Originally Posted by Sansa Stark I'm down with Jesus, in that case.

Originally Posted by Sansa Stark I'm down with Jesus, in that case.

(#4 on the Alfred Top 25)

Pink Floyd "The Dark Side Of The Moon"


Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon is a generic choice on any critic's list of the greatest albums of all time. But unlike other painfully boring albums (Sgt. Pepper, I'm looking at you), there is a very good reason why this is such a popular selection.

I didn't realize how great of an album this was until I sat in the car one day with my portable CD player, staring out the window, so focused on the music. It dawned on me how wonderful this album is. Never in the history of music has an album been so perfectly laid out and produced. This album demands to be listened to, from beginning to end with all of your attention directed at the strange, pleasing sounds flowing through your ears. Otherwise you simply won't understand its greatness.

The album plays out like a movie, with the mood changing as the album progresses, and even an intermission. The first four tracks of the album warm you up to a (almost) cheery sound. Money acts as an intermission in that it doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the tracks. It's a straight-up classic rock number with a great guitar solo to boot. From there, a gloomier, grander Pink Floyd play out, and the race to the end of the album begins. Us and Them is dreamy, almost heavenly, and as I review this, I want to fall asleep in its magical musical... okay I'm getting off track here. The point is, it's truly a wonderful listening experience.

But the greatest part of the package is its gripping, accelerating ending. The joint songs Brain Damage and Eclipse are beautiful, melodic, sick, and dark all at the same time. Just as a final dramatic, maybe even action-packed scene in a movie should be executed, The Dark Side Of The Moon holds your attention up until it's last note.

I am a very big fan of Pink Floyd, and having heard many of their albums, it is easy to see why Dark Side Of The Moon stands out as their best. The other albums are all great in their own ways, but Dark Side Of The Moon was Pink Floyd getting everything right. It was the album they were destined to make, and they nailed everything. The production is timeless, the mood shifts, the instruments are layered just as you should expect from Pink Floyd. This is a masterpiece in every sense of the word, and any self-respecting fan of music must hear this album. Thank you Mr. Waters, Mr. Mason, Mr. Gilmour, and Mr. Wright. You have created a timeless work of art. A true staple of the medium.

95%
Masterpiece

With Maylene III, the band breaks out of the shell that they were once confined in. With Dallas Taylor and Roman Havaland being the only original members, you could say that this is a reinvention. As well as Maylene's traditional southern metal, we hear a nice melodic, radio-friendly track called Listen Close, the long-awaited use of banjo and non-gruff vocals from Dallas Taylor on Step Up (I'm On It), and a new lead vocalist on Oh Lonely Grave. Little changes like this help make III special, and not just a repeat of II. But it's not as if the more traditional Southern Metal songs are just standard Maylene. I mean, they are, but instead of just being scattered, breakdown laden scream-fests, there's hooks galore. The riffs have their own style here, and all songs are memorable. Add that to the fact that all the tracks are perfectly laid out, and you have an album that manages to be good as a whole and on a track-by-track basis.

Originally Posted by Janszoon What? No. No. No. No no no.

(#1 on the Alfred Top 25)

At The Drive-In "Relationship Of Command*"

*Fearless Records re-release

The Mars Volta are a stunning musical group, and sometimes (most often during the cacophonous ending of "Goliath") I sit back and dream of how awesome it would be if they made a hardcore album. And then I slap myself and remember that they already did that... sort of. What every Mars Volta fan knows is that before our afro-bearing friends Cedric and Omar formed The Mars Volta, they played in the post-hardcore group At The Drive-In, and in 2000, they made the finest album of their careers. Relationship Of Command.

Relationship Of Command embodies every aspect of At The Drive-In's career in one solid, professional, cohesive record. Where their early releases lacked the heaviness and emotion that the band needed to achieve greatness, and In/Casino/Out was missing much of the band's hardcore roots, At The Drive-In perfected their imperfections with this one final album. From its aggressive opening track Arcarsenal to the emotionally-driven, In/Casino/Out-esque Invalid Litter Dept. to its blistering finale Catacombs, Relationship Of Command is a gripping, artistic, thirteen-track long epic. Boasting metaphoric lyrics, unconventional guitar, yet still keeping its punk rock attitude, you won't hear anything else like it.

Some of the best songs on the album are... well... all of them. Every song is noteworthy and great in its own respect. All of them seem to capture imagery through the lyrics as well as the instrumentation. For example, Quarantined paints a picture of a dark, war-torn futuristic city through its depressing, possibly political lyrics, Cedric's emotional vocal performance, and the thick, gloomy instrumentation. Arcarsenal reminds me of a man running through a jungle with its urgent, almost tribal-sounding drumming, rapid pace, and Cedric's near-screaming.

Relationship Of Command was an important album for me. It was one of the first albums which I listened to the entire way through and one of the first albums I fell in love with. It was an important album that directed me away from the pop-rock and scene kid music that I was ignorantly playing all day long. I still love it to this day, and it is probably still my favorite album of all time.

It should be your favorite album too.

100%
Perfect