Lurker > Seanchan

1. Metallica - Master of Puppets - Quite possibly the definitive Metallica album. Certainly the one Ive gone back to the most over the years. But then again, after re-listening to this, I dove back into Ride the Lightning and And Justice for All andyeahthose are pretty damn good too! (Maybe even better???). Overall, just a juggernaut of an album.
2. Guns N Roses' - Appetite for Destruction - Tremendous from start to finish. Theres the 3 big singles but even beyond that, theres not really a bad song here.
3. Avenged Sevenfold - Avenged Sevenfold - Metal is such an odd bird for me with these rankings. Its seemingly either love (Master of Puppets, Powerslave) or hate (Crack the Skye, Palimpsest (spoilers for next ranking...)). This self-titled album was one of the big surprises for me of this cycle. Much like Powerslave, this was another case of why the hell didnt I know about this?!?. Its as catchy as metal can get, with fun riffs, good singing, and some sometimes goofy lyrics. Hell, even the more slow/country songs are good! Metal sometimes has a problem of songs sounding kind of same-y but thats not the case here.
4. blink-182 - Enema of the State - I was a big fan of blink during my 15-25 year old period, which also coincides with their heyday. Enema is just perfect pop-punk for me. Catchy, fun, sometimes juvenile and silly, but with enough heart that it manages to avoid being kitschy.
5. Dream Theater - Images and Words - Id listened to some random Dream Theater songs back in college but for whatever reason never really got into them, despite liking a lot of artists of a similar prog metal sound. So this one wasnt a surprise as much as it was a head slap. Dream Theaters got a great singer that really matches the big, epic, almost operatic tone of this album. And I know that this isnt even considered their best!
6. The Beatles - Rubber Soul - I mean, its The Beatles, so its hard to go wrong. Its no Abbey Road, but what is? An album of songs that have been seared into my brain. So much so that I had a hard time ranking this, as it was often hard to say really, your ranking this ABOVE the frickin Beatles?!?.
7. Sunspot - Singularity - Another of the big surprises from this cycle. Perhaps a little bit unpolished in parts but its a tiny band from the midwest that probably about 10K people have ever heard of! I enjoyed the pop-punkish bent to a lot of the songs, and yes, I do wish I had F U money. The biggest compliment I can give is if an album makes me want to listen to more from an artist, and Singularity passed that test with flying colors.
8. Opeth - Damnation - That statement earlier about metal finds the natural exception here, with this being just a like from me. I always knew Opeth as an unclean vocal death metal band, and so though Id heard a song or two, it wasnt a sound I particularly cared for. Damnation then was a real left turn, with clean vocals and a much more mellow, melodic sound. I could say its maybe a little bit one note, but when its played this well that doesnt matter. Also, its a short album that doesnt overstay its welcome.
9. Jack White - Fear of the Dawn - I was worried about this one, as I wasnt a big fan of Elephant, the White Stripes album we covered that features Jack White. Imagine my shock when this was a very different, more edgy/hard/electronic sound that really appealed to me.
10. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee - Another pleasant surprise of this cycle. I had no idea what to expect going in, and what I got was an eminently listenable piece of pop. I am to understand that the upbeat tone belies some of the more somber messages of the lyrics but Im practically lyric blind sometimes so I didnt quite catch that.
11. Miracle Musical - Hawaii Part 2 - This has to be the oddest album we covered this cycle. But because of that, it stands out and is memorable, much the same way Rain Dogs was in the last ranking cycle.
12. Mos Def - Black on Both Sides - Im not big on rap, but this was better than I expected. Theres some good lyricism and a lot of catchy beats. The sheer variety on display here also helps mask the length of the album.
13. Eagles - Hotel California - Its(more than) a bit reductive to say that its the title track and then everything else butits kind of true for me? Hotel California is a tremendous single that casts a monstrous shadow over the rest of the album, and does the bulk of the work on carrying this album up my rankings.
14. Love - Forever Changes - Its not The Beatles but its still pretty good for 60s rock. Its an easy album to forget about, but when you listen its yeah, theres some decent stuff here.
15. Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory - One of the albums I loved as a late teen that I was hesitant about going back to, because its such a product of its time period. Theres a lot of angst and emotion here that doesnt really hit the way that it used to (and why would it to a 30+ year old), but at the same time, I cant pretend that theres not some good stuff here. Or maybe its just hitting those nostalgia centers and making me think its better than it is.

