Elite's top 50 albums v. - 3 Years Older: #1: love is the dance of eternity

[Tom Bombadil]

  on the last 2 updates

[Sacul]

[Zantera]

Close to the Edge is really good but I might prefer Fragile. It's a coin toss but Fragile has Roundabout and Heart of the Sunrise which are probably the two best Yes-songs IMO, but also some filler tracks.

[425]

Close to the Edge is a spectacular record. Groundbreaking and more massive than a 37-minute album really has any right to be.

[ThatOneGuy2112]

saying something is "X places too low" where X is its ranking implies that you want it to be #0 on the list btw, it's really getting on my nerves

Close to the Edge is just that good, bro.

Also, this:

Close to the Edge is a spectacular record. Groundbreaking and more massive than a 37-minute album really has any right to be.

As for Hunky Dory, that's a fantastic record. Life on Mars? might be my favorite Bowie track and honestly one of my favorite songs ever.

[Elite]

As for Hunky Dory, that's a fantastic record. Life on Mars? might be my favorite Bowie track and honestly one of my favorite songs ever.

Yeah, that applies to me as well!

Here's a double album!

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32. Jolly – The Audio Guide to Happiness (2012 & 2013)



I know, this is borderline cheating, but I really view these two albums as one. They even share the same title and both continue in the same style. When I saw the band at ProgPower Europe 2014, they played the entire two discs front to back and it was glorious. So what is this? Basically, these guys get put in the same boat at progressive metal bands, but what they do is far more subtle. I wouldn’t really say they’re any more progressive than your average alternative metal band, although they are far better than that.

I think this band’s sound could be described best as ‘pop metal’, but not in the sense Devin Townsend does it on ‘Addicted’. It’s rather more straight-forward, without all the unnecessary extra layers. The core sound is mainly guitars, drums and bass, although the band puts the keyboards to good use as well. The result is a ridiculously catchy (double-)album, as tunes like Joy and Lucky showcase. Actually, I think the comparison to Devin Townsend’s music isn’t even all that weird; Townsend likes to create huge walls of sound and Jolly does that too, to a certain extent. Arguably the heaviest track on both disks, Firewell showcases this exactly, and brilliantly at that. The band shows they can be very subtle as well, on tracks such as Storytime and As Heard on Tape.

Overall, this is ‘just’ an album chock-full of very good tracks, all of which are very catchy. Driven mainly by the heavy guitar sounds and vocals of frontman Anadale, the album is definitely based on around the guitar. The result is an album that features tons of great riffs, backed by keyboard sounds to fill the sound spectrum, all while never losing catchiness. Oh, and I must say I love the seemingly random cartoon noises in some tracks. Very goofy, very jolly.

Favourite song: Where Everything’s Perfect
Other songs worth checking out: Firewell, The Grand Utopia, The Pattern
Other stuff by this band: I don’t think these guys have released anything but these two albums, but if they have, I haven’t heard it.

[LordCost]

They have released another album before that one but I didn't listen to it. It's called Forty Six Minutes, Twelve Seconds Of Music.
I totally agree on the "other songs worth checking out" and maybe one of those three could be my favourite

[jakepriest]

I've never heard of this before, but it definitely sounds like something I should check out.

[Crow]

this is on my "to get eventually" list so I'm not yet familiar with anything except the one song 

[Train of Naught]

Solid enough albums, there's just so damn much of it

I freaking love Firewell, never heard anything quite like it.

[Elite]

31. The Ocean – Pelagial (2013)



In 2013, the albums I listened to most were this one, Karniool’s ‘Asymmetry’, ‘The Mountain’ by Haken and ‘Impermanent Resonance’ by James LaBrie. I think this one might actually have received the most plays, mainly on drives through the dark. For some reason, I recall borrowing my dad’s car all summer in 2013 and this CD was on basically all the time.

What we have here is an album that’s musically a journey into the depths of the ocean, with the music getting more and more intense, less melodic and darker with every subsequent track, whilst the lyrics tell a story of a journey into the psyche. A mixture of psychological weirdness and musical ocean-diving, apparently. The Ocean released this album in two versions; one version with vocals, and a completely instrumental one. To me, the version with vocals blows the instrumental one out of the water (ha. ha.), but I can imagine that if you’re not fond of growls, the instrumental one would be more to your liking. The band apparently recorded the entire album with the entire of leaving out the vocals, but the vocalist stepped in to deliver vocals anyway. The band then toured without vocals – and I even saw them live playing the entire album in full, instrumentally.

The Ocean play a modern blend of progressive metal, with lots of guitars, some atmospheric keyboards and many recurring themes. They don’t really do very much lead-playing at all, but try to shape moods in one way or another. The general recurring theme of the album, the descending into the ocean, is reflected very well in the music. Where the first tracks are very melodic and even uplifting to some extent (Mesopelagic: Into the Uncanny), the final track on the album, Benthic: The Origin of Our Wishes is based on a very heavy recurring motif, that probably depicts the weight of the ocean on top of you, with almost no melody left.

This album has some great flow to it, which is also a good reason why it could keep me up during the nightly drives in the summer of 2013. I can surely see why this album is not for everybody. If you’re intrigued nonetheless, I’d say my favourite track, Hadopelagic II: Let Them Believe, is a good example of what this album is about.

