meri's Almostopster: Swallow the Sun - Songs from the North I, II & III

by meri on Sun, Apr 14, 2024

A tough one to swallow.

Swallow the Sun are a band whose particular brand of melodic doom and gloom has always appealed to me. You can see this through my overrates in the discography run and the presence of their debut The Morning Never Came in my topster. My introduction to the band was through New Moon, around the time Emerald Forest and the Blackbird was released, when I was exploring a few different bands with somewhat similar sounds (In Mourning and Insomnium, from memory).

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The Nerd's Almostopster: Tyler Childers - Purgatory

by The Nërd on Sun, Apr 7, 2024

We apologize for the publication of this article.

Editor’s note: I think The Nërd is at war with himself. No one really knows what’s going on in his head, but this is what he had to say first (to be read with the voice of Hank Hill from King of the Hill). I ain’t writing no fucking review. Far more talented people than me have written about this album so go look them up. Or don’t, I’m The Nërd, not The Cöp.

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knighttomourning's Almostopster: Ol’ Dirty Bastard - N☆☆★A PLeASe

by knighttomourning on Fri, Mar 29, 2024

k2m tries to get the vortex canceled

Before having heard this album, I bought a CD copy of it at a Goodwill for $1. Given that I was a fan of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s first album, and a Wu-Tang fan in general, I figured this was well worth the asking price. I listened to it for the first time in my car while driving around Madison, Wisconsin, and I had a pang in my brain that I have only had a few times in my life: “Is this my new favorite album?

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Strawberry's Almostopster: The Beatles - The Beatles (White Album)

by StrawberryDeluxe on Sat, Mar 23, 2024

A surprise stone cold classic pick coming from strawb

Unlike most of my fellow vortexers I have more than a topster’s worth of 10’s, so this prompt could be taken from two different angles: an album that is a 10 but I wouldn’t consider to be a “favorite,” or one of my favorite 9’s. If we’re talking about “The 26th album on your topster” the first one that comes to mind is The Pretenders’s debut album, which has just missed my topster two years in a row.

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