| 4.5 superb |
| A Perfect Circle Thirteenth Step |
| A Tribe Called Quest Midnight Marauders |
| A Wilhelm Scream Career Suicide |
| Aesop Rock Spirit World Field Guide |
| Aesop Rock Integrated Tech Solutions |
| Animals As Leaders Animals as Leaders |
| Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works 85-92 |
| Aphex Twin Drukqs |
| At the Drive-In Relationship of Command |
| Beth Gibbons Lives Outgrown |
| This is exactly what you'd expect from a Beth Gibbons release: Vocals saturated with vulnerability over lush, engulfing instrumentation that finds just the right ways to be artistically daring. This'll scratch that itch if you've been waiting for new Portishead for the past 16 years. |
| Between the Buried and Me The Parallax II: Future Sequence |
| Bjork Post |
| Black Flag My War |
| Black Sabbath Master of Reality |
| Blotted Science The Machinations of Dementia |
| Botch An Anthology of Dead Ends |
| Botch We Are the Romans |
| Botch American Nervoso |
| Charles Mingus The Clown |
| Charles Mingus Me Myself An Eye |
| Chimaira The Impossibility of Reason |
| clipping. There Existed an Addiction to Blood |
| clipping. Visions of Bodies Being Burned |
| Clipse Hell Hath No Fury |
| Company Flow Funcrusher Plus |
| Converge Jane Doe |
| Danny Brown XXX |
| Danny Brown Atrocity Exhibition |
| De La Soul Buhloone Mindstate |
| De La Soul De La Soul Is Dead |
| Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables |
| Dead Kennedys Plastic Surgery Disasters |
| Death The Sound of Perseverance |
| Devin Townsend Terria |
| Devin Townsend Ocean Machine: Biomech |
| Devin Townsend Project Addicted |
| Devin Townsend Project Deconstruction |
| Devin Townsend Project Ghost |
| Dream Theater Images and Words |
| This one's got cheese, but goddamn, does it have some classics. The 2nd half of this album is like an artifact that belongs in a prog museum. The light tracks blend better with the track flow than on later albums where there're obvious radio ballads that are easy to skip. This is easily a landmark release for prog metal. |
| Dream Theater Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence |
| Dream Theater Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory |
| The sex scene in "Home" makes me so f*cking horny. And then there's murder at the end? This is some Shakespeare shit. |
| Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP |
| Faith No More Angel Dust |
| Fear Factory Demanufacture |
| Future of the Left Curses |
| Glassjaw Worship and Tribute |
| Glassjaw Coloring Book |
| Gojira From Mars to Sirius |
| Gojira The Flesh Alive |
| Gojira Magma |
| GZA Liquid Swords |
| Haken Vector |
| IDLES Joy as an Act of Resistance |
| Incubus (USA-CA) S.C.I.E.N.C.E. |
| Injury Reserve Live From The Dentist Office |
| James Blake Overgrown |
| JPEGMAFIA Veteran |
| JPEGMAFIA LP! (offline) |
| Kamasi Washington The Epic |
| Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d city |
| Kendrick Lamar Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers |
| Kids See Ghosts Kids See Ghosts |
| King Missile Mystical Shit |
| Lamb of God Ashes of the Wake |
| Linkin Park The Hunting Party |
| Little Simz Grey Area |
| Little Simz No Thank You |
| This one was a grower, for sure. I like it more than SIMBI. A lot of parts on this album have a stealthy way of getting stuck in my head, like ideas that get planted, waiting for their correlating blossoming. Def one of my favorites from her. |
| Machine Head Bloodstone And Diamonds |
| Madvillain Madvillainy |
| Mahogany Connectivity! |
| Mastodon Blood Mountain |
| Mastodon Crack the Skye |
| mclusky McLusky Do Dallas |
| Melt-Banana Fetch |
| Meshuggah Nothing (Re-Release) |
| Meshuggah obZen |
| Meshuggah Alive |
| Meshuggah The Ophidian Trek |
| Meshuggah The Violent Sleep Of Reason |
| Meshuggah obZen (15th Anniversary Remastered Edition) |
| Metallica Ride the Lightning |
| Metallica ...And Justice for All |
| Morbid Angel Covenant |
| Mr. Bungle Disco Volante |
