Demon Days by Gorillaz
Silent Alarm by Bloc Party
Metallica (Black Album)
Wait a second, no way you’re slandering Plastic Beach like that. PB is equal to DD, some days it hits better even.
Plastic Beach is good, but I like Demon Days more. Gorillaz fallen since PB.
Demon days > anything else gorillaZ
Sure, but I wouldn’t call PB “falling off.” Still, Gorillaz still makes bangers these days, even if the albums themselves aren’t as good. Desolé slaps.
Plastic Beach is better for the simple fact that it contains Sweepstakes. I’ve come to learn that a lot of people dislike that song a great deal, which blows my mind. Mos Def is aces and the production on that track is brilliant.
I’m more of an Empire Ants man myself, but I get what you’re saying. It’s such a fun album.
DD = 🐐
Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
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This is gonna be a really spicy take - Nightmare by Avenged Sevenfold. Pretty much every song is a banger and Save Me is a masterpiece. The singing is on point. I debated Waking the Fallen, but sadly I feel that some songs on that album just aren’t up to the same quality (and Nightmare is much more approachable).
As for albums after Nightmare, Hail to the King was okay, The Stage was good but flawed (we got so many songs, but the mixing wasn’t very good imo) and Life Is But A Dream is… Just not good - again, in my opinion as a long-time fan.
Before Nightmare, self-titled was okay (certain songs like Unbound kinda pull it down for me, but they’re not straight SKIPS per se) and City of Evil was amazing but not quite Nightmare quality in my opinion (just because of Matt’s nasally singing, especially in songs like Seize the Day). WtF I’ve already went over, and Sounding the Seventh Trumpet honestly only had a few good songs in my opinion.
I just checked it out and Save Me feels very Dream Theater. I’ll have to dig around their discog a bit.
If you like Save Me, I also highly recommend I Won’t See You Tonight Part 1. It’s very solid and pretty ubiquitously referred to as one of their best songs
I could definitely see that. I heavily disagree with you on the self-titled album just being okay, but as for a creative peak, it kind of feels like they’ve been phoning it in after Nightmare. There’s excellent songs on all the albums, but Nightmare was the last one where it felt that the majority of the tracks were ones where you really didn’t want to skip.
Pink Floyd - The Wall
Not their last album before Roger Waters left the band (that was The Final Cut, the album which followed), but it was far superior, and arguably their best album-- and inarguably their magnum opus.
The David Gilmour-led era of Pink Floyd was ok, but it would never reach the fevered heights and sick intensity of the Roger Waters days.
I agree except that Dark side of the moon is clearly Pink Floyds magnum opus.
I understand that Roger is a divisive character (personally I love him despite his flaws), but god damn he could write an album.
More popular, more commercially successful, and more accessible to casual fans. Agreed.
But for magnum opus, I gotta agree with the wall for a few reasons
- They made a movie out of it
- The ode to the intense para social relationships that revolve around stardom and how a truly crazy creative can take advantage of it in scary ways was not only true back then, but predictive of how much worse it would get in current time.
- DSotM always seemed like a lot of good ideas in an unordered list. I felt like they could be scrambled and the album would be similar, except for the first and last songs… Meanwhile the wall tells a story of pain, alienation, search for meaning, lashing out, and then a quest for self-forgiveness.
Best guitar solo of all time helps too
Fair shout. I also love the wall.
Everyone knows Ummagumma was their best album, they’re just too scared to admit it!
Best song is several small species
It’s good album. But I view The Wall as a Waters solo album than a Pink Floyd one.
how do you figure that?
He essentially did write the whole thing.
Except for the parts that David Gilmour wrote
David Gilmour was good at solos, not song writing.
He wrote all of The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Animals.
He essentially wrote everything post Syd Barret all the way up to the Final Cut which was supposed to be Floyd’s last album.
No. Dark Side was the first album Waters wrote all of it.
I’m not saying that the other members didn’t contribute, just that post Barret, Rogers wrote the vast majority.
The drop in vision and quality after The Final Cut really shows. The division bell is essentially Gilmour ranting at the poltergeist of Roger.
Except for the parts that David Gilmour wrote
A lot of the tracks have to do with what both Waters and Gilmour went through as children, as they both lost their fathers to World War II. David Gilmour got writing credit on a bunch of the tracks as well. And given the amount of work that both Waters and Gilmore put into the album, it’s not really right to say that it was a solo project. Not even to mention what Nick Mason put into it. If you wanna cut out Richard Wright’s contributions, considering that he got fired during this album’s production, that would be fair. 
The Wall is absolutely Rogers album. The concept and the songs are all his. Gilmour only received credits on three of the songs.
You can’t point to a few guitar solos and then give Gilmour half the credit, it was a great contribution, but even Gilmour would admit that Roger wrote the wall.
It’s an okay album. It’s a rock opera. It’s very melodramatic. There are some great songs.
I go back and forth on Animals or Meddle as their best record, with Wish You Were Here close behind.
Definitely The Wall feels much more like the solo Roger stuff than the best of Floyd.
Though the real purists only like the Barrett stuff.
There’s argument to be made for several albums across their career (including their first), but I think REM’s Document was the last great one they made. I know a lot of people will cry and point to Automatic for the People, but they are wrong.
At the drive in - Relationship of Command
Refused - The Shape Of Punk To Come Tocotronic - Digital ist besserI def used “one armed scissor” as a screen name back in high school.
I’m not saying Minutes to Midnight was Linkin parks zenith. But I thought it was fine, it was different for sure. But not bad at all IMO.
