Criminally underrated albums

What albums do you feel are criminally underrated on ProgArchives, and why? A few that I think deserve higher ratings:

I don't really have an issue with criminally underrated albums; after all degustibus non est disputandum. My issue is more with criminally unknown albums, like Roman Bunka's "Dein Kopf ist ein schlafendes Auto", Mother Gong's "Fairy Tales" or Nik Turner's "Xitintoday".

Edited by BaldFriede - March 23 2019 at 08:05

Unfortunately, most reviews are based on personal taste and opinions, and that's what counts for most (not all of course) people who buys music. I personally don't care about the ratings that much. I've found many albums that are considered "Not that Good" to be quite enjoyable for myself, and that's the only thing that ultimately matters.

Edited by Saperlipopette! - March 23 2019 at 11:01

^ That, but I'll post this anyway.

Criminally "underrated" (held in too low regard) might imply to me that an individual or individuals have made serious, erroneous criminally defamatory, libelous claims about the album and/ or the makers of the album (this may include various threats). For instance, "Comus' 'First Utterance' is musically an obvious imitation and perversion of the Everly Brothers album 'Christmas With The Everly Brothers and the Boys Town Choir'. Rest assured, Comus, the Everly Brothers Fan Club in concert with ex-members of the Boys Town Choir (now known as the Geriatrics Town Choir) shall exact its horrific-for-you revenge."

To be clear, I made that up, the Everly Brothers fan club have never, to my knowledge, threatened Comus or claimed that Comus imitated the Everly brothers.

That Comus story leads me to an album that I rather do think underrated and quite unfairly maligned, which is Comus' follow-up album to First Utterance called To Keep From Crying. The aggregate rating is higher than it used to be at 2.79, but compare it to Song to Comus: The Complete Collection which combines First Utterance with To Keep From Crying (with some superb bonus tracks, which bumps it up) and has a rating of 4.53, which is a higher rating for the this compilation album than for the First Utterance album, which has a rating of 4.14.

While I think that terms such as overrated and underrated get overused, and I think the terms works best when citing specific claims about something which may be verifiably incorrect, rather than it just coming down to personal taste, not only do I "feel" that To Keep From Crying does not get enough respect from those who love First Utterance, but I wish that it got more attention from those who hate Comus based on the rather dark and disturbing, pagan themed conceptual album called First Utterance. I think To Keep From Crying is judged more harshly as an album because people have certain expectations due to listening to First Utterance, and I think it gets ignored rather unfairly.

I also think that some people are too harsh when it comes to Magma' Merci, which has some excellent music, I think, at least. As an example of me underrating something, I was far too harsh with the Magma-related Offering hen I first heard it (I soon grew to really like it, much more than Merci bar a couple of tracks, actually, which at the time I thought was better than Offering's first album).

Edited by Logan - March 23 2019 at 11:45

ELP - both of their Works volumes have a lot of great material. Even Love Beach isn’t the ‘useless turd’ many make it out to be.

Tom Ozric wrote: ELP - both of their Works volumes have a lot of great material. Even Love Beach isn’t the ‘useless turd’ many make it out to be.

Rick Wakeman's Criminal Record 

dr wu23 wrote: Regarding Tull...I think This Was, War Child, and Stormwatch are all a bit underrated. The Moody Blues...I think Chord and Threshold deserve to be 4 star albums....both are excellent and ground breaking for the time period..imho.