Lateralus was on of the first albums I ever heard and I'm pretty sure it helped shaped what I look for in music because pretty much no matter what I'm looking for, I can put it on and it'll be on here - crescendos with amazing climaxes, awesome riffs, cool rhythms, beautiful atmosphere, really pissed off stuff. I actually stopped listening to it for around two years when I first started looking for more underground bands, but then anticipating 10,000 Days brought me back and it sounded new and exciting again because of how long it had been since I istened to any of their stuff.
For various reasons my three favourite albums. Frances the Mute for how perfect and inhuman it sounds - Omar either proved his genius or hit on something amazing for just a split second with Frances because his sngwriting isn't nearly as inspired and ambitious on their other two albums (although Cedric, Jon and Juan still make them great to listen to). Terraforming is here because of the opposite reason - how imperfect and human it sounds. The way they combine with lo-fi production with ambitious song structures lets them tap into the majesty of progressive rock without losing any energy or emotion. Last is Terria, which convinced me that there was in fact music beyond Tool and Rage Against the Machine to be discovered, and even though I don't appreciate it as much as I used to its still cool.
The three heaviest albums of all time (well City isn't exactly the heaviest, but the way it manages to be heavy as anything else and still melodic). I could use a lot of analagies about how they're like having liquid magma spew from your speakers directly into your eardrum, a vice being tigntened around your skull or the soundtrack to a riot, and those all work, but I'll just leave it at that.
The best song of all time. It flows so perfectly that when the chorus hits for the last time it makes me want to cry because I still haven't found anything quite as perfect as it in a year or so of searching. I've also listened to it a lot more than any other song according to lastfm :]
The two albums that make me think of the earth actual shattering while I listen to them. "Epic" and "violent" are the keywords for these. And they're both one song split into smaller sections, how odd...
