The Great Collection Rediscovery

Artist: Iron Maiden

Album: Dance of Death

Previous Last.fm Scrobbles: 162 (11 Tracks)

Old Rating: 5/5

Verdict: I'm not sure about worst artwork Patrick when this exists...but the album itself I have always loved. I consider this the most underrated work of Iron Maiden, not just in their modern Dickinson/Smith reunion period. I have never understood it when people say that Dance of Death is no good and wonder if they are judging it by its frankly horrendous cover. 

New Rating: No Change.

Album: Awake

Previous Last.fm Scrobbles: 25 (11 Tracks)

Old Rating: 3.5/5

Verdict: Although it's pretty much sacrilege for a Dream Theater fan to say it, I'm going to have to: 

I don't like Awake. 

I don't hate Awake either, but there's a big difference between not hating something and liking it. It's much more of a 'meh' album than bad per se. I cannot fathom why it is ranked up there with the likes of Metropolis Pt. 2 and Images & Words as among the band's best. There are a few highlights that keep it from a complete middling rating, but most of it is bland and soulless. 

New Rating: 3/5

Album: The Final Experiment

Previous Last.fm Scrobbles: 149 (24 Tracks - 15 + 9 Bonus)

Old Rating: 5/5

Verdict: The very first Ayreon album has some things about it that might cause fans who came along later to dismiss it. Arjen Lucassen wasn't a known name back then, so we don't have the all star cast that modern Ayreon albums attract - that said he did get some people from reasonable notable bands to lend him their voices on this record. Apparently most of them did it for free too. Vocalists are tied to a particular character on this one, like on later albums, so it feels less like a proper rock opera. It's certainly not as polished as his later work. But it remains one of my favourite Arjen Lucassen releases. I still remember when I first bought this and how I felt when it arrived. It wasn't the first Ayreon album I bought, that was Into the Electric Castle, which remains my favourite album to this day, but it was the first time I recall feeling like I was holding a piece of musical history - yet it was by an artist that absolutely no one I spoke to in real life had even heard of. Although it is not my favourite by Ayreon, I still consider this album worthy of classic status. Like Follow the Blind above, I find it a real shame that the MMA average sells it short at barely scraping 3.5 stars. Philistines. 

New Rating: No Change.

Album: Somewhere Far Beyond

Old Rating: 5/5

Verdict: My favourite Blind Guardian album. Didn't used to be, Imaginations From the Other Side was, but this worked it's way up over time. It's more polished than Tales From the Twilight World and the original speed metal sound almost completely shed away by this point, but it's so fast and aggressive as hell that as much as I love other power metal it makes me wonder why most bands are missing the trick in that regard and serving to regulate the genre to one that many self-defined tr00 (accurate spelling) metalheads readily dismiss while moshing to their trash metal (also accurate spelling). True story from my YouTube days when first discovering Blind Guardian.

New Rating: 10/5

Album: Into the Electric Castle

Old Rating: 5/5

Verdict: My favourite album. Has been since I first bought it in 2007. Ayreon's later work tends to get rated higher around here and though I love it too it doesn't hold a candle to this. I have many albums I love and consider my ultimate favourites but few have earned that status as immediately as this one did. And nothing has ever come close to unseating it.

New Rating: 11/5

Album: The Final Frontier

Old Rating: 4.5/5

Verdict: Out of all the post Dickinson/Smith reunion Iron Maiden albums The Final Frontier is the only one that hasn't historically resonated as a 5 star release for me. It's always been close though. It still is, but I really dug it on this latest spin. El Dorado actually remains my most played track of theirs on Last.fm by virtue of how many times I binged it while waiting for the album to be released. 

New Rating: No Change (yet). 

Album: Never, Neverland

Old Rating: 5/5

Verdict: This was, for a time, my favourite thrash metal album. I do have say that recent re-listens to Metallica though have unseated it in favour of Ride the Lightning, but it's still #2. I just find this a very fun thrash album to listen to. 

New Rating: No Change. 

Album: The Human Equation

Old Rating: 5/5

Verdict: The Human Equation is the Ayreon album that for a long time didn't completely click for me, although there are a few tracks from it I have always loved and were among the first I heard from Ayreon that today offer an incredibly high amount of nostalgia value. I've been up and down on the album as a whole though (so much that I have reviewed it no less than three times!), at least until a few years ago. I think the main reason for this was that I didn't (and still don't too much) like the voice of one of the cast, Eric Clayton. However over time the music has won through and I now consider this to be among Ayreon's best releases: certainly one of the most out and out progressive of them. I would even go so far as to say it is now one of my all time favourite albums. 

New Rating: No Change. 

Album: Oceanborn

Old Rating: 5/5

Verdict: My favourite Nightwish album. They always had the best sound with Tarja and playing power metal. An album of truly epic proportions. 

New Rating: No Change.