Your Top 25 Favorite Albums Thread

[J-Dubya 777]

Off The top of my head, in no order, and subject to change daily:

Freak Kitchen - Dead Soul Men
Freak Kitchen - Move
Symphony X - DWOT
UFO - Strangers In The Night
Steve Vai - Flexible
Frank Zappa - Sheik Yerbuti
AC/DC - Highway To Hell
Loudness - Thunder In The East
Yngwie Malmsteen - Marching Out
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Couldn't Stand The Weather
Rory Gallagher (RIP) - Stage Struck
Garry Moore (RIP) - Victims Of The Future
Thin Lizzy Thunder & Lightning
Diablo Swing Orchestra - Sing Along Songs For The Damned & Deliirious
Mike Keneally - Boil That Dust Speck
Whitesnake - S/T
Cheap Trick - In Color
The Spelunkers - Demand Your Annual Rent
Pat Travers - Go For What You Know
Iron Maiden - Killers
Iron Maiden - The Number Of The Beast
Kevin Gilbert - The Shaming Of The True
Eric Johnson - Ah Via Musicom
Van Halen - S/T
Van Haln - Fair Warning

If that's not varied enough, too bad!

 

[fire_angel]

I have hundreds of 'favourite' albums, but there are really only two that vye for the number 1 position:

Dream Theater - Images and Words
X-Japan - Dahlia

 

[Postulate]

I have never understood any fascination with Fate's Warning...lame and amateur to my ears...and the singer! ugh! uke:

I find them discombobulated...messy compositions with mediocre performances. Parallels is the only album I can stomach musically and it is still uninspiring...hanging on the coattails of Queensryche by attempting a more accessible approach (pop-like).

BTW...not much of a fan, but Scenes from a Memory is musically on another planet compared to any Fate's Warning.

Seriously, Fates imitating Queensryche, and poppier than Queensryche? That's a laugh. Queensryche was an Iron Maiden ripoff turned pop glam turned shit grunge. Not even prog. Fates Warning was one of the most inventive bands in prog metal. Eat me.

And I'll take APSoG over Scenes any day - which one sounds like the other run through a blender and played at a carnival? At that point DT was still stuck on lame NWOBHM riffs and Rudess' stupid keyboard patches. Zonder could eat Portnoy for breakfast! Bah ha ha hah

 

[proulxski]

One word, Voivod!

 

[J-Dubya 777]

One word, Voivod!

I like some of their stuff!

 

[Liquid Tension]

These two are my favorites and I'm sorry I didn't try and filter out 23 more for the list...

Opeth - Still Life
Pain of Salvation - The Perfect Element Pt.1

 

[noble savage]

Okay, here goes...

25) Exivious - Self Titled
24) Spock's Beard - The Kindness of Strangers
23) The Flower Kings - Unfold The Future
22) The Tangent - The World That We Drive Through
21) Tri Offensive - Self Titled
20) Ayreon - The Human Equation
19) Meshuggah - Nothing
18) On The Virg - Serious Young Insects (Would have been #4, but I forgot about it when typing this!)
17) Spiral Architect - A Sceptics Universe
16) Uncle Moe's Space Ranch - Moe's Town
15) Wobbler - Hinterland
14) Symphony X - V
13) Porcupine Tree - Deadwing
12) Opeth - Ghost Reveries
11) Cynic - Focus
10) Anekdoten - Gravity
9) Anekdoten - Vemod
8) Planet X - Quantum
7) Dream Theater - SFAM (Mostly because of The Spirit Carries on!)
6) Anglagard - Epilog
5) Derek Sherinian - Planet X
4) Cynic - Traced In Air
3) Anekdoten - Nucleus
2) Anglagard - Hybris
1) Planet X - Moonbabies

 

[Marwen]

Metal:

Symphony X - V
Dream Theater - Images and Words
Opeth - Blackwater Park
Death - Symbolic
Devin Townsend - Ocean Machine
Sun Caged - Artemisia
Children of Bodom - Follow the Reaper
Pantera - Cowboys from Hell

Some fusion metal:

