Hedgehog

Some people rock tattoos/piercings, others don't.

Big feet

In the world of music, there are millions or artists, millions of albums, billions of songs, but there are only 14 that I can honestly say have positively affected my life. These 14 albums have changed the way I think, the way I live, and the way I listen to music. For an album to make this list, it must be extraordinary in every facet: no weak songs, great lyrics, and impeccable musical talent. It’s natural for someone, when he or she listens to music, to immediately jump to conclusions and judge before they even begin to understand what they’re listening to. However, I ask that you all try to keep an open mind while listening to the samples I have provided. 1. Oceansize – Everyone Into Position A few years back, long before I had developed any musical knowledge, I would play my A Perfect Circle Pandora radio station for hours upon hours. As you would guess, much of the music was Tool-esque, dark, heavy, melodic; however, every so often, a song would come up that sounded so different from everything Pandora told me to listen to. As time passed, I began looking forward to hearing that song. I literally waited days for it to show up. Eventually, I learned the song name and its artist: “Meredith” by Oceansize, and played it over and over again on YouTube. That following Christmas, I got one of those sacred iTunes cards. A little internal conflict ensued. Green Day had recently released a new album, so I could either buy that, or buy the album that “Meredith” was on. I went with the latter option and never looked back. Everyone Into Position quickly became my favorite album. It had depth that no other album had. You could play it for hours and always hear something different. It helped me cope with death, break ups, and sickness. It highlighted all the blissful moments in my life. Without a doubt, Everyone Into Position by Oceansize is the greatest album of all time. 2. Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never die, But You Will I’ve been a Mogwai fan for years. Hell, I own every song they’ve ever written. Something about their take on Post-Rock makes their music seem so beautiful and refreshing to hear. When they released Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, I was a bit worried that their time was up, and that Mr. Beast would be their last great album. Thankfully, my worries didn’t turn into reality. In fact, it was quite the contrary. Hardcore… just sounded classy. That’s the best word I can use to describe it. It had everything Mogwai has always had, with an extra helping of class. It was clean, sauve, and sophisticated. If you’re ever sitting by a fire, wearing a suit, and drinking a scotch, this should be your soundtrack. 3. Dredg – El Cielo "This album was inspired by a painting titled 'Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second before Awakening'. It is recommended that you view this painting as you listen to El Cielo. It is as if one stimulus awakens other senses. In other words, it's about 'drawing music'". This quote comes from the song below, “The Canyon Behind Her”, and refers to Salvador Dali’s painting “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumblebee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening”, upon which the album was based. The album also makes heavy references to sleep-paralysis, which Dali’s wife suffered from. There’s not much more to say, except that this album is one of the best of all time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-CdB7-AFKw 4. The Mars Volta – Deloused in the Comatorium I think most people are familiar with this album, so I’m not going to write more than a few sentences on it. I was first introduced to Deloused from one of these lists, and at first I was put off by his voice, but I later came to realize that even with his extremely high voice, the album was still well written and one of the best concept albums of all time. The story that it was based on is located here: http://www.tmvfr.info/miscfiles/DeLoused_storybook.pdf. 5. The Pineapple Thief – Someone Here is Missing TPT’s first major album, Tightly Unwound, was on my old list, and it was one of the ones that I added for the sake of quantity. Since then, they released another album, Someone Here is Missing, which I can honestly say deserves to be on this list. It combines indie, progressive, and alternative elements and doesn’t sound as if it belongs to any of these genres, and has a truly unique sound, which is one of the rarest qualities in this day and age. 6. Isis – Panopticon Isis is a very interesting band. If you just listened to the beginnings of their songs, you would label them as a shoegaze band, but if you listened further, you would consider them post-rock, even further and you’d call them heavy metal. This being said, I cannot accurately describe them, so I’ll have to leave that to you all. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. 7. Sigur Ros – Takk Everyone knows that Iceland is supposed to be the green one and Greenland is supposed to be the icy one, but Sigur Ros, Iceland’s biggest musical export, seems to break right through this stereotype. Sigur Ros creates the iciest, loneliest, and most mournful music. Their 2005 album, Takk…, which is Icelandic for “Thanks”, epitomizes their sound. 8. Failure – Fantastic Planet Failure was one of the first bands to use sonic texturing, which is essentially noise in the background of a song that makes it sound fuller. Without Failure, most of today’s music would sound very empty, and not in a good way. They’re one of the most influential bands of all time, yet few people outside of the music industry have heard of them. 9. Deftones – Diamond Eyes After Deftone’s Bassist, Chi Cheng, was involved in a serious accident and entered a coma, the band ditched their work on a follow up to Saturday Night Wrist and began working on a new masterpiece. Throughout Diamond Eyes, you can sense the suffering the band endured throughout the ordeal. Diamond Eyes is one of the best albums of 2010, by far. 10. Acroma – Orbitals It’s difficult not to feel bad for Acroma. After pouring their hearts out to produce one hell of an album, they were snubbed by their record company in favor of more commercial acts. What they suffered was one of the worst things a band can go through. Even when I try my hardest to not have my ears clouded by sympathy, I still hear an amazing album that’s just as great from the intro to the ending. It sounds a lot like a concept album as well, in the sense that the songs work well together and have extremely descriptive lyrics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msj4BBm8oO8 11. Portugal The Man – Waiter: You Vultures! Portugal The Man is another one of those eclectic, experimental bands that I love so much, except these guys legitimately have something special. Much like every other album on this list, the first song is just as great as the last, the songs are consistent, but still sound unique. They employ some interesting techniques that many bands wouldn’t be able to pull off. I would understand if they sound a bit weird to some people, but I think at least one of their albums deserves to be on this list. 12. Porcupine Tree – Deadwing This is by far PT’s best album, and PT is a great band, and I’m pretty sure you’ve all heard enough about them, so I’ll just leave it at that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9vaAVm0LIk&feature=related 13. Spock’s Beard – Snow This album is the definition of epic. 24 songs, 2 discs, 104 minutes. If you can sit through the whole thing, I can assure you that you will not be disappointed. The music is so diverse and interesting, from prog to alternative, the story is so well told. This album is absolute genius, and I can’t think of a better way to end this list.

