Heavy metal is a genre that hits hardest when you can feel it on all fronts — ears, brain, heart — and sometimes there’s nothing that showcases that better than a good concept album full of clever storytelling.
From Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime all the way through pretty much Coheed and Cambria’s entire discography, there are a plethora of great rock and metal concept albums to explore, and when you want something a little darker and/or intricate to capture your attention, you might try these…
Abigail by King Diamond
Merycyful Fate frontman King Diamond set out on his own in the late ’80s with an all-new band, and, after dropping their debut album Fatal Portrait in 1986, the freshly minted band returned the following year with Abigail, a concept album that would go on to be an iconic moment for heavy metal.
The story is quite extensive, but the basic premise is that it is a horror story about Jonathan La’Fey and Miriam Natias, a couple who inherit a mansion that they ultimately move into, despite being warned to avoid the house.
It is eventually revealed that Miriam is possessed by the spirit of a stillborn child named Abigail, whom she is also pregnant with, and Jonathan is advised to kill Miriam to prevent the child’s rebirth. As you can probably imagine, things do not go smoothly for Jonathan and Miriam, ending in a truly gruesome climax.
Leviathan by Mastodon
To be fair, Mastodon’s second album, Leviathan, is not an album based on an original concept, but it is, unequivocally, the best heavy metal concept album based on an existing narrative.
The record is a musical retelling of Herman Melville’s literary opus, Moby-Dick, quite specifically focusing on soundtracking the hubris of man as it’s depicted through the actions of Captain Ahab, who seeks, much to his own detriment, to kill the great White Whale after which the book is named.
Not only did it catapult the band into the forefront of the heavy metal scene, but Leviathan continues to be heralded as one of the greatest metal albums of the new millennium, proving that their captivation with the story was something shared by metalheads around the world.
In Sorte Diaboli by Dimmu Borgir
In 2007, epic black metal band Dimmu Borgir released their first and, technically, only concept album: In Sorte Diaboli — which essentially translates to “In league with the devil” — and it’s no stretch to say that it is their masterpiece.
Across the nine to 11 tracks (depending on which edition you hear), the band utilizes their brand of tride and trve unholy black metal to tell the story of a priest in medieval Europe who begins doubting his faith, and eventually winds up taking over the role of Antichrist.
“There’s this dude that works as a priest’s assistant, and after a while he just discovers that he has nothing to do with Christianity,” Dimmu Borgir guitarist Silenoz previously said of the record. “He just sort of has this awakening and realizes that he has different abilities and different powers and is leaning more to the dark side.”
Coma Ecliptic by Between The Buried and Me
Most Between the Buried and Me albums follow some kind of concept, but their 2015 project, Coma Ecliptic, stands out for being a bit more definable.
In their own words, the band said of the album’s concept: “This time, the story follows the wanderings of an unidentified man, stuck in a coma, as he journeys through his past lives. Each song is its own episode in a modern-day, sort of The Twilight Zone-esque fashion. The unidentified man enters each world and is offered a choice: stay, or move on to the next in search of something better, something more ‘perfect.’”
Maybe this one is just more personal for me, since I’ve been following BTBAM since The Silent Circus, but Coma Ecliptic is just a fascinatingly clever album from start to finish (shoutout to “Dim Ignition”) and, 10 years later, it’s still an album I regularly revisit.
A Tear in the Fabric of Life EP by Knocked Loose
In 2021, Louisville hardcore band Knocked Loose decided to throw a wrench into whatever perception the world might have had of them by dropping A Tear in the Fabric of Life, an EP that feels like the auditory representation of the bleakest Southern Gothic book you’ve ever read.
The concept narrative behind A Tear in the Fabric of Life was conjured by Frontman Bryan Garris and is about someone mourning the loss of a loved one who died in a car crash. The story isn’t necessarily based on his real life, but is a fictional story he came up with to explore grief and mankind’s inability to often let go of pain and sorrow.
Musically, it was by far their heaviest project to date, but they also paired the album with an animated short film, which visually achieved an added layer of insight and emotional depth that really makes one feel the heartbound-anchor pulling you into an ocean of trauma that Garris and the boys injected into the album.
The post 5 Concept Albums That Prove Metal Is a Storytelling Genre appeared first on VICE.
