vocals are also often buried in the music, muddled to some extent, a trait that makes it hard to hear what they’re singing at all. That said, the lyrics on this record are often brilliant and it’s worth it to keep a lyric sheet nearby to hear what they’re singing. The lyrics contribute a ton to what happens musically. In the following passages I will try to give an honest account of all tracks on the album, but this is not an easy thing to do at all, especially since I want to keep these write-ups at least cohesive enough so that people will read them, but I’ll try.
A Quick One Before the Eternal Worm Devours All of Connecticut starts off the album. It’s mainly an instrumental, save for a couple of spoken words at the very end of the track. The song is built on repeating patterns played on slightly out-of-tune guitars, backed by cracking sounds and a spacey background. If this sounds boring. That’s probably because there’s not a whole lot more to this track. The result however, is a track that is very hypnotising and it works really well as an album opener. Bloodhail is the first track with vocals and is far more melodic than the mesmerising first tune, incorporating some heavily distorted guitars as drone underneath the reverb-drenched vocals. Pretty shoegazey, if you ask me. The lyrics, as far as I can tell, feature a man desperate to kill god, after he witnesses the destruction on earth. All humans form a living staircase, which the hunter climbs. He shoots god with 75x arrowheads and is successful in killing. The Big Gloom is probably my favourite track from the first CD and is a recounting of Jean-Paul Marat’s final days. The album cover is, for those who don’t know, an eighteenth century painting by David called ‘The Death of Marat’. The lyrics here are barely indecipherable, but the music provided is gloriously atmospheric. Hunter continues the story Bloodhail left us with. God has indeed been struck down, but rather than get angry, he’s merciful and lets the animals of earth eat of his flesh, so that he may be of further use still. Hunter opens very sombre, with distorted drums in a funeral pace, with slow vocals and little instrumentation at all. The ending is more uplifting and features some of the most melodic playing on the entire album.
Continuing the faster tempo is the next track, even though lyrically, Telefony is probably the most heart-breaking song on the album. A very depressing post-punk tune, despite the vocals being drenched in the mix. Who Would Leave Their Son Out in the Sun is probably about Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s very mellow and completely drenched in reverb. The band went for the full cathedral sound here, with the vocals being completely undecipherable. The vocals actually become the main instrument in this 5 minute drone that gets distorted through the lo-fi mix. The tinny acoustic guitar in the background is eerily out of place against the backdrop of drowned vocals. A haunting tune, definitely. Closing off the first disc is another instrumental, titled There is No Food. Supposedly about starving to death on a post-apocalyptic world, the song features mechanical beeps, as well as lots of volume swells in guitars. It’s not completely instrumental, because you can actually hear some faint voices in the background, though it’s completely not audible what they’re saying.
The second disc titled The Future is much less restrained than the first one, and you can hear that immediately on the first track. After 2 minutes of brooding guitar feedback, Waiting For Black Metal Records to Come in the Mail starts off with an actual riff an some audible singing for the first time in over half an hour. This song is actually similar to black metal in the sense that it has heavily distorted guitars, lo-fi production and processed drums. The track even contains some faint, distant screams in the last minute or so. Up next is my favourite from the album, called Holy Fucking Shit: 40.000. I don’t know what it is about this track that makes it so great, but the creativity of actually using a metronome as an instrument on this track is very original. The acoustic guitar is also a welcome change of things, as well as a verse/chorus-structure that you can follow. The middle part is actually the part I enjoy most of the entire song. The song gets completely drowned in distortion, with thanks to its lo-fi-ness and as a listener you get immersed completely into the sound of pounding drums. Up next is The Future, a track that’s based mostly on electronic drones with various sound effects. It’s the shortest track on the entire record and the only one on disc 2 that’s instrumental, though it does not feel out of place at all.
Deep, Deep is probably the heaviest track on the entire record, even though the guitars aren’t necessarily more distorted in this track than they were in disc 2’s first track. The most driving track on the record starts out in multiple ways, but the almost shouty singing and actually catchy chorus melodies are but one aspect. If I hadn’t limited myself to four tracks recommended down below, I would surely have added this one. The previous track being so heavy actually makes I Don’t Love stand out as the most demure track of the second disc. Starting out as clean singing, the song soon bursts into the most all-encompassing drone we have yet heard on the album. Drowned In guitar feedback, the slightly distorted vocals sound almost like an elegy or lament. The bass melody that’s the most apparent within the massive feedback is the thing that gives the song momentum and keeps it together.
The final track, Earthmover, is often named as the best track on the album. The lyrics to this track speak about stone golems, created by humans to destroy landscapes and devour the earth. These machines can not be killed, and through their destruction they realise how futile life is. Obviously symbolic for something, this song’s power does not merely come from the lyrics, but also from its massive sound all the way through. The words the golems would say when they could speak are “We wish we were dead.” This sentence, ironically, concludes the album lyrically, but the song won’t be finished for another 5 minutes. Through a very lengthy shoegazing/drone part, the band reaches the climax of this song and of the entire record. A powerful song, and one of the very best on this album.
As with so many albums in this list, mere words can’t really do an album enough justice. I have no idea how futile it has been to write down all of this, but I hope I will inspire at least some people to actually listen to this record. While it’s nice to write and read about music, it’s predominantly there to be listened to and this album really demands to be listened. It’s an album that needs to be experienced, preferably in full, for it’s amazing. Have a nice life, and enjoy this one. Ironic as that may sound with regards to its subject matter.
