Anybody feels like they are getting too long. IT has become a tradition to put in a lot of filler tracks which just bring down the quality. I end up liking only a bunch of songs myself. What do you think?

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I don't think they're long enough.

Generally for me, 80 minutes is about it for me. I listen to a lot of prog metal too and for the most part, the bands i listen to stay within this time frame. Occasionally, some albums go beyond that and I usually start getting bored with it. Dream Theater's - The Astonishing for example was a bear to get through and I've only listened to it in full twice. It did contain a lot of filler IMO, but Ayreon's - The Source was the complete oposite IMO and kept me engaged throughout both disc. Now when I start listening to death/doom or funeral doom, I get bored even faster when you get repetitive droning riffs that just go on and on and never change so some of these albums can go on too long IMO.

It depends on the intensity. For a Gorgoroth album 30-40mins is perfect. For Agalloch I think at least 1 hour is needed. Different formats for different experiences.

Yeah, a lot of bands seem to write to fill the CD run time. I can think of very few hour+ albums that would not benefit from editing some songs out (and most of those few are Summoning albums). It's always a treat to find a short, sweet, album with no filler. With digital albums nowadays, there's no physical limit on how long albums can be, but there's also no lower price limit making it not worth it to release shorter releases (a lot of people would get pissed nowadays if they bought a CD and it only had 25 minutes of music, for example), so we'll probably start seeing more variety in album length.

Just for fun, what are some great albums under 30 minutes long (35 if you can't think of any *that* short)? I can think of: "Reign in Blood" "Legion" "Horrified" "Orkblut The Retaliation" "Pentagram" "Antichrist".

Agreed. My favorite album is Pierced from Within, which at 45 minutes is perfect given the style of music Suffocation plays.

There's also individual song length to consider. If an album is over an hour because it contains 15 4-minute songs, it's a safe bet some of them are much weaker than others and could have been left off. In my experience a 60+ minute album has a better chance of being consistently interesting if the average song is, say, 6+ minutes. Terminal Redux by Vektor is a good recent example of this.

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40-45 minutes is usually my sweet spot, but like others said, more atmospheric/experimental music can be well served by a full hour. Any longer than that is a bit much for any style, though. My friend recently wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece about this:

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2017/11 ... lbum-long/

Probably the only album in the world I think needs to be longer is Traced in Air. It's just begging for one more song.

WTF?!? Try to listen to quality music. You'll see it does NOT matter.
P.S: Sometimes they refuse to play "long songs" (more than 5 minutes?) in my local pub. GTFO!

I think the next few decades, more bands will release EPs online, but more frequently. Think how spotify is slowly changing our music consumption and the playlist culture surrounding it. Physical objects like vinyls are only for hardcore, die hard fans.

This will also cover more ground for bands to play around with music. We can already see it with bands like Mastadon releasing Cold Dark Place which don't gell with any of the recent Emperor of Sand material. Or to take it from a pop perspective, Kero Kero Bonito released their darkest materials recently and sounded out of place from their albums. Besides, with more artwork related to material, means more merch and collectibles, which seems to be where the money is at for niche subgenres.

LPs at the end of the day would probably be home to either concept based albums or albums surrounding a certain theme.

Considering my favorite metal album of all time is over 2 hours long... the answer to your question is no.

Many of them are, especially from some of my fave bands. All of Maiden's 2000 releases are over an hour long. Priest have some long ass albums as well. It becomes a blur after a while and i end up either skipping songs or just stop playing it completely. That's why i prefer albums like Seventh Son or Painkiller because they're both in the 45 minute range and that's about perfect to me.

Albums, but most importantly, SONGS are way too long. Way too few good musical ideas.

"Torl Cormpt Norz Norz Norz". Under the 35 minute bar, there's "O Agios Pethane".

Lot's of them are. If an album is good enough I'm usually OK with just over an hour, but for the most part I enjoy releases that hover around 30-40 minutes.

For some bands and their shitty songs they probably are, for other bands they're not long enough. Also depends on style of music, number of sameish songs, etc. For example grind/hardcore eps/albums were short bursts of energy whereas a Wagner opera takes its time to unfold.

I was going to say Maiden's post 2000 releases and every single on of Metallica's albums, post Ride the Lightning.

9-12 tracks, at 40-50 minutes, for me, personally.

off the top of my head: abyssion - luonnon harmonia, suomi finland perkele, gods of war/fallen angel of doom, de principii evangelikum, and discharge - hear nothing... pure holocaust is <35 min too IIRC. then you have stuff like deathcrush, sjel av natten or thuringian pagan madness that may be officially regarded as EP's/mini albums, but (at least to me) feel like a legit full-length just as much as the first two gorgoroth albums.

Brocas Helm - Black Death
Cirith Ungol - Frost and Fire
Eternal Champion - The Armor of Ire
Liege Lord - Freedom's Rise
Quicksand Dream - Beheading Tyrants
Rainbow - Rising

Just a few that I can think of off the top of my head.

I think it's more dependent on how many songs are on the album THEN the length mattering. A sorta girth rather than length so to speak.

It should be noted that there is a difference between 60 minutes of actual content and 60 minutes of songs with fucking interludes after each song.

It depends record by record, but my average experience forces me to answer No. Too many to mention, but a lot of the records I've bought recently top the hour, and they're pure listenin' pleasure

Yes. In general terms, albums are too long these days.

I don't want to hear Metallica for 85 minutes, or Iron Maiden for 92 minutes, or (for fuck's sake) Judas Priest for 100 minutes. All of the classic albums by these bands are around the 40-50 minute mark (except for ...And Justice for All, which a lot of people think runs a little long.) Why can't they edit themselves, and cut out some of their less inspired moments?