| Mr. Bungle Mr. Bungle |
| Mudvayne L.D. 50 |
| Necrophagist Epitaph |
| Nine Inch Nails The Fragile |
| Nine Inch Nails Broken |
| Norma Jean Polar Similar |
| Ol' Dirty Bastard Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version |
| Operation Ivy Energy |
| Opeth Deliverance |
| Opeth Damnation |
| Opeth My Arms, Your Hearse |
| Opeth Ghost Reveries |
| OutKast Stankonia |
| Pantera Cowboys from Hell |
| Pantera Vulgar Display of Power |
| Portishead Roseland NYC Live |
| Portishead Third |
| Primus Frizzle Fry |
| Primus Sailing the Seas of Cheese |
| Protest the Hero Kezia |
| Protest the Hero Fortress |
| Queens of the Stone Age Songs for the Deaf |
| Radiohead Kid A |
| Radiohead In Rainbows |
| Ramones Ramones |
| Rancid ...And Out Come the Wolves |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magik |
| Run the Jewels Run the Jewels 2 |
| SikTh The Trees Are Dead and Dried Out, Wait for Something Wild |
| Slayer South of Heaven |
| slowthai UGLY |
| Sonic Youth Evol |
| Strapping Young Lad Alien |
| Strapping Young Lad City |
| Streetlight Manifesto Somewhere in the Between |
| Symphony X The Odyssey |
| System of a Down System of a Down |
| System of a Down Toxicity |
| The Devin Townsend Band Synchestra |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan Calculating Infinity |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan Miss Machine |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan Irony Is a Dead Scene |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan Ire Works |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan Option Paralysis |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan Dissociation |
| The Fall of Troy The Fall of Troy |
| The Fall of Troy Ghostship Demos |
| The Mars Volta De-Loused in the Comatorium |
| The Offspring Smash |
| The Offspring Ixnay on the Hombre |
| The Prodigy The Fat of the Land |
| The Roots Do You Want More?!!!??! |
| The Roots Things Fall Apart |
| Tkay Maidza Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 2 |
| Unexpect _We, Invaders |
| Unexpect In a Flesh Aquarium |
| Unwound Leaves Turn Inside You |
| Unwound Repetition |
| Venetian Snares Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett |
| Wintersun Wintersun |
| ZelooperZ Van Gogh's Left Ear |
| 4.0 excellent |
| A Perfect Circle Mer de Noms |
| A Tribe Called Quest People's Instinctive Travels & The Paths of Rhythm |
| A Wilhelm Scream Ruiner |
| Aesop Rock The Impossible Kid |
| Agitation Free 2nd |
| Al Di Meola Elegant Gypsy |
| Animals As Leaders The Joy of Motion |
| Anthrax Among the Living |
| Aphex Twin Richard D. James Album |
| Aphex Twin Windowlicker |
| AZ Doe or Die |
| Between the Buried and Me The Silent Circus |
| Between the Buried and Me The Great Misdirect |
| Between the Buried and Me The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues |
| Bikini Kill Pussy Whipped |
| Billy Woods Aethiopes |
| Billy Woods and Kenny Segal Hiding Places |
| Billy Woods and Kenny Segal Maps |
| Black Flag Damaged |
| Black Flag Slip It In |
| Black Sheep A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing |
| Blotted Science The Animation of Entomology |
| Brainiac Hissing Prigs in Static Couture |
| Brockhampton SATURATION II |
| Brockhampton SATURATION III |
| Brockhampton WILDFIRE, TRUMAN, DIANA |
| Buckethead The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell |
| Buckethead Colma |
| Buckethead Electric Tears |
| Cannibal Corpse The Wretched Spawn |
| Cannibal Corpse Chaos Horrific |
| Casualties of Cool Casualties of Cool |
| Cavalera Conspiracy Psychosis |
| Cee Lo Green Cee-Lo Green & His Perfect Imperfections |
| Cee Lo Green Cee-Lo Green Is The Soul Machine |
| Chimaira Chimaira |
| Chimaira Resurrection |
| Chimaira Crown of Phantoms |
| City Morgue HELL OR HIGH WATER VOL. 1 |
| clipping. CLPPNG |
| Currents The Place I Feel Safest |
| Daath The Concealers |
| Danny Brown Old |
| Danny Brown uknowhatimsayin¿ |
| Danny Brown Quaranta |
