Best Album of the Decade 2010 to 2019- AND WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!!!!!

[ariich]

I get that this is DTF but if all 4 DT albums make your top 10 list you may want to consider broadening your musical horizons slightly lol.

This is un anfair generalisation. There are two different artists who would have had 3 albums in my top 15 and I can assure you my musical horizons are broad. According to RYM I've listened to 1,200 albums from the 2010s, and of those the ones I'd say I love (generally if I'm rating them 4 stars or higher) are from a range of different genres and styles, but that doesn't mean that the very top handful won't be somewhat similar because they hit just the right spot.

[Volante99]

I get that this is DTF but if all 4 DT albums make your top 10 list you may want to consider broadening your musical horizons slightly lol.

This is un anfair generalisation. There are two different artists who would have had 3 albums in my top 15 and I can assure you my musical horizons are broad. According to RYM I've listened to 1,200 albums from the 2010s, and of those the ones I'd say I love (generally if I'm rating them 4 stars or higher) are from a range of different genres and styles, but that doesn't mean that the very top handful won't be somewhat similar because they hit just the right spot.

Like I said, people like what they like and it’s all objective especially since if we are including a best of albums for all genres of music we’re definitely getting into apples to oranges territory. But if someone truly feels that all 4 of the DT album are the best of what the decade has to offer, then more power to them. I certainly don’t want to gatekeeper what people should and shouldn’t view what has merit and what doesn’t.

I try to think of a lot of factors when coming up with “best of albums”. For me it’s less about does it “hit the spot?” and more about is it genre (re)defining? is it impactful? is it bold/unique? cultural significance? is the production of the highest quality for the time?

For example, I might listen to ADToE more than Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” and I might get more entertainment value out of the former because I, personally, reeally like progressive metal but I can set that aside and hold up Daft Punk’s album as an all around superior musical statement. Partially because it’s a really really damn good album but also because I think given its respective genres RAM is much better pop/dance album than ADoTE is a prog/metal album (IMO). It’s hard to articulate, and trying to be objective is a futile goal but if I travelled 1,000 years into the future and a historian wanted to listen to some of the best music from 2010-2019AD I, personally, wouldn’t give them ADToE, even though I’m fond of it and enjoy listening to it.

To drive my point further, I f-ing LOOOVE Dokken, but can I really hold up “Tooth and Nail” as one of the best albums of the 80s? Probably not. Conversely, if I never hear anything off of Led Zeppelin IV again in my life it will be too soon, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the best albums of the 70s.

[Volante99]

Delete- double post - sorry about that

[Elite]

This is insanely difficult, especially after reading through all the pages in this thread just now

I've come up with a shortlist, now to delete stuff, add stuff I've forgotten and then actually rank them as well.




Got a couple of obvious ones (for me) on the list though. Pretty sure about my #1.

[ariich]

I get that this is DTF but if all 4 DT albums make your top 10 list you may want to consider broadening your musical horizons slightly lol.

This is un anfair generalisation. There are two different artists who would have had 3 albums in my top 15 and I can assure you my musical horizons are broad. According to RYM I've listened to 1,200 albums from the 2010s, and of those the ones I'd say I love (generally if I'm rating them 4 stars or higher) are from a range of different genres and styles, but that doesn't mean that the very top handful won't be somewhat similar because they hit just the right spot.

Like I said, people like what they like and it’s all objective especially since if we are including a best of albums for all genres of music we’re definitely getting into apples to oranges territory. But if someone truly feels that all 4 of the DT album are the best of what the decade has to offer, then more power to them. I certainly don’t want to gatekeeper what people should and shouldn’t view what has merit and what doesn’t.

I try to think of a lot of factors when coming up with “best of albums”. For me it’s less about does it “hit the spot?” and more about is it genre (re)defining? is it impactful? is it bold/unique? cultural significance? is the production of the highest quality for the time?

