#22: Sigur Rós - ( ) (2002)
---TRACKLIST---Untitled 1, Untitled 2, Untitled 3... you get the idea.
As the previous update shows, I’m quite the metalhead. However, something else that I absolutely love that’s completely on the other end of the musical spectrum is atmosphere, and this album is just about as atmospheric as it gets. Some of the songs are optimistic, some are bleak, but all of them are stunningly beautiful. The record is very quiet for the most part, but when the more intense climaxes start showing up in the last three songs, they feel truly orgasmic. If you’ve heard of this album before you’re probably aware that the songs have no names, and all of the vocals are in a fictional language called “hopelandic”. (It’s just like Icelandic, except half of the language’s dictionary consists of something that sounds like YYYUUUUUUUU SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.)
Untitled I starts the album off on a somber but strangely uplifting and beautiful note.
Untitled III sticks out amongst the rest of the album for several reasons; it’s the only purely instrumental song, and while the rest of the album feels very cold and wintery, this song is incredibly lush, perfect for a rainy, warm day.
Untitled VI feels very war-like and serious and gets truly amazing towards the end, and
Untitled VIII ends the album off with a bombastic, energetic and optimistic outro. If you’re a fan of atmospheric or just plain beautiful music, this album will definitely find a special place in your heart.
---FAVORITE SONGS---Untitled I,
Untitled III,
Untitled VI,
Untitled VIII#21: OSI - Office Of Strategic Influence (2003)
---TRACKLIST---(1) The New Math (What He Said) (2) OSI (3) When You're Ready (4) Horseshoes And B-52's (5) Head (6) Hello, Helicopter!
(7) ShutDOWN (8) Dirt From A Holy Place (9) Memory Daydreams Lapses (10) Standby (Looks Like Rain)
OSI, the collaboration between Kevin Moore (who nobody here knows about, obviously) and Jim Matheos of Fate’s Warning, has made four albums since 2003. While they’re all great, in my opinion they still haven’t topped their debut album. It has the best songs, the least amount of filler, and the best flow. Sound-wise, while you’ve got plenty of Kevin Moore’s fantastic, atmospheric keyboard work, he wasn’t in on the project from the beginning. As a result, you can hear a lot from the project’s beginning when it was just Jim Matheos and Mike Portnoy. (Again, who’s that guy?) The first two songs in particular,
The New Math and
OSI, sound very much like typical progressive metal, but not in a bad way. The album has a good amount of variety to it, balancing out the more moody, ambient songs with louder, guitar-focused tracks. The two styles also blend together fantastically, unlike some of the band’s other albums. (Blood, in particular, sounds like two completely different albums stitched together at the last minute.) The song
Head is a great example of this, as it alternates between the two styles numerously and seamlessly.
ShutDOWN is another standout track; it features Steven Wilson (another random musician nobody cares about) on vocals, but the song sounds so Porcupine Tree-esque that my guess is he probably wrote a lot of the music for it too. Mike Portnoy’s drum work on the album is also fantastic, some of the best he’s ever done. Of course, he didn’t do nearly as well a job on the follow-up album due to him not really giving a shit because he didn’t get to make every single musical decision in the whole band like he was used to. This is definitely an album absolutely everyone on here should check out.
---FAVORITE SONGS---The New Math (What He Said),
OSI,
Head,
ShutDOWN
Topic: Buddyhunter1's Top 33 Albums! v.The End (Read 30831 times)