| De La Soul 3 Feet High and Rising |
| Dead Kennedys Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death |
| Decapitated Organic Hallucinosis |
| Decapitated The Negation |
| Deltron 3030 Deltron 3030 |
| Denzel Curry TA13OO |
| Denzel Curry Melt My Eyez See Your Future(The Extended Edition) |
| Destrage Are You Kidding Me? No. |
| Devin Townsend Infinity |
| Devin Townsend Project Ki |
| Devin Townsend Project Transcendence |
| Dr. Dre The Chronic |
| Dr. Dre 2001 |
| Dream Theater Train of Thought |
| I just realized that when he says "your light shines on my soul while a thousand candles burn" in Endless Sacrifice, he's talking about all the cuties holding up lighters during their ballads at concerts that he'd bang if he wasn't married. 8/10, would fuck this album and keep it as a FWB, but also not get TOO involved. I mean... DON'T CROSS THE CROOKED STEP. |
| Dream Theater A Change of Seasons |
| Dream Theater Black Clouds and Silver Linings |
| Drive Like Jehu Drive Like Jehu |
| El-P Fantastic Damage |
| El-P I'll Sleep When You're Dead |
| El-P Cancer 4 Cure |
| Eminem The Slim Shady LP |
| Every Time I Die From Parts Unknown |
| Every Time I Die Low Teens |
| Every Time I Die Radical |
| Faith No More The Real Thing |
| Faith No More Sol Invictus |
| Fear Factory Obsolete |
| Fear Factory Mechanize |
| Fleshwater We're Not Here To Be Loved |
| Future of the Left How To Stop Your Brain In An Accident |
| Genesis Owusu Smiling with No Teeth |
| Glassjaw Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence |
| Glassjaw Our Color Green (The Singles) |
| Gojira The Way of All Flesh |
| Gojira Sea Shepherd |
| Surely, some of these performances must be worth redoing. |
| GoldLink Diaspora |
| Gorillaz Demon Days |
| Greylotus Dawnfall |
| Hail the Sun Divine Inner Tension |
| Hiatus Kaiyote Tawk Tomahawk |
| Hiatus Kaiyote Choose Your Weapon |
| IDLES Brutalism |
| Igorrr Savage Sinusoid |
| Igorrr Spirituality and Distortion |
| In Flames Clayman |
| Incantation Onward to Golgotha |
| Incubus (USA-CA) Make Yourself |
| Incubus (USA-CA) Enjoy Incubus |
| Injury Reserve Floss |
| Injury Reserve Drive It Like It's Stolen! |
| Injury Reserve Injury Reserve |
| Integrity Those Who Fear Tomorrow |
| Intronaut Prehistoricisms |
| Jack Off Jill Clear Hearts Grey Flowers |
| James Blake James Blake |
| James Blake Playing Robots Into Heaven |
| Jeff Rosenstock HELLMODE |
| Jeromes Dream The Gray In Between |
| JID The Never Story |
| JID DiCaprio 2 |
| JID The Forever Story |
| John Petrucci Suspended Animation |
| Johnny Booth Moments Elsewhere |
| JPEGMAFIA All My Heroes Are Cornballs |
| JPEGMAFIA LP! (online) |
| JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown SCARING THE HOES: DLC PACK |
| Julia Holter Loud City Song |
| Kamasi Washington Heaven and Earth |
| Kamasi Washington The Choice |
| Kanye West Late Registration |
| Kanye West The College Dropout |
| Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy |
| Karnivool Themata |
| Karnivool Sound Awake |
| Kendrick Lamar Section.80 |
| Kendrick Lamar untitled unmastered. |
| Kendrick Lamar DAMN. |
| "Loyalty" and "Love" are the only tracks on here that really bring it down for me (for the production and the melody, respectively). Aside from that, I gotta say that him going for "what people want from him" still ended up being really experimental, and feels saturated with interesting and affective angles. |
| Killer Mike R.A.P. Music |
| King Missile They |
| Lamb of God As the Palaces Burn |
| Linkin Park Hybrid Theory |
| Linkin Park Meteora |
| Linkin Park Hybrid Theory EP |
| Liquid Tension Experiment Liquid Tension Experiment 2 |
| Little Simz E.D.G.E. |
| Little Simz Sometimes I Might Be Introvert |
| Machine Girl WLFGRL |
| Machine Girl ...BECAUSE I'M YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING |
| Machine Girl The Ugly Art |
| Machine Head The Blackening |
| Machine Head Unto The Locust |
| Mastodon Leviathan |
| Mastodon Once More 'Round the Sun |
