Neoclassical metal? Didn't know that genre even existed .
That actually made me laugh.
I enjoy everything from the Kiske era, even Pink Bubbles and Chameleon.
Both Pink Bubbles and TBA have aged remarkably well IMO.
Totally agree with you guys, I quite like those Helloween albums too.
That Malmsteen album is amazing of course too. Looking forward to the rest of this list.
I'm back at one - two albums a day schedule due to work, but I'll try to keep the things moving.
Saw them live opening for Metallica circa AJFA.
Who? Yngwie?
Yeah, that's my question too.
And now we're going forward to something more modern. Something very modern, in fact. If I had to make the best albums from the last five years, this one would've been on the 3rd place. I know, new car smell effect and so on, but I described my reasoning in the write-up, and I just can't stop listening to this album.
And a special shoutout to
of course!
#19The Road Of BonesIQGenre: progressive rock2014 Here’s the second and final occasion when the album makes this list not only because of its individual strength, but also because I want to kind of honor the band for their great work (first one was Unisonic waaaay back at #46, if you remember). Now don’t get me wrong, this album would’ve still made this list even if it was the only thing IQ ever released, because I love it to pieces, but it would be somewhere around the 30th place. I don’t know how it will stand the further tests of time, because it was only released this year, but I already have a feeling it will only get better and better. I’ll keep on talking about this in the third paragraph, but now I feel I should present a little information about the band here.
IQ is a British progressive rock band founded in 1981 by
Mike Holmes and
Martin Orford. They’ve put quite a lot of studio albums over this time and have been active for more than 30 years as of now, but for some reason they’ve never managed to get a lot of commercial success, despite the utter brilliance of the majority of their material. The lineup for the Road of Bones includes aforementioned Mike Holmes on guitars,
Peter Nicholis as a singer,
Neil Durant on keyboards,
Tim Esau on bass and
Paul Cook on drums.
So well, let me explain what I meant in the very first phrase on this write-up. I’ve enjoyed some IQ albums for a few years now, but I always felt there was something missing in each record, or some song or section that left me unimpressed. My three favourite IQ records before this one were Subterranea, Dark Matter and The Seventh House; Subterranea is a nearly flawless concept album with a lot of outstanding material until it comes to the grand twenty minutes epic called The Narrow Margin, which for me is incredibly underwhelming and kills all the excitement that is built up before it. Dark Matter is quite the opposite, the material on it ranges from just alright to good, but the big huge epic called Harvest of Souls is one of the most awesome things IQ ever recorded (I know RJ would totally disagree with this, haha). The Seventh House is just good stuff all around, but not great enough to make the list, even though the title track is unequivocally breathtaking. And all this brings us to The Road of Bones. The band decided to use an interesting approach here, instead of recording another huge double album they’ve put only five songs on the actual album, and labeled the rest as bonus tracks. This does all the wonderful things to the flow, really, and ensures there is no mediocre material on the record. They’ve put all the great songs on one disc, and placed the good stuff on the other, but as the actual album is Disc 1, we’ll be focusing on that. Given that there are only five songs, as I said, for some reason I felt it could’ve been either a disaster or an outstanding achievement, and it’s the latter. The material here might be just the best output from IQ. Shorter tracks like
The Road of Bones (well, not really short, but it's prog, you know) and
Ocean are full of feelings, slowly laying their impressive range of emotions before the listener; both rockers (proggers?)
From the Outside In and
Until the End have their kickass parts and totally beautiful, mellow sections; and the album’s epic,
Without Walls, might just be the best long song IQ ever created, with a proper balance and sound transitions between all the parts.
Basically, The Road of Bones is IQ in a nutshell, but somehow the record manages to sound remarkably fresh compared to all the albums the band released in this thirty years span. It’s like the band collected all the best parts from their previous material, rehashed them in some hardly recognizable form, added a few brilliant parts here and there, and the output exceeded all expectations I could’ve possibly have. While this record is the most recent on this list, I felt I really have to place it here on #19, because the amount of transcendental songs IQ put out already plus this flawless record equals a high place among my favourite albums. IQ deserves all success and recognition in the world, yet doesn’t have it, so at least I’ll honor the band putting the album pretty damn high in my list.
Favourite tracks:
From the Outside In,
The Road of Bones,
Without Walls,
Until the End (from 7:42)I wasn’t going to include Until the End in my favourite tracks, because the first three are already 35 minutes in length, but I just couldn’t ignore such beautiful ending to this magnificent album.