Favorite Alter Bridge Record

[fix]

AB III
Fortress
Blackbird
ODR

Based on how much songs there are on each album that I really like.

[erv]

Fortress, 3, blackbird, odr to me.

[cheesedip1]

It's hard to choose, I mean, I like almost anything AB puts out. I'd have to say...

1. One Day (Has classics, such as 'Open your Eyes", "in loving memory", "broken wings" and "shed my skin".

2. AB3 - I just really liked this album because of all the concept themes that deal with losing hope and stuff.
Still Remains was my least favorite.

3. Fortress (Fortress was pretty solid, I admit).

4. Blackbird IMO, Blackbird had great guitar work, but I felt like some of the choruses were average or nothing special. Obviously tho, some songs were great such as Ties, Come to, Blackbird, and Watch Over You. Seriously tho, I thought One by One and Coming Home were bland. Also, the choruses of White knuckles, Wayward One, and Buried Alive were kind of average to me.

[Timotheus]

Wayward One's chorus was based on Bach's Bourrée in E Minor. I always forget how much I love that song. It's so complete. Perfect chorus, perfect bridge, perfect guitar solo.

[\m/Tremonster\m/]

Here's my rankings for now. Tough call.

1. Fortress
2. Blackbird
3. ABIII
4. One Day Remains

Fortress is far and away my favourite album. Love how experimental it was. 2 to 4 are tougher. I like all 3. 2 and 3 are especially close. Blackbird and ABIII are near even for me.

[AllC392Was]

1. Fortress - Complete album. Mark on lead vocals and 2 epics. Songs like Calm the Fire and Lover make Fortress diverse and different

2. Blackbird- Album that brought us "Blackbird" and Watch over you. Come to Life, Ties That Bind, White Knuckles are the high energy/paced songs that I enjoy very much.

3. ODR - Classics like Open Your Eyes, Metalingus, In Loving Memory started what AB is all about. BB is what makes them today but these songs are the foundation of AB. End Is here and Shed My Skin should be the type of songs that AB should focus on making.

4. I think AB's most diverse album but I think this was poorly done. Overly mixed and the guitars don't sound very clean. I do love WDTTW and Still Remains.. Brought us Isolation and Ghosts of days gone by

[\m/Tremonster\m/]

How do the albums rank for you all now? Here's mine:

1. Fortress
2. Blackbird
3. The Last Hero
4. ABIII
5. One Day Remains

The Last Hero and ABIII are very close.

[gbruin]

Ugh, this is impossible, so here I go anyway...

Keeping in mind that ODR is so different from the other 4 that is really isn't a straight comparison.

1. ODR
2. Blackbird
3. Fortress/The Last Hero
5. AB III

[MuffinMcFluffin]

ODR has several songs that got me into Alter Bridge. I want to say that when MySpace around and kicking, it was kind of their "setlist" on their profile page: Open Your Eyes, Broken Wings, In Loving Memory and Metalingus. And then I didn't hear Down To My Last until after I had purchased the album, several years later (I want to say it was even after I had bought Blackbird, and maybe even AB III). The rest are ehh... they're good songs, but probably just better because of the band that plays them and not as much because of the songs themselves. I could do without them. 7/10

I remember listening to Blackbird for quite some time when I first got it. I wasn't big on either single, but Brand New Start, Before Tomorrow Comes, Blackbird, Watch Over You, and just the songs that rounded it off were always nicely pleasing for me (I'm referring to the Best Buy version that includes both The Damage Done and A New Way To Live). I respected Come To Life more so when I didn't think that the band did enough to play it in concerts, then it got a little old-hat. I charted Buried Alive on a Guitar Hero custom forum that you can still find a video for online, mostly because the guitar action was very sweet and distinct. There were but a few duds, but it was a nice and solid album. 8/10

AB III showed a different way for Alter Bridge. Here's where the mixing took a different sound altogether, and is where I started to say that Myles Kennedy didn't sound as "in the forefront" as he used to, just by the mix alone. I noticed that arrangements were slightly more complex, but it led to this sound that was... very consistent within the entire album. I even pretended like it was almost a film in a way, where there were different acts and elements that gave that foreshadowing effect. I always thought that Make It Right sounded like the little prologue to Words Darker Than Their Wings, if not just for the intro riff. Wonderful Life and Life Must Go On were two power ballads that I always thought could have been further simplified, and it seems they do that for WL in concert as an acoustic. Verses were very beautiful in this album, from Ghosts to All Hope Is Gone, from I Know It Hurts to Breathe Again, etc. There were even some "filler" tracks that I always found I never wanted to skip such as Fallout. This is the album much like Seventeen Days for 3 Doors Down: nowhere in this album features a standout AB track that I would say is heads above the rest nor is of my favorites for the band itself, but I could listen to all sixteen songs (yes, including the bonus two) straight through without any issue, as every song feels like it was pre-arranged and laid down very well before being recorded. 8.5/10

Fortress then came about, and I was a bit torn. Starting with Cry of Achilles, I saw a new path for them. More "cluttered" arrangements (that I now know has a term which is "progressive," but it was still a bit more chaotic than that), as I really felt like someone came into the studio a few times and asked the rest of the band to hear the new lick they formed, and they threw it into a song with lyrics on top of it. This is what I felt this entire album was like. Even other songs that I think are more put together as one consistent ensemble piece, such as All Ends Well, has elements where they say, "Put a bit of darkness in there. Yeah, let's do that. A few more minor chords, nice." I just think things were thrown in for the sake of throwing them in. It was refreshing, different, and dare I say welcomed... and it also was a spice that probably made me like some of these songs more than I would have otherwise (such as the bridge and solo in Bleed It Dry). But this was when Mark Tremonti was also starting to make a name for himself in a solo project, and I now saw that AB was not just with one front man, but two. That meant more Tremonti influence, and even a song where he takes the lead. I wasn't as for that, really. I liked when the band had their role and their part, for better or worse. I just felt like this would lead us to somewhere they couldn't come back from. Anyway, I also enjoyed the single Addicted to Pain, I found another little gem in The Uninvited, and I said to myself this is a great "concert album" that I can do some head-banging to. It was a strong once-over, but I was hoping for them to go back to their roots the next time around. 7.5/10