Favourite song: Holy Fucking Shit: 40.000
Other songs worth checking out: Earthmover, The Big Gloom, Hunter
Other stuff by this band: After years of silence, the band released a second album after this one in 2014, but it’s not nearly as good as ‘Deathconsciousness’ (in my opinion of course), but I must admit that I haven’t heard it as much.
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‘Deathconsciousness’ is best described as an album that mixes shoegazing with ambient, post-punk, adds industrial traits and drones and is overall mixed in relatively lo-fi standards.
Favourite song: Holy Fucking Shit: 40.000
I'll pass. :lol
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Hell yeah, been looking to expand the 'shoegazing' corner of my music library :lol
I've seen this album being tossed around a lot on this forum so I guess I will check it out after I'm done with all the roulette albums. (Vim and Vigor is great btw :tup)
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Amazing album that would be pretty high on my list too! :)
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Someone here recommended it to me before but I never checked it out :\ but it really sound like something I would like, so added to my list (it's getting bigger and bigger).
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:corn
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Earthmover, YES.
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if this had a CD release at all maybe i'd have dug into it deeper when i checked it out but even with the two full listens i gave it i remember just finding it okay anyways so
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if this had a CD release at all maybe i'd have dug into it deeper when i checked it out but even with the two full listens i gave it i remember just finding it okay anyways so
I have it on vinyl and it is glorious. It's a hard album to get into, but definitely worth the time you put into it. I'd say their second album is easier to get into and might get you hooked (or interested in giving DC more listens). Like Elite said, it's not AS good, but IMO still a 8/10 or so, with DC being a 10.
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Fantastic record :hefdaddy
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btw nice cloudkicker avatar zantera.
just s a y i n g
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btw nice cloudkicker avatar zantera.
just s a y i n g
I love the artwork of it, and it's probably my favorite Cloudkicker release too, so that's a plus :tup
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I perfectly agree on your suggested songs from California!
The least uninspired track for me is The Holy Filament, the rest is incredibly brilliant and flawless.
I don't know album number 5..
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California and Deathconsciousness are both brilliant albums. :tup
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Wow, there's more people that know this album than I thought there would be!
if this had a CD release at all maybe i'd have dug into it deeper when i checked it out but even with the two full listens i gave it i remember just finding it okay anyways so
I have it on vinyl and it is glorious. It's a hard album to get into, but definitely worth the time you put into it.
I really wanted to get a vinyl version of Deathconsciousness, but it's been completely unavailable for quite some time now :(
Hell yeah, been looking to expand the 'shoegazing' corner of my music library :lol
I've seen this album being tossed around a lot on this forum so I guess I will check it out after I'm done with all the roulette albums. (Vim and Vigor is great btw :tup)
Good to hear! This isn't really shoegazing in the style of the well-known shoegaze bands, but it's got elements of it. I think the actual style on this album is pretty hard to pinpoint. That's where this next quote comes in:
‘Deathconsciousness’ is best described as an album that mixes shoegazing with ambient, post-punk, adds industrial traits and drones and is overall mixed in relatively lo-fi standards.
Favourite song: Holy Fucking Shit: 40.000
I'll pass. :lol
Yeah, I don't think you would like this :lol
I perfectly agree on your suggested songs from California!
The least uninspired track for me is The Holy Filament, the rest is incredibly brilliant and flawless.
I don't know album number 5..
I don't think The Holy Filament is that bad, it's actually quite a nice break from all the weirdness, plus it has Mike Patton singing very high falsetto. He doesn't do that anywhere else on the album really. It's a pretty unique song in their discography, because it's rather toned-down. That said, it's likely the most 'uninteresting' song on the record, but that's mostly due to the other tracks being very interesting :)
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I really wanted to get a vinyl version of Deathconsciousness, but it's been completely unavailable for quite some time now :(
I was so happy when they finally put it out on vinyl again.. last year, or was it 2014? I think it was around when they dropped their second album, and their record label put out DC on vinyl again. Not sure if there are any copies left floating out there, I think it was fairly limited.
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Here comes number 4! Another polarising album and one that's likely not everybody's favourite from this particular band.
Also the top 3 is going to be disappointing :lol
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4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F#A#∞ (1997)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/F_sharp_a_sharp_infinity_vinyl_cover_street_sighn.jpg)
Typing out this write-up directly after the one for ‘Deathconsciousness’ proves to be a very difficult thing to do. I said so much in that last one, that I’m a bit worn-out, really. Especially since this album is quite similar to the previous one, but only In the sense that it’s pretty difficult to describe what’s going on. Truth be told, this album isn’t similar to anything else at all, except for other albums by the same band. Looking back on this list, this is the only post-rock album that made the list. I’m usually not too keen on that genre, in the sense that I don’t listen to many bands in the genre at all. Having said that, whenever I do have the urge to listen to some tracks, I usually really like what I hear. Post-rock is, to me, a genre of mostly instrumental music, that can go from very smooth atmospheres, to all-encompassing walls of sound. If you take that as the basis for the genre, this album is not really a post-rock album, actually.