| Maximum the Hormone Bu-ikikaesu |
| mclusky The Difference Between Me and You Is That I'm Not on Fire |
| Melt-Banana Cell-Scape |
| Melt-Banana Charlie |
| Mereba The Jungle Is The Only Way Out |
| Mereba Room for Living |
| Meshuggah Destroy Erase Improve |
| Meshuggah Nothing |
| Meshuggah Catch Thirtythree |
| Meshuggah None |
| Meshuggah Koloss |
| Metallica Kill 'Em All |
| Metallica Metallica |
| MF DOOM MM.. Food |
| Mindforce New Lords |
| Mnemic Mechanical Spin Phenomena |
| Modest Mouse This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About |
| Mudvayne The End of All Things to Come |
| Necrophagist Onset of Putrefaction |
| Nevermore Enemies of Reality |
| Nevermore Dreaming Neon Black |
| Nevermore Dead Heart in a Dead World |
| Nevermore The Politics of Ecstasy |
| Nevermore This Godless Endeavor |
| Norma Jean All Hail |
| Opeth Morningrise |
| Opeth Watershed |
| OutKast Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik |
| Panzerballett Breaking Brain |
| Phoxjaw notverynicecream |
| Pitchshifter www.pitchshifter.com |
| Pitchshifter Infotainment? |
| Pitchshifter Desensitized |
| Queens of the Stone Age Rated R |
| Queens of the Stone Age Over the Years and Through the Woods |
| Radiohead The Bends |
| Radiohead Hail to the Thief |
| Rage Against the Machine Evil Empire |
| Rage Against the Machine The Battle of Los Angeles |
| Rage Against the Machine Live & Rare |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication |
| RiTchie Triple Digits (112) |
| Rivers of Nihil Where Owls Know My Name |
| Run the Jewels Run the Jewels |
| Run the Jewels Run the Jewels (Instrumentals) |
| Run the Jewels Run the Jewels 3 |
| Sanctuary Refuge Denied |
| Sanctuary Into the Mirror Black |
| ScHoolboy Q Blue Lips |
| Septicflesh Communion |
| Septicflesh The Great Mass |
| Sepultura Chaos A.D. |
| Sepultura Machine Messiah |
| Sepultura Quadra |
| SikTh Opacities |
| Skepta Konnichiwa |
| Slayer Hell Awaits |
| Slayer Christ Illusion |
| Slipknot Slipknot |
| Slipknot We Are Not Your Kind |
| slowthai Nothing Great About Britain |
| slowthai TYRON |
| Sonic Youth Sister |
| Speed (AUS) Gang Called Speed |
| Strapping Young Lad For Those Aboot to Rock (DVD) |
| Strapping Young Lad 1994–2006 Chaos Years |
| Symphony X Paradise Lost |
| System of a Down Steal This Album! |
| Tera Melos Untitled |
| TesseracT One |
| The Contortionist Exoplanet |
| The Contortionist Language |
| The Devin Townsend Band Accelerated Evolution |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan One of Us Is the Killer |
| The Fall of Troy Doppelganger |
| The Fall of Troy Phantom on the Horizon |
| The Human Abstract Digital Veil |
| The Mothers of Invention Freak Out! |
| The Offspring Ignition |
| The Prodigy Experience |
| The Prodigy Invaders Must Die |
| The Roots Illadelph Halflife |
| The Smile A Light For Attracting Attention |
| thoughtcrimes Altered Pasts |
| Tigran Hamasyan Shadow Theater |
| Tigran Hamasyan Mockroot |
| Tkay Maidza Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 3 |
| TLC CrazySexyCool |
| Tool Undertow |
| Tool Salival |
| Turnstile Time and Space |
| Unwound The Future of What |
| Unwound Challenge For a Civilized Society |
| Vein.fm Errorzone |
| Venetian Snares Detrimentalist |
| Vessels Helioscope |
| Vessels Dilate |
| I'm gonna be 100% honest with y'all, I just really like this album because it sounds like good background music for fucking. On Monos just sounds moist af. |
| White Zombie Astro Creep: 2000 |
| Yarotz Erinyes |
| Yashira Fail To Be |
| ZelooperZ Dyn-O-Mite |
| Surprised this album has a lower aggregate rating than Valley of Life. They might have slightly different vibes, but you can def interchange tracks between the two albums and not really notice. |
| ZelooperZ Gremlin |
| ZelooperZ Valley of Life |
| 3.5 great |
| AC/DC Back In Black |
| Aphex Twin Come to Daddy |
| Aphex Twin ...I Care Because You Do |
| Archspire Bleed the Future |
| Avenged Sevenfold City of Evil |