Ah, so now here we are with The Last Hero. The mix: dreadful. The worst I have heard from a professional in any of my years that I have critiqued the music that I heard. It is hot and bombastic, to the extent like Syndrome says in The Incredibles: "And when everyone's super... no one will be." It was everything competing with each other and it lost the fidelity. I can't play it loud anywhere without making my concussed head hurt, be it the stereo in my car, the cans over my ears, or my calibrated home theater system that should otherwise give you a delectable eargasm. It just doesn't happen, and this really knocks around this album for worse. It's too unfortunate, which makes me wonder how it will sound in concert or with acoustic parts, because I really do need a second opinion after that. At any rate, I tried to listen to the singles with one ear closed and the other open: enough for me to know that they exist, but not enough for me to be able to repeat the tunes or lyrics in my head without exposing myself to them too much before the rest of the album. In the beginning, I was all over My Champion; now that I have had the album for a week, this one doesn't do too much for me. I wish it gave me chills, but it just doesn't. The Other Side is the only fantastic single of theirs from the album, IMO. Other standouts are the ones you all have mentioned, but even then the mix bogs them down so much that I'm thinking more could have come from it. Nevertheless, the songs are all missing a certain amount of variety as they all have a metal component to them that AB hasn't always had, and every song has something that I say, "If only they did this, then it would be a show-stopper." I'll be listening to this one for a while and picking it apart, but it's not the best piece of work they have done either. I think in the end it deserves and will get more, but for now it might be sitting at the bottom as an overall collection, if not just for Baskette's mix alone. 6.5/10

That being said, this does give me an official ranking, even though I don't know if I can sit there and say that it's true. But alas, here's how it seems to stand based on scores, all half a point away from one another:

- AB III
- Blackbird
- Fortress
- One Day Remains
- The Last Hero

And thinking about it more, I really don't know if TLH deserves to be there... but I just don't think I can officially judge it yet is all. It is missing "that song" that gives me chills that every other album has though, but that doesn't make it pitiful at all. I just wish we got this in a different mix. It really deters from my best opinion on the album itself. I think it was just an example of them trying really hard and then just being slightly underwhelmed as a result, like The Dark Knight Rises. Actually, that's a perfect example, because that's a film that I love to death, but then can also sit there and say, "If this, this, and that changed, my goodness the thing it could have been!!" So I'm probably giving TLH an unfair shake, but they lent me to that themselves. It's still strong though, and I'd love to hear some of these songs in concert very soon.

[Arctic]

I seriously find it almost impossible to rank these albums. All I know for sure is that Blackbird is my locked in number 1. After that it depends on my mood. I'm engrossed in ODR right now and can't get enough of the hugely melodic riffs. Fortress is an overall incredible album, and both AB III and TLH are solid albums. I don't think I'll ever be able to put them in an order.

[AHart96]

Very easy for me

1. Fortress
2. Blackbird
3. AB III
4. ODR
5. The Last Hero

[AB4Lyfe]

1. Fortress
2. Blackbird
3. The Last Hero
4. AB III
5. One Day Remains

No hate on ODR, love the record, just not my favorite AB record.

[Dolo]

I seriously find it almost impossible to rank these albums.

This. I feel that AB don't have enough albums yet to make a proper ranking, or maybe it is because they records aren't really versatile.

[Timotheus]

Blackbird
One Day Remains
Fortress
AB III
The Last Hero

[nildiven]

Blackbird
The Last Hero
Fortress
One Day Remains
ABIII

The Last Hero is a bit inconsistent and lacks in the ballad/midtempo area, but the highs (Cradle, This Side of Fate, Island, TLH) are some of the best songs they've ever done in my opinion.

[Andy92]

Blackbird
One Day Remains
Fortress
The Last Hero
AB III

[WaywardOne]

1.Blackbird/Fortress (don't make me choose)
2. The Last Hero
3. One Day Remains/ABIII (don't make me choose)

Basically there were two tiers of AB albums before, and for me TLH somehow managed to find a nice spot in the middle.

[VigilantSteve]

1.Blackbird/Fortress (don't make me choose)
2. The Last Hero
3. One Day Remains/ABIII (don't make me choose)

Basically there were two tiers of AB albums before, and for me TLH somehow managed to find a nice spot in the middle.

It's still a bit early for sure on The Last Hero for me, but I have a feeling that this is exactly how I will end up ranking them.

[mikeyd23]

I'd say:

Blackbird
Fortress
The Last Hero
One Day Remains
AB III

[Green_Hammock]

Okay so this is tough, as I love all of them but here goes:

1. AB III
2. Fortress
3. One Day Remains
4. The Last Hero
5. Blackbird

It's kind of tough to put them in order like this, I think that I listen to the different albums based on what mood I'm in. Fortress is mostly dark, ODR mostly uplifting, but AB III to me has a great mix of all their styles and my favourite song (Ghost of Days Gone By). I think The Last Hero is a lot like AB III but I can't put it above my other favourites at the moment. Blackbird I just listen to the least of all the albums, I don't exactly know why because I have plenty of favourites from that album, but don't listen to the whole thing very often.