Your Top Three Albums

[mediate]

Epica : The Phantom Agony
Great album, Mix of metal with a classical feel, one of those you will like from listening from one track (for me at least)

Nightwish : Dark Passion Play
There newest album, new lead singer. SOUNDS AMAZING! Sad to see the former lead female vocalist go, but
the transition is nearly seamless. Great stuff. If you havent heard of them, please look them up as well.

Agree fully. Epica and Nightwish are both awesome. Those are my bottom 2. My top album is Sonata Arctica - Silence. The album is just perfect in every way possible. After comes Nightwish - Dark Passion Play, then Epica - The Phantom Agony.

Another great nightwish albul to listen to is End of an Era (it's a live album + DVD). Their only DVD album, the last concert with Tarja as the singer. Awesome concert, I want to be part to be part of that crowd.

[origami_alligator]

Sung Tongs - Animal Collective
Alone or with friends, going extremely fast or extremely slow, night or day, up or down, this album to me is everything. It is almost perfection, if there is such a thing. The ambience of the acoustic guitars and the way each note and chord is played provides the trickle or stream of water that contrasts wonderfully with the vocals that often evoke a humid summer day. This is very earthy and the most "natural" sound that I believe Animal Collective has developed. This is perhaps why it is so appealing and why it feels appropriate to listen to it while taking a walk during sunset on a warm evening.

---


Funeral - The Arcade Fire
This album can give you chills. It can make you feel haunted by something both scary and extremely interesting. It's full of power yet leaves you feeling helpless. Awesome and provocative, it's hard to describe why everything in this album fits together, but upon listening it needs no explanation.

---


The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw - Pelican
Pelican's The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw is an album that teeters between hardcore instrumental rock and soft ambient melodies. With every song being over 5 or 6 minutes in length it allows the band to fully discover the hidden progressions that would have been left out in shorter versions of the tracks and thus removed the full effect of the feelings and ideas behind this album; this feeling of isolation on a glacier, of being lost in the forest during a blizzard, of finding one's self as well as finding others. The full effect isn't necessarily the only thing that comes out of listening to this album. The track Autumn Into Summer is extremely uplifting and inspires confidence; Track 4 on the other hand invokes quiet contemplation. There is nothing here that isn't as it should be and each song creates an unnatural curiosity and need for discovery.

[SlappyMcGee]

[Adoniseppi]

I don't know, exactly, but three of my favorites are...

Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet

Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction

Queen - A Night at the Opera

These are three of my favorite bands from my favorite era of music (with several of my favorite songs, no less), so it shouldn't be too hard to see why I chose them.

I would have said American Idiot by Green Day, but I could only pick three. :(

[Tanner]

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
Someone on the forums (I forget who) recently said that a group of people that didn't include myself made up the N Community Aeroplane fanbase. I chuckled.


Rossz Csillag Alatt Született by Venetian Snares


Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
... and so we have this. You have it in your secret windows and you're understanding to understand it and to bring it forth. It takes minute detail, it takes a holy life, it takes emotions, it takes dedication, it takes dedication, it takes a death and only God can allow it and you couldn't do it if you're not the seed of God.

[SlappyMcGee]

You never talk about yourself.

[a happy song]

You never talk about yourself.

And you talk TOO much. TOO MUCH SHUT UP ALL OVER THE PLACE.

(Pinkerton should have been on my list).

[Vyacheslav]

I'm changing mine. One of them stays.


Blackwater Park - Opeth


Nevermind the Bollocks, Here Come the Sex Pistols - Sex Pistols


Antichrist Superstar - Marilyn Manson

[sheganican]

I dont pay much mind to albums, so i'll just list a few that i know of and think highly of.



Hair Original Soundtrack Recording
You'd have to see the movie. Breathtaking hippie madness. A spectacular find, for which i have my mom to thank.



Arcade Fire - Funeral
See Southpaw's post.



