My discoveries per year - Music Diaries - Forums : Best Ever Albums

dihansse · 2016-04-10T12:28:28-04:00

Well! Here I would like to start with my own long term project taking advantage of the best BEA has to offer: overall charts from people who are as interested in music as I am. I already have year charts which are based on the albums I already own or know, but there are a lot of them which I haven't listened to yet and which might be worth discovering. I'd like to do this by going through the overall BEA top lists per year starting in 1963 which is both my year of birth and the year in which I personally think rock music started to become interesting. To keep it a bit varied I will skip through the years in five year periods, ie starting in 1963 then 1968 then 1973 all the way to 2013 and then back to 1964 and so on. Every year I will start with some stats of my personal chart in comparison to the overall year charts, both top 20 an top 50 and will start to listen to at least the top 20 albums I don't know and I'll hope to give some comments sometimes very short, sometimes a bit longer. I will also update my personal year charts accordingly. In principle I will use Apple Music to listen to the albums, which I suppose will cover most of the field. If a certain album isn't present in Apple Music, I'll have to skip it. I will try to listen to all the albums at least once and sometimes twice if I doubt, but I'll skip the really stupid ones (ex a Xmas compilation in 1963) and also other compilations, classical music, jazz and easy listening. This will be a long term project which means there might be times in which I will stop a bit of course because I don't want be stuck listining to albums of the same year all the time. However I suppose this will take at least a month per year. I will try to keep it up but please don't be mad if I give up (maybe already after the first year :lol: )

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And two of my two favorite metal bands released a great album in 2000:

First an album I already own:

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Brave New World by Iron Maiden
After a few bad albums this was a fantastic comeback:
- Bruce Dickinson is back and his voice is in great form
- the triple guitar attack is sounding awesome
- the songs are as epic as they used to be and this is about the only metal artist where the lyrics are of real interest
- resulting in the three best tracks in the title song, Ghost Of The Navigator and Blood Brothers
- the rest is also good Iron Maiden stuff.
and the rank of the album increases from 7 to 2.

And another Motörhead album:

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We Are Motorhead by Motörhead
With only one weak track, Slow Dance, which is full of clichés, this is again a fine one with especially Out To Lunch and their fantastic version of God Save The Queen. Also the slow One More Fucking Time is extraordinary. And immediately enters my year chart at the 4th rank.

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These are the 2001 albums I listened to :

An album I already own:

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Toxicity by System Of A Down
One of the only bands once characterized as nu-metal I actually like. In general this music is not what I would normally listen to but somehow the combination of the very versatile voice and the weird music hits a chord and of course Chop Suey! and the title track are good fun. I don't like everything here but nevertheless the rank of the album rises from 37 to 25.

An album on my wishlist:

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Killing Ground by Saxon
I very much like their version of Court Of The Crimson King here but that's about all: this is fairly boring and cliché hardrock.

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An album I already own of 2002:

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Songs For The Deaf by Queens Of The Stone Age
And why not take this masterpiece and certainly their best with absolute winners No One Knows and Go With The Flow. But there's so much more here. Certainly the best album of the year and one of those hard classics everybody needs to hear.

And an album on my wishlist:

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Remission by Mastodon
I like the band but I'm not a very big fan of them. But you can't deny they developed a sound of their own. But this is certainly not the case on this first album of theirs with a combination of trash and stoner rock but in my opinion not very original and with 4 tracks over 6 minutes also much too long. Not a bad album but overall there are no positive outliers which would make me want to include this album in my year chart.

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And here is 2003 already:

An album I own:

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St. Anger by Metallica
The drums sound terrible, the production is horrible, the albums lacks the good guitar solos Metallica is good at and the songs are overly long and repetitive. But if you saw the rockumentary Some Kind Of Monster you know where they came from. Or you think this album just breathes anger and angst or you think this is just the product if some semi-juvenile ranting. I'm still not sure. The first two tracks are ok but the rest is just what I stated in the beginning. But hey, it's still Metallica and there is definitely some Metallica quality here but further than the 46th rank of the year they don't get.

An album on my wishlist:

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Waking The Fallen by Avenged Sevenfold
While I liked the two follow-up albums of this one, there is only one word coming to mind to Waking The Fallen: nu-metal; I can't help comparing it to the worst of that already bad genre.

Jameth Profile

dihansse wrote:

An album I already own of 2002:

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Songs For The Deaf by Queens Of The Stone Age
And why not take this masterpiece and certainly their best with absolute winners No One Knows and Go With The Flow. But there's so much more here. Certainly the best album of the year and one of those hard classics everybody needs to hear.