Cosmosquad - Cosmosquad
Planet X - Quantum
Planet X - Moonbabies
Derek Sherinian - Black Utopia
Derek Sherinian - Blood of the Snake

Some prog rock:

Marillion - Happiness Is The Road
The Tangent - The World That We Drive Through
The Tangent - Pyramids & Stars
Porcupine Tree - Stupid Dreams
Sigur Ros - ( )

Some guitar stuff:

Guthrie Govan - Erotic Cakes
Daniele Gottardo - Frenzy of Ecstasy
Yngwie Malmsteen - Concerto
Yngwie Malmsteen - Rising Force
Yngwie Malmsteen - Alchemy
Marty Friedman - Dragon's Kiss
Michael Romeo - The Dark Chapter

That's 25, and I kept it to Metal/Rock. I listen to that stuff like 60% of the time, the rest of the time I listen to other music which is mostly Classical, Film Music, Game Music, Ambient, IDM, Trance, DnB, and Jazz/Funk/Fusion.

 

[schenkadere]

Seriously, Fates imitating Queensryche, and poppier than Queensryche? That's a laugh. Queensryche was an Iron Maiden ripoff turned pop glam turned shit grunge. Not even prog. Fates Warning was one of the most inventive bands in prog metal. Eat me.

And I'll take APSoG over Scenes any day - which one sounds like the other run through a blender and played at a carnival? At that point DT was still stuck on lame NWOBHM riffs and Rudess' stupid keyboard patches. Zonder could eat Portnoy for breakfast! Bah ha ha hah

Eat me...really? are you twelve?

They both bore me to tears...but Scenes doesn't make me want to completely puke...through most of it anyway.

I don't see them as inventive at all...what exactly did they invent that no one else had done before them?

 

[Postulate]

Eat me...really? are you twelve?

They both bore me to tears...but Scenes doesn't make me want to completely puke...through most of it anyway.

I don't see them as inventive at all...what exactly did they invent that no one else had done before them?

-The Spectre Within
-Awaken the Guardian
-Perfect Symmetry
-A Pleasant Shade of Gray
-Disconnected

 

[Progbass]

Queensryche and Fates Warning were both inventive. You can tell how much they influenced metal bands.

 

[Liquid Tension]

Eat me...really? are you twelve?

They both bore me to tears...but Scenes doesn't make me want to completely puke...through most of it anyway.

I don't see them as inventive at all...what exactly did they invent that no one else had done before them?

So sad...

 

[schenkadere]

-The Spectre Within
-Awaken the Guardian
-Perfect Symmetry
-A Pleasant Shade of Gray
-Disconnected

Exactly what I mean. Here are the names of some albums...great! Now, what I'm seriously asking is what you hear in these that no other group had done before them. Inventive and progressive are terms that are applied too loosely and I feel that many opinions come from a lack of exposure to past artists. I think if a listener has a robust background, those terms tend to be withheld and better scrutinized. Just because a band creates a concept album or plays in a time signature beyond 4/4 or incorporates baroque/classical themes, doesn't justify them being labeled inventive or progressive. IMO, of course.

 

[Postulate]

Exactly what I mean. Here are the names of some albums...great! Now, what I'm seriously asking is what you hear in these that no other group had done before them. Inventive and progressive are terms that are applied too loosely and I feel that many opinions come from a lack of exposure to past artists. I think if a listener has a robust background, those terms tend to be withheld and better scrutinized. Just because a band creates a concept album or plays in a time signature beyond 4/4 or incorporates baroque/classical themes, doesn't justify them being labeled inventive or progressive. IMO, of course.

Listen to Awaken the Guardian - Matheos' rhythm guitar is unlike anything in metal before that, and Arch's phrasings and sense of melody are totally unique. FW also pretty much invented the Rush-derived crunchy prog metal riff that DT popularized and became one of the key sounds of prog metal later. Perfect Symmetry might be the first modern 'prog metal' album in the way most people mean the term - At Fate's Hands is pretty much a blueprint for dozens of albums to come.