The Beatles - Rubber Soul
I've been a Beatles lover for as long as i can remember. In my 15 years there hasnt been a single group or artist able to surpass them in my mind (although Queen has come close). It wasnt easy to decide which of their albums was my favorite, but i eventually went with Rubber Soul. That harpsicord solo in "In My Life" gets me every time.



Eagles - Greatest Hits
I grew up with this music. I would listen to the soothing melodies for hours in the morning when i woke up. Desperado remains one of my favorite songs to this day.



The Mamas and The Papas
Classic soul music from the 60's. You cant not love it.

[mintnut]

Alphabetical Order:


Belle and Sebastian; If You're Feeling Sinister
This album translates standard teenage emotions into something beautiful and eclectic and happy. Too much of the time you'll find yourself destroying your self esteem over the smallest failures, and you just need an album to pick you up, even when the subject matter seems bleak.


Neutral Milk Hotel; In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
If nothing makes you cry this will. I'm a sucker for the kind of feeling this album embodies. It inherits a place in my mind that is timeless and classic and which is both rose tinted and blackened by time. It eats away at the back of your mind and lodges itself in like a cottage on a hillside on a bright winter's morn.


Radiohead; OK Computer
I have plenty of doubts over Radiohead, which I can never seem to remember when they're actually in my ears. OK Computer has got a wonderful instrumentation that sounds just fantastic through a decent pair of headphones and resonates like the beating of the collective ravaged heart of the empty souls of all the adults-too-soon. At least, I think it does.


Sufjan Stevens; Illinoise
Orchestration is beautiful in small doses, before becoming far too grandiose, but when you tie it in with folk leanings in the kind of magical ways Sufjan does, then I could listen to it all day long, and have done. It's an addictive album, with far too many highlights.

---
None of what I've written has done any of these albums justice, and, yeah, there's four, not three. Which I'll put down to me being silly, however, I could have picked far more.

[Borealis]

Megadeth - Rust in Peace
Quite simply, it's the quintessential thrash metal album, and the album that got me interested in music.


Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F♯A♯∞
Whilst more praise is generally given to "Lift Your....", I feel that this album's starker and more simplistic musical arrangements give it the edge.


Ulver - Bergtatt - Et eeventyr i 5 capitler
It was exceedingly difficult to pick any Ulver album for me, but this was their first I heard, mixing thrashing, abrasive riffs, haunting vocals and atmospheric folk influences, and it's damn beautiful. This is for all those who say that black metal is ugly.

[Vyacheslav]

Shoot, I should've mentioned Rust in Peace. Peace Sells is also a legendary album by Megadeth.

[SlappyMcGee]

Rust in Peace has over a thousand times more plays for me than Peace Sells. I think that other than the title track, it's a weak album.

[otters~1]

Rubber Soul -- The Beatles

Moondance -- Van Morrison

The Sounds of Silence -- Simon & Garfunkel


eganic: I was really amused by your choice of the soundtrack from Hair.

[yahoozy]

Boredoms - Super Ae
Tanner hurt my feelings by not liking this album.



Boris - Boris at Last - Feedbacker
An album with all the capacity and power of Absolutego, only with masterful musicianship and beauty. Part II is my most listened song ever.



Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Yanqui U.X.O.
I was a staunch believer in the dominance of Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven over every other album. Ironically, it's beat it out by an album by the same musicians. Though Lift Yr. Skinny Fists is an artful masterpiece, and probably the most beautiful piece of music in my library, Yanqui just feels bigger. If "Rockets" had a human form, it could crush the earth by plopping its massive, throbbing appendage onto it.

[Studebacher Hoch]

Yahoozy <3 Not that I'll ever admit willingly that I like GY!BE, but gotta give it up for Japanoise.



Every Red Heart Shines Towards the Red Sun by Red Sparowes
"The Great Leap Forward Poured Down On Us One Day Like a Mighty Suddenly and Furiously Blinding Our Senses"... and that's just track one.



