Top 50 Albums of 2018

Great post as always bro. Every year, there are usually at least five or six winners on your list that completely flew under my radar. However, most I had either already heard or didn't really care for. Surprisingly, this year only three...

Arion - Life Is Not Beautiful - Not that I haven't heard of these guys. For some reason, this just passed me by. Bad mistake...

Hago - Hago - I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. Liquid Tension Experiment meets Return To Forever. Nice.

Ostura - The Room - Features one of my favorite drummers in the world...Thomas Lang. Gotta snag this one.

Animal Drive is in my Top Ten...killer disc.

Lost In Thought...totally agree with you. I loved 'Opus Arise'. Really glad to see these guys back. Deane's vocals put me in mind of Tommy on 'Tiara' in places. Good stuff.

A few I'm really surprised didn't rate a mention from you...

Monuments - Phronesis - Simply smoking djenty proggy metalcore.

Distorted Harmony – A Way Out - Something in the water over there in The Middle East.

Ethernity - The Human Race Extinction - Right up there with Romeo as one of my top prog metal releases of the year.

Primal Fear - Apocalypse - These guys just keep on churning out the best discs Judas Priest never made...and yes the new Priest is comeback of the year for me...a welcome return to form.

A few personal faves...

Lione - Conti - S/T - If it were possible to wear out a CD...well. These two killer singers have never sounded better imo. The kind folks at Frontiers Music still know how to warm the cockles of an old metal head's heart.

Lords of Black - Icons of The New Days - Cannot get enough of Ronnie's vocals. Music is killer too.

Sunstorm - The Road To Hell - Yeah...Frontiers just churns this stuff out like there's no tomorrow. But I love this disc. It's great to hear Joe Lynn Turner belt it out as strong as ever. Pssst. Hey Joe. Lose the wig. We'll still love ya bald!

Divine Ascension - The Uncovering - KILLER female vocalist here. I discovered 'em while grabbing stuff from Amazon...one of those "if you like this then" type of recommendations. They opened for Blind Guardian in Europe recently. Hopefully that will garner them some recognition.

Presto Ballet - The Days Between - Late to the game, as it just came out in December. But Mr. Vanderhoof continues to pump out the old school prog rock. The classic sound with updated production values.

A few I discovered from other posts in this thread...

Collibus - Trusting the Illusion - How on EARTH did I manage to miss this?

Lux Terminus - The Courage to Be - Cool stuff.

Art of Illusion - Cold War of Solipsism

As I said, this thread is ALWAYS worth the read.

C'mon prog peeps...keep posting! I still have some Amazon balance left! :D
 
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Glenn,

Thanks for taking the time to post these and add your comments. These are all quality music links & I do appreciate it. Heck, this post is better than the festival music CD. Just pure goodness.

Have a great 2019 everyone.
 
FINALLY received my Lord of the Lost cd....holy shit it's good. Easily one of the best I've heard in a while. But for some strange reason I feel like I should be watching Lost Boys.
 
Dear Everyone Who Charted Where Owls Know My Name,

Thank you. I don't give a ton of tech death a shot, because it usually falls flat for me. I sorta got tired of seeing it everywhere and not knowing what everyone else saw in it so I gave it a shot a couple days ago and I was clicking "buy this fucking discography" by the third track. Rivers of Nihil forged a new fan with this album.