Ah, Magma, the final boss of 70s prog. I didn't get it at all when I first heard them, but as a lover of fantastical stories and especially concept albums, I kept coming back to them, reading all the lore and such. I can enjoy their music when I'm in the mood to just lose myself in their chaotic world, but it's a very occasional thing for me.

I don't think Magma are THAT inaccessible, their songs are about the groove more than anything, they are similar to Krautrock bands like Can and Neu! in that sense, only they are much more technically proficient and the grooves are a lot more complex, but they're not flashy in the way bands like Yes and ELP are.

The final boss of prog would be Univers Zéro, that's the music you play to summon Cthulhu.

Fair enough. I suppose they're not especially inaccessible in the sense of being particularly noisy or dissonant, but it's more like they use familiar prog rock musical elements in such different ways that it feels really alien. You're absolutely right in that a lot of the RIO stuff is much more inaccessible. Magma is like the last boss on disc one, avant garde prog is on disc 2, haha.

Album 923

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Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters
Year: 2007

WitTR is a warm cozy blanket that through coincidence (Pitchfork) became a lot of people's first foray into Black Metal with the excellent Diadem of 12 Stars. Two hunters is more mature and even more accessible, even if only because they achieve more in less time. This is a great album to just chill to, it features the beautiful dense soundscapes one can expect from atmospheric black metal, without ever becoming overwhelming. The album always stays on the less extreme side and sometimes that's exactly what you want.

3 Choice Tracks: There's four

Comus, thanks for the rec :) will check them out

Kinda cool concept here. Earlier bosses could be Frank Zappa or Peter Gabriel dressed as a flower or wielding a lawnmower. Gentle Giant wielding their myriad of instruments. Keith Emerson with his knives and organ. Samla Mammas Manna scuttling around and doing squeaky voices?

The normal enemies are just Canterbury bands. And The Mars Volta could be a recurring miniboss that varies wildly in strength to reflect the different styles and accessibility they came out with.

Album 922

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Max Romeo & The Upsetters - War ina Babylon
Year: 1976

Roots Reggae doesn't get enough love in general, War ina Babylon is a perfect introduction to the person who has only ever heard of Bob Marley. Extremely accessible yet very overlooked like most reggae in general, this album should have been in the original list. Definitely stronger in the first half but the whole effort is worth giving a listen. What makes this, and roots reggae in general, so interesting to me is that it voices the grievances of the African Diaspora of the time. Music that puts voice to the feelings of a generation will always hit stronger.

3 Choice Tracks: Uptown Babies, Chase the Devil, Stealing in The Name of Jah (Stealin')

Excellent album. Not my first Black Metal at all but definitely my first introduction to WITTR. Have you heard When Bitter Spring Sleeps?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlhaxemCvwY

Now that's obscure, the name rung a bell since they have done something with Panopticon, but i never listened to that album or anything else by them. Popped them in my queue.

Album 921

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Outer Limits - Misty Moon
Year: 1985


The 80's were a dark time for progressive rock, especially compared to how much great work came out in the 70's. Outer Limits beautiful symphonic effort Misty Moon seems to have been forgotten by almost everybody, undeservedly so. This album is a joy to listen to an evokes a feeling of nostalgia that I can't quite place, a yearning to put on something old and familiar. I'm not going to claim that Outer Limits go somewhere new and explore the unknown here, but what they are doing is keeping prog rock alive and interesting smack bang in the middle of the darkest decade (for prog). The vocals are a bit of a miss, but definitely not as bad as you could expect from a Japanese band singing mostly in English. What makes this truly shine however is the excellent Violin. Revisiting this album for this list has had me putting it on again and again, it's a special album, please give it a few whirls.

3 Choice Tracks: Misty Moon, Saturated Solution, Subete wa Kaze no Yōni