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Favorite Albums That Play As A Single Track


FatherAlabaster

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I tend to be an "album listener" in general. I'll sometimes put on a favorite song, or make a playlist of various tracks, but by and large I'll listen to an album from start to finish. One of my favorite things to come across is a great album (or long EP) that's written and put together all as a single piece of music. "One long song", if you like, or maybe something more experimental. 

I'm not talking about a "concept album" with a narrative arc or some other idea that develops over the course of several discrete songs (e.g. Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime or Pink Floyd's The Wall); I'm talking about albums that flow as a unit from beginning to end, without recognizable song breaks, whether there's some overarching cohesion or just a stream-of-consciousness flow from segment to segment. Sometimes they're offered as one long track; sometimes they're made up of dozens of short ones, the nightmare of anyone who puts things on shuffle. Here are a few of my favorites:

Edge Of Sanity - Crimson ...an ambitious sci-fi prog-death epic from the mind of Dan Swano. Mid-paced, melodic, and sprawling, full of memorable riffs, callbacks, and intuitive transitions that keep it on course over its full forty minutes.

 

Gorguts -Pleiades' Dust   ...my favorite album of 2016. Cerebral, intricate, finely textured dissonant death metal with a dark, lumbering overall vibe, tons of dynamics, and great interplay between instruments. Watching them play this start to finish live was a treat.

 

Deathspell Omega - Chaining The Katechon   ...this carefully structured avant-garde black metal track was one of the direct inspirations for Pleiades's Dust. Trademark DSO dissonance; venomous, moody, and occasionally melodic.

 

Diabolical Masquerade - Death's Design   ...Anders Nystrom's symphonic black metal side project put together this intentionally cinematic album as the "soundtrack" for a nonexistent movie. There's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek quality to everything DM put out, but there are no half measures taken with the music here. Chock full of creepy atmospheres, good melodies, and fucking cool riffs. Their last album, and sometimes (for me) their finest moment.

 

Ulver - Themes From William Blake's "The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell"   ...a tough sell for anyone expecting the black metal assault of Nattens Madrigal, this is an industrial/electronic album with some metal elements (and guest spots) scattered throughout. Garm's trademark bombastic cleans give an appropriate sense of melodrama to Blake's text. The first real step down the path they'd end up taking for the next twenty-odd years, and despite it being nothing at all like the folk/black metal I fell in love with, it's been one of my favorite albums ever since.

 

Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects - Sol Niger Within   ...a spastic, jazzy polyrhythmic metal extravaganza from Meshuggah's lead guitarist, tightly played but loosely structured, full of effective stop-starts and nifty ideas. None of the elements here will surprise anyone familiar with Meshuggah's output, but the relentlessly linear flow of this recording makes for a unique listening experience.

 

 

Anybody else have any favorite non-stop, long-form albums to share?

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The one that comes to mind is side B of "No Exit" by Fates Warning. I guess it is not a full album, but the whole side is one long song.
Also, wouldn't "Reign In Blood" count?
I really need to find that on CD, I have the cassette still and it still plays.

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No Exit is great. I really enjoy the whole thing. I hadn't considered "The Ivory Gate Of Dreams" in this context, though, thanks for pointing it out. Reign In Blood doesn't fit the theme here, no - what I mean by "dozens of short tracks" is specifically what happens on the Diabolical Masquerade, Ulver, and Fredrik Thordendal albums above, where there may be twenty-something track breaks on the CD, but the entire recording plays through as a single piece of music.

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  • 2 months later...

First of all @FatherAlabaster, brilliant thread.

Challenging one this and will require some more thought, but to pick up on the example of 'Pleiades' Dust' if I can, this is nothing short of one of the best compositions that Lemay has ever put his name too.  To write something as arcane as that and somehow retain any sense of narrative is extraordinary.  I mean literally every part of the Gorgut's engine is working in unison on that EP.  Hamelin's understated drums, Marston's ever-present yet never smothering bass and Hufnagel's textural perfection alongside Lemay's visionary riffage all fits together so well you'll want to hug yourself on behalf of the band.

Some cunt on another forum once said in response to 'Pleiades' Dust'  that "life is too short for Gorguts".  What a bell end!

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