Sometimes we come across really cool albums, but the only downside is that there's either too much or not enough material on them.

Too long:

Destruction - Inventor of Evil

This is really the only Destruction album where I encounter this problem. It just seems to keep going and going. I think "The Alliance of Hellhoundz", with the grating spelling and eight million guest vocals, peak the album too early, and it just sort of doesn't stop from there.

Gorguts - Obscura

I've always felt this album, while good, was about 2 or 3 songs too long. At one hour, there seems to be a lot of things happening, and Lemay's vocals get raspier in the final quarter, I feel, so that doesn't do the length of it any justice. I like it more now than I used to, though, so it could just be a case of getting more used to it.

Too short:

Religious Nightmare - The Junkyard of Infinity

This is dubbed as an album, but with a running time of just 11 minutes, you are simply begging for more. There's a few sections in the album that I feel they could've expanded on, and if they could even just double that time, there'd be lots more room to move and become a really great and unique grind band.

Krisiun - Works of Carnage

This whole album feels a little more rushed than their others, which is a shame because it's still quite brutal. Clocking in at just over half an hour, including instrumentals and a cover song, there's not too much of actual Krisiun material here. I guess some of their other albums make up for that, though.

I guess it's a matter of perception.. all albums are too short if you are really into them, although I tend to prefer 8-10 tracks (not 9 it's a symmetrical thing). However, albums that absolutely suck feel like they just go on and on and so feel like they are too long. A lot of the later Destruction ones do indeed have too many tracks on them. To me any album with more than ten tracks is too long unless it's truly something quite special and varied.

I guess you're right. I have an album with 11 tracks and 78 minutes and I reckon I could've handled another 20 minutes of it, but that's because I really get into it.

Indeed, Obscura is somewhat too long. If there were more songs like Nostalgia, the length would be easier to handle, but the concept starts getting old when at some point songs no longer introduce any new interesting ideas, but merely more of the same. The album needs more varity: more genuinely brutal, heavy parts, and more introspective, atmospheric parts. Death metal albums can rarely hold my attention perfectly for an hour if there isn't quite a lot of variety.

Unorthodox by Edge of Sanity comes to mind. Almost an hour is too long for a death metal album imo.

I have never actually felt an album is too short. Typically speaking I'm happy with the 20-30 for grind, 25-35 for thrash or fast death metal, 35 to 45 for mid paced or slow dm or power or heavy, and 40-55 for doom. Any longer than that and most bands tend to start running together for me, although that's not a total certainty.

I've always found Dark Fortress' Ylem to be too long for its good, I get bored by it at half, even though the second half also has good songs... if it was only 45 minutes long (with the better tracks) it'd be much more enjoyable. I can't name any albums to be too short either, shorter albums I know tend to feel finished as they are.

Reverend Bizarre's III: So Long Suckers has to be the king of too long albums. Though that just results from much too long songs, rather than too many songs. It could really benefit from having all the song lengths except for Kundalini Arisen (4:25) cut in half.

Black Sabbath's Master of Reality is damn near a perfect album, but with 1 flaw: It's too short. Only 6 real songs for about 35 minutes. One or two additional real songs could've made it better.

Pentagram's Day of Reckoning is also a little short. Like Master of Reality, an all time classic of doom, but not enough songs. 7 tracks at about 35 minutes. Again, could've used an additional one or two songs.

Too long - Cage's Hell Destroyer! 21 songs! It just goes on and on and on and on.... For 1 hour and 18 minutes!

Perfect length - 38 minutes. see; Wolf's Return.

Gridlink's albums, while awesome, really do feel too short, at around 12 minutes each one. I really want more stuff to be released by them to make up for it. I know grindcore is meant to be short I guess, but I usually listen to hours of it at a time when I do.

Deicide's ''Legion'' is too long. If there was a shorter, faster version of it it would be much better.

If Legion was any shorter it'd barely qualify as an album.

Angra's Temple of Shadows drags on for ages near the end with 4-5 exact sounding filler songs

I know I've mentioned this album way too many times in the past, but Lulu is just insufferably long. It just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and ON.

In my opinion, an album cannot be too short.

If it's that good, where I want it to keep going, I just listen to it again.

Too long though, oh yeah, that's a problem for me. Ever had an album actually put you to sleep, despite your sound system being turned up fucking loud?

I've surprisingly never fallen asleep during an album before. I have with movies though, such as Tim Burton's (ass raping of) Alice in Wonderland.

Too Long:
The Great Execution (Krisiun) - Seriously drags on too much, a complete disappointment considering that Southern Storm was just perfect.

Too Short:
Time I (Wintersun) - 3 real songs. Really Jari?

How else would they be able to sell Time II?

Dämmerfarben - Herbstpfad is way to short. It's only 30 min long, and because the songs are so good it makes you yearn for more. On the other hand, it does have a lot of replay value this way.

Too long:
Naastrand - Chant's D Europe

Off the top of my head...

Too Long
Woods of Ypres - IV The Green Album
Woods of Ypres - The Deepest Roots and Darkest Blues

Too Short
While Heaven Wept - Fear of Infinity
While Heaven Wept - Vast Oceans Lachrymose

Fixed!

While I like Accept - Blood of the Nation, it is way too long, Stalingrad is just fine though.

I always thought so too. They should have stuck with the traditional eight song format and cut out every song after "Clouded" except "Faceless Ones" and the instrumental. Not that the middle songs aren't good on their own, but when I'm going through the album as a whole the middle songs don't keep my attention as well. Don't forget that Steeve Hurdle (RIP) also shared vocal duties with Lemay and his voice is raspier and, I'm sorry, not very good.

