TheAlterBridgeNation.com

Blackbird
ABIII
Fortress
One Day Remains/Walk the Sky/The Last Hero

Blackbird 93%
One Day Remains/AB III/Fortress/Walk The Sky - 91%
The Last Hero 89%

Need to give everything except Blackbird another spin since it was originally at the 91% mark as well but went up on the second full listen. Every album is incredible I'm so thankful we have a band that consistently puts out great material.

Blackbird
Fortress
Walk the Sky
One Day Remains
AB III
The Last Hero

Can't decide order so I did tiers
Tier 1: Blackbird, Fortress
Tier 2: Walk the Sky, ABIII, ODR
Tier 3: The Last Hero

TheEndisHere wrote:Can't decide order so I did tiers
Tier 1: Blackbird, Fortress
Tier 2: Walk the Sky, ABIII, ODR
Tier 3: The Last Hero

This is the real answer here

Fortress
Blackbird
TLH
ODR
WtS
ABIII

Blackbird
Fortress
Walk the Sky
AB III
One Day Remains
The Last Hero

Blackbird and Fortress are basically 1A and 1B for me, Blackbird gets the slight edge due to the nostalgia factor. Walk the Sky is their most consistent album for me. AB III is a great album but I prefer the tone and atmosphere of Blackbird, and it’s less consistent. I love One Day Remains but it’s basically a totally different band and sound and doesn’t compare to the stuff they did when Mark and Myles started to truly collaborate.

As for The Last Hero, it has a chunk of really good songs. Island of Fools, The Other Side, TSoF, TLH, Cradle, and Crows are all great songs. What brings it down for me is there are more songs that I skip on this album than the others, and Myles voice has that twangy/nasally quality almost all the way through for whatever reason, and it really grates on my ears. He does it every now and then on other records, not enough to bother me, but on The Last Hero it’s constant and it’s hard on the ears.

Fortress
Blackbird
Walk The Sky
ABIII
One Day Remains
The Last Hero

Walk the Sky is so much more consistent that even though songs like Slip to the Void and Words are probably better than anything on WTS, the weak parts of ABIII drag it below.

Arctic wrote:Blackbird
Fortress
Walk the Sky
AB III
One Day Remains
The Last Hero

Blackbird and Fortress are basically 1A and 1B for me, Blackbird gets the slight edge due to the nostalgia factor. Walk the Sky is their most consistent album for me. AB III is a great album but I prefer the tone and atmosphere of Blackbird, and it’s less consistent. I love One Day Remains but it’s basically a totally different band and sound and doesn’t compare to the stuff they did when Mark and Myles started to truly collaborate.

As for The Last Hero, it has a chunk of really good songs. Island of Fools, The Other Side, TSoF, TLH, Cradle, and Crows are all great songs. What brings it down for me is there are more songs that I skip on this album than the others, and Myles voice has that twangy/nasally quality almost all the way through for whatever reason, and it really grates on my ears. He does it every now and then on other records, not enough to bother me, but on The Last Hero it’s constant and it’s hard on the ears.

I feel like TLH is an album in which it's less than the sum of its parts. There are some incredible songs on that album but the tone of Myles singing, the heaviness (production), and length of some of the songs put together makes it a slog. I find that the songs on that album can be appreciated more in isolation rather than as a full album. Like if you put AB songs on shuffle and a TLH song pops up it's great and I love the song (except YWBR) but I can't play the album start to finish.

That actually pretty much sums it up. I love hearing the songs I mentioned if I hit shuffle, but playing the whole album through is just a chore. I wonder if Myles voice was just strained during the recording process or he was doing more of a Slash style vocal on purpose. Either way it’s bizarre because he sounds smooth as hell on Walk the Sky.

Moving my post in the newer ranking thread to here as I didn't realise it was a duplicate. I have an extraordinarily hard time ranking each individual album, mainly because I never know which metric to focus upon (for example, album-wide consistency or the strength of individual songs?) Having said that:

1) Fortress
2) Blackbird
3) Walk the Sky
4) ABIII
5) The Last Hero
6) One Day Remains

This is a moveable ranking, but there’s no doubt still that Fortress is my number one album:

1. Fortress
2./3. Blackbird/Walk The Sky - undecided
4. AB III
5. ODR
6. TLH

1. Fortress/ODR (Can't split - God Tier)
2. Blackbird/Walk the Sky (Good Tier)
3. ABIII (Mid-Tier)
4. TLH (Shit Tier .... with some real diamonds in it)

Andy92 wrote:Blackbird
Fortress
Walk the Sky
One Day Remains
AB III
The Last Hero

Fortress
--------------
The rest

The reasons Fortress gets the nod as the best album for me are two fold;

Consistency - the album is almost flawless, there are no “bad” songs or fillers, apart from possibly All Ends Well.

Musical growth - there is a huge step up in complexity and songwriting from Blackbird to Fortress. The songs are more progressive, more intricate, but they don’t lose that sense of melody or space. The Last Hero is also progressive and complex, but many of the melodies aren’t as sharp or as well developed which is where that album falls down.

Blackbird album is peak anthemic AB. It is probably the best of the rest, although Walk The Sky is giving it a run for its money due to the consistency of the songs on the album.

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

Honestly only listen to a handful of tracks from Blackbird these days and tend to skip almost all of AB III. Come at me fans.

After listening to all the albums again

Fortress
The Last Hero/ABIII
Blackbird
Walk The Sky
One Day Remains

1. One Day Remains : love the voice, love the ones, love the variety. Still untopped in my book!
2. Blackbird: it's really close, but it would have been a stronger album without Break Me Down, One by One and Coming Home.
...
3. Fortress
4. Walk the Sky : really solid. It just lacks a couple more stand-out tracks.
...
5. The Last Hero : half the album is awesome, and half of it is completely forgettable.
6. AB III : WDTTW is incredible, Breathe Again, Never Born to Bollow and All Hope is Gone are OK, but I can live without the rest of it. It's not that those other songs are bad, it's just that they're just average/decent.

ABIII still by far their best !
Fortress
Blackbird
Walk the Sky
One day Remains just Creed with a better singer
The last hero