I just listened to this the other day. You could call it semi-juvenile (to borrow from you) as, at times, it gives off this early 2000’s Cali skate park vibe that I could live without. But, it’s still a nostalgic listen. “The Sky is Fallin’” has probably been my favorite for years, but every time I hear “Hangin’ Tree”, I swear that schizophrenic hook in the chorus grows larger and larger to the point that the song feels like it’s beaming to me from all corners of the universe. It’s my new favorite.

Anyway, I guess I’m speaking of the “so much more”.
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Jameth wrote:

dihansse wrote:

An album I already own of 2002:

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Songs For The Deaf by Queens Of The Stone Age
And why not take this masterpiece and certainly their best with absolute winners No One Knows and Go With The Flow. But there's so much more here. Certainly the best album of the year and one of those hard classics everybody needs to hear.

I just listened to this the other day. You could call it semi-juvenile (to borrow from you) as, at times, it gives off this early 2000’s Cali skate park vibe that I could live without. But, it’s still a nostalgic listen. “The Sky is Fallin’” has probably been my favorite for years, but every time I hear “Hangin’ Tree”, I swear that schizophrenic hook in the chorus grows larger and larger to the point that the song feels like it’s beaming to me from all corners of the universe. It’s my new favorite.

Anyway, I guess I’m speaking of the “so much more”.

My semi-juvenile comment was certainly not for this album because this is also one of my favorites ever. Hangin' Tree is indeed also a highlight amongst the many other highlights of this classic I never get tired of.

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These are the hard albums of 2004 I listened to.

First an album I already own:

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Contraband by Velvet Revolver
This indeed feels a bit like a Guns 'n Roses album without Axl Rose as the singer but with Scott Weiland, ex-Stone Temple Pilots. And it's in fact the power ballad which sound most like GnR just because of the very expressive guitar playing by Slash her especially on the highlight Fall To Pieces but also on Loving The Alien and You Got No Right. There's many weak spots but nevertheless this album rises from the 59th to the 36th rank of the year.

And then two album on my wishlist:

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Tempo Of The Damned by Exodus (US)
I hadn't listened to Exodus yet but man this is one hell of a trash metal album. The lyrics are a bit dumb but all of that is made good by the great voice of Steve Souza, the continuing stampeding rhythm and the excellent twin guitar attack with matching solos. Especially the first two tracks are killers with Scar Spangled Banner and War Is My Shepherd. As this was a return of their heydays in earlier days, this album certainly makes me want to listen to their 1985 Bonded by Blood. So it really deserves its 12th rank of the year.

And of course:

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Inferno by Motörhead
What can I say: another excellent album by this band which is again in very good form and even churns out some very good guitar solos. 17th rank of 2004.

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My two hard choices for 2005 are:

an album I already own:

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Rosenrot by Rammstein
This album has a lot more variety than other Rammstein albums which is not a bad thing because their albums have generally a big tendency to contain tracks that all sound the same. So even the songs that are a bit different like the title track are still ok. Not my favorite band in the world but this album still rises from the 59th to the 45th rank.

an album on my wishlist and why not take another Exodus album:

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Shovel Headed Kill Machine by Exodus (US)
Because there's only one year between the two, this album is often mentioned together with and compared to Tempo Of The Damned and except it has a different singer there is not so much different between the two: I like them them both very much. But there is one other very important difference: this one doesn't have Scar Spangled Banner and War Is My Shepherd and therefore is a bit less good than the former one. Nevertheless it's good for the 15th rank.

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Two classic metal albums for 2006 (in both senses).

An album I already own:

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A Matter Of Life And Death by Iron Maiden
Of their post-2000 albums with Bruce Dickinson back in his role as singer, this is their best album: apart from the opener Different World which is shorter and harder edged but also a great track, this it mainly contains the epics (on the level of the lyrics, the quality of the songs themselves and the guitar solos) for which they are known and in which they have no competition: sometimes they are near misses like Lord Of Light or The Legacy but in most cases they are very good like on These Colours Don't Run, Brighter Than A Thousand Suns and The Longest Day; and in my opinion it even contains a classic in the sense of their older albums with For The Greater Good Of Good. This album grows from the 4th to the 2nd rank.

An album on my wishlist:

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Kiss Of Death by Motörhead
Not their best but still better than most of the competition and especially the semi-ballad God Was Never On Your Side sounds very accomplished. The album lands at the 18th rank of the year.

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The comes 2007:

An album I already own:

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Libertad by Velvet Revolver
Like that other VR album: they are at their best when Slash shines (try to pronounce this 😁 ). So a fairly uneven album but nevertheless it moves up from the 47th to the 28th rank in my year chart.

Two albums on my wishlist:

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Rock The Rebel/Metal The Devil by Volbeat
Not really my thing

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The Inner Sanctum by Saxon
One of their best albums of latter years because they do rock here and even the lyrics are a bit beyond what they produced so far. A few tracks are a bit more epic and longer but also those are well done so no complaints from my part and they earn to arrive at the 17th rank of the year.