Too Short(?): I feel like the last couple Anaal Nathrakh albums are pretty short, but that might be part of their genius; I always hit the reset button when the album concludes.

This is the album I thought of when I saw this post. It's not a particularly memorable album, to be honest. It's only been a year or so since I last played it in my CD player, and right off the top of my head I can't really remember anything about it other than that I thought it was pretty good.

As far as "too long" is concerned, I usually don't have a problem with it save for extreme cases, such as Dream Theater's "Systematic Chaos". I like the album, but 78 fucking minutes it takes up is simply too long. I can't go for more than 60 minutes without feeling like I could be spending my evening doing something more productive than sitting in my room listening to John Pettruci masturbate in my ear. The songs are not bad, they are simply too long and drawn out for me to be interested in (and I might add that the only short song, "Forsaken", sucks). A good example of a long ass fucking album that would want to listen to is "Awake", which runs for 74 minutes, but that length is divided up pretty well between songs, so nothing really feels like it overstays it's welcome.



"Legion" is perfect, in my opinion.

Legion is about thirty minutes long. Not long enough if you ask me.

The ultimate short album would be Hate, Fear and Power by Hirax. Clocking in at 16 minutes with 8 songs, it somehow qualifies as a full-length.

I'd think it's best to say it's an LP in name only, kind of like how A Change of Seasons is an EP in name only.

67 minutes!! I never realized it's that long! I can not stand overly long albums, so I guess it goes to show that this IS a perfect album.

I've always felt that Blind Guardian's 'Somewhere Far Beyond' was just a little too short. It's the only flaw I can find with the album. If it were five or six minutes longer, it would have been perfect... well, more perfect. =]

On the other hand, Vital Remains's 'Let Us Pray' just drags on and on. It's a good album, but fuck, give it a rest already.

Autopsy's Macabre Eternal sounded so awesome when I put it on for the first time, but after about the 8th track I'd heard enough. There are some really great pieces on there like "Dirty Gore Whore", but the album didn't need to be an hour long. If Autopsy had put a few more tracks onto The Tomb Within and took a few away from Macabre Eternal, we'd have two fabulously balanced albums.

I've gotta second Dark Fortress's "Ylem". It's such a great album that it's a shame I usually only get halfway through it. Also too long: TYR's "Ragnarock". A few less tracks and I think it would keep me fully interested.

Ulver's Bergtatt it's too short, although it's flawless like that. Gorgoroth's Antichrist could have been lenghtier with a couple of more songs on it.

Nargaroth's BMIK should be 25 minutes long or something.

Too long - Every damn Rage album.

Every Iron Maiden album beyond No Prayer for the Dying is pretty obligatory for this. Overly repetitive choruses, long melodic intros that are repeated again at the end (AMOLAD has several minutes of intro/outro fluff alone), and some songs that just don't have any ideas going on. Brave New World is the most unfortunate case because the peaks touch their earlier material and it has a relatively unusual sound in the Iron Maiden catalog, but the chorus' are so ridiculous and some songs so long. ~15 minutes shorter and it could have been great.

Yup. The Green album could've finished after the first half-dozen songs + " Retrosleep in the Morning Calm " and called it solid Canadian " World Coming Down " worship. Instead we got some awful Crowbar D-sides and another couple of weird pseudo-melodic black metal songs after a nearly perfect run of songs. A confused effort, unfortunately.

The Deepest Roots and Darkest Blues was conceptualized over 3 years, and this lack of focus shows. Ditch " Your Ontario Town " - it's cliched and awful, also ditch the forgettable " Iron Grudge " and the 4 folk metal songs (" Years of Silence", " December in Windsor ", " Trillium ", " Song of Redemption ") put on a separate EP. Would've made way more sense, just having the melodic black metal and melodic doom metal on one album. Those songs are the strongest on it, show the new direction since their Agalloch worship on the album before it, and show the direction things are going - more doomy. Plus, it brings it down to about 45 minutes, perfect LP length, not the gargantuan 1:12:18 length as listed on the Archives.

Just my two coppers, anyways.

I wish that Sepultura's "Arise" was just a 3-track EP, that would only have the first 3 songs featured. If they had split a day after it was released - that would be the best way to put an end to a band with a flawless discography.

I would probably be able to enjoy Bathory's "Twilight of the Gods", if it had only the half an hour long song.

Necrovore's demo is the most "too short" release in the history of Death Metal, in my opinion. I wish they had more songs featured there

Yeah, I think a few songs after "Clouded" could've been scratched, but overall it's still a pretty neat album.


I felt that Vanitas could've had one or two more songs on it, but hey, it's a great album, so I'm not complaining too much with the material already present.

Too long:

Cradle of Filth. From Damnation to Godspeed (and I really like this album).

Too short:

Gorgoroth-Antichrist(it should be considered an EP, and its my favourite)
Fear Factory-The Industrialist(only 8 "real" songs, fucking great ones but too few)

Yeah, Obscura could have been cut to 40 minutes aprox with no harm to the overall feeling of the album. [I just feel that Obscura is one of those albums that everyone praises but no one listens in a regular basis]

I also think Deathspell Omega's SMRC could have been shorter too.

Too short?

Focus by CYNIC! Only 36 min.

It's actually too long, Hocus Focus ought to have a much faster tempo.