Jester Slave
Narcissist
Exactly, an album full of 10/10 songs is 10/10, even if they have the same structure. Same structure != same song.
Unless we have super-hyper-mega expectations and when we talk about an album we mean a concept album with 20 interludes, a book written around it and whatnot.
SC matches all the not too high standards of a phenomenon called an album.
1. Have songs on it. This is pretty important if you want to call something an album. Preferrably at least 7/7+, otherwise it's more like an EP.
2. Don't make the track order obscure. You can throw all your new material in any order to the disk as long as it doesn't feel dissonant. Like if you have 5 faster paced songs and 5 slower ones, you don't want to separate them 5-5 (unless it is a concept album and that's the whole point of your vision) because it feels shit. Obviously there are songs which are vastly different on their own, so no matter where you put it, it will feel somewhat out of place (like Alias on ASOP). This also means you should not have let's say 7 death metal songs and 3 dubstep on the same disc. You either merge them into a new genre or you release it on different albums.
3. Congratulations, you just made an album! It's really not the hard part.
Anyway, SC gets some extra credits:
+1. It has a vibe. It doesn't mean it is good, but you don't feel lost every 3rd or 2nd song, you can pretty much "feel" that these songs are from SC, which just strengthens the integrity of the album.
+2. The songs are defiently not over the place, you don't have to be a wizard to see the raw concept. You see the world is about to end, it's already happening and you can't do shit. Now the TO is interesting and linked with SC. In TO the protagonist begs for a savior "Save me from my fears/And darkest thought of her/Carry me through times/Through oblivion" and in SC the Siren offers him what he wanted (OR he has found the Siren and he is talking to others to follow him, because he knows the way to Her) "I'll set you free if you follow me/Reach out touch the hand of God". Now what the fuck is going on exactly could be up to debate, but then the world explodes and the rest of the album (bonus tracks not included, we don't know where exactly they would fit into the narrative) takes place in the post-apocalyptic world, aka Earth after everyone nuked the shit out of each other. Filtered Truth is interesting. It's like he's talking to someone from a time before shit got loose. Anyway, it has the oddest vibe on SC, so it's either as I think, between Whoracle and SC, or it's a song where the protagonist is dying (if we take BTS as a canon last song, he eventually dies there) and calls out the cowards who caused this/did not help him prevent it.
tl;dr: the prophecy from the Whoracle has finally arrived and it's too late to do anything and implies that they did nothing, despite the Whoracle's warning. + something about that Siren.
I also dig the contrast between a Whoracle (you despise her) and Siren (you fall in love with her).
So yeah, if someone thinks the songs are 6 or 6+ then I have no idea what else does he expect from an album if he gives it 4, lol. You might say they were lazy with the songs, same structure blahblah, but the work on the album itself can hardly be taken away from them, especially how they linked it with Whoracle, which is a really cool thing.
Edit: sorry, you gave it 5.5. It still doesn't make sense but not as outrageous as a 4. 4 is pretty much "Two songs are OK-ish, the rest are fucking terrible".
but if this doesn't make it clear to you I don't know what will.