For example, I might listen to ADToE more than Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” and I might get more entertainment value out of the former because I, personally, reeally like progressive metal but I can set that aside and hold up Daft Punk’s album as an all around superior musical statement. Partially because it’s a really really damn good album but also because I think given its respective genres RAM is much better pop/dance album than ADoTE is a prog/metal album (IMO). It’s hard to articulate, and trying to be objective is a futile goal but if I travelled 1,000 years into the future and a historian wanted to listen to some of the best music from 2010-2019AD I, personally, wouldn’t give them ADToE, even though I’m fond of it and enjoy listening to it.

To drive my point further, I f-ing LOOOVE Dokken, but can I really hold up “Tooth and Nail” as one of the best albums of the 80s? Probably not. Conversely, if I never hear anything off of Led Zeppelin IV again in my life it will be too soon, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the best albums of the 70s.

For sure tastes are tastes and everyone has different criteria by which they rank/rate music, and I didn't mean to imply that you were criticising anyone else's tastes. I was only challenging the assertion that one artist (or even one genre) featuring heavily in someone's top 10 or top 15 says anything about how broad or narrow their musical interests are. It is, after all, only 10-15 albums out of, for most, people, hundreds that they'll have heard from that period.

EDIT: To use myself as an example again, the music I love and rate highly includes yes a lot of rock and metal and all sorts of sub-genres, but also pop, country, folk, jazz, funk, electronica, rap/grime, classical (admittedly not much from the last 10 years though!), and a load of music that crosses genres like electro-swing. The fact that the tiny number of albums that speak to me so much they make my top 15 are concentrated more on rock/metal and include some artists multiple times doesn't say anything about my tastes overall.

[jingle.boy]

Oh, FFS.  I just did my first pass, and I've got 20.  I can begrudgingly drop 3, but after that, I've got no fucking clue which others I can drop  Didn't expect it to be that hard tbh.  Not like it'll matter, most are ones that haven't been mentioned by anyone else.  And unless some of my homies jump into this thread, they won't be either.  Some will still be a jingle-boy unique entry.

[Stadler]

To drive my point further, I f-ing LOOOVE Dokken, but can I really hold up “Tooth and Nail” as one of the best albums of the 80s? Probably not. Conversely, if I never hear anything off of Led Zeppelin IV again in my life it will be too soon, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the best albums of the 70s.

You and I are compadres on this point, but from personal experience, I would suggest we are in the minority. 

[jingle.boy]

To drive my point further, I f-ing LOOOVE Dokken, but can I really hold up “Tooth and Nail” as one of the best albums of the 80s? Probably not. Conversely, if I never hear anything off of Led Zeppelin IV again in my life it will be too soon, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the best albums of the 70s.

You and I are compadres on this point, but from personal experience, I would suggest we are in the minority.

I be minor then too.  But for these purposes, I'm gonna go with the albums I truly love, and were *my* best of the decade.  Truthfully, for those that know the albums I list, there is really only 1 that wouldn't get some form of agreement around here that it's conceivably a "top" album of the decade.

[lonestar]

Yeah, for me, the biggest indicator of how much I love an album is play time. How much of my life did they take up? For example, this year my two top releases are IQ and Allegaeon, and while IQ is of course my favorite band and Resistance is a masterpiece, I still seem to be going to Allegaeon more when I need some tunes. What does that say to which album I like more?

[Stadler]

Taking the Jingle approach, and notwithstanding what I wrote, these are (mostly) MY favorite albums of the decade, not the "best" albums of the decade (though there is some overlap).

