FII and Scenes in an absolute canter for me. Both in my top 3 albums. I’ve banged on about it before, but FII is criminally underrated. Many cite a couple of weaker tracks (which every album has) but never mention the quality of New Millenium, Peruvian Skies, Hollow years (Budokan version is next level), Hells Kitchen, Lines (one of my all time faves), TAMP which I really like, Anna Lee which is haunting and the brilliant Trial of tears. That’s 8 quality tracks for me, which even with a couple of tracks of lesser quality, is still more tracks than some of their other albums. I actually don’t mind You not Me (you or me would have been better) and JLMB either. In any case just an album that I love more than many that has aged particularly well…
SDOIT I really like, but not as much as many here. I really like some stuff, other stuff particularly on disk 2 I’m still a little lukewarm about.
TOT is overrated to me. I like As I Am, Endless Sacrifice and in the Name of God, but the last 2 could definitely have been condensed. Many of the others have some good moments but just amble on too long and I find Stream of Consciousness to be repetitive and probably their least interesting instrumental.
Having said all this, while we like to debate and discuss these things and plead our case for our faves, the band has never bought an album out I flat out don’t like, and has bought so much musical joy to these ageing ears over the years…