Album Rating: 2.5

Yeah, I never quite understood why 1.6-1.9 and 1.1-1.4 ratings were off-limits to staffers, considering the rest of the .1 increments are fair game

Album Rating: 2.5

Giving a record a 1.1 would be a funny move



like “hey this record is complete fucking dogshit but there was that few seconds of cowbell that I enjoyed”

Album Rating: 2.5

I was always kinda iffy on Almost Easy but seeing it live the other night made me fall in love with it. Easily my favorite behind Afterlife and Brompton Cocktail. The whole band doing harmonies during the chorus is legitimately fucking beautiful.

Album Rating: 2.5

Gunslinger was very good live too which was never a song I really cared for.



And then they had go and ruin it by closing with A Little Piece of Heaven instead of Cosmic like they did the night before. I’m so fucking sick of that song. Taking up 8 minutes of set time. Objectively they’ve made worse songs but at this point it’s probably my most hated song they ever wrote.

Album Rating: 2.5

Idk where else to point this out but I’ll do it here since it was recorded during these sessions, it’s truly wild to me that Demons didn’t make the cut for this record. It’s better than everything here aside from Afterlife. I’d say Dancing Dead is pretty rad too, it throws you off by being way slower tempo than normal and then Syn busts through with a fucking insane solo. The chorus is catchy as a motherfucker too.



If you take the best tracks off this and the best tracks off Diamonds in the Rough you’d legit have a pretty good album. I might make that playlist.

Album Rating: 1.5

i forgot how much i hate this album

Album Rating: 2.0

Yeah, it blows hard.

Album Rating: 3.5

Outside of the awful awful (awful) ballads A7X love to incorporate into their albums, I've always had a soft spot for this one. Incredibly streamlined but I think it has a really fun energy. It also came immediately after City of Evil which had me in a grapple hold for a while in high school so I was primed to enjoy it. Can definitely understand the low ratings, though.

Album Rating: 3.0

Literally the lowest replay value of any A7x. However, I th-



wtf Hawks

why do you have HttK rated higher than The Stage

Album Rating: 3.0

anyway

I can appreciate the stylistic experimentation. Said it somewhere else already, but I consider this the precursor of LIBAD in being an oddball in the group of relatively normal A7x albums, as lame as it is.



And fuck me but A Little Piece of Heaven is the third best song here.

Album Rating: 3.0

I’d say Dancing Dead is pretty rad too [2]



“And fuck me but A Little Piece of Heaven is the third best song here.“



i have a soft spot for it. not really sure why.

Album Rating: 2.5

This is the fisher price version of Life is But a Dream



And whatever your opinion is of A Little Piece of Heaven is, I think everybody should be able to admit that playing it live instead of Cosmic is truly an insane fucking thing to do. I went to that show with my ex and it was one of the last things we did together, so I guess I can at least channel that bad energy into hating that fucking song and not my beloved Cosmic

Album Rating: 2.5

And hawks, rating HttK higher than The Stage is craaaaaazy. I’m not looking at your long ass ratings list, what do you have them at lmao



Cuz HttK is easily their worst imo. Afterlife and Brompton Cocktail shit on everything on that record

Album Rating: 2.0

I really dig Hail to the King tbh. The Stage is good, but hasn't really stuck with me.

Album Rating: 2.5

Damn, I think that record is so dull and uninspired.



I do like Heretic and Coming Home tho, like a lot. Shepherd of Fire is fine too… and I actually really love the acoustic rendition of the title track at their Grammy performance, I would be much more open to them playing it at literally every fkn show if they did the acoustic version.



Aside from that the record is doo doo ass. This Means War would be fine if it wasn’t literally Sad But True.



I actually loved that song back when it dropped and then my uncle showed me Sad But True and I just cannot get that stink off it now. He took me to my first show and they played it, and he literally thought it was a Sad But True cover until the chorus hit, and even then he asked me after the show if it was some weird kind of cover lol

Album Rating: 3.0

Understandable lol. I heard Sad But True first and oh man, was I facepalming hard while listening to This Means War...



Now, #JusticeforCosmic, but I still dig A Little Piece of Heaven on the musical level. Basically the band in Tim Burton mode and I'm all about it. They really had a tendency to nail their longest songs, at least before 2016. Speaking of which, the Grammy rendition of Exist is a parsec above the studio version. Would be nice for it to return to the setlists as long as it would be in that form.

Album Rating: 2.5

Agreed. They played that little middle section when I saw them pre COVID and it was amazing. I really don’t like the rest of the song if I’m being honest lol.



Like, cool Syn, you can shred. We know.

Excited to listen to this next and justify my decade+ aversion to these guys before they apparently get better again.

Album Rating: 2.5

Yeah, this record is not good man. But I’ll defend the rest of their discog to my dying breath, except Hail to the King.

Yee I think that's the other bad one I've tried listening to before. But I'm gonna do it. I'M GONNA DO IT AND ENJOY IT AS MUCH AS I CAN.