Your Five Favorite Albums of All Time

[Samsara]

Pretty simple...what are your favorite five albums of all time? Put 'em in order #1 through #5, and you can include ONE "honorable mention" if you like, at the end. Make sure you explain what is so special about each record, and include the artwork! 

1. Queensr˙che - Operation: Mindcrime (1988)



To me, hands down, the finest album ever recorded. It has everything I could ever want in a record. A concept/thought provoking lyrics, ripping metal, great solos, killer riffs, beautiful melodies, and great drama, WITHOUT being melodramatic. It's an amazing experience, and is still astounding to this day.

2. Fifth Angel - Fifth Angel (1986, re-released 1988)



Quite simply, an underground power metal classic that started me down the path of heavy metal fandom. A powerful operatic lead singer, virtuoso guitar playing, a serious lyrical message, something that spoke to me as an 11 year old and continues to. Ironically, another Seattle band.

3. Sevendust - Alpha (2007)



I honestly never even dreamed that this album would end up connecting with me the way it did. The second album from Sevendust without guitarist/songwriter Clint Lowery, Sevendust came out with a record that flew over the heads of most of its fanbase. A thematic album, the songs tackle situations tracking a man that is losing his mind. You have instances of three different voices (alternating on speakers) talking to one another, brutal riffs, soulful lead vocals, gut wrenching melodies, and pure, unadulterated aggression. I had been a Sevendust fan for years, but this album was beyond any sort of expectation I ever had for them.

4. Alice in Chains - Dirt (1992)



Yep, the third Seattle band in my top-five. What can I say? Alice in Chains' 1992 album Dirt gave me just the right blend of rawness, metal, guitar work, lyrical content, and vocal delivery for my tastes. It's an incredibly strong album from start to finish. The funny thing is, I never even owned Dirt in its entirety until 2003. Once I did, the album just took me for a ride that is still going.

5. Alter Bridge - Blackbird (2007)



Alter Bridge's Blackbird is simply epic. I know a lot of people didn't realize that the musicians in Creed could actually play, but surprise, they absolutely can, and they can write dynamic songs. Throw in the vocal God in Myles Kennedy, who doubles as a tremendous lead guitar player in his own right, and you have a recipe for a killer headbanger's meal. And that's what Blackbird is. Soaring vocals, tremendous guitar leads, a thunderous groove, and a great balance between mainstream hard rock, thrash, and good old metal to keep you throwing your horns in the air long after it's over. 2007 was certainly a good year in music for me.

Honorable Mention: Metallica - Master of Puppets (1986)



I actually waffled between this record and ...And Justice for All. What won the day for Puppets was better production.  What can you say about Puppets that hasn't been said. The defining album of the thrash metal genre. A wild ride from the opening charge of Battery right through Damage, Inc. The blistering leads, galloping riffs, progression changes, and of course James Hetfield's old vocal style, it just commands your attention.

[AwakeFromOctavarium]

1. Awake - Dream Theater
2. Images & Words - Dream Theater
3. Entropia - Pain of Salvation
4. V - Symphony X
5. Ghost Reveries - Opeth

[KevShmev]

1. Awake
2. Images & Words
3. Entropia
4. V
5. Ghost Reveries

It helps to list the bands, ya know?  Can I assume that V is the album by Spock's Beard?

Working on my list and will post it later today...

[AwakeFromOctavarium]

Done it for ya. I bet you already knew that the V I listed was by Symphony X.

[KevShmev]

  I bet you already knew that the V I listed was by Symphony X.

Why would I think that?  To me, Spock's Beard have the best album called V that I know of, so that is naturally the first album I thought of.

[TheVoxyn]

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

[RandalGraves]

In no particular order:

[Samsara]

Pick an order. Go 1 through 5, please! That's a part of the reason for the thread.

And EXPLAIN your choices folks. This is a discussion forum for goodness sakes. Have some discussion!

[Nick]

My top for would be...