‘F#A#∞’ exists in two different forms, that contain roughly the same music. Originally released in 1997, the Vinyl LP edition of this record had no track-list. The two 20-minute long sides of the LP had the titles Nervous, Sad, Poor... and Bleak, Uncertain, Beautiful…, two titles that can not be found on the later released CD version. Both sides do not have any subtitles, but the music on both sides is not cohesive per se. The CD version took the music from the LP, added some parts, rearranged it in places and split the result into three tracks, all again roughly 20 minutes in length. The three tracks carry the titles The Dead Flag Blues, East Hastings and Providence and the CD-version actually gives titles for the sub-sections of all tracks.
It’s strange that a band decided to release the album differently on CD, especially considering the fact that the LP was the initial way they wanted this music to be heard. Granted, the LP version actually sounds a bit amateurish at points. The songs, or rather, pieces of music – I don’t think GY!BE wrote this music with the actual intention of splitting them into tracks or songs. Just the way music has to be ordered on a CD or LP gives it that formality. This would also explain the lack of track-titles on the LP-version – don’t really go anywhere and have no really progression to them. What’s to like about this album then? I’ll try to explain this in the remainder of this write-up.
I do not view this album as three different tracks, nor as an album that has two sides. In that sense, I will not comment on the tracks as such, nor give any detailed account of what actually happens in the music, because this would be an almost impossible thing to do without spoiling the track. Despite there being more music on the CD-version, I actually prefer the LP-version. Not only is it more cohesive, I feel like the CD-version adds a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t as good as the music on the LP. I’m talking specifically about a movement in Providence called ‘Dead Metheny’, a part that’s absent on the LP. I therefore like to believe that the album represented here is the LP, although both are rewarding listens in their own right.
‘F#A#∞’ got its name from the vinyl LP. The first side is supposedly in F#, the second side in A#. The infinity symbol represents a locked groove at the end of Side B, making the record technically last forever. The album is completely instrumental, although it does contain spoken word passages and ethnic field recordings. Godspeed is not really a band, but rather a musical collective that over the years has spanned as many as 15 people in total. On this record, there’s probably at least 15 people playing, including guest appearances by folks not formally in the band. This results in a very varied instrumentation which, combined with recordings of stuff (more on that later), creates a unique sound.
What I said before, that these pieces seemingly go nowhere, is mostly due to the fact that band has stuck various recordings on top of each other, creating pieces that feel disconnected as a whole, but at the same time feel very natural. Godspeed has often been called ‘apocalyptic’, because their music could so well resemble the end of the world. This hold very true for ‘F#A#∞’. The vinyl opens with bleak glissandos on string-instruments, topped with a narrator who speaks in a dark voice about the end of the world. Following this part is the sound of trains, presumably altered and slowed-down to create more haunting glissandos. The rest of the album is quite alike. Short parts of music follow each other up and as such, the pieces might feel dragged out or incoherent. I actually believe the band didn’t really intend to put a meaning behind the music, but left that for the listener to decide. In that sense, it’s very much a work of art and a very interesting listen throughout.
Excuse me for this rather lousy excuse of a write-up for an album that really deserves some explanation or praise. There’s just not really a way this album can be described accurately, it has to be experienced. The best way I can recommend is by putting on the vinyl and by lying on your bed in the dark, listening to the sounds. The locked groove at the end is very hypnotising, but all the music works greatly in this context. Let me end this write-up that I do not think that this is Godspeed’s best effort. That would be the amazing ‘Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven’, but this one is undoubtedly my favourite. It’s not an album I listen to often, but whenever I do, it’s a beautiful experience and unlike anything I have ever heard.
Favourite song: n/a
Other songs worth checking out: n/a
Other stuff by this band: Of the other records these guys have released, ‘Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven’ is my favourite and the one I know best. That one has some amazing stuff on it.
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Amazing band with a really strong discography. LYSF is their best IMO, but F#A# was such a great debut album, and a classic. After the last few albums the top3 might be a disappointment but it might be great too. If it has DT12, Systematic Chaos and The Astonishing it will be all good. ;)
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GS!BE was never really my thing but I give them a spin once in a while. I like Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven but I'm not sure when was the last time I listened to F#A#∞.
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Fantastic record, and as you said, a difficult one to describe - I always wonder how those guys could even come up with what I hear. But I disagree that it has no message at all - digging through the artwork and the samples, I find it clear they talk about the end of the world as we know it, probably the collapse of society due to capitalism, or something deeper. It's quite criptic tbh, but not entirely meaningless.
For the top 3 I predict some DT album, maybe Six Degrees or SFAM. Also a Leprous record, either Bilateral or Coal. And, dunno, babymetal? :lol
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:corn :corn :corn
Awake, Bilateral and Nickelback's s/t
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I'd say Bilateral, Six Degrees and something else.
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this would be their best but providence has never done much for me, and it's like almost half the album so
right thread now suckas
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Just listened on Spotify to some of the records I didn't know. Some cool stuff, some stuff that's probably not for me.
But as I listened to Holy Fucking Shit: 40.000 I thought that they must have listened to the german band Trio back in 1982:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYcviXK4rg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYcviXK4rg) ;D
Or they have an old and cheap casio keyboard for the rhythm.
