Most Underrated/Overlooked Albums Ever

Another music thread... this one is dedicated to albums that didn't quite get the recognition that they deserved, despite being outstanding, and perhaps even one of the artists' best.

I'll kick it off with one of the most overlooked gems in AC/DC's catalog:

"Ballbreaker" by AC/DC, 1995

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

A vastly underrated and overlooked album, and one of my personal favorites.

This album is a little bit different from others... most songs lack the "crunch" of AC/DC's heavier stuff, and the music is more strictly blues-based than usual. The lyrics on several songs are particularly crass ("Hard As A Rock", "Cover You In Oil"), more so than usual.

But even more unusual is that several of the songs deal with some dark political themes, including Julius Caesar ("Hail Caesar" and Hitler ("The Furor")! "Caught With Your Pants Down" also takes a jab at Bill Clinton, fresh off of the Lewinski scandal.

The songs on the album are also quite lengthy for an AC/DC record. Most of them run from four to five minutes at least. The album is also very solid... several AC/DC albums are notorious for containing "filler", but the only song on this record that can be considered "filler" is "Love Bomb".

Overall, it's an outstanding album. I'm not sure why it never got more attention than it did, but it was released in 1995 at the peak of the "grunge" era. So I suspect that the ill-timed release is what ultimately shoved this album into relative obscurity.

On a side note... it also has one of the most awesome fucking album covers I've ever seen.

As an added bonus, here's the entire album available in video form, via YouTube:






















http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkZvub7YgzA


Enjoy!