365 Albums In One Year

Another one today?
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Oh, and I'm 90% sure that the original version of Walking in the Air was used in an animated adaptation of one of Beatrix Potter's books (can't remember which)
 
John Silver said:
Impressive plan, Diesel the Weasel.

I want to suggest just one record, but am unsure if it is up your alley so to speak.
It is the heaviest record they did and their best in my opinion too.
Do you need more suggestions or are you full of it?
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I’ll take any suggestions because I have a fairly wide music taste and there’s a lot of time in a year. Which album is it?
 
It's never been held in the same light as stuff like Thriller, Sgt. Pepper, etc., yet somehow it's still one of the best-selling albums of all time. How good is it? Let's find out...

MEAT LOAF - BAT OUT OF HELL
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Album 5/365

Tracks:
  1. "Bat Out Of Hell" - An interesting opening that culminates in some screaming guitar. It's long but it keeps the attention. The verse is cool, as is the pre-chorus, but it's the chorus itself that really grabs the attention - it's awesome and never fails to send chills. Meat Loaf is a pretty great vocalist and Jim Steinman is a pretty genius vocalist. There are so many twists and turns to this song, it's insane, but damn the near ten minutes wiz by. Love it. 10/10
  2. "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)" - Interesting dialogue section there before we break into the actual song... and it's great. This song is shorter but it's just as epic as the opening title track was. It's fantastic. 10/10
  3. "Heaven Can Wait" - A really nice ballad. It isn't Iron Maiden, but it works very well. 9/10
  4. "All Revved Up With No Place To Go" - This is such a great, boppy tune. The saxophone works really well, the lyrics are great, the song keeps you rollin', and that hook is awesome. The frantic ending is especially good. Love it. 10/10
  5. "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad" - Another ballad, and it's also pretty good. I like the imagery and stuff going on here. 9/10
  6. "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" - It's a classic rock staple and for good reason. Brilliant storyline with a lot of twists and turns, including that baseball bit, but everything after that bit is just goddamn amazing. The dual vocals work so well and parts of the narrative are legitimately hilarious - it's an awesome song. 10/10
  7. "For Crying Out Loud" - Pretty nice ending to the album. Not as rockin' as I'd have liked, but it's clearly the best and most epic of the ballads on here, and damn is it emotional. As far as songs go, it too is excellent. 10/10
Bat Out Of Hell deserves just about every ounce of praise it's ever received. Almost everything here is perfect, from the vocals to the instruments to the structure to the writing itself - what a genius way to craft together an album. It's glorious.

Rating: 97%
 
IMO, don't listen too much to recommendations, just go on your own searches, It'll be more rewarding in the long run. You don't want to be reacting to other peoples favourite metal albums the rest of the year. You started off right with Acid Bath, amazing album, keep exploring!
 
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More Nightwish!

NIGHTWISH - WISHMASTER
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Album 6/365

Tracks:
  1. "She Is My Sin" - What a song. Such a great chorus here, and those lyrics. It's pretty awesome. 9/10
  2. "The Kinslayer" - A song about Columbine of all things... and it's such a masterful retelling of the events. The militaristic way the verses are presented, the way the lyrics move back and forth from eyewitness accounts to the thoughts of the shooters... yeah, this song is amazing. 10/10
  3. "Come Cover Me" - Excellent opening. The rest of the song is pretty strong but not as good as the previous two. Still, this is shaping up to be a pretty great album. 8/10
  4. "Wanderlust" - Some more good stuff, particularly in the second half of the song. Lyrics are very picturesque, which I like. Still, some parts are kinda on the edge here. 7/10
  5. "Two For Tragedy" - This song really builds up the further you're in, but damn are those lyrics amazing. 9/10
  6. "Wishmaster" - Holy shit, it's "Attero Dominatus"! Someone tell Sabaton that Bazza is on the line! Seriously though, the similarities are striking. Both are good songs though, but I'd give the tip to Sabaton's (maybe it's bias, IDK). At any rate it's a pretty cool song. Not what I'd have expected from Nightwish but they make it work. 8/10
  7. "Bare Grace Misery" - Damn, I love this song. The "man of sorrows" imagery is so amazingly done here I'm speechless. As far as lyricism goes, Nightwish have me hooked. And that chorus piece... wow. Perfect song. 10/10
  8. "Crownless" - Nothing bad here, but it's not as good as a lot of the other songs on the album. 7/10
  9. "Deep Silent Complete" - Love the harmonized vocals at the beginning. The rest of the song is great, too. It says more in tone than it does in lyrics. Great stuff. 9/10
  10. "Dead Boy's Poem" - A more epic sort of song with a lot of beauty in it. Nicely done. 9/10
  11. "FantasMic" - I've got some mixed feelings on this one. It's a way better epic than "Lappi" was, but it doesn't quite knock it out of the park for me. It's still fairly strong though. 8/10
Bonus:
  • "Sleepwalker" - A nice song, but not quite a masterpiece. As a closer it's great, though. 8/10
Way better album than I anticipated, and another step forward for the band. "The Kinslayer" and "Bare Grace Misery" are easily the best Nightwish songs up to this point, and there's a great sprinkling of other awesome songs here too. One thing that struck me with this listen is how similar Sabaton's first three albums are to these Nightwish ones. I wouldn't be surprised if they took a page of their book. Overall, pretty great album.