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It wouldn't surprise me if HANL used a cheap old casio keyabord at all :lol
this would be their best but providence has never done much for me, and it's like almost half the album so
Which is part of the reason why I stated that I prefer the vinyl edition. I realise you can't really listen to that right away, but you can. There's a couple of uploads from that version on Youtube you could try out.
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maybe I'll find the time for it sometime then yeah
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Number 3, an album nobody has guessed and an album that kind of surprised me as well when it got this high in the top 50. I wouldn't have it any other way though. I don't often show my love for this record, but for some reason it feels very personal to me, even though it's ridiculously well-known and perhaps even over-sold to the point that any of this artists's posthumous releases could be questioned on their authenticity. Not this record though. Without further ado, here's the actual write-up, which I'm actually not too happy about. It's hard to write about an album that speaks to you on a deep emotional level, so rather than sum up all tracks on this records, this is more a general impression of the record, I hope.
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3. Jeff Buckley – Grace (1994)
(https://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/2014/list/1994-the-40-best-records-from-mainstream-alternatives-greatest-year-20140417/items/jeff-buckley-grace-19691231/140521/_original/1035x1035-jeffbuckley-1800-1397061482.jpg)
Can an album be considered a ‘classic’ if it’s only 22 years old? And what if the singer is dead? Is this really a good album, or is it simply overhyped because of what we might have had, if Jeff Buckley didn’t die an untimely death at the young age of 30. Just too old for the famous 27 club, but for a singer-songwriter, he was certainly late at recording his debut album (which he did at, exactly, age 27).
There a few examples in popular music of a son surpassing his father in terms of popularity. While Tim Buckley certainly was the eccentric song-writer, his son Jeff (whom he has allegedly met only once) is certainly the more appealing. A fine-looking young man, who created an album to absolutely be proud of. Like with many artists that die prematurely, many (live) recordings have shown up, enough to make compilation album after compilation album – and even a couple of records full of new material. The only proper studio recording he made is this one, although a second album was released after his death, with roughly finished material polished enough to actually sound good. That one is titled ‘Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunk’, which is a rather nice album. ‘Grace’ is better though, and that’s not only got to do with its legacy.
For some reason, I feel the intense need to have to justify this album being so high up on my list, mostly because of how very different it is from the rest of the bands listed up here. I can not do this, but I can hopefully explain why this album is this high up, especially since it’s overhyped, though critically acclaimed. David Bowie reportedly said once that ‘Grace’ was a so-called “desert island disc” for him, and probably the best record ever made. I kind of agree with him, in the sense that if I had to go to a desert island and could take only 5 CDs with me, this would be one of them. Definitely. I don’t really know what the other 4 would be, but this one would be there.
On my first top 50 list I had this compilation album by Jeff Buckley called ‘So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley’, which is a great compilation, but it features roughly the same songs as on ‘Grace’, except that it adds a couple of new ones, has an alternate take from Eternal life and a couple of live versions instead of studio recordings. In some occasions I actually prefer listening to that one, instead of this record, but this record is obviously the real deal. Featuring 11 songs, Jeff Buckley (and his band!) go through various styles of alternative rock, but the songs border heavily on folk rock and singer-songwriter style music. Although Jeff Buckley’s name is on the cover, and he does sing and play the guitar, he has a very capable band surrounding him on this record, that adds the remainder of the instruments. Though the band doesn’t stray far from traditional rock instruments, they create rich textures nonetheless.
People do not really know this about me, but apart from my band Overhaul, I have written a bunch of songs and music and performed lots of acoustic covers live. Jeff Buckley has been an enormous inspiration for me, not only as a vocalist (I love trying to emulate his voice), but also and maybe even more so in the way he uses the guitar to write songs. Jeff Buckley was a master at creating unusual chords on his guitar an managing to make stuff sound natural and good. Listen for instance to the title-track Grace, that’s full of dissonant chords, illogical chord-progressions and brilliant melodies. I don't think Jeff Buckley ever approached the guitar (or even song-writing) from a music theoretic standpoint and the result can definitely be heard in the way his songs are structured. Great stuff.
Apart from the song-writing, probably the most notable about this album is not Buckley’s guitar-playing (which is good, but not especially ground-breaking, even though he does clearly have a signature style), but his phenomenal voice. The man could do anything, from soft vocals, to long wails, to even shouts and screams. He might not be as varied as for instance Mike Patton is, but whereas Mike Patton often sounds rather sterile or goofy, with Jeff Buckley’s voice it sounds like it comes from the heart, like he actually means what he says. Take for instance Forget Her, a track that wasn’t released initially because Jeff felt it was too personal. On this song Jeff speaks directly to you, and you can hear his sadness. Eternal Life is the other side of the spectrum; a rocking tune that got a full-blown grunge version on the aforementioned album ‘So Real’. Corpus Christi Carol then, is an odd piece on this album; an interpretation of a Benjamin Britten piece, that was in turn based on a Middle English writing. Featuring Buckley exclusively in falsetto voice, this song is almost angelic compared to the rest of the record.
‘Grace’ isn’t exactly a happy record, but it’s not necessarily sad either. I’d say it’s mostly melancholic, with the subject of the lyrics often being love, in one way or another. Perhaps the best known song from this record is not one of his own, but his cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. This might In fact be one of those rare instances where the cover version is better known than the original. It’s a good track, but you can hear it’s not his own. His own tracks are better, more distinct and in a style that suits him better, though by all means; it’s a great cover and one worthy of all the praise it gets.