| Black Pumas Chronicles of a Diamond |
| Born of Osiris The Discovery |
| Boston Boston |
| Brockhampton SATURATION |
| Brockhampton Ginger |
| Brockhampton Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine |
| Buckethead Enter the Chicken |
| Buckethead Bucketheadland |
| Charles Mingus Pithecanthropus Erectus |
| Chat Pile God's Country |
| Chimaira Pass Out of Existence |
| Cities Aviv Black Pleasure |
| City Morgue City Morgue Vol 2: As Good As Dead |
| City Morgue Vol. 3: Bottom Of The Barrel |
| clipping. Midcity |
| clipping. Wriggle |
| clipping. Splendor and Misery |
| Code Orange I Am King |
| Code Orange Forever |
| A handful of tracks slay; the others either disrupt the flow or are super basic and it doesn't land. There's potential here. |
| Code Orange Underneath |
| Daath The Deceivers |
| Damageplan New Found Power |
| Danny Brown The Hybrid |
| Decapitated Nihility |
| Deftones Deftones |
| Deftones Diamond Eyes |
| Deftones Koi No Yokan |
| Denzel Curry Imperial |
| Denzel Curry Zuu |
| Denzel Curry Melt My Eyez See Your Future |
| This is a tough one to rate because some of the tracks here are absolutely brilliant, but then a good few tracks feel kind of inaccessible to me mood-wise like "John Wayne" (though I do like the imagery painted by the lyrics). And then tracks like "X-Wing" have a catchy hook and solid delivery, but the materialism comes off shallow compared to the heavy tone set by the opener; I do see how these are natural elements to Curry's expression, but the contrasts aren't as connected as they could be. Overall, I feel like this album unifies well as an overall vibe and mindset, but there're still some bumps along the way that keep it from being as focused as it can be. |
| Devin Townsend Ziltoid the Omniscient |
| Dilated Peoples The Platform |
| Dr. Dre Compton |
| Drake Take Care |
| Dream Theater Octavarium |
| Dream Theater Systematic Chaos |
| Dying Fetus Make Them Beg for Death |
| EarthGang Torba |
| EarthGang Shallow Graves For Toys |
| EarthGang Mirrorland |
| El-P High Water |
| Eminem The Eminem Show |
| Eternal Storm A Giant Bound to Fall |
| Everclear Sparkle And Fade |
| Faith No More King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime |
| Fear Factory Archetype |
| Fear Factory Soul of a New Machine |
| Fear Factory Genexus |
| Fit for an Autopsy The Great Collapse |
| Fleshgod Apocalypse Agony |
| Future of the Left The Plot Against Common Sense |
| Genesis Owusu Struggler |
| Glass Beach plastic death |
| Gojira The Link |
| Gojira Terra Incognita |
| Gojira L'Enfant Sauvage |
| GoldLink And After That, We Didn't Talk |
| GoldLink At What Cost |
| Greyhaven Stereo Grief |
| Harlots The Woman You Saw Is The Great City |
| Helena Deland Goodnight Summerland |
| Hot Snakes Automatic Midnight |
| IDLES Ultra Mono |
| IDLES Crawler |
| Inclination Unaltered Perspective |
| Incubus (USA-CA) A Crow Left of the Murder... |
| Incubus (USA-CA) Fungus Amongus |
| Jinjer Cloud Factory |
| JPEGMAFIA Black Ben Carson |
| JPEGMAFIA EP! |
| Junglepussy Satisfaction Guaranteed |
| Junglepussy Pregnant With Success |
| Kalmah Kalmah |
| Kendrick Lamar Overly Dedicated |
| King Missile Fluting On The Hump |
| Korn The Serenity of Suffering |
| Kublai Khan TX Absolute |
| Lamb of God Sacrament |
| Liquid Tension Experiment Liquid Tension Experiment |
| Little Simz Age 101: Drop 1 |
| Little Simz A Curious Tale Of Trials + Persons |
| Little Simz Drop 6 |
| Machine Girl Gemini |
| Machine Head Burn My Eyes |
| Master Boot Record Personal Computer |
| Mastodon The Hunter |
| Mastodon Hushed and Grim |
| Matt Champion Mika's Laundry |
| mclusky My Pain and Sadness Is More Sad and Painful Than Yours |
| Melt-Banana Teeny Shiny |
| Melt-Banana Bambi's Dilemma |
| Meshuggah Chaosphere |
| Meshuggah Immutable |
| Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine |
| Nine Inch Nails With Teeth |
| Opeth Pale Communion |
| Opeth In Cauda Venenum |
| Pan.Thy.Monium Khaooohs And Kon-Fus-Ion |