1. Rush - A Farewell to Kings
2. Rush - Hemispheres
3. Transatlantic - Bridge Across Forever
4. Queensryche - Operation: Mindcrime

There are a couple of albums that would fight for the 5th spot, not sure what to pick. I'll go into more detail on my choices once my top 50 is finished.

[Zantera]

Personally there's albums climbing/changing, and the list that would be my top5 of all time now, could be 100% replaced if i would make this list again in a year.
But right now, this is my top5:

1. Agalloch - Ashes Against the Grain
The music is really one of a kind, during the 1 ½ year i've been familiar with the band, i've never come across something that sounds similar to them.
This is imo their best album, it combines neo-folk, progressive, doom, black and even ambient/noise.
It has 8 songs, all 8 being pretty much 10/10 songs, and it's an album where the term "perfect" says it all.

2. Ulver - Perdition City
Amazing mix of electronic & ambient music, with elements of jazz and triphop.
This album is very dark, and listening to it in headphones in a dark room at night is truly one of the best listening-experiences i've ever had.

3. Steven Wilson - Insurgentes
SW is a genius, and his solo-album is a proof of this.
It's hard describing how brilliant this album is, but it's another listening-experience i remember, played it in the headphones, and it was amazing.

4. Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet
6 songs, 50 minute running-time, this album is the perfect PT-album.
It's just perfect, because it isn't too short, it isn't too long, it's exactly how it should be (length-wise), and all the 6 songs flow perfectly into each other.
They also work very well individually, which adds to the awesomeness.

5. Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here
This album being new, but i was just amazed by how awesome it actually is.
All 10 songs are amazing, and i can wait another 7 years if they make an album like this one.
Atmospheric & Uplifting prog-rock at it's best.

Honorable mentions:
Porcupine Tree - Signify
Opeth - Deliverance
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Blackfield - Blackfield
Dream Theater - 6DOIT/Awake
Riverside - Anno Domini High Defenition

[PixelDream]

I limit myself to one album per band, otherwise the list would probably be the run from Stupid Dream until The Incident  .

1. Porcupine Tree - Deadwing

Well, I wouldn't call 'Shallow' a masterpiece, but the rest isn't too far off. It has one of my favorite songs of all time on it ('Arriving Somewhere But Not Here'), and from that song on everything is just pure gold. The atmosphere changes completely, and the songs generally are slow-burners from there on. Except for 'Open Car', which would be even better if it had the 'breakdown' they do live. 'Glass Arm Shattering' is such a great closing piece, I love the 'space' it has, and I love the 'shalala' vocals at the end even more.

In short, the textures on this album are making me want to go back to this 'place' called 'Deadwing' all the time.

2. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

I actually think this album is objectively 'better' than 'Deadwing'. But that doesn't make it my favorite. The reason why I love this album so much: everything is just so beautiful and subtle. It's kind of the best listening experience you can have in 45 minutes. Absolute highlight must be 'Great Gig in the Sky', also one of my favorite songs of all time. The studio version, that is. Nothing else can touch that. Not even Sam Brown's excellent job on the P.U.L.S.E. live album.

3. Dream Theater - Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

DT on top of their game in every aspect: Songwriting, performance, production, experimentation and ambition. After all these years of being a DT fan, I must say that I think this is, hands down, their finest hour. Oh, and the vocal melodies here are a thousand times better than on 'SFAM'.

4. Opeth - Blackwater Park

Second Opeth album I listened to. Atmosphere is incredible, it has ... well every song is just pure genius to me. Every riff is spot on, and I absolutely adore the death growls on this record. That's something I never thought I'd actually enjoy in heavy music.

5. Tool - Lateralus

The description 'DSOTM of the 00's' is a pretty good one if you ask me. Many amazing moments, and really great to listen to in it's entirety ofcourse. Truly immersive, etc. Tool fans know why this album is so great.  I can't really explain it, but there isn't anything quite like this album.

Honorable mention: The Beatles - their most respected albums. I'm getting heavily into them right now, after having pussied out on them all of my life. It's no joke they're being called the best band of all time, and I'm sure at least one of their records will end up in my top 5. 'Abbey Road' is my favorite right now, and I'm not half done with it.

