Concept albums have always been interesting to me. The music is the most important part, but having a story to be portrayed with the music makes it so much more enthralling. The better the story of an album, the more I find myself going back to it and listening to it over and over. While most music is up to the interpretation of the listener, concept albums give the listener an idea to base their interpretations off. Hearing other fans’ thoughts on a certain song or part of the album makes it such an incredible experience. That’s why I decided to come up with a list of my top five favorite concept albums of all time. I’ll be basing their ranking solely on the story and the impact it leaves.

5. Silverstein – “This is How the Wind Shifts”

The Story

“This is How the Wind Shifts” is a concept album like I have never heard before. It is not one fluid story throughout all of the tracks, as they each have their own stories. What makes this interesting is that each song has a parallel on the other half of the cd. There are 14 tracks, and it is basically two different albums, with two different beginnings and endings. All of the songs are about how one simple choice can lead to such different outcomes. Each song is about a situation, and the parallel is about what would happen if they were to make a different choice. In the first half of the album’s ending, the character is in a bad relationship but decides to stay in it. In the second half, the character ends the relationship and has confidence and self worth.

The Impact

A lot of Silverstein’s music has a very teenage angsty vibe to it. There’s a lot of talk about breakups and girls and things of that nature. There is a song for almost every problem a teenager faces. “This is How the Wind Shifts” takes that to a whole new level and shows the different outcomes of problems that teenagers face. This album is a very emotional one and has me going to it whenever I’m feeling like an angsty teenager. It shows me in some ways that problems aren’t as bad as they could be, and it also shows me that there are consequences for my actions. It’s a very powerful and inspirational album that I was addicted to for a long time.

Here’s the video to the most popular song off this album.

4. The Protomen – “Act II: The Father of Death”

The Story

“Act II: The Father of Death” is a rock opera about Mega Man. If that doesn’t catch your eye right away, I don’t know what will. For an album based off of an 80s video game, it is surprisingly emotional and epic. “Act II” is actually a prequel to Dr. Wily’s takeover of the city for those of you who know much about Mega Man. It starts out with Dr. Thomas Light talking to Dr. Albert Wily about how Light’s father died working in the coal mines when he was young. Light and Wily decide to build robots to do the work that miners do so there will be no more deaths. During their work, Wily starts to become hungry for power. He starts modifying their robots to do more than just mine. Wily tells Light that they should be in control of everyone because of all the work they did for mankind. He thinks that people aren’t capable of controlling themselves and has a utopian society planned out in his mind where he is the leader. Light thinks this is wrong but doesn’t want all of their work to go to waste, so he agrees to turn on the machines. Light starts to hate himself for what he did and the only person he can find solace in is his wife Emily Stanton. Light goes for a walk to clear his head and Wily comes to his house to try to take Emily away from Light. When Emily refuses, Wily orders one of his robots to kill her, then calls the police to peg the crime on Light. His plan works and Light gets arrested. Light is found innocent but the city is outraged and exiles him. 20 years in the future, Dr. Light hasn’t stopped blaming himself for the death of Emily, and a young rebel named Joe wants to stand up against Dr. Wily. Light finds him and together they come up with a plan to take down Wily. Joe rides his motorcycle into Wily’s headquarters with a bomb to blow up the transmitters that are keeping a constant watch over the city’s people. The bomb detonates early and destroys the transmitter but kills Joe. Light watches as the monitors and robots shut down momentarily, then start back up. It’s revealed that Wily has another transmitter and Joe’s death was in vain. Light decides that he is going to give up, but then remembers that Emily left him a note shortly before her murder. She tells him that he can’t give up hope because she will always love him. The album ends with Light saying “Joe, when you see Emily, tell her to wait for me ‘cause I still have work to do.” and then he walks away from the chaos of the city.

The Impact

The song “The State Vs. Thomas Light” is hands down the most emotional song I have ever heard. This is where Light is in Court for the murder of his wife being blamed on him. No matter how many times I listen to it, I still get goosebumps. When the jury reads the verdict, the line goes “We find the only man who loved her, we find the only man who’d give his life to see her once again. We find this man not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty.” While the jury is saying “Not guilty”, Dr. Light is saying “I am guilty”, and it is the most passionate part I have ever heard in a song. He has so much emotion in his voice and the music fits it perfectly. Even if I didn’t enjoy the music this album has, I would still listen to it just for how powerfully the story is told. It feels like I’m listening to the soundtrack to a Broadway musical as opposed to just a normal album. “Act II: The Father of Death” is an album that I can go back to at any point and listen to just because of the story.

