Six of the prog entries below are brand new. Four of them have previously appeared on my Top 10 Metal Albums of 2016 list. (What can I say? I like prog metal!)
All together, they constitute my Top 10 Prog Albums for the year of 2016.
I begin my list below with the six brand new entries, and I end it with the four previously announced “prog metal” masterpieces:
Headspace — All That You Fear is Gone
Ranked in no particular order, here again (on the occasion of New Year’s Eve) are my Top 20 Albums of 2014:
I make no claim to omniscience, so take this simply as the best of what I myself had the opportunity to hear this year. I very much enjoy reading your own “best of” lists and learning about new music from you which either escaped my ears or that I didn’t give enough of a fair chance to. I look forward to discovering, in the beginning of 2015, any albums that you recommend from 2014 that I can add to the upper echelon of my prog archives.
Long live rock! Prog on!
Happy Dominion Day from the Great White North — a.k.a., the home of RUSH!
“Et dominabitur a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos terrae” (Ps 72:8)
Citizens of Progarchy have been celebrating by drafting lists of their Top Ten Rush Albums EVER.
We have heard from Erik, Kevin, Brad, RJP, and Drew.
Et moi:
1. Moving Pictures 1981
2. Permanent Waves 1980
3. A Farewell To Kings 1977
4. Hemispheres 1978
5. 2112 1976
6. Signals 1982
7. Grace Under Pressure 1984
8. Power Windows 1985
9. Counterparts 1993
10. Fly By Night 1975
Next, to rock in a truly star-spangled Fourth, stay tuned to Progarchy.com …
… because over the next couple of days I will be revealing — halfway through the year — some of the utterly essential five-star albums of upper-echelon excellence already released in 2014, clearly destined for my end-of-year Top Ten.
Who needs to wait for the end of the year? It seems the best prog is already here!
So, prepare to celebrate …
In order to meet the challenge of listing my own Top Ten Prog Albums EVER, I imposed upon myself an additional requirement over and above the ones Brad specified.
Each album on the list, I insist, must contain at least one song that is over ten minutes long.
And so, given that sonnet-like constraint, here is my list:
★★★★★
Big Big Train — The Underfall Yard (H/T: “The Underfall Yard” [22:54] and “Victorian Brickwork” [12:33])
Kate Bush — Hounds of Love (H/T: “The Ninth Wave” [= Side Two of the LP, clocking in at 27 minutes])
Flying Colors — Flying Colors (H/T: “Infinite Fire” [12:00])
Genesis — Foxtrot (H/T: “Supper’s Ready” [23:06])
Haken — The Mountain (H/T: “Pareidolia” [10:51] and “Falling Back to Earth” [11:51])
King Crimson — Red (H/T: “Starless” [12:26])
Rush — A Farewell to Kings (H/T: “Xanadu” [11:12] and “Cygnus X-1” [10:26])
Sound of Contact — Dimensionaut (H/T: “Möbius Slip” [19:36])
Transatlantic — The Whirlwind (H/T: The entire album is one song 78 minutes long! Or take “Dancing With Eternal Grace” [12:04])
Yes — Fragile (H/T: “Heart of the Sunrise” [11:33])
★★★★★
If I were allowed doubles then maybe I would substitute Yes’ Close to the Edge for the Haken and Big Big Train’s Far Skies Deep Time for the Sound of Contact.
But can I instead invent a new challenge?
How about the “Top Ten Rush Albums EVER”, ranked not alphabetically but in order of preference?
Progarchy 