My list is nearing completion, and I have to say, it's a lot more compact. It really helps to not worry about the number of albums. I did that last time and ended up including Green Day and Disturbed, among others. This time around, I only left space for the greats.

Alright, I remembered this thread the other day, and found my half made thread. I had about 50 albums, and much of the list was completely finished, but the thing that struck me was that I wasn't particularly fond of half of them anymore. I couldn't honestly say that there were 50 albums you should own on that list. That being said, I went back, edited my list a bit, and narrowed it down to twenty albums. I'm writing up the reviews or whatever you want to call them now. I'll probably post tomorrow.

Oceansize Mogwai Dredg The Pineapple Thief Isis Sigur Ros Portugal The Man Tool Failure Acroma

Trio Runebound Necro Gravecreeper Thunderous Shadow Forger Bal'lak Flesh-Spoiler Most of them are pains in the ass more than they are hard.

99s are inefficient.

I don't have any experience at barb, but assuming it works like every other place where you drop stuff, it'd be quicker to fish 3 at a time and drop them all at once.

c2s are still alright, even though the xp was halved. If you prefer conventional fishing, however, fly fish at shilo.

Don't get a rapier till after 100 dunge and 99 att, and even then, a different bind may be more useful.

Use elite void vs wfs. It has decent magic def and prayer, plus the normal void bonus.

You should be able to steal kills from the bots very easily.

Pretty bad quality. I'll see what I can do.

I thought I'd summarize this thread a bit.

I've got a G2H/longbow sight pure in the works. No idea how it's gonna work out.

Guides are, in most cases, for more complex training methods. You don't really need a guide for something simple like combat. There's nothing you can say that can't be found on rs wiki or a h&a thread.

I meant in Help & Advice. This thread pops up every page or so.

AZ's if you can get to them, zombie monkeys, DHing skeleton monkeys, giant skeletons, anything where you can use a salve really. There's probably a million threads on this, just have a look around.

Try slayer. It's good xp, charms, and cash.

I thought that too, but then there's the issue where it only seems to reduce defense.

Every site I've visited so far states that the anchor's spec reduces either attack, magic, ranged, or defense by 10% of the damage inflicted. However, this is not true. The anchor only reduces defense by 1%. If need be, I could record its special attacks and post a video of it for proof.

I was assuming you'd be doing yews, which you really shouldn't be protecting.

I'd recommend looking at them before the weekend starts, to make sure there's no dead trees. There's a good chance you'll miss out on a nice chunk of xp if you don't.