There are actually no music videos for any song off this cd, but since I praised the song “The State Vs. Thomas Light” so much, I decided to link it here.

3. A Lot Like Birds – “No Place” 

The Story

“No Place” is a very unique take on the typical concept album format. It is about a person living in a house, and each track is about a specific room in the house and the events that take place. It starts out with the familiar doorbell chime playing while a speaking part about the house and the unnamed main character’s past with the house. It goes through all the trials and tribulations that he’s experienced, from his father leaving him to getting married to a women he doesn’t love and an eventual suicide attempt. The album ends with the main character running away from the house (Which I believe represents the bad memories as opposed to the house itself) as it crumbles and falls apart. After he makes it out of the house, he turns around and it comes back to life and ends with the line “It survived! It survived! It survived!”.

The Impact

Everyone interprets music differently and A Lot Like Birds has not come out and directly stated what exactly is happening. This is one of my favorite things about the album, because they leave so much up to the interpretation of the listener. I believe that the suicide attempt in “Kuroi Ledge” wasn’t just an attempt and that during “Shaking of the Frame” when the house actually survives, it’s just a manifestation of the problems he thought he was leaving behind being put onto the people he loves. Having so much be left up to interpretation adds so much to this album. It makes me go back and listen to it over and over trying to find new things that I haven’t noticed before. This album not only has one of the most gripping stories, but it has some of the most emotional lines I’ve ever heard such as “They say like father like son, is that the reason that I constantly feel like I don’t exist?” from “No Nurture” when he’s discussing how his father left him. I think the saddest and realest line is from the spoken word song “Myth of Lasting Sympathy” when he says “That when we grow up, you and I, that we cheat. That we find the girl we love and that we lose her because we learn to love ourselves much more. That the friends that we make will drift away once we have leeched them dry. That the mother who turned our darkened scary hallways into pathways to a bedroom will call us and miss us and love us and we will stay hidden.” It shows how selfish people can be and how painful life is. This album brings out all of the dark places in our lives and manifests them into one heart wrenching and hypnotic masterpiece that makes me evaluate all of my decisions and has me going back and listening to it day after day.

This video below this is actually my favorite music video of all time (A topic I may revisit). The animations are amazing and it is a visual masterpiece. It also tells the entire story in one six minute video.

2. Boys Night Out – “Trainwreck”

The Story

“Trainwreck” starts out with an unnamed doctor talking about an unnamed patient. The listener finds out that the patient is catatonic and suffers from hyperrealistic nightmares. As the doctor talks more, the listener finds out that the patient killed his wife in his catatonic state because of these nightmares. The next track is from the patient’s point of view and introduces him from the night before the murder. As the story progresses, the patient slowly starts slipping into insanity partly due to the longing for his wife, and partly due to his growing prescription drug addiction (“One pill will get me through the day, but I take two anyway. When I take three pills, the song begins to play and it won’t go away.” – Recovering, Boys Night Out’s “Trainwreck”). As he slowly becomes more and more unstable, he starts hearing a song in his head that won’t go away. The song begins eating him away and he needs to “finish the song”. In order to finish it, he thinks he needs to kill everyone who has shunned him since the incident took place. He invites them over to dinner and poisons them all. After he murders these people, he still feels empty. He wallows in pity and alcohol until he passes out, where he has an out of body experience and hears his wife tell him that in order to finish the song, he needs to kill the doctor. He invites the doctor over to his house where he plans on killing him. The last track, “Dying”, starts out with very strange sounding vocals. As the vocals continue, the listener realizes that it’s the song that the patient has been obsessing over. After that song ends, there is a spoken section as the doctor enters the patients home to find pill bottles, alcohol containers, and blood all over the floors and walls. He later finds the patient on the floor, dying. He walks up to him and realizes that he’s singing the song he’s been obsessing over. The album ends with four integral lines from the album all being sung at once. The last line that is sung is “We were inseparable”, and then the patient dies.

