The Analog Cub

Seeing all 3 shows at Red Rocks in a few days! So excited.

1. First Concert? Styx 2003 2. Last Concert? Haken 2024 3. Worst Concert? Tesla 2015 the vocalist sounded like Cartman but in his late 50s 4. Loudest Concert? Iron Maiden 2017 5. Best Concert? Rush 2015 6. Seen the Most? Rush (8 times) 7. Most Surprising? Ghost 2017 - instant fan afterwards 8. Happy I got to see? Buddy Guy 9. Wish I could have seen? Porcupine Tree 10. Next Concert? King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard at Red Rocks in a few weeks!

I can try Metallica 1. Ride the Lightning - nothing tops it 2. Master of Puppets - only one that comes close 3. And Justice for All - shit mix #1, great songs 4. Black Album - great songs, falls off hard later 5. Death Magnetic - shit mix #2, best thing they've done since they cut their hair 6. Kill 'Em All - pioneering but overall a mixed bag 7. Hardwired to Self-Destruct - fantastic first disc, utterly forgettable second disc 8. 72 Seasons - disappointed overall but it's not as bad as their lost years 9. Load - some solid songs, but definitely not a great album 10. Reload - oh hey, two great songs and we're bored again 11. St. Anger - shit mix #3 and one of the worst albums made

New Lindsey Stirling album is pretty great. 1. Artemis 2. Duality 3. Lindsey Stirling 4. Shatter Me 5. Brave Enough

I can't reliably rank King Gizzard's albums numerically, but I can group them into tiers. Giving this another go after their latest 70s rock styled album (which is pretty good): Holy Collection PetroDragonic Apocalypse Nonagon Infinity Polygondwanaland Flying Microtonal Banana L.W. Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, and Lava Great stuff Omnium Gatherum K.G. Flight b741 Laminated Denim Changes I'm In Your Mind Fuzz Infest The Rats' Nest Mixed bag Gumboot Soup Murder of the Universe Fishing for Fishies Butterfly 3000 Styles aren't my cup of tea but I can't call them "bad" Paper Mache Dream Balloon Quarters Float Along - Fill Your Lungs Sketches of Brunswick East The Silver Cord Bad Eyes Like The Sky Made In Timeland 12 Bar Bruise Oddments

Updated after finally getting around to Dark Matter and tastes changing a bit. 1. Vs. - better than Ten, both of these albums can blast on repeat 2. Ten - one of the strongest debut albums from any band ever. I prefer Vs.'s rawness more, though. 3. Avocado - Best batch of what I'd consider the beginning of "late-era PJ", i.e. the Telecaster-driven straightforward rock they've put out for the last 20 years 4. Vitalogy - Album's a ton of fun, even if it gets a little too weird at times 5. Gigaton - Really, really pleased with how much they experimented on this one. It doesn't always work but it just feels inspired. 6. Yield - Some absolute classics in here but it falls off HARD 7. Dark Matter - Heavy and lots of guitar solos, great guitar album. Still getting to know it but I can see it rising. The overall song quality is high. 8. Binaural - Lots of misfires, a few certified bangers like Insignificance 9. No Code - This one's probably due for a re-listen but I can't bring myself to enjoy it every time I try. 10. Backspacer - A lot of the songs just don't work for Eddie's voice. They had a lot of fun on this album but at the expense of quality. 11. Riot Act - Alternates with Lightning Bolt for their absolute worst 12. Lightning Bolt - I listened to this one more recently and it was _worse_ than I remembered.

Coheed and Cambria 1. Good Apollo II 2. Afterman: Ascension 3. Vaxis I 4. Good Apollo I 5. Vaxis II 6. Afterman: Descension 7. In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 8. Year of the Black Rainbow 9. The Color Before the Sun 10. Second Stage Turbine

1. Emperor of Sand 2. Crack the Skye 3. Hushed and Grim 4. Blood Mountain 5. Once More 'Round the Sun 6. Leviathan 7. The Hunter 8. Remission Interesting to compare these. The older stuff doesn't but well for me but I'm glad we agree on EoS

It's either Blue Collar Man or Renegade for me. Miss America isn't what I'd call a hit but that's another good one. For deeper cuts I prefer that one and Queen of Spades. Their theater-ish stuff doesn't do it for me as much.