While I didn’t really get the love for ‘Grace’ or for Jeff Buckley as much, in the past couple of years it has dawned on me that I really love this album. As far as actually popular music goes, I think this is about as good as it gets, as far as I’m concerned. There is another very positive thing about this record, which doesn’t really have anything to do with quality or anything, but it still makes kind of a funny anecdote. My girlfriend and I both have very different tastes when it comes to music. This is probably one of the only records in the top 50 that she could stand to listen to. As a result, this album became the soundtrack to our first holiday together. Maybe it’s some sentimental value that put it up this high, but I don’t think that’s all of it. I just think this is song-writing at its finest and that this is one of the best albums ever. Though not exactly the ‘best’ (but what is, really), but according to this list my third favourite. I must admit, I didn’t expect this either when I started the list. It had to be like this.
Thanks for all the inspiration, for the great songs and for the beautiful voice. Like all the other people that adore this album like it’s the best thing ever, I really do wonder what would have happened had Jeff Buckley not drowned. Would there have been an even better record? Or is this record only as good because the mass hype made it that way? I don’t really think so, to be honest. It deserves all the praise it gets, because it’s definitely amazing. But so are many other albums that I probably will never hear. In fact, had Jeff Buckley not drowned, I might have never heard (of) ‘Grace’. It’s funny how those things go.
Good lord, after finishing this write-up I realised I didn’t even say a thing about the lyrics. Go look them up, they’re pure poetry. “It's never over, she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever.”
Favourite song: Grace
Other songs worth checking out: Forget Her, So Real, Eternal Life
Other stuff by this band: Because this man died, he only released one single album. After his death, lots of stuff was released under his name though, the most notable of which a live album called ‘Mystery White Boy’. The compilation album ‘So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley’ also features some great tracks unheard on his only record.
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:corn :corn :corn
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Grace is a good album and Buckley was a great artist but I've always found it to be a bit overrated. I'd still say it's 8/10, but beyond my general appreciation for it, I've never had any deeper love for it.
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Mystery White Boy has some really awesome stuff on it. The Kanga Roo on that is my favourite of those I've heard, and the What Would You Say. Even the Mojo Pin is possibly better than the album version. But the production on that album's weird, which lets it down.
I don't consider Forget Her part of the actual album of Grace. I see it's been added to the end of the album, but to me, it's a bonus track.
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MWB is amazing indeed, with Kanga Roo as a highlight.
With regards to Forget Her, I (only recently) learned that it wasn't supposed to be an album track, because of the personal lyrics. The version of 'Grace' I own has contains it, so I don't know any better. It's always been an album track for me. It sounds so much in line with the rest of the material too, it's obviously been recorded in the same sessions. I love the track as well and wouldn't want to exclude it.
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this i probably need to listen to at some point
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The post for #2 is likely postponed until tomorrow, but there's the off-chance that it could be here tonight. Sorry, I can't do it right now :(
The aim is to post #1 before the weekend, so that this list is done by then (partly since I have a very busy weekend coming up). Expect #2 very soon, but like I said, it will most likely be tomorrow.
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And here's number 2, finally. This was actually guessed, to my surprise really. I should have known better though, people who know me know I love this record.
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2. Leprous – Bilateral (2011)
(https://www.thisisnotascene.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Leprous-Bilateral.jpg)
Well, here we go. An album that’s only 5 years old, managed to become my second favourite album ever. This didn’t happen unexpectedly to be honest. Right from the bat I knew exactly which two albums would be at the top. This one, and the #1 that will soon be revealed. In the write-up for that one, I will hopefully make clear why this one isn’t placed just one spot higher, but for now, this will have to do. There will likely be a bunch of controversial opinions in this write-up, but let me start with the one that will have the most people disagreeing: this is the best progressive metal album ever made.
When I saw Leprous live for the first time in 2010, I probably should have noticed that they would become the band they are nowadays. Having released ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ the year before, I already knew the album because I listened to that one a lot before checking them out live. To date, I think it remains my second favourite Leprous album, though it’s been battling with ‘The Congregation’, which was released in 2015. Leprous impressed me very much live at ProgPower Europe 2010. So much, that I bought their CD, went to the signing session afterwards and I was astounded that me and a friend of mine were the only person there. This would not be possible nowadays. The band was very grateful, signed the CD and even put me and the friend on the guest list for their next show in the Netherlands. Very cool.
The above anecdote doesn’t really have anything to do with the album, but it gave me faces and people behind the music. I doubt the band would even remember this, partly due to the fact that 40% of the band has changed since then (with constant factors being guitarist Tod Oddmund Suhrke and Øystein Landsverk and keyboardist/vocalist/composer Einar Solberg). It’s this trio, mostly, that made possible the magic on ‘Bilateral’, the insanity in some songs and the restrained melodies and brooding atmospheres in others. In many ways a continuation of what Leprous did on their previous record ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’, but improved to be even better.
‘Bilateral’ contains 10 songs, ranging in length from 2:45 to 10:21, and featuring a lot of different style. There’s short rockers (Bilateral and Cryptogenic Desires), mini prog-epics (Forced Entry and Painful Detour), ballads (Mb. Indifferentia and Acquired Taste), extreme metal influenced songs (Thorn, featuring Ihsahn formerly of Emperor, and Waste of Air) and two songs that are hard to categorise (Restless and Mediocrity Wins). Although, having written this, it’s a very trivialised account of the songs on this record.