After that however, I don’t think they released a single song i liked.
I know a lot of people didn’t like it because it was a departure from their earlier style but I honestly think A Thousand Suns was their peak. I don’t even like all the songs on it, but each one was so obviously crafted with care and intent, and you could tell they were really all-in on it. I think the exploration of their talents through a post-apocalyptic concept album really challenged and brought out the best in them.
I miss Chester still :(
Agree with lots of others here so I’ll say
Paul Simon - Graceland
Green Day - American Idiot. It’s not that I dislike what came after, but 21st Century Breakdown feels disjointed, the Trilogy has really low lows, and they stopped being ambitious after that and just put out two “pretty good” albums and one awful one.
Also even if you don’t like their '00s sound, I seriously don’t get why Dookie is more well-liked than Nimrod beyond “it had more hits and I heard it first.”
21st is a mix of B-Sides from American Idiot and Cigarettes and Valentine’s, put together to make it’s own album, I don’t see it as disjointed but I can understand why. For me it comes across as an aged Warning.
Uno-Tre was their way of screwing over their record label because they were contracted to do 3 more albums. So considering they pulled out 38 songs in that timeline. I’d say listening through 21st and the songs through Uno-Tre, it’s pretty clear to hear the difference in production of the songs complexity. 21st has tons of diverse, almost orchestral elements supporting the background of the songs. Uno-Tre are generally a bit more simple in their compositions (as are Rev Radio and FOAMF)
I think Kerplunk is better than all 3 of those…
Honestly I like Kerplunk and 39/Smooth better than Dookie, but I get why a lot of people don’t. Nimrod, I have no clue.
I like Nimrod, I think everything after that has been bullshit.
And because nobody has said it, I think Insomniac is their best album
Nimrod is for older folks who grew up on British punk imho.
Death Magnetic is better than Metallica’s Metallica. That coming from a person who has been a fan since the 80s.
Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
R.E.M. - Automatic for the people
As massive R.E.M. fan, this made me conflicted! Automatic for the People is beautiful, and most days my favourite, but I wouldn’t want to miss where the band went after.
Their last album was brilliant, Accelerate was fun… I know AftP was a hell of a peak, but I can’t find it in me to write off anything except a chunk of Around the Sun…
Thank you for allowing me to talk about my favourite band. :)
Accelerate was a lot of fun, but for me the last album that was stellar front to back was Life’s Rich Pageant. It was joyous, raucous, and they hit their signature sound head on. Every track sparkled (even the Superman cover that Michael hated).
That’s a very fair opinion too! I feel they changed about 4 times as a band (understandably I guess as they were about for 3 decades), and damn Life’s Rich Pageant was special - it’s one I play very often, and it is stacked! :)
It’s the best they sounded as a pure rock band, even though I have such a soft spot for Murmur. New Adventures touched on that feeling again, but it wasn’t front to back perfect in the same way (partly because of its length!)
The trouble I have is I couldn’t imagine life without what came after Life’s Rich Pageant, for instance Automatic meant a great deal to me, as it was the first album I remember hearing and loving growing up. :)
For sure! One of the reasons they’re such an amazing band is that they were able to innovate and adapt over a long career without losing their core style. They grew with their audience instead of apart from it.
My opinion is based on my own music preference (I’m a sucker for power pop) but there’s no denying R.E.M. stayed at the top of their game far longer than most bands even stay together.
These are great. In this vein I add:
Pearl Jam - Yield
(and forgive me but)
Radiohead - OK Computer
Kid A was class when it came out
I don’t know is Mellon collie was a huge drop off, but their direction definitely changed.
I agree with both of you. I’m very fond of everything by them up through the American Gothic EP, but Mellon Collie is still kinda the peak.
Peak, yes. But it’s not like their next couple of albums were terrible. They were just a different direction.
Oh absolutely. Adore was actually the album that got me into them.
Gish is a transcendental album that created the genre that dominated the next 20 years: alternative rock.
Everything after Gish might have been more popular or well known, but none of it will ever approach being as influential.
- Last Splash by the Breeders
- White Album - The Beatles
- The Wall - Pink Floyd
Abbey Road was their final album and it was arguably their best. They definitely did not fall off after White Album.
Marilyn Manson - Holywood
I’d put ACS as peak, MA and Holywood were both great, then a very long lull. Pale Emperor was the last one that caught my ear like the older ones did.
Yeah, I really liked ACS, but it didn’t feel right leaving the next 2 out. Pale Emperor was the last half decent one for sure.
Double Nickels on the Dime, Minutemen. Also probably the best power trio record ever made. Granted, they only made one more record before D Boon died, but as legendary as he is, Mike Watt has still never done anything as good since.
This seems to happen with progressive rock at alarming levels. They just reach a point where they take their pretentious bullshit a little too far, and the fans grow weary of it. You saw that with Jethro Tull, which pushed its luck with A Passion Play after scoring a critical success with Thick as a Brick. Yes took it too far with Topographic Oceans. I’m sure ELP has an album where they pushed the envelope a little too far and pushed away the audience in the process. Unfortunately, that had a pendulum effect, with ELP releasing the wimpy Love Beach in an attempt to reel back in those lapsed fans.
I feel like Topographic Oceans could’ve been way better if it was condensed by almost half its runtime. The songs have cool ideas, but no focus and they all blend together.
I think A Passion Play being my favorite album in that whole genre might be my least popular opinion in all of music, I really don’t get the hate. And I’m not really a Tull fan even.
