Favourite concept albums ?

[Ghouly]

What are your favorite "concept" albums? By this I mean an album which from start to finish, tells a complete story through the lyrics and follows an over-arching theme. Sort of the musical version of an epic saga. Here are just a few of my favorites: Vehemence - God Was Created This album tells the story of a man driven insane by two opposing sides of his psyche: love and lust. He falls in love with a girl, from afar, whom he watches through her bedroom window, as she grows up from a girl to a young woman. She's devoutly Christian and worships Jesus Christ. Her father raped her repeatedly in the ass her entire life. On night, in a twist of delusion, believes himself to be her Jesus, and her savior ,and the main character destroys and murders her father -- turns to have vaginal sex with her (taking her virginity) and choke her to death, in a sick attempt to show her "love" and "compassion" and "pleasure" before "putting her out of her misery". Incredibly fucked up. The album then goes on to detail his psychological downward spiral and how he ends up exhuming her grave and raping her again. All in all, a sad story, and a really interesting perspective from an insane man and nathan gearhart's vocals are superb, and the little moments of clean acoustic guitar are really nice, it's a solid death metal album. Ayreon - The Human Equation Arguably not metal, Ayreon had some metal giants guest on this album such as Devin Townsend, James LaBrie, and Mikael Akerfelt, and a few heavier tracks such as Pain and Loser. The album starts off with the internal dialogue of a man who just got into a car wreck, and is lying in a hospital, comatose, but not at all braindead. He is trapped in his mind, with his thoughts. Every different vocalist on the album is personified as an emotion in his mind, for example, James LaBrie is the man himself, Devin Townsend is the emotion "pain". Day by Day, he unravels himself, rediscovers who he is, layer by layer, memory by memory, in a metaphorical fight to regain himself and heal from the coma, putting back the shattered pieces of his psyche. All the different vocalists, the voices in his mind, urge him on to put together vague memories, happiness, pain, love, until finally he rediscovers who he is again, and wakes up from the coma. It's a beautifully done masterpiece but also very emotional and not an album I can listen to often. Devin Townsend - Ziltoid the Omniscient Ziltoid the Omniscient is a humorous work of genius whereby an unisnpired grunt of a barista working at Starbucks dozes off into a daydream about how one particular demanding yuppie fuckwit customer is transformed into an intergalactic uber space villain, who invades planet earth demanding the worlds finest cup of coffee. This uber space villain is Ziltoid the Omniscient, and he's a demanding yuppie prick if there ever was one! Not satisfied with the cup of coffee that the lowly earthlings bring him, he spits it out and declares war on planet earth, to uncover their finest bean which they are concealing from his grasp! The only way to do this is to seek out the Planetsmasher and destroyyyyy. The album then sort of evolves into full on war, and its the heavy insane riffing we know and love from DT. It isn't until the end, we realize that it was all daydream and the barista wakes up, while his boss is shouting at him, and another douchenozzle is at the counter ordering a decaf, nonfat, no whip, sugar free vanilla-flavored latte. I really like how this whole album comes together and flows from one song to another, I love the theme of it because it's whimsical and humorous and you don't get that often in metal. I have so many more I could list out, but it would take forever. I want to know which concept albums you guys like! And what you think they mean.

[BlutAusNerd]

Re: Favorite Concept Albums I do love a good concept album, Ziltoid being a good example. I actually have a Ziltoid sock puppet that a friend got me for my birthday one year, it's pretty amusing. As far as my contribution, Operation: Mindcrime ranks very highly for me, as I know it does for many others. Other examples of favorite concept albums would be the early King Diamond canon (Abigail, Them, Conspiracy), Novembers Doom's The Knowing, Edge of Sanity's Crimson, Lunar Aurora's Zyklus, and Green Carnation's Light of Day, Day of Darkness. I won't go into detail about the stories (I am posting from my phone), but I would say that all of these albums are worth anyone's time. I can't think of anymore off the top of my head, but there are certainly others. Our (Nevertanezra's) new album will be a concept album, though as I don't have much of the story written yet, I won't reveal much about it (I probably won't once it's done either), but it has been a very compelling project for me. I stay awake at night thinking about how it's going to play it, trying to structure it around the songs and progress the story the way I want to. I hope it can live up to the lofty heights set by other ambitions concept albums, like the ones mentioned here. Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[Iceni]

