Albums with atmosphere/imagery

R0l0

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Nov 12, 2003
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I find that some of my favorite albums are ones that bring out some sort of imagery or atmosphere whenever I listen to them. I thought I'd post this here because I think the first two Opeth albums are some of the strongest examples of this. I could sometimes close my eyes while listening to say, BRI and picture myself inside a forest-- I love that feeling!

So I'm looking for new albums/artists that can have similar effects on me. Genre doesn't matter of course.

Here are the ones that I could think of and the atmosphere they create for me.
It might also be interesting to see if others get same/different reactions to them.

Opeth - Orchid: a dark forest in the summertime
Opeth - Morningrise: same as above (mellow parts on BRI are godly)
Opeth - MAYH: a dark forest in the late fall, lots of greys
Agalloch - The Mantle: somewhere white and snowy with log cabins
Ulver - Kveldssanger: sitting around a camp fire in a dark forest
Ulver - Bergtatt: in a semi-dark and very greenish/brown forest, with fairies and gnomes :)
Black Sabbath - S/T & Paranoid: same as above, but not very strong
Camel - Moonmadness: seems to bring out a trippy landscape like on the album art, esp. on the first few songs
Anglagard - Hybris: can't put my finger on it, but it makes me think of wooden things much(btw I found this gem in the prog thread, thx guys :))
Portishead - S/T: underwater
Nightwish: some of their earlier stuff gives me a dark blue ocean or disney-like atmosphere
Elend: all their stuff makes me feel like I'm dying inside a church or something



I guess there's also a whole genre of atmospheric/ambient stuff but I haven't heard anything from it besides crap like "nature sounds of the rainforest" or "sounds from space" which had little to no effect on me. Anyone know about this type of music?
 
I agree pretty much with your first 7 choices. I'll also add:

Aeternus - Beyond the Wandering Moon
Epic, winding melodies that evoke some incredible imagery. I cannot recommend this album enough for this sort of thing.

Burzum - Filosofem
The sound is so fucking... sinister. Some realy interesting riffs, and the second half is pretty much just ambient, but very unnerving.

Beherit - Drawing Down the Moon
Fucking terrifying. Like being in space without a spacesuit.

Drudkh - Autumn Aurora
Rolling hills, clear streams, the lush colours of autumn... all very well conveyed in this album. True beauty.

Portal - Seepia
Like being in an insane asylum in the 1800's. Stagnant, chaotic, suffocating...]





And if you're interested in checking out some ambient, I suggest looking into Burzum's Hlidskjalf and Ildjarn's Hardangervidda (I and II). That's pretty much all I know about ambient, but they're good releases.
 
Sweet, thanks. I'll have to check some of those out. The only Burzum release I've heard is Hvis Lyset.. and it didn't really click with me. Maybe I'll check some of those other ones out though.
 
Hvis Lyset is masterful, but it took a while to click for me. Might want to give it some more tries, though possibly after hearing Filosofem.
 
Great topic, I really love atmospheric music that evokes thought and imagery.

I got a some to add to the list,

My Dying Bride - gothic imagery in general

Devin Townsend - ocean/land

Tiamat - Forest/woods

Enslaved - Forest/woods

Rakoth - Medievil Village

Nest - Forest

Forest Stream - Forest

Orphaned Land - In a 3rd world country

I like Forest music
 
isis - oceanic and panopticon - make me feel like i'm on a raft in the middle of the ocean, esp. listen to "so did we" from panopticon, you'll know what i'm talking about

leviathan - tentacles of whorror - a swamp; hot, humid and dark...wrest is all about creating a really oppressive atmosphere, ditto malefic:

xasthur - if anyone's familiar with h.p. lovecraft at all :D , listening to telepathic with the deceased makes me think of the climax of "the rats in the walls"...can't really explain it better than that

moonsorrow - all their albums make me feel like i'm in a viking longship, sailing along a rocky coast through a misty morning...that's the feeling they're going for i guess, and they nailed it :cool:

@R0l0: i've always seen "the mantle" as more of an autumn album if that makes sense, i visualize a forest with lots of reds and browns, falling leaves, it's kind of a more "profound" sadness in a way to me..."pale folklore" definitely makes me think of winter and blizzards, but imo it's not quite as evocative as the mantle is
 
Im gonna choose some that havent been mentioned yet....


Caravan - In The land of Grey and Pink - My top imagery escapism record.
Summoning - Stronghold - Dark Places in middle earth (fantastic album)
Yes - Close to the Edge - some of the best fantasy imagery in rock music...ever
Ulver - Bergtatt (duh)
Bathory - Blood Fire Death (DUH!!!)
Morte Macabre - Symphonic Holocaust - The best dark and doomy vintage feel and imagery ever. you think Opeth has imagery? You havent heard nothin yet :p
 
XASTHUR - A dark cave, with things moving around, body trembling with suicide, utter despair and horror. Very personal. A nightmare.

LEVIATHAN - Similar to Xasthur, but not nearly as strong.

AGALLOCH - Wintry pine forests, snow-covered limbs.

OPETH - Orchid reminds me of autumn, changing, falling leaves. Morningrise reminds me of spring in a temperate forest with a stream nearby, and a like. The cover, basically. MAYH, very dark, thick forests. BWP reminds me of heat, humidity, marshy, twisted trees, ghosts.

Early VINTERSORG - The northlands. Forests, elves, etc. Flying over mountains and rivers.

Newer KATATONIA - A city full of nightmares and sorrow. Betrayal, loneliness. Paranoia.

