The rock concept album has been around in some shape or form since the ’60s, when the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Since then, the concept has given us some of the best albums ever written (like Pink Floyd’s The Wall), and some of the worst (we’re looking at you, Operation: Mindcrime II). Many fall somewhere in the middle, with the search for a unified theme getting in the way of the music, the lyrics, or both.
Flavorwire has just released a list of the top 10 “Most Gloriously Geeky Concept Albums of All Time,” and wouldn’t you know that metal comprises a decent amount of the list. Blind Guardian’s Nightfall in Middle Earth takes the top spot, mainly because it’s based on Lord of the Rings. But Mastodon, Manowar, The Mars Volta and Marilyn Manson are also on the list alongside Styx, Stevie Wonder and… Weezer?
Mastodon is perfectly understandable. Crack the Skye is a great album, but with a few years space to look back at it, the plot about time travel, holes in the sky and Rasputin does seem a little convoluted. Manowar’s 2007 album Gods of War is nominated mainly because it’s the first in a promised series of concept albums about war gods – and it’s about Odin. The whole list is pretty good, minus the fact that they misspelled the title of the Blind Guardian album, their #1 pick. Check out the whole list here.