Rating: 85%
 
Cornfed Hick said:
Well, there's this: 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. There are a bunch I would have no interest in, but certainly there would be 360 on here worth checking out. Good hunting!
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Sure, that's an option, but I think I'll only use it as a last resort. :P

SixesAlltheway said:
IMO, don't listen too much to recommendations, just go on your own searches, It'll be more rewarding in the long run. You don't want to be reacting to other peoples favourite metal albums the rest of the year. You started off right with Acid Bath, amazing album, keep exploring!
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Well, what I'm basically doing a mix of recommendations and albums I found on my own. So far it's a pretty great journey.
 
Diesel 11 said:
Bat Out Of Hell deserves just about every ounce of praise it's ever received. Almost everything here is perfect, from the vocals to the instruments to the structure to the writing itself - what a genius way to craft together an album. It's glorious.

Rating: 97%
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Hmm. I suppose I will refrain from making any more specific recommendations here, as our musical tastes are obviously WILDLY divergent! Maybe you should check out Broadway musical soundtracks. Question: do you like Maiden's/Bruce's "Empire of the Clouds"? If so, you should DEFINITELY check out Broadway musicals!
:ph34r:
P.S. Yeah, it's a troll-y post, but I'm sort of being serious here: if you like Meat Loaf and "Empire" you probably will, in fact, like at least some Broadway musicals. Which I, for one, uniformly hate.
 
Cornfed Hick said:
P.S. Yeah, it's a troll-y post, but I'm sort of being serious here: if you like Meat Loaf and "Empire" you probably will, in fact, like at least some Broadway musicals. Which I, for one, uniformly hate.
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Yeah, I've got a friend who's big on musicals and got me into Hamilton, so somewhere down the line I'm definitely going to dive into some others. It is a style I like a lot when done right.
 
SixesAlltheway said:
IMO, don't listen too much to recommendations, just go on your own searches, It'll be more rewarding in the long run. You don't want to be reacting to other peoples favourite metal albums the rest of the year. You started off right with Acid Bath, amazing album, keep exploring!
Click to expand...
SixesAlltheway said:
IMO, don't listen too much to recommendations, just go on your own searches, It'll be more rewarding in the long run. You don't want to be reacting to other peoples favourite metal albums the rest of the year. You started off right with Acid Bath, amazing album, keep exploring!
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I disagree with this. Nothing wrong with self discovery but recommendations can be great especially if you know the taste of the person making the recommendations. This forum can be a pretty good resource for that. There’s a lot of music out there. It’s good to have some help with sorting through the noise.
 
If the purpose is to find albums you like, I think recommendations are a fantastic place to start. If someone recommends 2-3 you don't like, don't listen to them anymore.
 
Before I do Core, there's another grunge album I'm gonna get out of the way first. Like STP, I enjoy AIC a lot, but haven't actually heard a full album from them. Time to rectify that.

ALICE IN CHAINS - DIRT
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Album 7/365