I don't remember many off the top of my head - but I do like Dark Empire's Humanity Dethroned. From what I could tell, the album seemed to detail one man's shift from idealistic atheism to nihilism to superstition and then to madness, as the strangeness of the world and his own pathology continue to destroy his preconceptions. This is a bit of a lazy one, but Paradise Lost by Symphony X was a pretty well-done elaboration of the Milton story, retaining the relevant themes.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Queensryche - Operation Mindcrime Top shelf progressive metal with well explored themes. Very much an album one must sit down and listen to from start to finish as the songs lose a little of their power individually. Iron Maiden - Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son An interesting story coupled with almost progressive metal structures. Bruce's vocals were on their way downhill on this record but they don't detract from the music too much. Deceased - Supernatural Addiction Not sure this counts as a concept given each song touches on a different story but the overall concept is macabre stories.

[coraxoband]

Definitely 'Edge of Sanity - Crimson'. One 40 minute song of old school melodic death metal, with some progressive elements thrown in. St6lJaiHYIc

[orcslayr23]

Amorphis - Silent Waters Amorphis - Circle Elvenking - The Scythe Seventh Wonder - Mercy Falls

[Ghouly]

A summary of your interpretation of the concept albums' stories would be super rad.

[MacabreEternal]

Queensryche - Operation Mindcrime Top shelf progressive metal with well explored themes. Very much an album one must sit down and listen to from start to finish as the songs lose a little of their power individually.

Excellent choice and good point about the entire album should be heard in one sitting to truly get the brilliance. I debated with someone once about how concept albums are like a book (they are stories after all) and that like any good read a concept album should have a beginning, a middle and an end all clearly structured within the progression of the record. The person I debated with was moaning because "Operation Mindcrime" didn't start at a million miles an hour and took a while to get going, my point was that if you picked up a story and knew everything about it from page one you'd feel cheated so of course the album builds!

[Iceni]

Seventh Wonder - Mercy Falls

Musically, this album was awesome. The lyrics were odd and kind of weak in my opinion. Maybe I missed something.

[SBird94]

Dream Theater's Metropolis Pt. 2 Scenes From a Memory was a Progressive Masterpiece and My favourite concept album. The entire story and music is just amazing! Home is my favourite track

[FatherAlabaster]

I don't feel that an album has to have a storyline to be a concept album - it can deal with some topic, without having a narrative structure. I also feel like sometimes the narratives are pretty loose, just a framework for some lyrics to go with music that has a more cinematic or atmospheric ebb and flow, rather than just being a bunch of songs. A great example of the first kind is Swans' Soundtracks For The Blind, which has very few actual "songs" on it but is a pretty grim double album dealing with pain, sickness, alienation, etc. Of the second "loose framework" sort, I'd say several Opeth albums (notably Still Life) and most Isis albums fit - Isis never published their lyrics so I'm not really sure of that, but the music works in the right way. I'd also say Death's Design, by Diabolical Masquerade, fits this mold, seeing as the "movie" it was written for never existed. Of the more tightly narrative albums, I'm a huge fan of Operation Mindcrime, but could also recommend Queensrÿche's Promised Land. There are some crap tracks on it but it's the last time they did anything interesting, and it's a fairly maturely written story about the trials of youth and young adulthood, followed by eventual maturity. One can only assume Goeff Tate was basing it on some mature friend or role model... certainly couldn't be autobiographical. I also love love love Pink Floyd's The Wall, and enjoy Final Cut - that one's an even more personal and potentially harrowing Waters album about, from what I can tell, war, and the loss of his father (themes touched on in The Wall). I'm not going to analyze it too deeply because it's been quite a while since I heard it. Of new things: I really did get a lot out of the Lumbar album, which is a chronicle of the guy's descent into full blown MS. I can't understand all of the lyrics - this had always been tough for me - but it's very personal and claustrophobic, so I'd say it succeeds well.

[FatherAlabaster]

A notable failure that I'd put forward is Fear Factory's Obsolete. They should have stuck with writing songs, which is basically all they did anyway, but the juvenile narrative about a post-apocalyptic anti-establishment hero breaking out of prison to save the world from evil robots, or whatever it was, was certainly done no favors by Burton's characteristically shallow lyrics. I like some of the tracks from the album, but the "story" makes it seem pretentious and silly. The kind of overreach that's hard to accept. Whereas Mars Volta's Frances The Mute, even though I haven't read all the lyrics, is a very transporting album, and one that deserves a start to finish listen - they're a band that's often accused of pretentiousness and overreach, but I feel like that's where they hit their high point. It's not pretentious if you succeed.