Edit: Damn, how could I forget Jeff Buckley and Radiohead.. I absolutely adore 'In Rainbows', but I don't know where to place it right now.

[skydivingninja]

I promise I'll get the artwork up at some point.  These are all albums I consider perfect in every way.

1. Wish You Were Here-Pink Floyd
Probably the most beautiful album ever recorded.  I really started getting into this album around 2006, when my grandfather passed away, and I was coming to the end of my high school days.  The song "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is my favorite Floyd song, the atmospheric intro before the explosive chorus is incredible.  Things are kept simple in the middle, which is a pleasant breather from the two epic bookends.  Its musical perfection.

2. Moving Pictures-Rush
An album I like more for its music than out of any real personal connection.  That sort of exists in songs like "Red Barchetta" and "Limelight," but for the most part, I can just listen and enjoy, Neil's lyrics and themes are distant enough so that I don't feel like he's choking me with his soul, but they're close and worldly enough where I can understand.  A pretty amazing record, and should get an award one of these days for "best side 1 ever created."

3. Lighbulb Sun-Porcupine Tree
At this point in their career, PT was sort of in a transition period, one side was still cemented in the alt-rock/pop side they had explored earlier with Stupid Dream and the other was caught in some experimental heaviness that would show itself on In Absentia.  Both sides work incredibly well.   Songs like "Shesmovedon" and "Feel So Low" capture the classic melancholy of PT songs while songs like "Russia on Ice" take the listener on an epic journey.

4. Born to Run-Bruce Springsteen
Love of Bruce Springsteen has been encoded into my family's genes since the '70s.  My dad always likes to brag about how he paid five bucks for Springsteen tickets at the Bucknell gym.  About a week before the show, this album hit the sky, and all of a sudden Bruce was God.  Its easy to see why, you have the greatest rock song ever written ("Thunder Road") and the theme of escaping your boring life is something I think almost everyone can relate to.  Seeing him play "Thunder Road" and "Backstreets" live last year for my birthday was an unforgettable experience.

5. Bat Out of Hell-Meat Loaf
Ladies and gentlemen, if you want your kids to get into prog-rock and metal, give them this album.  My mom gave me this album, which to this day kind of shocks me, its chock full of amazing, epic music, Meat Loaf's great broadway vocals, and classic lyrics.  If you listen to this album, especially the title track, while driving on the highway, you will probably get a speeding ticket.  You just can't avoid it.  Its one of the most energetic and passionate albums you'll ever hear.  Its kind of a shame Meat has had to live in its shadow for all these years.

[Marvellous G]

I've limited myself to one album per band, otherwise Tool would feature heavily.

1. Tool - Lateralus

Truly the greatest combination of incredible lyrics and fantastic, but not overly complicated progressive music I've ever heard. It's more of an experience album than any other I've heard of, and the D - R - T sequence is as close as one can come to feeling high without substance abuse. It also has infinite re-listenability to me.

2. John Mayer - Continuum

I know this will elicit groans, but it's one of the most wonderfully atmospheric albums I've ever heard with the best modern rock/blues guitarist, vocalist and songwriter I've ever heard at his finest.

3. Dream Theater - Scenes From A Memory

Just wonderful from start to finish, no complaints here other than some sub par lyrical moments.

4. Metallica - ...And Justice For All

Easily their best album IMO, and featuring some of the proggiest stuff they ever did with their best overall lyrical showing.

5. Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run

Needs no explanation really. The fines collection of rock songs of all time.

Honourable mentions:
Every PT album I've heard so far,
Opeth's BWP, Ghost Reveries and Watershed,
Pearl Jam's Ten,
and Guns N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction.

[Samsara]

MG - would completely agree with ...And Justice for All, and probably would have made that my #5, bumping AB's Blackbird down to honorable mention, and dropping Puppets into the lower part of my top-10. BUT...BUT...the production. Ugh. Why, oh why did they have such a terrible mix on that record. Hazing Jason is one thing, but burying the bass in the mix is just a travesty. It completely pisses me off every time I listen to the record.