1. Van Halen - A Different Kind Of Truth (half sentimental, half legit; this is a legendary album by a legendary band)
2. Rival Sons - Feral Roots
3. Harry Styles - Harry Styles (yes, you heard me)
4. Flying Colors - Flying Colors (probably the one album I listen to most from this list; couple duff tracks keep it at four)
5. Iron Maiden - Book Of Souls (Dance of Death is still my favorite reunion record, but Maiden deserves a spot here)
6. Deep Purple - Now What?! (if only for the elegiac "Above And Beyond", but this is a SOLID record)
7. Kiss - Monster (Shut up.  I like it. Sonic Boom is better overall, but this has some tracks that slap.  "Shout Mercy")
8. Alice In Chains - Ranier Fog (WAY better than I thought it would or should be)
9. Myles Kennedy - Year Of The Tiger (solid record; I wish this Zeppelin III vibe would carry over to Alter Bridge and Slash)
10. Devin Townsend Project - Transcendence (this could be Empath too; both are solid records and make me like him)
11. The Neal Morse Band - The Similitude Of A Dream/The Great Adventure (It's one story, amirite?)
12. Claypool Lennon Delirium - South Of Reality
13. Robert Plant - Carry Fire (could just as easily be "The Lullabye And The Ceaseless Roar"; both are excellent)
14a. Liam Gallagher - As You Were
14b. Noel Gallagher - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (Can we just call 14 "Oasis" and be done with it?)
15. Ayreon - The Source
16. Slash - Slash (could just as easily been "Apocalyptic Love", but I went with the more varied work)

Honorable mentions:
- Chris Cornell - Higher Truth
- Yes - Fly From Here
- Black Country Communion - Black Country Communion 2
- The Civil Wars - Barton Hollow
- Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball
- Black Sabbath - 13

[IDontNotDoThings]

Lonestar, just so you know, I've started archiving the votes so far in a Google Sheet, which I'll try to keep up to date for as long as I can. If you want, I can DM the current version to you.

[ZKX-2099]

1. The Devin Townsend Project - Deconstruction (2011)
2. Avenged Sevenfold - The Stage (2016)
3. Dream Theater - Dream Theater (2013)
4. Periphery - Juggernaut (I'm counting both as one, suck it) (2015)
5. Every Time I Die - From Parts Unknown (2014)
6. Destrage - Are You Kidding Me? No. (2014)
7. Between The Buried And Me - The Parallax 2: Future Sequence (2012)
8. Queens Of The Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork (2013)
9. Trivium - The Sin And The Sentence (2017)
10. Alter Bridge - Fortress (2013)
11. Atreyu - Long Live (2015)
12. DragonForce - Maximum Overload (2014)
13. Killer Be Killed - Killer Be Killed (2014)
14. Stone Sour - Hydrograd (2017)
15. Behemoth - The Satanist (2014)

[lonestar]

Good to see another vote for Destrage, that album was so uniquely awesome.

Lonestar, just so you know, I've started archiving the votes so far in a Google Sheet, which I'll try to keep up to date for as long as I can. If you want, I can DM the current version to you.

Cool...just keep in mind all votes can still be edited at this time. I kind of wanted to keep things open for a while since this is such a vast time period, people will change their minds for sure. As I said, sometime around Dec I'll make a post saying that votes can't be edited anymore.

[Nekov]

I am not sure if this is right or not. I went through other people's list to see if I had missed something important but, unsurprisingly, I don't listen to most of what the other people here do  . I am not confident this ranking is right but it is what it is. Maybe I will come back later and work it out a little bit but I don't think it will change much.

1. Anathema - Weather Systems
2. Haken - Affinity
3. Papadosio - T.E.T.I.O.S
4. Apparat - The Devil's Walk
5. Lonely Robot - The Big Dream
6. Papir - IIII
7. Anathema - We're here because we're here
8. Mystery - One Among the Living
9. Steven Wilson - Hand. Cannot. Erase.
10. Steven Wilson - The Raven that Refused to Sing
11. Moon Safari - Lover's End
12. Kiev - Falling Bough Wisdom Teeth
13. IQ - The Road of Bones
14. Alcest - Les Voyages de Lame
15. Flying Colors - Flying Colors

[lonestar]

Four of those are definitely making my list.

