LogFAQs > #967944967

Protest the Hero - Palimpsest results

The participants sorted by deviation from final results:
FoolFantastic (22)
TheArkOfTurus (24)
Steiner (26)
VeryInsane (34)
HBJDubs (38)
Seanchan (42)
Johnbobb (44)
MetalmindStats (44)
BlueCrystalTear (52)
Raetsel_Lapin (52)

General Album Comments

Seanchan: Did a first listen a few days ago and, uh, yeah...

What a bunch of you were saying last week (for So Long, Astoria) applies for me this week. This was just a long slog of "whatever"; a bunch of okay/fine metal instrumentation but with vocals that didn't seem particularly great and didn't feel "connected" to the music.

We'll see if my opinion changes with more listens but I am skeptical when my initial impression was so poor.

BlueCrystalTear: This is really a split of 10/2/1. Ten songs all do the same thing with only a little variance. Two other songs also do the same thing, which makes those standouts. And there's the one that really, really stands out because it's the one that helps the album the most. I would have found this album unbearable without it there. My #1 is without question.

Raetsel_Lapin: Having listened to this three times now, I still don't know how I actually feel about this album. Progressive metal isn't exactly my favorite genre of metal and there are several songs here that I very aggressively dislike--I do not care for intense or epic drumming and there's a LOT of that here. To an actively painful degree at times. And yet, there's also at least one absolutely fantastic song that I love & I like the themes of the album. The darker side of American history with genocide, mass incarceration, suicide... I'd say that I generally enjoy the stories they chose to tell and the lyrics used to tell them. So this is simultaneously 'a very cohesive album that tells compelling stories & featuring an incredibly high scoring song, the likes of which few albums can ever attain' and 'actively painful at times, in ways that I hate'.

I have absolutely no idea how I would score this album as a whole (though, I suspect, having a 9/10 song will place this on the higher end of this cycle's "Rank the Albums" regardless), but I guess I'm thankful we covered it? It's all over the place with incredibly high and low scoring songs, but it's never boring at least.

FoolFantastic: Oh hey, I kind of liked this one despite not typically listening to this kind of music. However, the vocals felt off to me, and I'm not completely sure why.

TheArkOfTurus: I haven't listened to this a ton like I have some other PtH albums, but I'm not really sure why. All of it is fantastic, and I'm glad this got picked to remind me that I really should have.

HBJDubs: Protest The Hero is like The Ataris to me just in a different genre. Nothing sticks out, but it's a good listen when I'm doing something else.

Seanchan: Two more listens did not change my opinion. I just didn't care for this. I feel like I should like this but my reaction was for the most part "meh". Two of the three instrumentals were actually very nice, to the point where it made me wonder if there's any classical music that would work for Ranking. The final instrumental is clearly the worst (of the 3), and the shortest, so I just put it last. The "real" songs on the album didn't do very much for me but I tried to rank them as best as a could, despite my flagging interest.

VeryInsane: Most of my familiarity with Protest is Fortress and Kezia. I think this one was pretty good, albeit it took a little while to get the ball rolling. The sides are ok interludes but I completely forgot what Harborside was, hence why it got the boot.

MetalmindStats: A highly arbitrary ranking, all-in-all - ask me tomorrow, and I might maintain only my first place and last two ranks. That somehow feels fitting for an album I would really appreciate if I were a fan of this type of music.