When a band puts out an album it’s mostly a collection of songs from various times between albums and it’s decided which songs fit best for the album and the bands sound at the time.  But there comes a time when a band pushes the envelope and creates an album that each song is a chapter in a story they have created.  It’s known as a concept album and all that really means is that each song is a continuation of the song before it telling what is happening to the cast of characters.  Some notorious bands throughout the years that have done this are Pink Floyd, The Who, Rush, Green Day, Coheed And Cambria and many others.  Some of these bands have even made movies or plays out of these albums stories with the album being the obvious score to the show.  Mainly I just wanted to talk about some of my favorite concept albums and give a brief synopsis of what each one is about and why you should pick it up.

Probably one of the most interesting is Pink Floyd’s The Wall which is a two disc epic story about a man who grows up being abused and under abnormal circumstances that lead him to grow up building this wall around his mind to block the pain of these bad things.  The story ends up he becomes so comotose from all this and disturbed it is ruining his life and his mind mentally goes through a battle to try and tear down this “Wall”. 

Coheed And Cambria took it to another level by not just making a concept album but making concept albums that continue from album to album the story of a man tortured by his powers.  The four albums tell of a man finding out his family was part of a military experiment that turns people into weapons (think Incredible Hulk meets Luke Skywalker).  Through each album he gets closer and closer to finding out what has happened to him and his family and who is responsible.  The band is pretty amazing for this day and age and each album they put out was epic, combining a thrilling story with fantasic musicianship.

Green Day’s American Idiot created an alternate United States where the government was ruining the country and an anti-hero rises up named Jesus of Suburbia who has alter egos in himself that he needs to fight off in order to fill his goals for the country.  The story is in the works for a Broadway play now and is apparantly going to follow the entire album through for the score of the play, should be interesting to see if it comes out.

Finally a band I hadn’t mentioned earlier but a great concept album for a proggy emo band called Armor For sleep.  The album was called What To Do When You Are Dead and is about a boy who has a fight with a girl he loves and on the way home from the fight drives off a bridge and drowns to death in his car.  He avoids going to Heaven and decides to roam the Earth for awhile only to find it’s horrible feeling like your still alive but your really not.  He starts noticing he can’t actually feel anymore and it’s like he is completely numb and falls into a panic.  He trys following around his former lover who is wheeping everyday at his death just trying to talk to her and contact her but in the end realizes that he can’t ever come back and he needs to set his soul free.

All these albums are some perfect examples of great albums that have some pretty amazing stories that I feel could even be movies.  Since most people know the other bands and the songs on those albums I put a video clip of Armor For Sleep’s “Car Underwater” below.