1. Woman (in mirror)
2. Objects in Space
3. For Mayor in Splitsville
4. The Child We Lost 1963
5. Stay Happy There
6. Extraordinary Dinner Party
7. 35
8. Woman (reading)
9. First Reactions After Falling Through the Ice
10. Scenes from Highways 1981-2009
11. Hudsonville, MI 1956

1. Harborside
2. Mountainside
3. Little Snakes
4. From the Sky
5. All Hands
6. Rivet
7. The Migrant Mother
8. The Fireside
9. Gardenias
10. Soliloquy
11. The Canary
12. Reverie
13. Hillside

can't believe they did 18th century France AND England console games but when they finally do ancient China it's a fucking mobile game

Back in 2013-2014, I was playing catch up with the series, actually got up all the way to Freedom's Cry
But then they announced that they are releasing two games on the same year (Rogue and Unity) and I said fuck this, I am done

This year I decided to return to the series and I am currently doing a marathon of all the games (started Syndicate today) and...yeah this shit makes me feel like quitting again
It's bad enough that I heard about the Odyssey/Valahalla bloat and being 200 hours games and now they decided to announce 4 different games that will be releasing...pretty much I assume in less than a year apart?

I am tired

Yeah, I was including your inevitable last place vote in my statement.

It's especially weird to me here, on a video game forum, where people have probably had greater exposure to purely atmospheric music.

It's funny comparing the reactions to Portishead here and on the music-dedicated forum I frequent. There, we voted Third our #179 favorite album ever and the band itself #62 on the all-time artist poll I am currently hosting.

(Their debut, Dummy, sits at #35, which I maybe should have nominated instead as a more accessible work - but Third also dominated its vote that week despite only being my third choice, so I'm thinking there are plenty of Portishead fans here who simply aren't actually participating in these polls)

They matter in that they are a key piece (along with Star Wars) to keep people subscribed to D+ monthly, and it appears in that, they are a success and matter significantly.

In terms of the MCU value, introducing new characters is going to depend on who our next crop of Avengers are, but WandaVision played a crucial role to Dr. Strange, Loki has played a crucial role for Quantumania, Ms. Marvel is the second lead (as far as we know) in Captain Marvel 2, and I'm sure handing the shield to Falcon is going to be of immense importance. Now, you could argue "yeah, but how important are these stories to those?" and the answer is always, "to the studio, they've made it clear it's as important as they can manage it".

Yes, when they're designed to set up major pieces of the franchise and are advertised as necessary viewing with the franchise as a whole

Loki literally introduces who they're making out to be the next big bad of the series, Ms. Marvel is (supposedly) setting up the upcoming The Marvels, Hawkeye directly connects to both Black Widow and several upcoming shows/movies, etc. Arguably Moon Knight and What If? are the only ones that don't really matter.

Of course theyre also producing much more content at once than the other phases. Wed get Thor 2 and thats all we had for so long waiting on the next thing to come out wouldnt be for a long time so it got immortalized as a terrible movie. Whereas Miss Marvel came out and people rallied against it but now its over and theres the next thing to talk about next month.

It appears Westlife is yet another boy band. Not sure why we are being subjected to a boy band week but...

Because variety!

And nysnc is great you should vote for them

What is a Westlife?

1. Summer '79
2. So Long, Astoria
3. Looking Back on Today
4. All You Can Ever Learn is What You Already Know
5. In This Diary
6. The Boys of Summer
7. I Won't Spend Another Night Alone
8. Unopened Letter to the World
9. Takeoffs and Landings
10. Radio #2
11. My Reply
12. The Hero Dies in This One
13. Eight of Nine
14. The Saddest Song - Acoustic
15. The Saddest Song

I added it to my album ranking spreadsheet and, of the 3,300 albums I have listened to, it landed in the bottom 10 (do note, however, that I mostly listen to music I expect to like, so I'm not saying this is an 'all-time worst album' as I haven't listened to much notoriously bad music - I'm certain there are thousands of albums worse than this I would rather not subject myself to)

Just, half the stuff here sounded to me like the montage transition music of a mid-2000s teen drama. The other half was rejected Sonic the Hedgehog background music. I already find pop-punk vaguely annoying and this had the added layer of being overly long and largely generic. I got a headache a few tracks in. The only moment that felt okay to me was a cover song, of which I greatly prefer the original.