For some reason, I did not check this album back when it was released. Despite Leprous having impressed me greatly a ProgPower Europe 2010, it wasn’t until probably a year after ‘Bilateral’ was released that I got around to checking it out. Back in 2011, I was discovering lots of other music and ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ was all the Leprous I needed in my life. When I eventually did try out ‘Bilateral’, I kind of wondered why I didn’t do so before, although I can also vaguely recall this album not blowing me away instantly either. There’s a couple of reasons for that, but the main reason is probably that there’s musically so much to this album that it’s impossible to hear everything that’s going on the first time you hear this. Take for instance the wacky drum-rhythms in Restless, the amazing build-up in (backing-)vocals in Mediocrity Wins and basically all of Forced Entry.
‘Bilateral’ is a very melodic (and dare I say, ‘progressive’) album throughout, much more so than the band’s later releases ‘Coal’ and ‘The Congregation’ which focus much more on rhythmic changes, syncopations and slow melodic rhythms. Although many like to believe that the latest two albums are defining for the Leprous-sound, to me the band was much more unique in the way they treated songs on their first two record. ‘Bilateral’ was their magnum opus as far as I’m concerned, and like I said before, turned the great writing from their first record into something amazing. These melodic traits are easily heard in the two aforementioned ballad-like songs, as well as in both Painful Detour and the album’s two shortest songs.
Another aspect of this band that disappeared slightly on the two subsequent releases is their technical playing. I’m not saying that the band doesn’t know how to play anymore, but to me there’s so much amazing playing on ‘Bilateral’ that it’s hard to compare it to the more straight-forward releases. For clarification, I’m not saying that ‘Coal’ and ‘The Congregation’ are straight-forward albums, for they show a very unique style of playing, but within the songs there’s much less going on than on ‘Bilateral’. Sort-of a ‘less-is-more’-approach that works very well on those records, but that wouldn’t have worked at all on ‘Bilateral’. The technical playing is for instance apparent in my favourite Leprous song, Forced Entry, but also in the black metal inspired Waste of Air and Restless.
One more thing that deserves special mention is Einar Solberg’s magnificent voice. He can do basically anything from mellow vocals to high-pitched screams/shrieks and when his voice is not sufficient enough for the song they get Ihsahn to deliver a couple of growls in the awesomely brooding and dark Thorn. The best vocal performance on this CD would either be Forced Entry or Mb. Indifferentia if I had to choose, although there is not a single weak moment on the entire record. Seriously, that last sentences applies to all other instruments as well and to every single track. There’s no weak songs, only songs that are slightly less awesome. Having said that, Forced Entry definitely sticks out as the best tune. It’s no surprise that nowadays, even though the band rarely plays anything from their first two records, this song is always a standard in the live set. It’s a fan favourite, and for good reason.
I don’t really know what else I can say. This band was completely off the charts in the creation of this album and the result is phenomenal. A record that manages to impress even after having heard this dozens upon dozens of times. There is a thread currently on DTF that asked which album you have listened to the most in your life. I haven’t replied there yet, because the answer would be my #1, probably. In the past 4-5 years though, that can’t be anything other than ‘Bilateral’. What an album, go listen to it now.
Favourite song: Forced Entry
Other songs worth checking out: Mediocrity Wins, Mb. Indifferentia, Thorn
Other stuff by this band: I’m more of a fan of their early work, so I would recommend ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ first. To me, ‘Coal’ is their weakest album, but I know many people love that one, so I won’t bash it or anything. Lately, ‘The Congregation’ has been growing on me as well, that one has some excellent tunes. Overall, these guys have yet to release a bad album, everything they do is amazing and that’s why they are my favourite contemporary progressive band.
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I liked Leprous when I saw them live, but apart from Coal I never really got into their other albums as much (their last one was pretty good) but I guess I should try again.
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I liked Leprous when I saw them live, but apart from Coal I never really got into their other albums as much (their last one was pretty good) but I guess I should try again.
I must admit that Bilateral didn't really amaze me the first time I listened to it. It's really a grower.
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well, i was already getting this in my next album order (alongside affinity) so i'll be back to you with my opinion on this in a few months :P
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I tried to get into this album and band, but I just can't, they don't resonate with me at all.
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I really dig the congregation but the listens I gave to coal it was kinda meh for me outside of the valley, I know this album is completely different from those two tho and forced entry is pretty rad
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This album is on my radar. I liked The Congregation and I liked the title track from this one, so I'm going to either check it out or blind buy if I see this in a record store tomorrow.
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The best Leprous album. This would definitely be in my top 50 as well. It's really fantastic and yes, Forced Entry is their best song. Holy shit.
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Yes, yes! I definitely agree!
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So, what's #1?
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I've got nothing to add about your write up on Bilateral :tup
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So, what's #1?
an album
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So, what's #1?
It's 100% not progressive metal, as you said in write-up, so we can narrow the selection. I think it is pretty old album, maybe folk or classic rock (Led Zeppelin IV?).