[Zydar]

1. The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds (1966)



A true pop masterpiece. Released under my favourite music year of all time, it was an attempt to top The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album. When Beach Boys’ mastermind Brian Wilson first heard Rubber Soul he was really challenged to to a great album. He said he wasn’t ready for the unity of that album, it felt like it all belonged together. And he created this masterpiece full of tight and lush arrangements, instrumentations, and on top of that the brilliant harmonies of the full band. It’s still in the Top 3 on most polls of the best albums of all time. The introspective themes and lyrics here proves that The Beach Boys wasn’t all about fun in the sun, surfin’ and girls.

Favourite songs: God Only Knows, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Here Today, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, I’m Waiting For The Day.


2. The Beatles – Abbey Road (1969)



The last album that was recorded by The Beatles (although Let It Be was the last released album), is also the ultimate way to bow down and end an astonishing career. It is regarded as one of their most tightly constructed albums, although the band was barely operating as a functioning band at this time. It really sounds as if they knew this would be their last album together, so they just went for it and created some of the best songs of their career. My favourite part of this album is the closing medley – especially She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers, and The End. The only thing I wish for is that they end it all with The End, and not the short song Her Majesty that follows. But that’s nitpicking.

Favourite songs: Something, Here Comes The Sun, Because, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers, The End.


3. Dream Theater – Images And Words (1992)



My favourite DT album, and one of the best albums I’ve ever heard. I actually bought this when I heard Pull Me Under in late 2000 and gave the album a few spins but it didn’t really do that much for me. It got shelved for a few years, and when I returned to DT in 2007 I gave it another listen. And holy Hell – what an experience it was when it clicked for me. Every song here is pure brilliance, all the band members are on top of their game, and I actually like the “dated” 80s sound, and yes that includes the triggered snare drum as well. I’ve heard the 2007 remixes of some of the tracks and I can safely say I prefer the original ones. 3 of the 8 tracks here are featured on my Top 5 list of favourite DT songs (Another Day, Surrounded, Learning To Live) of all time. I can’t think of anything else to say – only that I wish that they would play at least one of the tracks when I saw them live for the first time in 2009. Oh well.

Favourite songs: Another Day, Surrounded, Metropolis pt 1: The Miracle And The Sleeper, Under A Glass Moon, Learning To Live.


4. Genesis – Selling England By The Pound (1973)



Genesis’ fifth album was recorded and released in 1973, another favourite year for me in music history. This album’s theme is a yearning for ancient or medieval England, and the album focuses on traces of this past in the present. The musical performances are much more polished and tight that on the previous albums. For me this album is the pinnacle of Genesis, and it contains their most brilliant work ever. From the opener Dancing With The Moonlit Knight to the closer Aisle Of Plenty this is truly a remarkable album, a milestone in the prog genre, and not shy of being pretty accessible to non-proggers. Highlights include Steve Hackett’s classic guitar solo on Firth Of Fifth, Tony Banks’ piano intro in the same song, and Peter Gabriel’s portraits on I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe).

Favourite songs: Dancing With The Moonlit Knight, Firth Of Fifth, The Cinema Show.


5. Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run (1975)



This is the third album by The Boss, and it was a critical and commercial success and became his breakthrough album – it is also considered to be his magnum opus. The album took 14 months to record, and six months alone was spent on the title track. I don’t know how to describe this album and my fascination over it. It’s rock & roll fused with Bruce’s own obsession over the Wall Of Sound by old producer Phil Spector that resulted in something magical. I love everything here, from the orgasmic saxophone solo in Jungleland, to the adrenaline rush of Born To Run. When I finally saw him live in 2009 I was fortunate enough to hear four of the tracks here – the highlight was Jungleland, one of my favourite songs of all time. I get shivers everytime I hear it.

Favourite songs: Thunder Road, Night, Born To Run, She’s The One, Jungleland.

[Gadough]

1. BTBAM - Colors
2. Opeth - Ghost Reveries
3. Rush - 2112
4. Death - Symbolic
5. Dream Theater - toss up between several albums, but a DT one definitely takes this spot.

