The Prog Rock Album Club

Unknown Soldier · 05-24-2014, 04:41 PM

Are we meant to be using Trollheart's formula thingy or just writing a few lines and a score?

Anteater · 05-24-2014, 05:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

Are we meant to be using Trollheart's formula thingy or just writing a few lines and a score?

We'll be using an abbreviated version of TH's formula, since I don't think its necessary to have as many fields as he uses.

Album Title: Countdown To Extinction
Artist: Megadeth
Nationality: American
Year: 1992
Subgenre: Somewhat proggy thrash metal
Familiarity: Very.

Favourite Track(s): Symphony Of Destruction, Foreclosure Of A Dream
Why? One of the best politically charged metal singles of all time coupled with an unconventional mid-tempo groover makes for a good sequence.

Least Favourite Track(s): None.
Why? N/A

End Impression: Excellent at its best, rock solid at its worst.
Comments: In the wake of albums like Metallica's Black Album from the previous year, Queensryche's Empire and bands like Pantera coming out of the woodwork, the double Daves (Mustaine and Ellefson) needed to put together music that remained true to the sound they had spent the last couple of classic albums pioneering whilst softening up jusssst enough to be palatable enough for the masses in arenas across the country. The results of that tricky compromise at their best, like in the swaggering 'Symphony Of Destruction', 'Architecture Of Aggression' or the proggy 'Ashes In Your Mouth', are what make this album click so well and also why it outsold everything that had come before in mere weeks. Sometimes being at the right place at the right time is all that matters, and progressive metal's viability as a mainstream genre was very, very brief: Megadeth would never click this well again or try to write commercial tunes this technical, but perhaps that was for the best when you consider how meh their output after this one would be.

Rating 4.0

Unknown Soldier · 05-24-2014, 05:08 PM

Ok cool, mine up tomorrow morning European time.

Unknown Soldier · 05-25-2014, 04:59 AM

Album Title: Countdown To Extinction
Artist: Megadeth
Nationality: American
Year: 1992
Subgenre: thrash metal
Familiarity: Very.
Favourite Track(s): Symphony Of Destruction, This Was My Life, Ashes in Your Mouth
Why? SOD one of the signature tunes of the band and so Megadeth. The other two tracks are probably my picks from the rest of the album and flow well with the band's technical playing.
Least Favourite Track(s): Sweating Bullets
Why? Dave at his silliest.
End Impression: One of the band's best albums, but not their best.
Comments: The album that saw Megadeth switch to a commercial thrash band, which largely came in the wake of Metallica's Black Album and was Dave Mustaine's attempt to make the band more accessible than ever, with a range of poppier tunes. I always find it interesting how something as aggressive as thrash ended up going full circle in the end (as far as some bands were concerned) and were putting out something not much more aggressive than say British Steel from around 10 years earlier. As for the album though the tracks are tight and the playing technical as you'd expect and despite a couple of silly 'Dave' moments on the album it's a winner. Saying all this I'd hardly put it in a prog list but then again Anteater sees things or hears things in music the rest of us don't

Rating 4.0

Anteater · 05-25-2014, 09:33 AM

^ Nah, it definitely belongs in a prog list, although its not prog in the 70's sense. Its the technicality of the riffs, the nuances on some of the individual songs and the overall theme of the record that qualifies it.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to everyone else's thoughts on Countdown To Extinction, but seeing as its Sunday, I'll go ahead and announce next album in case people wanted a different album to jump into for the club. Using a random number generator I ended up landing on number 70, which is-

Advent - Cantus Firmus (2006)

This one is definitely more in the 70's prog-rock vein, and a long time favorite of mine. Think classic Gentle Giant mixed with a 90's neo-prog ambient aesthetic, sprinkled with some Trepass-era Genesis pastorality for kicks. This mixture results in a unique atmosphere, and it definitely sounds like the missing "epic" styled album that the Shulman brothers never did in their heyday.

After this album, we'll go back to the methodology where we take turns week-by-week in bringing several albums to the table that people have the option to review, and we'll stick to the abbreviated version of Trollheart's review matrix US and I used above for these future reviews as well.

On another note, I'd love people to think up new things we could be doing with this club to make it more engaging and bring in more contributing core members, so feel free to offer your suggestions between all the album reviewing.

Besides YouTube, I'm pretty sure Cantus Firmus is streamable/downloadable in all kinds of places. You can also stream and/or buy the album from their official BandCamp page here: http://advent-prog.bandcamp.com/album/cantus-firmus

Xurtio · 06-02-2014, 01:02 PM

Album Title: Cantus Firmus
Artist: Advent
Nationality: American
Year: 2006
Subgenre: Uber-Prog
Familiarity: None
Favourite Track(s): "Remembering when"
Why? Nice dissonant harmonies in the acoustic guitar with pleasant pentatonic structures in the electric lead guitar and good variety, yet continuity between progressions.
Least Favourite Track(s): "Alison Waits"
Why? Vocals ruin it
End Impression: A lot of it seemed kind of like generic prog, like every other prog album I've heard, especially the flutes and the staccato strings, like in Ramblin Sailor, but the vocals are very plain in timbre and the vocal style is annoying. I hear the style in a lot of prog and it's one of the things that limits my prog appreciation.
Comments: Remembering when was surprisingly good compared to the rest of the album. Not just because of the lack of vocals, but the use of harmony and melody was really quite unique, whereas the rest of the album had a lot of that folky stuff that I really only let Jethro Tull get away with I guess. Maybe that's unfair, but I heard Jethro first!
Rating: 3.5

Anteater · 06-02-2014, 05:16 PM

Good reviews all around everyone! Now, let's try something fun: lets create an order of people who will choose each week's albums like the club worked originally. Based on the current club's participants, here's my suggested order for who can suggest each week's potential albums to review:

1. Unknown Soldier
2. Moss
3. Carpe Mortem
4. Xurtio
5. Anteater

Basically, when its your turn you need to pick 1-3 possible prog/prog-related albums you'd like to give the rest of the club (and guest reviewers) an opportunity to post reviews over for the following week.