Favourite song:Hadopelagic II: Let Them Believe
Other songs worth checking out: Bathyalpelagic III: Disequillibrated, Benthic: The Origin of Our Wishes, Abyssopelagic II: Signals of Anxiety
Other stuff by this band: Of their other albums, I like ‘Anthropocentric’ the most, but a lot of their other material is heavier and less melodic. To be frank, this is by far the album of theirs I know best.

[Crow]

this album was a grower for sure, thought it was alright when i first listened to it but now i kinda love it 
though benthic is a bit weak imo, doesn't feel "heavy" enough.
also yeah the instrumental version is a lot weaker than the vocal version

[Sacul]

[Crow]

ok seriously at this point your posts are just spam 

[Elite]

yeah, I was just about to say so. That to-listen-to-list of yours is clearly not large enough.

[Zantera]

Pelagial is a great album and The Ocean are pretty solid in terms of Post-Metal, even though they aren't as good as the holy trinity of the genre. (Neurosis, Isis and Cult of Luna)

[Tomislav95]

I wanted to check them since forever but now I'm putting it on my to-check list and I will check it

[Elite]

I didn't know they were considered post-metal, but it does make sense

[Sacul]

That to-listen-to-list of yours is clearly not large enough.

I know Bowie (though not that album) and Jolly, and don't like Pelagial, so...

[Zantera]

Post-Metal is probably the best metal subgenre so if you like The Ocean you should check out more Elite.

[Shadow Ninja 2.0]

A million thumbs up. This is my absolute favorite album.

I didn't know they were considered post-metal, but it does make sense

I've never considered them to be pure post metal, but they've definitely got that feel to some of their music.

[Crow]

Pelagial is a great album and The Ocean are pretty solid in terms of Post-Metal, even though they aren't as good as the holy trinity of the genre. (Neurosis, Isis and Cult of Luna)

neurosis has always been pretty offputting to me but i need to check out some cult of luna.
also i may spam this everywhere but if you want some more good proggy post-metal, east of the wall and intronaut are the way to go, especially the apologist and the direction of last things

[Scorpion]

Great album, but I slightly prefer Precambrian. Definitely one of the best post metal bands though - not familiar with Neurosis, but I'd consider them a lot better than the other big two (that is, Isis and Cult of Luna), even though both have quite a few songs that I really dig.

[jakepriest]

I've heard this album only once but it was definitely good from what I remember. If I had more time I'd definitely revisit it. 

[Train of Naught]

Awesome, awesome album. I think I heard Precambrian first but I definitely prefered this one.

[Sacul]

Maybe some day I'll get into post-metal, but what I've tried hasn't clicked with me 

[Crow]

Maybe some day I'll get into post-metal, but what I've tried hasn't clicked with me 

well I put one of the tracks from this album on the EP you never listened to

[Sacul]

I'll get to it soon, don't worry 

[Elite]

I really did not expect that much discussion on The Ocean, frankly. Here's a similar thing, in the sense that it's quite easy to love this album.

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30. Karnivool – Sound Awake (2009)



It was rather difficult choosing between ‘Sound Awake’ and ‘Asymmetry’, but ultimately I went with this one. Karnivool is a band that are mostly known for the interesting stuff they do rhythmically, but this Australian band knows how to write a progressive metal tune as well. On this album, the band shows in 11 tracks what one band can do with their instruments to do something different. A special highlight for me is the band’s drummer; holy shit, what he does is insane occasionally.

This album starts really strong with the double punch of Simple Boy and Goliath already giving a good impression of what this band is about. Building on wacky rhythmic changes, the next track called New Day is a fan favourite and the first highlight on the album. Stylistically similar, but an all-round better song to me is the slow and melodic Umbra, a song that at first might sound rather boring, but contains a bunch of layers all the way through. These different layers are what makes Karnivool have their own sound and they are most apparent in the three tracks that close the album; Illumine which is probably the heaviest track guitar-wise, Deadman which is one of the best songs featured in this entire list (yes, I’m serious) and Change closes the album in a great way.

All-round, this band’s music is mostly guitar based and gets quite heavy at some points, but most of the time it’s melodic, although not in the sense that it’s goes many different places. In fact, I don’t really know how to characterise this band’s sound without missing an important aspect of it. They have often been compared to Tool, but I feel like this comparison isn’t exactly valid. Certainly they’re a rather unique band and one that deserves far more attention than they currently get.

Favourite song: Deadman
Other songs worth checking out: Umbra, Change, New Day
Other stuff by this band: Of the two other albums they’ve released, ‘Asymmetry’ is easily my favourite and it’s almost on the same level as ‘Sound Awake’. Not that ‘Themata’, their first record, is bad, but it’s on a completely different level song-writing based.

[Zantera]

Sound Awake is a pretty nice album and definitely the best Karnivool album. Sometimes they can be a bit too "Tool light" for me, but this album has some gems.

[home]

That's another amazing album!   I think Sound Awake is slightly better as an album, mainly because it'sway more consistent, Asymmetry has both more standout songs and more weaker songs (the title track for instance)I never really got the similarities with Tool, they are obviously influenced by them but the sound and atmosphere/feel is completely different.

[Train of Naught]

Set fire to the fucking hive, where is it

[Elite]

meh.

[wolfking]

Great band and album.

[Crow]

Set fire to the fucking hive, where is it

yeah, legitimately the only song on the album that does much for me, this album is "fine" overall but i've never been able to get that into it