Too lazy to get artwork/explain my choices. 

[Plasmastrike]

Good posts everyone! This is probably my favorite "list" thread thus far, so I'll definitely be reading intently and posting later after I go on a run.

Also, yeah, post explanations people! We're interested in your thoughts.

[pogoowner]

1. Kansas - Point of Know Return



Song for America has some proggier moments and Leftoverture has some more "rocking" moments, but Point of Know Return is the album that best fuses the two together, in my opinion. Fantastic songwriting and awesome keyboards throughout.

2. Kansas - Leftoverture



The album where they hit it big. Radio classics like "Carry on Wayward Son" and "The Wall," plus other greats including the ridiculous prog epic, "Magnum Opus." There's not a bad song on the album.

3. Dream Theater - Images and Words



The album that defines progressive metal. This is Dream Theater at their creative peak, in my opinion. The songs are both technical and catchy, and Petrucci's guitar work is simply gorgeous. You've also gotta love the soaring vocals of a young James LaBrie.

4. Alice in Chains - Dirt



Consistently dark, and at times extremely heavy, this is not an uplifting album. As usual, the vocal harmonies between Jerry Cantrell and Layne Staley are fantastic, and Staley is phenomenal at conveying the pain and emotion of each song through his voice.

5. Pain of Salvation - The Perfect Element I



Pain of Salvation at their finest. Songs like "Idioglossia" and "King of Loss" are the highlights for me, but this is an album that must be listened to as a whole for full appreciation. Daniel Gildenlow turns in an epic vocal performance, and this album hits hard.

[Dr. DTVT]

I go with 5 when I can go with 150!

This list would be significantly different if I remade it, but the top 10 would be about the same.

[Marvellous G]

MG - would completely agree with ...And Justice for All, and probably would have made that my #5, bumping AB's Blackbird down to honorable mention, and dropping Puppets into the lower part of my top-10. BUT...BUT...the production. Ugh. Why, oh why did they have such a terrible mix on that record. Hazing Jason is one thing, but burying the bass in the mix is just a travesty. It completely pisses me off every time I listen to the record.

Yeah, that's true. And the fuzzy guitars also marr it hugely, but I've listened to it sooo many times now I've sort of gotten used to the quality. And as you can see by a Tool album being my number 1, production doesn't bother me too much after the shock of how bad it often is wears off. 

[Mladen]

I think mine's quite diverse, although I'm not 100% sure about it...

1. The Beatles -Sgt. Pepper's lonely hearts club band



2. Iron Maiden - Somewhere in time



3. Metallica - ...And justice for all



4. Pink Floyd - Animals



5. Dream Theater - Scenes from a memory

[Marvellous G]

Nice to see so many others who have AJFA as their favourite Metallica album.

[Sigz]

1. Kayo Dot - Choirs of the Eye



Just a mindblowing album from start to finish. Every song is perfect, and every song complements the overall album. Pretty much the closest thing to a perfect album IMO.


2. Porcupine Tree - Deadwing



PT's best album, and what an amazing one. It's a little inconsistent, with the title track and Lazarus both being kinda meh compared to the rest of the album, but they're still good songs, and everything else is excellent. SW often talks about making 'albums', and I think this is the best example of that in his catalog. Every song is good, but they flow so amazingly that even the weaker tracks work incredibly well in the context of the overall album. Glass Arm Shattering is an absolutely beautiful closer.


3. Circle Takes the Square - As the Roots Undo




Brilliant, brilliant album. Psychotic music, poetic lyrics, great flow.



4. Opeth - Blackwater Park



Basically every song is amazing, the production is fantastic, and it flows great. I love especially how many of the heavy bits are doubled with an acoustic that is mixed perfectly into it. Gives the entire album a really evil pagan feel. Kinda like Avatar but with a forest that isn't retarded and natives who will actually slit your throat and gut you rather than be some furry's wet dream.


