Which album was a band's creative zenith/magnum opus before falling off?
Which album was a band's creative zenith/magnum opus before falling off?
Demon Days by Gorillaz
Silent Alarm by Bloc Party
Metallica (Black Album)
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Pink Floyd - The Wall
Not their last album before Roger Waters left the band (that was The Final Cut, the album which followed), but it was far superior, and arguably their best album-- and inarguably their magnum opus.
The David Gilmour-led era of Pink Floyd was ok, but it would never reach the fevered heights and sick intensity of the Roger Waters days.
It's good album. But I view The Wall as a Waters solo album than a Pink Floyd one.
It's an okay album. It's a rock opera. It's very melodramatic. There are some great songs.
I go back and forth on Animals or Meddle as their best record, with Wish You Were Here close behind.
Definitely The Wall feels much more like the solo Roger stuff than the best of Floyd.
Though the real purists only like the Barrett stuff.
how do you figure that?
He essentially did write the whole thing.
He wrote all of The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Animals.
He essentially wrote everything post Syd Barret all the way up to the Final Cut which was supposed to be Floyd's last album.
No. Dark Side was the first album Waters wrote all of it.
I'm not saying that the other members didn't contribute, just that post Barret, Rogers wrote the vast majority.
The drop in vision and quality after The Final Cut really shows. The division bell is essentially Gilmour ranting at the poltergeist of Roger.
Except for the parts that David Gilmour wrote
Except for the parts that David Gilmour wrote
David Gilmour was good at solos, not song writing.
Some of the tracks are based on his childhood, and seeing how many The Wall tours he did. In 2016 he turned it into an opera. So the album is very personal to him.
A lot of the tracks have to do with what both Waters and Gilmour went through as children, as they both lost their fathers to World War II. David Gilmour got writing credit on a bunch of the tracks as well. And given the amount of work that both Waters and Gilmore put into the album, it’s not really right to say that it was a solo project. Not even to mention what Nick Mason put into it. If you wanna cut out Richard Wright’s contributions, considering that he got fired during this album’s production, that would be fair. 
The Wall is absolutely Rogers album. The concept and the songs are all his. Gilmour only received credits on three of the songs.
You can't point to a few guitar solos and then give Gilmour half the credit, it was a great contribution, but even Gilmour would admit that Roger wrote the wall.
I agree except that Dark side of the moon is clearly Pink Floyds magnum opus.
I understand that Roger is a divisive character (personally I love him despite his flaws), but god damn he could write an album.
More popular, more commercially successful, and more accessible to casual fans. Agreed.
But for magnum opus, I gotta agree with the wall for a few reasons
- They made a movie out of it
- The ode to the intense para social relationships that revolve around stardom and how a truly crazy creative can take advantage of it in scary ways was not only true back then, but predictive of how much worse it would get in current time.
- DSotM always seemed like a lot of good ideas in an unordered list. I felt like they could be scrambled and the album would be similar, except for the first and last songs.. Meanwhile the wall tells a story of pain, alienation, search for meaning, lashing out, and then a quest for self-forgiveness.
Fair shout. I also love the wall.
Best guitar solo of all time helps too
Everyone knows Ummagumma was their best album, they're just too scared to admit it!
Best song is several small species