In Spectre Within/Awaken the Guardian, there is an interplay between the vocals and instruments that was not present in metal at the time. Rhythm in metal pretty much consisted of 1) repeating riffs, which some more adventurous thrash bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Voivod, etc. were also expanding on at the time, but not reinventing as Fates did, 2) strophic rhythms (NWOBHM gallops, one-note speed metal chugging, etc.) and 3) simple harmony, usually in the form of power chords. Matheos introduced a a syncopated sound that helped shape the songs, rather than just holding them together beneath the vocalist. Instead of the guitar only being the lead instrument during the solos, the vocals and instruments were on equal footing and responded to each other. DiBiase's fills were also pretty interesting during this time and went beyond the whole Grosskopf/Harris thing of happily mirroring or helping drive the guitar melodies or providing the traditional metal role of just being the glue between rhythm and melody. The guitar solos became part of the structure of the overall song, rather than interchangeable "break time!" detours where the vocalist stops and the guitarist gets a turn to show off, and the songs themselves had increasingly complex structures. Some of the vocal melodies were also extremely inventive, such as the choruses to Orphan Gypsy or Exodus.

Show me anything in 1986 that was in the same universe as this in metal (edit: except for Watchtower?):



And this is not even getting into their post-Inside Out period and all of the brilliant things on APSoG and Disconnected. In short, just because you don't like the music doesn't mean it wasn't really inventive.

 

[azal]

^completely co-sign everything you said.

Awaken the Guardian was unlike anything heard before that. Of course the band started with a lot of Maiden and NWOBHM influence, but they had developed into something completely original by the third album.

Arch's melody and phrasing along is something that was so progressive, I don't think anyone has ever come close to having such an original and complex, yet memorable delivery ever in metal.

Awaken the Guardian and Queensryche - Rage for Order were both game-changing albums in 1986 imo. Very innovative and original, and of course, hugely influential to like-minded prog dudes of the future.

 

[Kenneth R.]

sorry man but Awaken The Guardian sounds just like every other prog metal album. Maybe that's what you're getting at by inspirational?

to me it's incredibly boring strung-together riffs. Mindcrime was aeons ahead of it. To me, FW is APSOG. That, Disconnected, and a handful of others.

 

[Postulate]

sorry man but Awaken The Guardian sounds just like every other prog metal album. Maybe that's what you're getting at by inspirational?

to me it's incredibly boring strung-together riffs. Mindcrime was aeons ahead of it. To me, FW is APSOG. That, Disconnected, and a handful of others.

To me, Mindcrime was already dated by the time it came out, in every respect except perhaps its production. Some songs are well-written, but it's certainly not ground-breaking. I wouldn't even call it progressive. Both Queensryche and FW had their fair share of middling crap, but Queensryche never really got over their fascination with Iron Maiden, while FW did.

 

[azal]

I'm talking chronologically.

Nothing sounded like Awaken the Guardian in 1986. It was a brand new sound, and it was one of the first times that prog was being combined with metal, in the sense that music that was very traditional and rooted in NWOBHM stuff like Maiden and Priest was taking on themes and ideas that were not typical of metal, but more of prog rock like Rush, Yes, Genesis, etc - things like lyrics that were more abstract and conceptual, songs that were longer, more intricate arrangements, etc. Without albums like Awaken the Guardian and Rage for Order in 1986 that were pushing boundaries and making "artful" metal and alternative to people who wanted metal that was more intellectual, there would never have been a When Dream and Day Unite, and whatever else people perceive to be the first real prog metal albums.

 

[Kenneth R.]

And the world may have been better with a different evolution, imo. Just saying.

 

[schenkadere]

I concede. Maybe it's just so irritating to my ear that I can't hear what anyone perceived as inventive or progressive. I can't get past just how bad and annoying it sounds to me to study it to that level.

I really gave this band a real college try, but never got past that it's just not pleasing to me in any form. That posted youtube clip brought it all back...I couldn't get through a minute of it...the proverbial nails on the chalkboard.

Not meant to insult anyone, just my honest personal opinion.

Count me out, delete my posts...carry on!