5. Eisley - Room Noises



Beautiful, beautiful indie rock. Every song is amazing, and quite a bit of ground is covered over the 12 songs, with ethereal dream pop and country spread out amongst what would otherwise be normal indie rock.

[zxlkho]

Porcupine Tree - In Absentia
Riverside - Second Life Syndrome
Dream Theater - SDOIT
Coheed and Cambria - In Keeping Secrets
Tool - Lateralus

A few others are very close:
Metallica - Master of Puppets
In Flames - Clayman
Thrice - Beggars

[Sintheros]

1. Porcupine Tree - In Absentia
2. Devin Townsend - Terria
3. Opeth - Blackwater Park
4. Redemption - The Fullness of Time
5. Dream Theater - Awake

Also

with the title track and Lazarus both being kinda meh compared to the rest of the album

Die.

[Marvellous G]

I'm pleasantly surprised by the amount of love Lateralus is getting here!

[Sigz]

with the title track and Lazarus both being kinda meh compared to the rest of the album

Die.

no u

[antigoon]

1. The Dear Hunter - Act III: Life and Death


This album is perfect to me. Casey Crescenzo is a monster songwriter and this is his best work. I can't think of another album that makes me feel so many things at once.

2. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning


This is folk rock at it's best. Conor Oberst is so great at utilizing just a few chords to craft intricate songs, and his lyrics are always worth listening to.

3. Dream Theater - Awake


Dark, heavy, introspective. This is Dream Theater's masterpiece.

4. John Mayer - Continuum


When my buddy told me to check out this album back in 2005, I thought he was wasting his breath. Man, was I ever wrong. Blues-pop perfection. I wish I could write songs like the ones on this record.

5. Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet


Although many PT fans don't hold this album in high regard, I think it's their best. I think the lyrics are actually quite good, and Anesthetize is one hell of a track.

[Nihil-Morari]

I'm sorry, I just can't pick.

I can choose a couple favourite albums in a certain style or mood, but how the hell should one compare Meshuggah's I with Sigur Ros' ( ), and with Zappa's Just Another Band From L.A.?
Not to mention no-man's Together We're Stranger, Pain of Salvtion's Be, DT's I&W, Pink Floyd's Meddle, The Mars Volta's Frances the Mute, Pat Metheny's The Way Up, TransAtlantic's Bridge Across Forever, Zappa's Freak Out, Mono's Are You There?, Fantoma's Suspended Animation, David Gilmour's On An Island, oh and I'm forgetting tons of albums now.

[antigoon]

David Gilmour's On An Island

HELL YES.

[Nihil-Morari]

Thank you very much, all the albums I picked have one certain quality.

Whenever I put them on, no matter how I felt before, they'll all make me feel the same way afterwards.
I can now put on On an Island, and feel exactly the same way as when I last listened to it.

Playing with the emotions of your listeners on that shallow level (shallow as in it really shows) is a quality only the best songwriters/performers possess.

[bosk1]

AGHH Awake

AGHH Awake

SUCK DICK

ONLY YOURS


Wait wat

EXTREME RARE BREED ON THIS FORUM CONTINUUM o/

EXTREME RARE BREED ON THIS FORUM CONTINUUM o/

o/*\o

(>'-')>

Kinda like Avatar but with a forest that isn't retarded and natives who will actually slit your throat and gut you rather than be some furry's wet dream.

why u so mad?

@Sigz & co.:  Come on now.  I great a LOT of leeway on these forums in terms of allowing joking and reasonable tangents in discussions, but this is just ridiculous.  There is no good reason to clog up a thread of legitimate discussion with that kind of nonsense.  That's exactly why we have a chat thread (remember way, WAY back when dt.net didn't even have chat threads and this kind of joking around in any thread could get you a warning?  We don't want to go back there, right?).  Please try a bit harder to keep your posting habits more reasonable.  Again, there are plenty of thread where stuff like that is fine.  There's no reason to derail otherwise intelligent discussion.

