I would like to slow things down for the Top 10 with individual entries, but by the end of next week I'll be unavailable for an extended period of time so I'm going to power through this and make sure it gets done rather than leave things on a cliffhanger. Speaking of cliffhanger...
6. Shadow Gallery - Carved in Stone [1995]
Track Picks: Cliffhanger, Crystalline Dream, Don't Ever Cry Just Remember, Celtic Princess, Deeper Than Life, Alaska
The sophomore release from Shadow Gallery is an exceptional album with an incredible display of prog-metal prowess. I was fortunate enough to discover this amazing band early in my prog-metal exploration days. Long before DTF, spotify, pandora and all other resources for finding music that match your tastes, it was a bit of a lucky chance that I ran into this album somewhere on an obscure website praising its name. It was essentially a blind purchase with nothing but hopes for something interesting. From the moment "Cliffhanger" kicks in with its dark and mysterious piano and ambience followed by acoustic guitar and then a towering and chilling guitar solo leading into the first verse, I knew I was in love, and I knew that I was way out in left field for musical tastes and would probably never relate to anyone again. "Crystalline Dream" is a slick and icy cool track with a great melody. By the time "Don't Ever Cry, Just Remember" starts up you realize how cool this band is. Flutes aren't exactly foreign to prog, but they aren't common either and the addition here adds a nice element to separate them from from the pack. The short instrumental "Celtic Princess" is a great moment that rises up among all the other brief segues on the album. "Deeper than Life" is perhaps a more standard mid-tempo rocker, but it's one of the most memorable songs here. "Alaska" is a great ballad and adds to the diversity and balance this album showcases. The final song "Ghostship" is an epic broken up into 8 separate tracks. It may not reach the highs of most prog-metal epic masterpieces, but it is still a great ending to a special album.
Why it should be ranked lower: It's not quite as refined as later albums
Why it should be ranked higher: Tons of creativity, they carve out their own unique sound and execute to perfection.
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5. Opeth - Ghost Reveries [2005]
Track Picks: Ghost of Perdition, The Baying of the Hounds, Reverie/Harlequin Forest, Hours of Wealth, The Grand Conjuration, Isolation Years
What is it about Opeth and Mikael Akerfeldt that makes this music so damn good. I first thought it was due to the non-standard song structures that travel ample musical territory with numerous themes and contrasting dark/light elements, but that's not exactly unique in the prog world and has been done as well by many others. It finally hit me with "Ghost Reveries", Opeth has mastered the art of transitions. In what could be a recipe for disaster by changing things up so often throughout a song, Opeth fuses disparate elements together brilliantly. One moment a song is aggressive, monster riffing with gutteral growls and the next, acoustic guitar with icy smooth clean vocals and often times this transition can occur over just a few metres. The ability to add and peel off layers like this and create a moment that feels so natural is mind boggling. Perhaps no song exemplifies this better than the opener "Ghost of Perdition". Not only is it the best track on the album, but arguably the best in their catalog. It twists and weaves through incredibly dark and ominous moments to the flighty and ethereal and back again in a song that will no doubt impress. "The Baying of the Hounds" has some cool experimental moments. "Reverie/Harelquin Forest" does feel like two separate songs, but the opening is just killer. I could listen to the main verse over and over again with it's clean vocals over heavy riffing. "The Grand Conjuration" for as aggressive and heavy as it is, has a tinge of commercial appeal to it. Not that it will be played on the radio any time soon, but it feels a little more accessible than most tracks. Be sure to pick up the special edition which contains the Deep Purple cover "Soldier of Fortune".
Why it should be ranked lower: There's nothing below this album that should be higher, so it can't go any lower.
Why it should be ranked higher: It is the climax and conclusion to the signature sound Opeth had crafted, defined and redefined over the last 5 albums.
Topic: Orthogonal's Top 50 Albums v Final Recap (Read 17635 times)