[deathstorm]

The industrialist fear factory's. newest Conept. Cd it is pretty awesome. Demanufacture kick ass

[FatherAlabaster]

Haven't heard the new one. Demanufacture is a great album, but I wouldn't call it a concept album.

[BlutAusNerd]

Re: Favorite Concept Albums

A notable failure that I'd put forward is Fear Factory's Obsolete. They should have stuck with writing songs' date=' which is basically all they did anyway, but the juvenile narrative about a post-apocalyptic anti-establishment hero breaking out of prison to save the world from evil robots, or whatever it was, was certainly done no favors by Burton's characteristically shallow lyrics. I like some of the tracks from the album, but the "story" makes it seem pretentious and silly. The kind of overreach that's hard to accept. Whereas Mars Volta's Frances The Mute, even though I haven't read all the lyrics, is a very transporting album, and one that deserves a start to finish listen - they're a band that's often accused of pretentiousness and overreach, but I feel like that's where they hit their high point. It's not pretentious if you succeed.[/quote'] Obsolete was a weak album overall. Fear Factory have always had horrid lyrics (at least they were more honest on the debut), and that album showed a further decline in their quality, obviously pandering to the nu-metal crowd of the time with bass drops and jumpdafukup "riffs". Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[FatherAlabaster]

Weak as it is, it's the last one of theirs I found tolerable. "Mechanize" had some ok ideas on it but wasn't what I'd call a good album by any stretch, and everything else I've heard from them sucked horribly.

[SBird94]

The industrialist is awesome, I think they recovered themselves with it.

[RelentlessOblivion]

"Finisterra" by Mago De Oz is a great concept album. I had no idea it was a concept album until recently though since all the vocals are in Spanish.

[jnurp]

nothing beats King Diamond "Them" when it comes to this question.

[BlutAusNerd]

Re: Favorite Concept Albums

nothing beats King Diamond "Them" when it comes to this question.

I prefer Conspiracy and Abigail, but that's still essential KD stuff for sure. Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[jnurp]

Im kind of vanilla on conspiracy but Abigail is one of my favorite albums of all time for sure, maybe even ahead of them and fatal portrait in the KD catalogue but in terms of overall story to music, imo nothing beats Them. Every story tells a different part of the story and it all fits together beautifully.

[totlamad15]

I'm trying to find some good concept albums to listen to (any metal subgenre). Would be great if you could recommend some!

[FatherAlabaster]

We have a thread about this that might have some good recommendations for you: http://metalforum.com/showthread.php?t=4879 A few come to mind for me, from several genres - Fredrik Thordendal's "Sol Niger Within", Queensrÿche's "Operation Mindcrime", Nevermore's "Dreaming Neon Black", Diabolical Masquerade's "Death's Design", a couple albums each by Opeth and Isis that are pretty loose as "concept" albums but hang together musically very well, and Ulver's "Nattens Madrigal" (raw black metal) and "Themes From The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell" (odd industrial fusion based on William Blake). You may also like Fall Of Efrafa's three-album run based on Watership Down: "Owsla", "Elil", and "Inle". Pretty cool if a bit basic, moody, doomy neo-crust with some cello. Not sure if one could get away with calling Celtic Frost's "Into The Pandemonium" a concept album, but it certainly has the feel of one. There's something more than the music going on there, and it's a great take on the album format. From outside metal, Queens Of The Stone Age's "Songs For The Deaf" is a very cool trip, and of course the quintessential concept album is Pink Floyd's "The Wall", not to be missed by any fan of music in general.

[True Belief]

Queensryche "Operation Mindcrime" probably the one that springs to mind. Kind Diamonds albums perhaps. Savatage " Streets" and WASP "Crimson Idol" also come to mind.

[Midi]

Fall Of Efrafa's three-album run based on Watership Down: "Owsla"' date=' "Elil", and "Inle". Pretty cool if a bit basic, moody, doomy neo-crust with some cello.[/quote']