Tracks:
  1. "Them Bones" - A really heavy start to the album. "Them Bones" is pretty much perfect - short but pretty goddamn sweet. 10/10
  2. "Dam That River" - This is another really great song with a lot of heaviness to it. I'd say it's on par with the previous song, pretty much perfect. 10/10
  3. "Rain When I Die" - Goddamn, this album is on a roll. This one is slower but the verses and chorus are just awesome. Another pretty much perfect song. 10/10
  4. "Down In A Hole" - Not the biggest fan of this song. Parts of it drag on, but it also has some decent moments at the same time. Not nearly as good as the first three, though. 7/10
  5. "Sickman" - This song is kind of a mess. The only really cool part is that valley of death section, the rest is just... meh. 5/10
  6. "Rooster" - A much better song after the previous two, though still not up to par with the first three. It's a pretty great anti-war song though, and I like the trudge it does to conjure up images of Vietnam. 9/10
  7. "Junkhead" - Another bland song. It's better than "Sickman" but it just trudges along and makes me wanna fall asleep. Yeesh. 6/10
  8. "Dirt" - The title track is better than the previous song, but still not of the same cut as the first three songs. 7/10
  9. "God Smack" - Weird verse, great pre-chorus, merely decent chorus. Parts of this song feel like they could have been a part of a Psycho Motel song, so it's easy to see where the latter song drew inspiration from. Still not the best song. 7/10
  10. "Iron Gland" - Kinda cool interlude. Nothing more. N/A
  11. "Hate To Feel" - Better song than the other sevens, though still some weird stuff. I like the bluesy, Sabbathy stuff on display. 8/10
  12. "Angry Chair" - Another better song than a lot of others here, but it never does reach greatness, while remaining merely pretty good. 8/10
  13. "Would?" - Finally, ten songs later, one more song that can rival the opening trio. "Would?" is probably AIC's most popular song overall and for good reason - it's awesome. A groovy number with a lot of good vocals and moments and once again... it's pretty much perfect. 10/10
Dirt has one of the best openings of any album I've ever heard. Those three songs absolutely rule. And then... it kinda falls off a cliff. Nothing's truly terrible, but a lot of it is bland as fuck, just trudging along, never getting anywhere. I get that it's supposed to be depressing, but I've heard better depressing stuff. At any rate, putting all of them together on the same album is probably what trips some of these songs up the most. On its own I could probably tolerate them better. The only song that really knocks it out of the park again is "Would?", though "Rooster" comes close and "Hate To Feel" and "Angry Chair" are sort of on the right track, but not quite. Overall, it's a bit of a disappointing album, saved merely because of those four amazing songs and that one great one.

Rating: 74%
 
Glad to see you gave Dirt a listen. It’s my personal favorite grunge album. If Sickman was cut then it would be a perfect album IMO. You should give The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here a listen. The album is a bit slower and harder to get into, but the songwriting is out of this world.
 
Collin said:
Glad to see you gave Dirt a listen. It’s my personal favorite grunge album. If Sickman was cut then it would be a perfect album IMO. You should give The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here a listen. The album is a bit slower and harder to get into, but the songwriting is out of this world.
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I might. Dunno if I wanna do that one before some of the other 'classic' AIC albums or not but I'm curious how the modern incarnation of the band sounds so I'll definitely be considering it.
 
Hey, it's Black Abyss Babe!

NIGHTWISH - CENTURY CHILD
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Album 8/365

Tracks:
  1. "Bless The Child" - I first heard this song a while back in MaidenFans chat as a live version, and I've loved it from almost the first moment I heard it. I wish this song was longer because damn, it just passes by. But I love it. 10/10
  2. "End Of All Hope" - This song sort of retreads the "Wishmaster" style of chorus, but it does it even better than that song did. It's quite good! I like it. 9/10
  3. "Dead To The World" - Marco is a way better vocalist than Tuomas was on the first album, and his vocals mesh well with Tarja's. I'm really digging this overarching story that seems to be going on, and it's such an intense song. 10/10
  4. "Ever Dream" - Another really good song, so atmospheric. Not quite sure about the lyrics this time, though, but the rest of the song is great. 9/10
  5. "Slaying The Dreamer" - Pretty good song, though it goes off the path in the second half and ends on a weird note with that screamy piece. Without that, it could've been a ten, but... 8/10
  6. "Forever Yours" - Pretty nice ballad but not as good as some of the other songs here. 8/10
  7. "Ocean Soul" - What a beautiful song. Those lyrics, that voice... god is it wonderful. 10/10
  8. "Feel For You" - A pretty great song, though Marco's vocals aren't so good this time and bring it down just a notch. 9/10
  9. "The Phantom of the Opera" - This song was destined to be perfected as a metal epic. Nightwish absolutely kill the original (and there's another cover on YouTube that's even better than this one). Suffice it to say that this is a fucking amazing cover, and I'll even be that guy: this is better than the Maiden song of the same name. I love it. 10/10
  10. "Beauty of the Beast" - Nightwish finally knock it out of the park with an epic. This song is way better than their previous two attempts and is such a great closer. 10/10
What a fantastic album. Everything takes another step up - the musicianship is better, the production is better, hell, even Tarja is better (her English pronunciation is a big step over the past albums). No song is bad, and while the whole thing isn't perfect, I wouldn't surprised if this is as good as they'll get - though I'll be happy if it does get even better after this.

Rating: 93%
 
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