[Stadler]

Blown away that there isn't at least ONE other mention of Van Halen's record (as far as I can tell).   That doesn't at least make ONE other person's TOP 15?

[Nekov]

Has anyone actually listened to that album?

[KevShmev]

Blown away that there isn't at least ONE other mention of Van Halen's record (as far as I can tell).   That doesn't at least make ONE other person's TOP 15?

It might make mine as well, once I get around to doing a top 15.  Even if it misses out, I still love most of it. 

[lonestar]

I listened to it....it was definitely Van Halen...

[jingle.boy]

I listened to it....it was definitely Van Halen...

[Stadler]

Has anyone actually listened to that album?

It's a fist fight between that, Flying Colors and Slash's first album as to which one I listen to most often.  That Van Halen record is REALLY good, on every level.  It's a top three VH record for me over all (including all three singers).   

[lonestar]

I listened to it....it was definitely Van Halen...

 

[Northern Lion]

My musical tastes have narrowed considerably as I've gotten older, so I may not reach a full ten when I post my favs, but I really like this thread idea.  Will be back soon .

[KevShmev]

Has anyone actually listened to that album?

It's a fist fight between that, Flying Colors and Slash's first album as to which one I listen to most often.  That Van Halen record is REALLY good, on every level.  It's a top three VH record for me over all (including all three singers).

I can't go that far, as I love albums like the debut, Fair Warning, 5150 and OU812 way too much to elevate it above any of those, but I would certainly take it over half of the original Roth albums, the Cherone album and maybe Balance.

[jingle.boy]

Here's what I got (in alphabetical order).  Gotta drop 5 of them.

Anthriel - The Pathway
Beyond the Bridge - Old Man and the Spirit
Daydream XI - The Circus of the Tattered and Torn
Dimension Act - Manifestation of Progress
Echoes - Nature | Existence
Epysode - Obsessions
Evergrey - Hymns for the Broken
Flaming Row - Elinoire
Glass Mind - Haunting Regrets
Lords of Black - II
Magnus Karlsson's FreeFall - FreeFall
Mystery - The World is a Game
Mystery - Lies and Butterflies
Ostura - The Room
Stare One - Victims of the Modern Age
Sunburst - Fragments of Creation
Symphony X - Underworld
Teramaze - Her Halo
Vanden Plas - Chronicles of the Immortals:Netherworld
Vanden Plas - Chronicles of the Immortals:Netherworld II

I GOTTA DROP 5 OF THOSE!?!?!?!?!

#1 and #2 are a no-brainer / given.  After that, it's pretty marginal for the rest of the top 10.  Gonna have fun listening to all of these over the next couple of weeks - think I'll try to get 2-3 done per day.  Fuck this is some solid music.

[TAC]

Not sure how I would even begin to put this together..

[jingle.boy]

Not sure how I would even begin to put this together..

One album at a time... just like the rest of us.

[Stadler]

Star One:   three thumbs up.  I didn't put it on mine because I haven't heard the whole thing.   But what I have heard...

[jingle.boy]

Star One:   three thumbs up.  I didn't put it on mine because I haven't heard the whole thing.   But what I have heard...

Do it buddy.  Honestly, it made me want to go and (re)watch all the movies.

[IDontNotDoThings]

11. The Neal Morse Band - The Similitude Of A Dream/The Great Adventure (It's one story, amirite?)
[...]
14a. Liam Gallagher - As You Were
14b. Noel Gallagher - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (Can we just call 14 "Oasis" and be done with it?)

4. Periphery - Juggernaut (I'm counting both as one, suck it) (2015)

Have we set a rule for how we're going to score ties that are only listed as one rank position?

[Bentower]

Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here
Björk - Vulnicura
Flying Colors - Second Nature
Master Musicians of Bukkake - Far West
Joanna Newsom - Divers
Ott - Mir
Ott - Fairchildren
Steve Von Till - A Life Unto Itself
Swans - To Be Kind
Scott Walker - Bish Bosch

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

Here's what I got (in alphabetical order).  Gotta drop 5 of them.

