MR

My personal Top 10 CDS of 2014 read like this:

All Genres Included

1. Sabaton - Heroes

2. John Mellencamp - Plain Spoken

3. Accept - Blind Rage

4. Kix - Rock Your Face Off

5. Uriah Heep - Outsider

6. Judas Priest - Redeemer of Souls

7. Joe Bonamassa - Different Shades of Blue

8. Lone Justice - This is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983

9. Ronny Munroe - Electric Wake

10. Night Ranger - High Road

ROCK AND METAL ONLY

1. Sabaton - Heroes (Nuclear Blast Records)

2. Accept - Blind Rage (Nuclear Blast Records)

3. Kix - Rock Your Face Off (Loud & Proud Records)

4. Uriah Heep - Outsider (Frontiers Records)

5. Judas Priest - Redeemer of Souls (Epic Records)

6. Ronny Munroe - Electric Wake (Rat Pak Records)

7. Night Ranger - High Road (Frontiers Records)

8. Winger - Better Days Comin' (Frontiers Records)

9. Tesla - Simplicity (Tesla Electric Co.)

10. Overkill - White Devil Armory (EOne Music)

TageRyche wrote:My personal Top 10 CDS of 2014 read like this:

All Genres Included

1. Sabaton - Heroes

2. John Mellencamp - Plain Spoken

3. Accept - Blind Rage

4. Kix - Rock Your Face Off

5. Uriah Heep - Outsider

6. Judas Priest - Redeemer of Souls

7. Joe Bonamassa - Different Shades of Blue

8. Lone Justice - This is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983

9. Ronny Munroe - Electric Wake

10. Night Ranger - High Road

Accept's "Blind Rage" and Priest's "Redeemer of Souls" were really good but I was disappointed in "High Road" by Night Ranger after the previous album.

I didn't hear the previous Night Ranger album. While there were a couple of songs I didn't enjoy on High Road, overall the album held up really well for me.

Pretty shocked that Evergrey's "Hymns For The Broken" isn't on either of your lists. It topped just about every other rock/metal list of the year.

Archetype wrote:Pretty shocked that Evergrey's "Hymns For The Broken" isn't on either of your lists. It topped just about every other rock/metal list of the year.

I didn't listen to it, so it couldn't be included.

That's an unfortunate deprivation. Check it out!

This is terribly off topic, but I finally went and bought the last Boston album, Life, Love & Hope. I didn't get it sooner, because I didn't like the thought of buying an album that included so many retreads from Corporate America. And I'm still aggravated about that. But I absolutely love some of the new tracks. Heaven on Earth, with David Victor and Louis St. August on vocals is a great song, and they sound eerily like Brad Delp. Sail Away is my favorite track, and one of my favorite Boston songs, ever. The title track, Life, Love & Hope, with Tommy DiCarlo on vocals is a really good song as well, and again DiCarlo sounds so much like Delp. There are a couple more songs on the record that I like, and I can even stomach the song Tom Scholz sang lead vocals on. I'm glad I decided to go ahead and get the album. Shockingly though, and so uncharacteristic of Boston, the production is just good enough.

I went back and listened to it... same as before.. man the drums suck on this... as does the mix.

Its ironic that Tom Scholz, someone who openly professes his hate for computers, has recorded drums that sound like they are straight off a 1990's Alesis SR-16 drum machine.

It still astonishes me, because the first 2 Boston albums are such sonic masterpieces... likely because there was a producer involved with the recordings....