The Impact

This is the most haunting album I have ever listened to. It all feels so real, no matter how insane the circumstances are. When I listen it, I get so emotionally invested into the character, and even though I know how insane and ultimately evil he is, I still feel sympathy for him and want for him to be happy. The album as a whole is so dark but beautiful. I first listened to it back in 2011 and still enjoy it as much as I did when I first heard it. It leaves me deep in thought for awhile after each listen, and I only listen to it when I know I can listen to it all the way through. The buildup to “Dying” is so perfect and every time I hear it, I get goosebumps. This album is one of the most memorable I have ever heard. It has so much emotion in it and the storytelling is perfect.

Here’s a video to the band’s most popular song, and an integral part of the story.

1. Between the Buried and Me – The Parallax Series

The Story

This one is a bit different. It’s actually two cd’s as opposed to one (I know, that’s cheating, but this is my blog, I can do what I want). Aside from it being two albums, it is also a much harder concept to explain. Let me briefly explain. The Parallax series itself (“The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues” and “The Parallax II: Future Sequence”) is about two people, Prospect 1 and Prospect 2. They are almost completely identical in appearance and spirit. They share memories and events and only catch glimpses of each other. They are basically the same person with two different bodies who live on two different planes of existence. These godlike creatures, The Nightowls (or sometimes referred to as Strigiformes), control both Prospects and make them meet each other. They start to lose their grip on reality and can’t distinguish between what is a dream and what is real life. The listener only knows that they both have been sent on a mission and they have to make the decision together. As the story progresses, the listener finds out that Prospect 2 left his wife and house to go on this mission. He leaves a letter for his wife explaining why he left. She doesn’t get the letter because a mysterious character (referred to in the linear notes of the album as “The Black Mask”) takes the letter. She becomes so grief stricken that she kills herself by burning down their house while she is trapped inside. Prospect 2 finds out about this and decides he is going to carry out the mission “as The Nightowls want”. The listener finds out that this means destroying the universe and everyone who is in it except for The Nightowls. Prospect 1 does not know that he is going to follow through with it and the album ends with Prospect 2 killing Prospect 1 and then ending everything with the line “Goodbye to everything”. This story itself is fairly in depth and crazy as it is. What makes it so much more intense is that Prospect 1, Prospect 2, and The Nightowls have been introduced long before The Parallax cd’s came to be. All three beings are introduced having a conversation in the song Lost Perfection A) Coulrophobia. This song was released on the album “The Silent Circus” which was the band’s second album and came out in 2003. The Parallax series started in 2011. That means that the idea of the Prospects came out eight years before the series itself was started. That’s not the only thing that built up on the Parallax before it was released. The Nightowls were introduced as celestial beings in Fossil Genera – A Feed From Cloud Mountain which was released on “The Great Misdirect” which came out in 2009. Also, Prospect 1 is introduced in the song Swim to the Moon which also came out on “The Great Misdirect”. What makes this story so mind blowing is not the story itself, but how this band has been, unbeknownst to fans, writing this genius story since 2003 and didn’t finish it until 2012. This summary of the story is not very in depth at all, and if you’d like to read the whole thing, check out this article that Heavy Blog Is Heavy wrote on it.

Also, if you don’t want to read a giant five part piece on it but still want to hear the explanation, here is a video that puts all the songs into chronological order, has all the lyrics, and the explanations to what is going on.

The Impact 

Any story that could have me spend an hour and a half reading an article on what is going on is definitely a sign that I’m very intrigued by it. I have spent countless hours listening to this cd over and over. Every time I hear it and study the lyrics and story, I get so sucked in. It’s unlike any other story or album I’ve ever heard. It is tied with my favorite album of all time and no matter how many times I hear it, I am always equally sucked in by just how intense the story is.

In conclusion, concept albums are amazing. I’ve expressed a lot of love for them in this entry. I have a lot more thoughts on all of these albums, but I knew I’d lose interest if I wrote them all out here. While these are my top five, I know there are many fantastic concept albums out there and I’m always looking to change my lineup.