As far as review format goes, we can stick to my abbreviated version of Trollheart's post format or you could just write a few paragraphs worth of impressions and slap a number rating at the end.

...or we can stick with me randomly picking albums off my list if you guys would rather just review what pops up every week instead of bringing choices to the table yourselves. I'm fine with that too since my list is 200+ albums long, lol!

What do you guys think?

Xurtio · 05-25-2014, 12:27 PM

Album Title: Countdown To Extinction
Artist: Megadeth
Nationality: American
Year: 1992
Subgenre: Melodic thrash
Familiarity: I was part of the juvenile "megadeth > metallic" mentality in my larvae metal stage.
Favourite Track(s): Foreclosure of a Dream, Captive Honour
Why? simply because they stand out from other Megadeth songs (that all tend to sound the same)
Least Favourite Track(s): Skin O' My Teeth
Why? While I agree that Sweating Bullets is silly, it's still interesting in that way, and Skin O' My Teeth isn't bad, it just doesn't stand out in anyway.
End Impression: Overall, a good album, very consistent musical atmosphere and theme conceptually.
Comments: I can see how you might call Megadeth proggish. While the theme, attitude, and timbre of the vocals and the guitars is all very thrash, there is a lot of iconic melodic structure and evolving progressions in many Megadeth songs, which are the primary characteristics of prog. So the imagery, the wrapper... it's thrash. But the underlying music theory is all very proggish.

Anyway, this review exposed me to a couple songs that I haden't heard (or at least not recognized) as I've never really listened to Megadeth "by the album". I just kind of mass downloaded random Megadeth songs off of Kazaa at one point in my youth. So it's good to hear stuff that was outside of that P2P aggregate.
Rating: 4.0

06-02-2014, 01:02 PM	#6 (permalink)
Xurtio Brain Licker Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 1,083	Album Title: Cantus Firmus Artist: Advent Nationality: American Year: 2006 Subgenre: Uber-Prog Familiarity: None Favourite Track(s): "Remembering when" Why? Nice dissonant harmonies in the acoustic guitar with pleasant pentatonic structures in the electric lead guitar and good variety, yet continuity between progressions. Least Favourite Track(s): "Alison Waits" Why? Vocals ruin it End Impression: A lot of it seemed kind of like generic prog, like every other prog album I've heard, especially the flutes and the staccato strings, like in Ramblin Sailor, but the vocals are very plain in timbre and the vocal style is annoying. I hear the style in a lot of prog and it's one of the things that limits my prog appreciation. Comments: Remembering when was surprisingly good compared to the rest of the album. Not just because of the lack of vocals, but the use of harmony and melody was really quite unique, whereas the rest of the album had a lot of that folky stuff that I really only let Jethro Tull get away with I guess. Maybe that's unfair, but I heard Jethro first! Rating: 3.5 __________________ H̓̇̅̉yͤ͏mͬ͂ͧn͑̽̽̌ͪ̑͐͟o̴͊̈́͑̇m͛͌̓ͦ̑aͫ̽ͤ̇n̅̎͐̒ͫ͐c̆ͯͫ̋ ̔̃́eͯ͒rͬͬ̄҉ Last edited by Xurtio; 06-02-2014 at 08:21 PM.

05-25-2014, 12:27 PM	#8 (permalink)
Xurtio Brain Licker Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 1,083	Album Title: Countdown To Extinction Artist: Megadeth Nationality: American Year: 1992 Subgenre: Melodic thrash Familiarity: I was part of the juvenile "megadeth > metallic" mentality in my larvae metal stage. Favourite Track(s): Foreclosure of a Dream, Captive Honour Why? simply because they stand out from other Megadeth songs (that all tend to sound the same) Least Favourite Track(s): Skin O' My Teeth Why? While I agree that Sweating Bullets is silly, it's still interesting in that way, and Skin O' My Teeth isn't bad, it just doesn't stand out in anyway. End Impression: Overall, a good album, very consistent musical atmosphere and theme conceptually. Comments: I can see how you might call Megadeth proggish. While the theme, attitude, and timbre of the vocals and the guitars is all very thrash, there is a lot of iconic melodic structure and evolving progressions in many Megadeth songs, which are the primary characteristics of prog. So the imagery, the wrapper... it's thrash. But the underlying music theory is all very proggish. Anyway, this review exposed me to a couple songs that I haden't heard (or at least not recognized) as I've never really listened to Megadeth "by the album". I just kind of mass downloaded random Megadeth songs off of Kazaa at one point in my youth. So it's good to hear stuff that was outside of that P2P aggregate. Rating: 4.0 __________________ H̓̇̅̉yͤ͏mͬ͂ͧn͑̽̽̌ͪ̑͐͟o̴͊̈́͑̇m͛͌̓ͦ̑aͫ̽ͤ̇n̅̎͐̒ͫ͐c̆ͯͫ̋ ̔̃́eͯ͒rͬͬ̄҉