LogFAQs > #926807707

Firewood18 posted...

Yeah probably 18th listen through and Danny is definitely the constant that makes it great. Especially on Pneuma.

Danny really is...Great.

Here's how I've always ranked the main albums, and I'm going to ramble a bit so bear with me.

Opiate and Undertow are on their own level. Very different than the rest, early works. Paul's albums really.

Something happens with them going into nima and they tap into something. They're onto something. They've tapped into something they almost can't control.

Then, they try to capture it again on Lateralus. Good album, but it's missing...I dunno, something. It's intangible, and fleeting, but something is a little off-center there.

Then, 10,000 Days. It's so smart. It's also way too much Maynard navel-gazing. It's a solid album, but it's too much. It's the first album where you just let it happen, let it wash over you, don't try and understand it, it's too dense. They went too deep on that one. It's too challenging for casual listening. It's a doctorate. Nobody gets it until the double album/split track list order is discovered.

They deny that is ever the intent, but the laced version makes more sense in every important sense, and doesn't have the total ADD aspect in the album track order. The stitched version makes more sense and the band claims that was just a coincidence. Who knows?

Then, well over a decade passes and the band members do other things. Maynard has 3 bands and a restaurant and a farm because, Maynard is gonna Maynard.

I have no idea what the rest of the band is up to during the hiatus tbh.

They walk into the studio a decade later, and spend two years fighting over this album.

And it's fucking magical. Suspiciously lacking the odd joke track in the B-side...it's going to take me some more time to unravel Fear Inoculum, but it took me 4 or 5 years to think I had a handle on nima, and I still hear parts on the albums since that I've missed despite repeated listens.

Took me 2 years to catch certain riffs on nima that loop back around across the entire album.

And that's the other thing...Undertow and Opiate can be broken down into tracks, all separate from the others. From nima onwards, the albums are compositions where no track exists within a vacuum. They become symphonies.
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