The first two ULVER albums - Bergtatt being forests and mountains, fairy-tale creatures. Kveldssanger being northern forests in general.


That's all I'll go into right now. Other bands that I find atmospheric but that I can't describe are WEAKLING and EMPEROR, among others.
 
The opeth albums conjour up images like that for me also:

Obviously MAYH has the theme running through that is full of imagery, and I agree that parts of BRI are breathtaking and I do feel different whilst listening to it, especially the bit from aboot 9.50 onwards, that acoustic passage has to be one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written.

FUBAR, I agree with you aboot Rakoth, also it feels very Lord Of The Rings-esque to me.

Obvious, but Nile conjours up Egyptian imagery, and Sepultura - especially Chaos AD era - Brasillian.
 
Most of the CDs I own bring me back memories from the time when they wouldn't leave my CD player in days. So, for instance, Symphony X's "The Divine Wings of Tragedy" is linked to my friend Dirgetarian and my University years; Slayer (in general) to a year I was sharing a flat with my friend Manolo (year 2001); a Spanish rock band called Héroes del Silencio remind me of summer and travelling with a van to the mountains (I did that with my brother), but all of these are personal experiences and don't want to make you bored although this same thing can happen to many of you.

But concerning the topic of this thread, I agree that

Katatonia= a big city +

Badly Drawn Boy (Soundtrack About a Boy)= life in the UK + raindrops on the windows;
Rage= industry/ factory;
Opeth= rain / fog + (scary) movies;
Emperor -Prometheus= gothic (middle age) halls;
Amon Amarth= Viking battles;
My Dying Bride= loneliness;

I could go on and on...
 
The Third And The Mortal - "Tears Laid In Earth" immediately springs to my mind, especially the song "Oceana" (I just see what the lyrics say, so that may not be very creative on my part. The last verse says: "Cold winter nights, I walk upon the frozen earth, the moon lights my way, the Northwind embraces me, tells me to go on". I think the album cover also gives a very good impression of the atmosphere of this album.)

The Third And The Mortal - "Painting On Glass" (also very atmospheric stuff, hard to describe, the most concrete picture is probably conjured up by the song "Magma" - the title says it all!)

Kari Bremnes - "Svarta Bjørn" (a concept album with a touching story, like reading a book; especially the first song "Sangen om fyret ved Tornehamn" made a very strong impression on me and inspired this picture:

svartabjorn.JPG


Again, I just see what the lyrics say. The songs with the most intense atmosphere on this album are IMO - apart from the first song - "Byssan lull" and "Sangen om ka ho Anna drømte om".)

Tactile Gemma - "Tactile Gemma" (Some songs made a very strong impression on me. While listening to "Creepy-crawlies" I imagined a little animation-cartoon, maybe Tex Avery-style, about these 5 little creatures in their five-cornered living room in a dark and scary forest lulling each other into sleep. "Whiz" is some kind of sequence of surrealistic pictures - you have to read the lyrics, I can´t explain it in one sentence. In "Serpentarium" you see the snakes gliding over and around each other. "Miss Loona´s Speech" is really crazy/surrealistic and even inspired a little character - Miss Loona -, well I guess explaining this here would take things too far.)

Kari Rueslåtten´s song "Nordnatt" on her album "Spindelsinn" evokes the impression of a dark night, a lonely and cold landscape and the polar lights in the sky being reflected from an icy surface. (Ok, that´s actually just what a part of the lyrics says, but still you can sort of see/feel it.)

Fear Of God´s "White Door" evokes in me the impression of the status of falling through darkness - very eerie.

I could probably think of some more examples, but I think this will do for now.
 
Cool guys, this thread is getting really interesting... lots of albums to check out here.

cthulufhtagn said:
moonsorrow - all their albums make me feel like i'm in a viking longship, sailing along a rocky coast through a misty morning...that's the feeling they're going for i guess, and they nailed it
Ah yes, all of their stuff reminds me of epic viking battles similar to what you've described.

cthulufhtagn said:
@R0l0: i've always seen "the mantle" as more of an autumn album if that makes sense, i visualize a forest with lots of reds and browns, falling leaves, it's kind of a more "profound" sadness in a way to me.
Interesting, I always pictured it in a snowy area because I recall some of the sound effects (esp on "The Lodge") reminded me of walking on snow and chopping wood. But I guess the cool thing is that the music can "speak" in different ways to differernt people, much like you can find many different ways to interpret a painting.

NineFeetUnderground said:
Caravan - In The land of Grey and Pink - My top imagery escapism record.
Oh yeah forgot about that one, it's excellent. There's especially a lot of strong imagery during the second half on Nine Feet Underground for me.
 
Fates Warning - A Pleasant Shade of Gray. listen to this even on a sunny day and you can feel the rain.

Riverside - Out of Myself. i imagine such a dark and quiet but possibly warm place, maybe an inn or an old town. though its not really a story, it unfolds like one.
 
Demoke said:
.... but all of these are personal experiences and don't want to make you bored although this same thing can happen to many of you.
Definately. I find that your surroundings during the first ~10-20 times that you listen to an album can have a very lasting effect by linking the music and the surroundings together. I can think of several memories that when I back on them, I think of the music that I was listening to at the time. Listening to the music now reminds me of the memory as well.


It's funny that when I first got into Opeth through Still Life, I was playing a N64 video game called Zelda: Majoras Mask and listening to the album over and over. The main character in the game often transforms into this guy to gain some different abilities:
dekuscrub9zy.jpg

So somehow I've linked this image of "deku link" as the protagonist "godhead" in Still Life. Every time I'm reminded of the game I think of Still Life and vise versa...