Lincoln by They Might be Giants
Forget Flood.



Grinderman by Grinderman
Best Nick Cave side project? I happen to think so. Plus, all the songs are about not getting any, which I find relatable.

[origami_alligator]

Yahoozy <3 Not that I'll ever admit willingly that I like GY!BE, but gotta give it up for Japanoise.



Every Red Heart Shines Towards the Red Sun by Red Sparowes
"The Great Leap Forward Poured Down On Us One Day Like a Mighty Suddenly and Furiously Blinding Our Senses"... and that's just track one.

"Annihilate The Sparrow, That Stealer Of Seed, And Our Harvests Will Be Around; We Will Watch Our Wealth Flood In"

<3 that album. At The Soundless Dawn is also wonderful.

[SkyPanda]

Rise Against- Siren Song of the Counter Culture


Rise Against- The Sufferer and the Witness


Snow Patrol- Songs for Polar Bears

[andalus]

Rise against fan eh? Cool..

My music taste is really awkward. I would say my own music, obviously, but I don't have an album.

Anyway:

The Ultimate Collection - The Who

This is really a wonderful collection. Contains some brilliant songs and I just can't get enough of it. If you like The Who, get it. Get it now.

Accelerate - Rapid. Eye. Movement.

I love this. It's just great. Listen to it and I swear you'll love it.

Stanley Road - Paul Weller

An oddball really, I don't like Paul Weller much. Don't like the sound of his voice. But this is a wonderful album.

[SkyPanda]

Rise against fan eh?

Yes yes yes yes :P

[otters~1]

<3 Godspeed, Yahoozy.

[McP]

Well id say i have 2 really generic picks in my top 10, Radiohead-OK Computer and Neutral Milk Hotel-In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, but id also name drop these 5 for funz

Converge-Jane Doe
Metalcore
-Absolutely heartpounding, gutwrenching, face smashing brutality and beauty is mixed into this extremely well forumlated album. The emotion seeps through the album and cascades above and beyond what the metalcore scene was ever supposed to accomplish. If the Metalcore scene is dead, this was its life's greatest moment.
Jacob Bannon is mad as hell, and he's not gonna take it anymore.



Have A Nice Life-Deathconciousness
Shoegaze
-This is probably the single most pretentious album ever created. From the wide array of depressing mood and genre changes, to the depressingly melodramatic lyrics, and overtly simplistic compositions, this album is the perfect metaphor for life and death.



Circle Takes The Square-As The Roots Undo
Screamo
-"Hide the petals beneath the bedroom floorboard,
and they will wither without fail or success.
Put the people in the hollow box they crafted,
bolt the doors and watch them perish."



maudlin of the Well-Bath
Avant-Garde/Progressive Death Metal
-Toby Driver is man among children and let it be known. This album's sound is so progressive and powerful, yet still being emotionally enthralling. Ranging from traditional death metal, to jazz rock, to epic organ pieces, and finally ending with one of the single greatest acoustic ballads ever written, this album has it all.



Nick Drake-Pink Moon
Folk
-To sum this up, Nick Drake was being a better Elliott Smith than the '03 suicidal ever could be. With serene songwriting, genuine lyrics, and a mood matched only by few, this 1972 album is the greatest thing recorded before 1990. It is all the more chilling that the man killed himself a year after this album was released. He never got the fame and stardom he deserved while alive.

[a happy song]

Have A Nice Life are epic. I'll have to check the other bands on your list.

[McP]

Dan Barrett from Have A Nice Life is so pretentious. I bought the album on vinyl a month ago online, and when i got it in the mail, i also got a 75 page booklet on Antiochean history and how it relates to the album, written by an anonymous profressor of Religious History at University of Massachusetts, Amherst

[a happy song]

Also Pink Moon is my favourite solo album of all time, closely followed by Elliot Smith's self titled.