Chris is the easy answer, and the correct one. Fell on Black Days alone showcases that power and his ability to subdue it. Only Vedder comes close. Vedder is easy to meme because his style has been copied to death and stereotypes the 90s male vocalist, but he's adapted his voice over time into something many audiences can appreciate. Pearl Jam really isn't even what I'd call grunge, they've always been a hard rock band more in line with classic rock artists. And as they've gotten older, they (and Eddie's older voice) remind me of Bruce Springsteen, except they don't suck.

Sin After Sin is where things really start to take off for me. I know SWOD is a popular one but despite its importance, it's too much of a Queen imitation to me. Too much of the 70s cheese in these first few.

I've decided to give Priest a proper discography run. Will take me a while given the size but you gotta start somewhere. Rocka Rolla is better than I remember it being. It's not the Priest I know, but for 70s hard rock it's surprisingly solid, at least the first couple tracks and Diamonds and Rust.

Haken is a hard one to get aggregate reviews for because the albums are all very different apart from Vector/Virus being similar to each other. You can tell a lot about how someone's tastes are with Haken based on where they rate Affinity, I think. For me it's: Fauna Affinity Virus The Mountain Visions Vector Aquarius

I go back and forth a bit between Stained Class, Painkiller, and Screaming for Vengeance. Depends on the day. I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan of Priest like I am Maiden, but they scratch the itch.

These guys impress me. Richie Faulkner saved this band. I'm enjoying this one more than a fair amount of their 70s material, to be completely honest. It's not their BEST album, but you could take a few from this, a few from Firepower, and maybe one or two from RoS and it'd be a top 5 Priest album.

I'll also pick Death Magnetic from Metallica, I'd argue their "late career" started with that one in that their tours had started playing it safe with 80s + Black Album material.

Maiden's last two were fantastic. Pink Floyd's Division Bell is one of their absolute best. Foo Fighters' But Here We Are is their best since Wasting Light.

I'm a software engineer. It's literally the hottest issue right now. I've enough clout to tell my boss to leave well enough alone if he wants to keep me and he doesn't seem too keen on enforcing it anyway. If I go in, I'm on a Teams call anyways since we're global. Waste of time.

Much like companies with their bullshit return to office policies, they'll try it again once they feel they can get away with it.

Five Guys is expensive, and my location started skimping on them (by their standards), in that they aren't dumping another scoop straight in the bag. Just enough to fill the little fry container. It's not NY prices making it $18, either, it's stupid high in Iowa, too.

I'm game for Maiden. The top 3 are untouchable for me but 4-9 are likely to shuffle depending on how I'm feeling. Seventh Son Brave New World Powerslave Somewhere In Time A Matter of Life and Death Number of the Beast Senjutsu Piece of Mind Book of Souls Things start to feel a little meh here but there are some absolute gems within Dance of Death Iron Maiden Killers X Factor These have very few redeeming qualities The Final Frontier - they just sound tired Fear of the Dark No Prayer for the Dying Virtual XI

I wish there was an official live release of the 07-08 tour with Dave. The YouTube footage I can find is night and day better than that horrible live album. There were moments where he'd actually sing in key.

Balance has one, maybe two decent songs (Aftershock and Seventh Seal), but the rest is pretty bad. My one defense of Truth is that Eddie and Alex sound fantastic. Some absolute fire on there, but Dave is cooked. There's a few good songs. Beats Workin, China Town, She's The Woman.

Best full ranking shot at King Gizzard - this is f***ing hard! PetroDragonic Apocalypse Nonagon Infinity Polygondwanaland Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, and Lava Flying Microtonal Banana L.W. Omnium Gatherum Infest the Rats Nest Changes Gumboot Soup K.G. I'm In Your Mind Fuzz Butterfly 3000 Murder of the Universe ====== This is where they start to lose me ===== Fishing For Fishes Laminated Denim Float Along - Fill Your Lungs Quarters! The Silver Cord Sketches at Brunswick's East Paper Mache Dream Balloon 12 Bar Bruise Oddments Made In Timeland Eyes Like The Sky

Starset 1. Horizons 2. Vessels 3. Transmissions 4. Divisions Divisions is just awful. Enjoying the band but, like Breaking Benjamin, they're incredibly formulaic. Horizons and Vessels just happen to do it very well