Sorry, I haven’t been around to follow the list, so I will now bombard you with impressions.
I find it amusing that people seem to like making updates of these threads within a year or two of their last. A few years of musical exploration is pretty small, in the greater scheme of things.
There are a good number of bands/albums on here that were also on my (incomplete) list:
- You don’t say anything about it, though I guess you might know, but in case you don’t: Steal This Album was literally the B-Sides from Toxicity, though a few were older. They leaked, and the band wanted to be able to profit from them, and for people to hear them in better quality, so the album was rushed out. As you say, the album doesn’t have much flow, but the material is generally still really strong. My favourites from that album are Chic’N’Stu, IEAIAIO, and Highway Song. Oh, and Toxicity was on my list too, for good reason.
- I like Opeth, but don’t care for their post-growl albums.
- The Mars Volta are one of the best bands since the year 2000. And yeah, Bedlam has some of the best drumming ever on a prog album.
- Rage’s s/t is awesome, and was on my list when I made it yonks ago. I prefer Battle of LA these days though.
- Origin of Symmetry is far and away Muse’s best album. Aside from the odd song, the only thing they’ve ever done that has interested me. It’s incredible how much better they were on that album than all of their others. To me, they came to suffer from Queen Syndrome: all style and faux-pomp and flamboyance, no substance.
- I like St Anger and Lulu better than Death Magnetic, but I realise I’m in an ultra-minority on that one. And I agree with what a lot of people said that Puppets ain’t all it’s made out to be. Ride the Lightning, however, is.
- If Waking the Fallen is the Avenged Sevenfold album with I Won’t See You Tonight (Pt 1), I love that song.
- Rust in Peace tears strips off every other Megadeth album. To me, that album’s the only one you need. I have this weird thing where even if I like a number of albums by a band, if one album encapsulates what I most like about them, the others I like will just fall away and become obsolete until there’s really only one I care for. That definitely happened with Megadeth.
- Dramatic Turn is the best DT album since SFAM, and the only one since 6DOIT I listen to these days. Six Degrees is also great, but most of the songs on there could use trimming, IMO. Glass Prison in particular should be about two or three minutes shorter. And Blind Faith may be their best song.
- While I’ve seen people raving about them since they first came out, I’ve still never even heard the Arctic Monkeys.
- Machine Head were one of my favourite metal bands 5 or 10 years ago, and The Blackening is an incredible album. A Farewell to Arms is a better, more cohesive epic than most prog bands can write.
- I really want to hear that Royal Blood album, it’s literally in the 10 or so albums I plan to buy next (which is really quite far up the queue).
- I loved Slipknot back in the day. These days, I’d say their albums still have about six or seven songs I could play the shit out of, but I could leave the rest aside. Although I was more or less “out of them” by the time it came out, Volume III probably is the best one overall, and when I finally heard it, I was really surprised how much they’d grown.
- SFAM is aight, I guess.
Topic: ToN's Top 50 Albums! #1: Just Push Play (Read 27926 times)
