The 500 Best Prog Albums - Ever!

[Toy Revolver]

your write ups are great but in this case i think you're low balling it - it's a full five star classic in my book

to each his own but dang - still great work - fantastic journal

[Trollheart]

You know, I really wanted to like it. And I do. I just... don't love it, you know? For me, it's not a 2112 or a Hemispheres or A Farewell to Kings or a Caress of Steel. That could have to do with it being the first time I've heard it, and I took into account the three songs I knew, but of those I did not know, I just wasn't that impressed. I imagine with repeated listens, again, it would click, but time is a-wastin' and I ain't gettin' no younger. Ten down, four hundred and ninety to go, and that's without all the other many projects I got in the fire. Sometime maybe I'll give it the few listens it probably deserves, but here on this thread ya only get one chance to impress.

[Toy Revolver]

2112 or a Hemispheres or A Farewell to Kings or a Caress of Steel

i think the best album side they ever made was side a of 2112 (i mentioned how great it is, already) and Steel is probably their most underrated

i think you might've been a little put off by the super glossy production of Pictures but the immaculate production is part of its profundity

i'm not trying to put words in your mouth but i think if the production was a little more raw those songs would've made a stronger first impact

it's not that there's anything wrong with that kind of production it's just that it's been used to cover other deficiencies in so many records since then that we've become suspicious of it

[Lexi Darling]

Melt and Moving Pictures are two of the best rock albums of the 80s, both stone cold classics.

[Toy Revolver]

this got me nostalgic for caress of steel so i just gave it a fresh listen - i don't care what anyone says it's a good album - i'll take side a or side b over 2112's side b

[Lexi Darling]

I love Caress of Steel as well. And I agree, I've always thought the second side of 2112 was kinda patchy.

[Toy Revolver]

this is the best of their early prog epics

[Trollheart]

Agree with all of that, however it's really not the production. I don't mind slick, overproduced albums - I love Townsend's Epicloud to bits. I just didn't go crazy over the songs on the Rush album. I remember listening to Caress and it was like "Bastille Day", yeah ok, "I Think I'm Going Bald" bloody rubbish, "Lakeside Park" really nice then we hit the suite and HELLO! So there would be tracks probably on most Rush albums (and this does indeed include 2112) which I would call weaker ones, at least in my opinion, but then, that's true of almost any band, artist or album. I've already expressed my opinion on what is seen as the best and most popular Genesis album, but there are others that kind of suck too. I mean, "Absent Friends" on Nursery Cryme? "Ballad of Big" on And Then There Were Three? "Timetable" on Foxtrot? It's rare that you get an album that's a perfect ten, and that isn't even what I was looking for here. I had just hoped to be more impressed and, well, I wasn't, not as much as I had thought I would be.

[Toy Revolver]

can't stand Devin Townsend - 🤮

"I Think I'm Going Bald" bloody rubbish

it really is

they liked to think they had a sense of humor but a song that bad is not a laughing matter

it's hard to believe it made the cut - they really couldn't scrape together something better? - i really believe that album wouldn't have gotten such bad reviews without that track - they almost disbanded that album was such a failure- that song almost killed rush!!!

[Trollheart]

Yeah it's like "Shamus" on Meddle isn't it: as Gilmour found out, it wasn't half as funny as he thought it was. I mean, apart from anything else, Rush would have been in, what, their twenties when that album was recorded. Who writes a song about, or even thinks about going bald in their twenties?!!

[Trollheart]

On Townsend; he's an acquired taste, and even then, there are some of his works I bloody hate, like Devlab and Ziltoid and stuff, but then he can come up with some truly lovely and powerful pieces. Bit of a dichotomy really. Much of his material I can leave where it is, but some of it really moves me.

[Toy Revolver]

"Shamus"

Seamus?

i always liked that one tbh -

[Trollheart]

Having gone through the first top 10 then, from 10 to 1, which brought us to the beginning of the 1980s, it's time to revert to the bottom end of the chart and once again choose the number 10 album as we move up through time, into 1982.

Album title: Kenso II
Artist: Kenso
Nationality: Japanese
Sub-genre: Jazz Fusion
Year: 1982
Position on list for that year: 10
Chronology: 2 of 10
Familiarity with artist: 1
Familiarity with album: 1
Gold Rated track(s): None
Silver Rated track(s): None
Wooden Rated track(s): None
Comments: Okay. Me and jazz fusion don't generally tend to get along well, but them's the breaks so let's see what this is like. Well there's no gentle easing in anyway, as we get going with boppy keys and flute and it's all very bright and breezy; I would assume there will be no vocals and that this is an instrumental album. I don't see a vocalist credited anyway. Some very very good guitar work for sure, as is the solo guitar on track two, but as with the few jazz fusion albums I've listened to, a lot of it seems to blend together. Nice piano on track four I think it is, gives a kind of lounge feeling, slowing things down from the somewhat frenetic pace of the album thus far. Joined by some turpuling synth (what? It's a perfectly cromulent word. Yes it is: I just made it up - that sort of thick, heavy, not-quite-trumpeting but not whistling noise a synth can make: turpuling. Look it up. No, wait: don't look it up).

Next one (I'm not writing track names as they're all in japanese and I'm lazy) has a sort of mid-seventies Tony Banks feel about it, blasting along on a trumpeting keyboard like something out of maybe "The Colony of Slippermen", certainly kicks the speed of the album up. Some sort of crazy sound like, I don't know, the very edge of children laughing or cartoon mice or some damn thing, tres weird, then the next one comes in on a slow, staggered percussion line with parping bass and swirly synth and some chiming, ringing guitar almost in the background. Builds up then into somewhat a confusion of sounds, which more or less ruins the effect for me, but hey there you go, me and jazz fusion etc yadda yadda. Settles down then on the back of a whining fast synth, again very seventies Genesis or Yes, then goes a bit eighties SKY. Hmm. Then there's springy, spongy, ambient squelchy synth (lots of "s" words in there, I know) in a much more sedate, almost elastic sense of music, think there's some piano in there too. Either some woman singing or maybe it's synthesised or taped.

The final track is the longest, just over seven minutes, and I guess it's really more of a jam than any of the previous songs, with some very good instrumentation certainly, but overall I don't think this album is for me. I see comments enthusing about it, and they probably should; if you're into jazz fusion then you'll probably love this. I'm not, and it's kind of okay to me but there's nothing here I'll remember once I'm done, and I don't see myself going back to it at any point.

Personal Rating: 5/10

[Toy Revolver]

Kenso II

i had a feeling from your description i was going to love this and i did

great way to start off an easy sunday morning watching the sunrise with my dog checking this record out

i agree with the influences you pointed out and add jethro tull and weather report

[Trollheart]

Yeah like I said if you're a jazz fusion fan this is almost certainly for you. I'm not and it's not, but it certainly deserves its place in the list. Just, you know, not mine.