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Bilateral is amazing indeed :hefdaddy also my favourite album of theirs. Restless has one of my favourite music videos too :metal
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I'll take some risks, probably it's none of them: Sunbather, Phantom on the Horizon, An Awesome Wave.
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No, it's none of those. Also, The Fall of Troy was already in this list, so it's not that. Furthermore, 'best' is subjective and not necessarily tied to 'favourite' or 'top X'. But that's semantics and maybe I was overthinking that write-up on Bilateral.
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No, it's none of those. Also, The Fall of Troy was already in this list, so it's not that. Furthermore, 'best' is subjective and not necessarily tied to 'favourite' or 'top X'. But that's semantics and maybe I was overthinking that write-up on Bilateral.
Oh, I thought you meant best as your favorite. Now I'm at the very beginning :huh:
Wait, did we see DT so far? No? It's DT.
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Here's the worst write-up of the top 50.
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1. Dream Theater – Images & Words (1992)
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Mh3c0eys-8o/maxresdefault.jpg)
Well, what a boring finish this is, isn’t it? :lol
Seriously though, is this any surprise? It might be, though for me it wasn’t. I knew before I even started compiling the top 50 and putting other albums on the list, that this album would be #1. Like on my very first list, this album is my favourite album ever. Watch that word though, ‘favourite’, for it will play a part in this write-up. This write-up that will likely be very short compared to the rest of the top 11, for reasons that are obvious. If you’re on DTF and are reading this, yet have never heard ‘Images & Words’, get off and do so immediately.
That was not a typo, in the last paragraph, where I wrote “top 11”. Check the OP in this list; I have the entire top 50 typed out there, with a line break between #12 and #11. That is, because I felt that these 11 record stand out more than the 39 above it. You know how ten is a magic number and all that, for me there’s 11 favourite records. The top 11 was set from the get-go and #12-#50 fluctuated quite a lot until they landed in the spots they did and that’s how I started typing the write-ups. These 11 record are no coincidence, for they are not only my favourite records, but also the best records I have ever heard. Looking back on these other 10 albums, apart from ‘Images & Words’, I genuinely think that all those 10 albums are better albums than ‘Images & Words’. Seriously. Then why is this at the top? Allow me to explain.
Dream Theater were the band I listened to most throughout high school and the first one or two years of university. I don’t exactly know how it came to be like this, but I had to find something that was more interesting than Metallica at some point in my puberty and the same step-father that has been mentioned more often in this top 50 was a Dream Theater fan. My mother was one too, and this is how I got to know both ‘Images & Words’ and ‘Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory’, two albums that along with Shadow Gallery’s ‘Legacy (featured at #25) used to rotate in my mother’s car for quite some time.
Of course, this was a case of hearing the right album at the right time in my musical taste development, yet I would be inclined to say that without this album, I wouldn’t like the same music I do now. Of course, this is bullshit in some way, because sooner or later I would have found my way through the vast jungles of music genres regardless. Anyway, this album is fucking amazing in the sense that I enjoy every single thing on this album, it opened up the gates to all the music I listen to nowadays and it was influential to me, not only for the way I listened to music, but also for the way I played music. (Hell, my current band started off playing DT covers; most of my guitar playing back in high-school was me trying to emulate Petrucci’s fantastic style.) Featuring 3 out of my top 5 Dream Theater songs (they would be Metropolis, Surrounded and Learning to Live, there is no doubt that this is my favourite DT album.
This album has also been extremely influential in helping build the progressive metal seen, as it’s often viewed as a highlight of the genre, or at least of the beginning days of the genre. With progressive metal being the core genre in my music tastes (even though the top 11 would disagree), it’s an obvious choice for my #1 album ever. Having said that, this album’s placement is mostly based on the feeling I have towards this album, not necessarily the music on it anymore. I like it, it’s very good, but I feel that all of the other 10 albums in the top 11 are more interesting musically. Can it be justified then, for me to place this album here? Of course, for this album has done much more for me. I have simply heard this album so ridiculously many times that I can literally play every single track in my head and know what’s going on. This is without a doubt the album I’ve heard most in my life.
Of course the progressive metal genre hadn’t been evolved to the point it could spawn albums like ‘Bilateral’ yet, but Dream Theater can truly be seen as visionaries in the respect that what they did on this record was new, sounded fresh and was delivered with amazing precision. In hindsight it might not be all that much (seriously, would we be impressed if random prog band X released I&W today?), but for the time being it was amazing. This album defined not only Dream Theater’s sound, but the sound of an entire genre. That, in itself, is mind-blowing. Fantastic song-writing, unrivalled virtuosity on all instruments, great differences between, but also within songs and to top it off: it’s memorable. Dream Theater’s magnum opus, but also the genre’s absolute highlight. If ‘Bilateral’ is the best progressive metal album ever written, then this is its badass father. And it’s my favourite. That’s all there is to it.
tl;dr. My favourite album ever, for reasons I can’t really explain properly.
Favourite song: Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper
Other songs worth checking out: Surrounded, Learning to Live, Take the Time
Other stuff by this band: No comment :lol .... Alright then, ‘Awake’ is my second favourite. Other good albums by this band are ‘Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory’ and ‘Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence’.