| Pantera Far Beyond Driven |
| Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Land of Sleeper |
| Pitchshifter Industrial |
| Portishead Portishead |
| Pusha T DAYTONA |
| Queens of the Stone Age Queens of the Stone Age |
| Queens of the Stone Age Lullabies to Paralyze |
| Queens of the Stone Age In Times New Roman... |
| Quelle Chris Being You Is Great... |
| Quelle Chris Guns |
| Radiohead A Moon Shaped Pool |
| Raekwon Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers By the Way |
| Rihanna ANTI |
| RXKNephew Till I'm Dead |
| Septicflesh Modern Primitive |
| Sepultura The Mediator Between Head and Hands Must Be the Heart |
| Sewerslvt Draining Love Story |
| SikTh The Future In Whose Eyes? |
| SKECH185 He Left Nothing for the Swim Back |
| Slayer Show No Mercy |
| Slice the Cake Odyssey to the West |
| Slipknot Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses |
| Slipknot Iowa |
| Soulfly Dark Ages |
| Strapping Young Lad Strapping Young Lad |
| Strapping Young Lad The New Black |
| Strapping Young Lad Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing |
| Streetlight Manifesto The Hands That Thieve |
| System of a Down Mezmerize |
| Tera Melos Patagonian Rats |
| TesseracT War of Being |
| The Algorithm CRITICAL.ERROR |
| The Algorithm Polymorphic Code |
| The Contortionist Clairvoyant |
| The Contortionist Our Bones |
| The Offspring The Offspring |
| The Roots undun |
| Tkay Maidza Sweet Justice |
| TLC FanMail |
| Tool Opiate |
| Tool 10,000 Days |
| Turnstile Nonstop Feeling |
| Unexpect Fables of the Sleepless Empire |
| I don't see this being better than In a Flesh Aquarium or We, Invaders by any metric. There are great ideas, but the structures are a bit meandering, whereas on previous releases, the spastic quality was never out of place or unfocused, and every song had previously stuck out *almost* too much, but it landed because they were going full avant-garde. What they put more emphasis on with this release is enjoyable - more symphonic - but it also wears itself out before the end. One example is that the violinist on this release sounds fantastic, with some of the best parts of the album, but a lot of their parts also fulfill the same function in different compositions (drawn out melodic passages, regardless of other instrumentation - adds an interesting element harmonically, but the expectable nature of it counters their avant-garde strength). Overall, these bands members have already proven to be powerhouses, and while that isn't lacking on this release, I just don't feel that the tracks are distinguished from each other well enough. I can see why they'd feel dissuaded from touring with straight death metal groups, as they fit a specific in-between for spastic experimental prog metal. Here, they drop the spastic feel but keep the composition moving and it feels like something is missing. Still a great album, I just wish it didn't feel like the swansong of the discography. |
| Veil of Maya The Common Man's Collapse |
| I'd rate the best 5 tracks between 3.7 and 4.3. I'd rate the other 5 tracks between 2.6 and 3.4. Veil of Maya has the capacity to make inspired metal tunes that really get the blood pumping and hit just the right spot so you don't think about whatever formula was utilizing to create it. Then a lot of the stuff on here relies on kind of beginner phrasings / note patterns that doesn't really evoke nearly as strong of a visceral reaction. I wouldn't say anything on here is "bad," but some of these tracks do bore me to the point of never wanting to listen to the full album. But I'll still revisit for tracks like "Crawl Back," "Pillars," or "We Bow In It's Aura." |
| Vein.fm This World Is Going to Ruin You |
| Venetian Snares Doll Doll Doll |
| Whitechapel This Is Exile |
| Windowshopping Andromeda |
| Wu-Tang Clan Wu-Tang Forever |
| 2.5 average |
| A Perfect Circle eMOTIVe |
| A Perfect Circle Eat the Elephant |
| Avenged Sevenfold Waking the Fallen |