Whatever their flaws, Megadeth and Slayer have always written albums that are the right length for what they're trying to do (with one or two exceptions in Megadeth's case). Repentless and Supercollider both suck but at least they're not an 87 minute endurance marathon like Lulu.

This is partly why, as much as I like Blind Guardian's Somewhere Far Beyond, I'm in no hurry to get Nightfall in Middle Earth.

As someone mentioned, different genres and styles call for different song lengths. But I agree that generally songs are too long and that less is more. I suspect that's why I often find myself listening to brutal death metal, where song lengths are typically ~3-5 minutes. I can't stand meandering in music, which has turned one of my favorite bands (Iron Maiden) into something otherwise unlistenable. I think it's appropriate to have one "epic" on an album, in any metal subgenre, but it would need to use that length to great effectiveness. Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner is a great example, or even Foret Disparue (Akitsa).

In general, yes. I think 40-45 minutes is the perfect average length that most albums should shoot for. Sometimes running length is correlated with substance which usually means a lot to a consumer who is wanting to make sure they are making a worthwhile purchase. Even though a more focused and concise album might lead to more enjoyment in the long run.

Fortunately, I think shorter running times are starting to make a comeback. Look at some of the most popular albums from last year: Power Trip, Satan's Hallow, Tomb Mold, etc.

To answer the original question, it's getting to be the case. A lot of albums are too long.

Ideally, an album should run about 45-50 minutes. Which means about 9-10 average length songs (or depending on the genre, 4-6 epic length ones, or 40-50 grindcore songs.) Any longer than that, and it becomes tedius to listen to all the way through; by the time the record's over you are bored with the band. And usually a band doesn't present enough good material to fill an album longer than that. You end up with albums like (perfect example) Hardwired to Self Destruct, which could have had maybe half the songs culled from it to make a really great 45 minute album. Instead what you get is a 100 minute average-to-decent album.

Too many albums with too many tracks that should have been culled; I think most would agree they would rather hear a 45 minute album with 8 or 10 great tracks, than a 90 minute album with 8 or 10 great tracks and 5 or 6 mediocre ones.

It depends on the genre a lot of the time. I can't imagine Grindcore being over 40 minutes but I also can't imagine Funeral Doom Metal below an hour in length. For example Esoteric's The Maniacal Vale is 1 hour and 42 minutes in length but it works well for building the album's dark, haunting and punishing atmosphere... it is practically the perfect double album. On the other hand The Berzerker's Animosty is only a brief 28 minutes in length but its so punishing and attacks you so relentlessly that its length makes it the perfect package for simple brutality. Some genres could cut their length a bit... like Groove Metal which has a lot of hour long albums when 45 minutes would do for the slower simpler thrash sound.

I think it depends on the genre, but I have noticed a lot of power metal albums that are unnecessarily long. Evertale's Of Dragons and Elves is nearly 80 minutes long and I have no idea why. There's a solid 50 minutes worth of material there, but actually sitting through the whole thing is a chore. Stormhammer has an affinity for creating albums over an hour long that really should have been shortened to around 40 minutes. Of course a lot of bands pull it off (Blind Guardian for example), but I feel like a lot of power metal bands feel like their albums need to be long in order to be "epic."

I think a lot of bands feel compelled to produce a large volume of material in order to provide fans a better value when buying their albums. I'd be happy to pay the same price for shorter albums whose songs have been more painstakingly honed to excellence and so would a lot of people, but quality is a lot harder to measure than quantity so it's not going to fit into any spreadsheet calculating the expected return on investment.

Kohti yhdeksän nousua by Horna is 32 minutes, less than that if you remove the three minute outro. Crazy good half hour though.

Let's not forget that it's now easier to record and produce music, investing in home recording means no costs for studio time, and releasing material digitally, on Spotify for instance, means less restrictions on runtime.

Back in the day artists had to be pretty ruthless with the material they left out of the final cut.

There's no general rule, but for my money this led to shorter albums of higher quality. I love two hours of Midnight Odyssey as much as the next person, but you can have too much of a good thing.

No. I buy music on the regular and album lengths vary wildly--and I'm not including extended plays and other such miscellaneous releases, here.

I like long albums. They tend to be journeys.

Albums have been too long ever since the CD format allowed people to store more music.



more like the year 1991.



That looks like a big pile of AIDS.



You should get Imaginations From The Other Side or At The Edge of Time next anyway.

If albums are too long then maybe you're too short.

Your attention span, not the rapper.

Eh, I kinda agree. I think most bands should write 8-10 solid tracks (depending on the band and genre) instead of 12+ eh one or even 12 good ones. I find I zone out when I listen to albums longer than 45~, with a few notable exceptions of course. Bands like Metallica have always struggled to keep me entertained and I feel you could cut a track from almost every album to make it way better.

This is all just opinion of course but the general rule is to not write a 3-hour long album if it doesn't need to be that long.

Just for the fun, I do sometimes imagine how 50-79 minute-releases would look like if we still would be in the pre-digital vinyl-age. What tracks they would leave out, what track starts the b-side, etc.

One thing I know that hit or miss, bonus tracks can extend an album anywhere from a few minutes to a half an hour. I could name a few albums that don't fit this criteria but with the bonus tracks and b-sides, they most certainly do.

We've had those albums actually. Prog rock and electronic artists back in those days still had a habit of writing multiple massive songs so they often released double vinyl albums. Here's a couple of the most extreme examples.

https://www.discogs.com/Klaus-Schulze-C ... ase/219771

https://www.discogs.com/Yes-Tales-From- ... ase/476248