Full Album - Accident Of Birth

[Jer]

For sharing thoughts and ratings on the full album.

[Hessos]

OK, so first of all it’s clearly a four star album to me. When looking at the ratings I just gave to each song, we would get 3.3 stars without “The Ghost of Cain” and 3.5 including that one as well. And the reason I calculate these two cases separately is that to me, “The Ghost of Cain” is not on the album. It’s merely a bonus track, because that’s how the album was released in Europe.

I haven’t done much of these song-by-song ratings, but this one shows me that AoB feels better than the individual songs on it. And there’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose? The songs feel very well thought through, ie. the arrangements are mostly really good, and everyone involved is doing a great job with their instruments. The soundscape is heavy as hell. Everything sounds unbelievably good, even today. This might even be the album where Bruce’s singing was at its absolute peak (to my taste at least). So even if every song here isn’t the best that they’ve written, it’s a really enjoyable listen. And it truly feels like this is a band playing together, performing the songs that they’ve rehearsed together.

The album really blew my mind back then, and I can easily see why it happened.