[KevShmev]

Honorable mention:
Radiohead - In Rainbows


Top 5
5. Porcupine Tree - Lightbulb Sun


4. Kansas - Leftoverture


3. Rush - Permanent Waves


2. The Beatles - Abbey Road


1. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon



I'll try to work on write-ups for each a bit later, and then add them in, but for now, those are my picks.

[bosk1]

1.  Neal Morse - One
To me, hands down, the finest album ever recorded. It has everything I could ever want in a record.    Well, okay, maybe not that last part.  In fact, it's strange to me that my top two have no "metal" elements to them whatsoever, given that I generally listen to and enjoy metal in some form more than any other type of music.  But this album is just about perfect.  Very well composed and performed, and the lyrics and subject matter resonate with me on a very deep level.  

2.  Transatlantic - The Whirlwind
A year from now, it'll be interesting to see whether I still rank this album so highly.  But I had been calling it "album of the year" material, and coming off the high of seeing the title song performed in its entirety to such spectacular perfection still has this one pretty high up on the list.  I dunno--maybe it would have been more fair to omit this one and put it down as my honorable mention.  But as of right now, I would put it in my #2 spot.  I love the perfect blend of complexity and catchines on this album.  And the bonus material (8 more songs and a terrific documentary DVD) elevate it even further.  Is it fair to take the bonus material into account when ranking it against albums that are in a more traditional format?  I don't know.  And I don't really care.  Subjectively speaking, I love that stuff, and it works for me in the context of this ranking to take it into account, so I will given that the thread starter didn't specify that doing so would be against the thread rules.  But back to the content of the songs themselves, there is just something magical about these 4 guys writing together and it shone through on this album like never before.  Some "supergroups" work well.  Others don't.  For these guys, they each bring something to the table and are able to synthesize the strengths of the individual members in a way that makes for some incredible music.  To me, on this album, it translated into an album I consider legendary.

3.  Dream Theater - Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence
Hard to believe this album finally got knocked out of the top spot.  I love both the unifying theme of the album and the diversity of each of the individual songs.  Even the title song is about as diverse as you can get, but at 42+ minutes, it better be.  Great blend of heavy, catchy, proggy, and...a lot of other cool stuff.

4.  Dream Theater - Live Scenes From New York
SFAM was for me in 1999 what Mindcrime was to me and many others back in 1989--it just blew my mind and really took my expectations for music to a whole new level.  As I've often said, that album works so well as a concept album because the album as a whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts.  I love the performance of it on this live set, and the rest of the set list is top-notch as well.  If we could not include live albums on this list, I would probably still have put SFAM in the #4 spot.  Again, it was such a game-changer for me and forever cemented DT as a favorite band.  Add in such a great live performance of this album along with the rest of the set, and I just had to include this in my top 5.

5.  Neal Morse - Sola Scriptura
Neal does it again.  I was blown away by this album when it first came out, and I still am.  And I love that it adds a bit of heaviness that is absent from his other albums.  Neal Morse + Mike Portnoy + Randy George already = magic.  Add in Paul Gilbert to that formula and I fail to see how anyone could not be blown away.

Honorable Mention:  Queensryche - Empire
I just had to include a QR album here somewhere, even though they no longer make my top 5.  Promised Land might technically be a "better" album, but I think I want to list Empire here just because it was such a difinitive album, was so varied, and is able to connect on so many different levels.  Both Promised Land and Mindcrime have a lot to offer as well, but Empire to me showcases a band that was firing on all cylinders and was able to showcase an almost-unprecedented (at the time) amount of diversity in terms of the types of sounds and emotions on that album while at the same time displaying an incredible consistency in terms of song quality.  I have worn out more copies of this album than any other.

[Bombardana]

Blackwater Park is number one. I can't decide on 2-4.
To make this not a total cop out, I'll list my favourite part of each BWP song:
The Leper Affinity: the acoustic section in the middle
Bleak: that bit at 6:40
Harvest: the "into the orchard" parts.
The Drapery Falls: intro and outro riff
Dirge for November: that bit from 2:42
The Funeral Portrait: the scream at 1:14
Patterns in the Ivy: the piano over the last minute
Blackwater Park: the long dreamy section