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I want to seriously thank everyone for following this list and commenting on it. I really, genuinely hope I have inspired some of you to actually go listen to some of the albums I have mentioned in this list. The write-ups took (for the most part) a damn long time to type out, so I would be very glad if some has stuck with you. I might throw in a couple of albums to close of, but I don't think I will. Along with the 60 albums in this list and the further suggestions to explore the artists in this list, there's more than enough music in this thread to last over a year. That said, if there's any questions about any artists, or anything at all with regards to list list, I can try and point you in the right direction.
I hope people who followed had as much fun reading the write-ups as I did working the thing out.
Thanks for staying with me and as I said in the OP, I won't be doing another list for quite a while. This will be my definite top 50 albums ever for the coming time. Check in the OP for direct links to specific albums by the way, and thanks again for reading.
So long!
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That's a worthy number one :azn: Thanks for putting so much time in this! I really enjoyed reading the write-ups and you gave me tons of music to check out. Agent Fresco is by far my favourite recent 'discovery', I've been listening to Destrier quite a lot lately :angel:
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Awake is better :neverusethis:
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I thought Awake was your #1 for some reason but I guess this makes sense. Last couple of months I've been listening to DT significantly less, but I still can't skip any of the songs on this album, not a single bad song on it.
If I had to do my list again (I had IaW at #3) it would maybe be a bit lower, but still easily in the top 10. That said, it's already higher than the #2 and #1 of that list.
Had a lot of fun following this list and thanks to it I finally came around to that Beardfish - Mammoth album
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Nice way to end the list, even though I personally don't like I&W nearly as much as the average DT fan.
Learning to Live > Metropolis by a big shot though. :hat
I really enjoyed following the list (even though I didn't know like half of it :neverusethis:), so thank you for creating it and sticking to such a tight schedule. This is how top lists should be done. :tup
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take the time is the best
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As this is a Dream Theater forum there should be no surprise that there's a Dream Theater record on your list. Wouldn't have guessed seeing it at number one beforehand, but your reasoning makes sense. I&W would be high up in my list as well, so good choice there.
Thanks for sharing your list, a lot of great records, a lot records I don't know (but have heard of frequently) and probably some I will check out further.
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No complaints here! :metal I won't say where it ranks in my list because I'll be doing one soon, but it's definitely on there somewhere.
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Awesome album :tup My 2nd favorite DT.
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Can't argue with this at all. Even got the top three song choices right, even though you can really pick any three songs from this album and justify those being the top three. I'd have Wait for Sleep right at the same tier as Surrounded, and maybe at #3 instead of it, but still.
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Love the Godspeed Record (especially the vinyl version, with all the extras), I adore Grace (and bought Mystery White Boy today cause you guys said it was good), don't know #2 and I don't think I should check it out ( ;) ) and I still really like Images and Words, I agree with that being the best DT album. Cool list Rich, thanks for doing this!
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Well, that's a worthy #1. I think I&W was the second or third DT album I heard after getting into their music when I heard BC&SL. It's a definitive prog classic and one of DT's best, although my personal favourite would probably be SDOIT. Nice list!
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Meh, DT has better albums!
But overall, great job with the list! You've updated it frequently, and with the exception of the last week, you've really been on point with consistent updating, good write-ups, lengthy write-ups and just overall pretty much a class act when it comes to making a list like this. So... good job! :)
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Awake is better :neverusethis:
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Yeah, I think Awake is my number one DT album.
But I&W is my number two, and it is still an amazing album, and highly deserving of this placement! :metal
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Thanks for all the comments :) I'm out, so I can't comment on all individual posts, but I will do that at some point in the near future.
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If I was to do a list where albums which were the biggest deal to me at various points of my life were given weight over those which are current favourites, SFAM would sit VERY highly on the list, so I don't see anything wrong with putting IAW at the top based heavily on that criteria.
Your list was cool though, there were a bunch of albums on there that seeing them ranked highly yet again gives them another nudge towards me checking them out sooner, which is one of the main things I hope to get out of these lists, more perspective on music I need to check out. So nice stuff!
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That's one good album. :tup
Nice list overall, Elite, it was fun following it.
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Elite, I'm listening to B. Dolan's The Failure right now, I remember you being impressed with the track Kate on your roulette. Just using this thread so that it can be in your top 50 next year. (Aka: listen to it!)
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That one is still on the list to try out. Damn, that track was amazing! I'll fire it up soon, first I have to sing Verdi's Requiem tomorrow for Dodenherdenking.
I'm not doing another one of these lists anytime soon though, but I'm glad people liked following! :D
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Bumping because we talked about this album earlier, but Flenser just posted an update that alongside the new Kayo Dot album, it looks like there will be pre-orders for a repress of Deathconsciousness tomorrow. I already own it on vinyl, but just putting it out there in case anyone here doesn't have it. :P
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Thanks for thr heads-up. I'll see if I'm fast enough in about 3 hours :)
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Did you get it? :)
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Yes, I did! For some reason I had the idea that the album would sell out really fast, so I was behind the computer the moment the pre-order came online and got myself a copy. Turned out I didn't need to rush after all, they're still available. Thanks for the heads-up! Come september when this pre-order gets shipped, I own a physical copy of every record in the top 50 :)
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Nice! :D Yeah I think a lot of people got it when the last reissue happened (last year?) so the rush to get it this time is probably slightly lower. Still, a great album to own! I got the Kayo Dot pre-order myself. :)