| Went back to this album for the first time in over a decade, and I've gotta say... I'm not the biggest fan of nostalgia. The only track I didn't just skip through to remind myself how it goes is the last song; It just doesn't feel like a valuable and engaging use of my time now that I know what music can do. It's like this album is overcome by the mentality that generic metalcore with churchy white boy R n B melodies is unironically epically cool just because they know how to harmonize guitars over basic chord progressions. It's an okay pop metalcore record, but regarding prog, the level of dramatic delivery + the lyricism suggests more teenage "you just can't understand me" emo, and the vast majority of the guitar work doesn't actually make up for it. It just doesn't mesh. I'm bored. |
| Avenged Sevenfold Nightmare |
| Avenged Sevenfold Life Is But a Dream... |
| Behold... The Arctopus Hapeleptic Overtrove |
| Between the Buried and Me Automata I |
| Beyonce Dangerously in Love |
| Beyonce Cowboy Carter |
| Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded |
| Cee Lo Green The Lady Killer |
| Chance the Rapper 10 Day |
| Chance the Rapper Acid Rap |
| Curse of the Golden Vampire Mass Destruction |
| Dance Gavin Dance Dance Gavin Dance |
| Death Grips The Money Store |
| Deftones Ohms |
| Disturbed The Sickness |
| Drake If You're Reading This It's Too Late |
| Dream Theater Falling into Infinity |
| Eminem Kamikaze |
| Eminem Music to Be Murdered By |
| Eminem Music to Be Murdered By: Side B |
| Fear Factory The Industrialist |
| Fousheé sofCORE |
| Franz Ferdinand Franz Ferdinand |
No offense to anyone who enjoys this, but literally every song on here sounds like something
someone already did better at the point this album was released. |
| Incubus (USA-CA) Light Grenades |
| J. Cole Cole World: The Sideline Story |
| Korn Take a Look in the Mirror |
| Korn See You on the Other Side |
| Just listened to this album for the first time (it's 2024). Polarizing, to say the least. There are some surprisingly progressive moments on some tracks, but then other tracks just have absolute radio pop tripe from the worst inclinations of the early-to-mid 2000s. A few moments made me laugh. Nothing deep about this one. I do think the range of sonic tendencies to these styles can be pretty interesting, but then it might get undermined by a bad lyric or melody, but Jonathan Davis still does a great job on a few of these tracks. If I cut out the bad songs, this could be like a 3.3, and if I cut out the good songs, it's like a 1.9. |
| Lil B I'm Thraxx |
| Lil Durk Almost Healed |
| Meshuggah Ejaculation Of Salvation |
| Metallica 72 Seasons |
| Mudvayne Lost and Found |
| Periphery Periphery IV: Hail Stan |
| Periphery Periphery V: Djent is Not a Genre |
| Kinda samey. The parts that aren't samey are random breaks. Song structure is only vaguely relevant. Periphery is one of those bands where I could complain to the point where it sounds like I'm talking shit, but those complaints are inherent in the strengths of their identity, so there isn't any real point in complaining. I'm not going to get subtlety, or tasteful ambience / dynamic interplay, or meaningful / significant song progressions, or any experimentation that doesn't have some level of safety to it already established in its genre, but that's okay, because Periphery has been doing this long enough for me to not have to critically analyze my expectations. Still, not bad. They can djent. They can sort of do pop. It works. It's just a lot of the same. |
| Protest the Hero Scurrilous |
| Radiohead Pablo Honey |
| Rihanna Good Girl Gone Bad |
| Serj Tankian Elect the Dead |
| Siena Liggins Ms. Out Tonight |
| The Glitch Mob Drink the Sea |
| Tool Fear Inoculum |
| Veil of Maya All Things Set Aside |
| Veil of Maya Eclipse |
| Spud Nick. I don't care about this. Do you? Ugh. |
| Veil of Maya Matriarch |
| Veil of Maya False Idol |
| Veil of Maya [m]other |
| Wintersun Warning |
| ZelooperZ Moszel Offline |