Anthriel - The Pathway
Beyond the Bridge - Old Man and the Spirit
Daydream XI - The Circus of the Tattered and Torn
Dimension Act - Manifestation of Progress
Echoes - Nature | Existence
Epysode - Obsessions
Evergrey - Hymns for the Broken
Flaming Row - Elinoire
Glass Mind - Haunting Regrets
Lords of Black - II
Magnus Karlsson's FreeFall - FreeFall
Mystery - The World is a Game
Mystery - Lies and Butterflies
Ostura - The Room
Stare One - Victims of the Modern Age
Sunburst - Fragments of Creation
Symphony X - Underworld
Teramaze - Her Halo
Vanden Plas - Chronicles of the Immortals:Netherworld
Vanden Plas - Chronicles of the Immortals:Netherworld II

I GOTTA DROP 5 OF THOSE!?!?!?!?!

#1 and #2 are a no-brainer / given.  After that, it's pretty marginal for the rest of the top 10.  Gonna have fun listening to all of these over the next couple of weeks - think I'll try to get 2-3 done per day.  Fuck this is some solid music.

I can only give my opinion, which you can do with what you will. From that list I'd personally drop Anthriel, Echoes, Evergrey, Sunburst, and Magnus Karlsson. But like I said that is just my opinion.

[lonestar]

11. The Neal Morse Band - The Similitude Of A Dream/The Great Adventure (It's one story, amirite?)
[...]
14a. Liam Gallagher - As You Were
14b. Noel Gallagher - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (Can we just call 14 "Oasis" and be done with it?)

4. Periphery - Juggernaut (I'm counting both as one, suck it) (2015)

Have we set a rule for how we're going to score ties that are only listed as one rank position?

I'd say we'll give each album half the points. So each Morse album will get 5.5 points.

[TAC]

Here's what I got (in alphabetical order).  Gotta drop 5 of them.

Anthriel - The Pathway
Beyond the Bridge - Old Man and the Spirit
Daydream XI - The Circus of the Tattered and Torn
Dimension Act - Manifestation of Progress
Echoes - Nature | Existence
Epysode - Obsessions
Evergrey - Hymns for the Broken
Flaming Row - Elinoire
Glass Mind - Haunting Regrets
Lords of Black - II
Magnus Karlsson's FreeFall - FreeFall
Mystery - The World is a Game
Mystery - Lies and Butterflies
Ostura - The Room
Stare One - Victims of the Modern Age
Sunburst - Fragments of Creation
Symphony X - Underworld
Teramaze - Her Halo
Vanden Plas - Chronicles of the Immortals:Netherworld
Vanden Plas - Chronicles of the Immortals:Netherworld II

I GOTTA DROP 5 OF THOSE!?!?!?!?!

#1 and #2 are a no-brainer / given.  After that, it's pretty marginal for the rest of the top 10.  Gonna have fun listening to all of these over the next couple of weeks - think I'll try to get 2-3 done per day.  Fuck this is some solid music.

I can only give my opinion, which you can do with what you will. From that list I'd personally drop Anthriel, Echoes, Evergrey, Sunburst, and Magnus Karlsson. But like I said that is just my opinion.

I'd drop each Vanden Plas twice. BAM! There's 4!

[IDontNotDoThings]

11. The Neal Morse Band - The Similitude Of A Dream/The Great Adventure (It's one story, amirite?)
[...]
14a. Liam Gallagher - As You Were
14b. Noel Gallagher - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (Can we just call 14 "Oasis" and be done with it?)

4. Periphery - Juggernaut (I'm counting both as one, suck it) (2015)

Have we set a rule for how we're going to score ties that are only listed as one rank position?

I'd say we'll give each album half the points. So each Morse album will get 5.5 points.

But wouldn't 11th place be worth 5 points? So half of that would be 2.5