Album Rating: 2.5

nice jam their good albums !

Album Rating: 3.5

Bit of an overrated one in their catalogue, but still excellent. I do find myself coming back to this and Deadwing the least these days though

Album Rating: 2.5

Deadwing has all their best songs from this era aside from Anaesthetize and Chloroform though

Album Rating: 4.5

This was the last great album they did tho



Up the Downstair or bust

Album Rating: 3.5

Can't agree there. FoaBP is still by far my favorite from their later era, and it's mostly because they started ditching the alternative elements of this and Deadwing. Lyrically it's questionable, although you could say that about basically every Steven Wilson album... the atmosphere is great though, and I don't think there's a weak song in the bunch. As opposed to the other two albums, which both could have benefitted from a few cuts... especially Collapse the Light into Earth and Mellotron Scratch

Album Rating: 2.5

yeah no. this this is definitely bloated but Collapse is the perfect closer for it, rides off the the rest of the album's weariness v well / Mellotron Scratch is one of the most interesting tracks PT ever made, everything from that guitar solo onwards is Wilson at his best. you don't fuck with those harmonies.

Foabp is a really good album but a lot of its heaviness is hamfisted and the (relatively small tbh) quotient of alt rock that they traded in from Deadwing got replaced with industrial vibes that work less well for Wilson. weak takes

Album Rating: 3.5

Honestly, I think Deadwing’s heaviness is a lot more hamfisted... all that Drop D chugging gets excessive after a while, especially on songs like Shallow and Open Car. As for Collapse, I just think it’s super out-of-place on an album that’s so dark and twisted. Just seems way too jarring after the intensity of Strip the Soul. Plus, the song is too dull and I find myself wanting to turn it off after about 2-3 minutes... it didn’t need to be dragged out for as long as it was

Album Rating: 2.5

This album is full of soothing tracks in between its tense numbers, and often these are the better songs tbh. Collapse the Light is not a huge change of tone from them and it makes perf sense to complement a track as tortured as Strip the Soul with something that pure and pared back - the lyrics (actually p good by Wilson's standards) paint the conceptdude as 'pure' in this vulnerable way, like he's been reduced to nothing with all the darkness and paranoia taken out of frame, and I think the statement there both carries and is obvious enough to warrant an extra 2min winddown at the end of an album already way longer than it needs to be

Album Rating: 5.0

I’m with Johnny, also the detriments of both DW and FoaBP are too many forced basic drop d metal sections, not just DW. This one and even The Incident blend the styles more naturally imo, even if the latter is overall their weakest besides OtSoL.

Album Rating: 3.5

Everything ever done by Wilson is ‘forced’

Album Rating: 4.0

Revisiting some PT and this one is easily his most consistently enjoyable album imo. A few of the heavy riffs ape off of Opeth way too obviously (that heavy progression in Gravity Eyelids is exactly the same chord progression as a segment of The Leper Affinity, for example) but I overall think this is by far his most successful attempt at incorporating darker/heavier metal riffs. Might be an unpopular opinion, but the metal segments ruin Arriving Somewhere But Not Here for me.

Album Rating: 4.0

Oh and yeah the lyrics on this album are definitely bad for the most part but I love the writing on Trains and Heart Attack in a Layby mostly.

Album Rating: 5.0

Blackest Eyes' lyrics are pretty brilliant too tbh. Sound of Muzak isn't bad either.

Album Rating: 3.5

Sound of Muzak is either great or dogshit depending on how much I'm I'm the mood for Steven Wilson gravely intoning a bunch of Steven Wilson-isms, very much like Anesthetize

Album Rating: 4.0

The lyrics on the album are either so on the nose that it sounds like a high schooler wrote them or so vague that they just don’t make any gotdamn sense, sometimes both in the same song! (Looking at you, Lips of Ashes)

Bit of an overrated one in their catalogue, but still excellent. I do find myself coming back to this and Deadwing the least these days though [2]

Album Rating: 3.5

>The lyrics on the album are either so on the nose that it sounds like a high schooler wrote them or so vague that they just don’t make any gotdamn sense, sometimes both in the same song! (Looking at you, Lips of Ashes)



lmao yeah... in a more interesting universe, the gulf between wilson's takes on music and his lyrics would be performance art... but im pretty sure hes just a cringe self-unaware nerdy white boomer

Album Rating: 3.5

Maybe the narrator is compounding his marriage problems and abusive behavior with laments of a dying music industry... perhaps that was the straw that broke the camel's back!

Album Rating: 3.5

Yeah, it's a stretch, I know

Album Rating: 3.5

Tbh, I never thought this album's concept was nearly as focused as that of Fear of a Blank Planet or even The Incident. In fact, I always kinda forget this one even has a concept at all because numerous songs just seem to stray away from it, lol