25 Most Important Albums of My Life

inspired by the facebook trend thing but I spruced mine up a bit and turned it into a blog entry...I put these in as much chronological order as I possibly could...

1. Nirvana - Nevermind (cliche, I know, but it's the first real rock record I ever liked/owned)
2. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (my mom would play this all the time when I was a little kid and I fell in love with it at an early age...to this day it's one of my top 5 records of all time)
3. Limp Bizkit - Significant Other (yes, I'm ashamed of this, but I can't deny that this record marks a very definitive beginning to me being truly passionate about music...considering I heard it when I was starting freshman year of high school...)
4. Slipknot - Slipknot (I had never heard anything that heavy before...blew my mind)
5. Deftones - White Pony (part 1 of 3: The Always-Resonant Soundtrack to Summer 2000)
6. Stone Temple Pilots - Purple (part 2 of 3: The Always-Resonant Soundtrack to Summer 2000)
7. Stone Temple Pilots - No. 4 (part 3 of 3: The Always-Resonant Soundtrack to Summer 2000)
8. Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine (meet the band that introduced me to politics)
9. Metallica - ...And Justice for All (meet the band that introduced me to THRASH)
10. Tool - Ænima (I had this album for a while and never really got past the first song--or at least paid attention. Then one day I decided to lay down on my bed and listen to it in my headphones. By the time "Third Eye" was through, my life had been changed...they've been one of my top 5 favorite bands ever since)
11. Mudvayne - L.D. 50 (I don't care what anyone says this album is pretty decent...for nu metal, it's brilliant. Not only did this band introduce me to Terence McKenna but they did a lot to pique my interest in the "deeper" more melodic, unique, interesting side of not just heavy music but eventually all music)
12. Weezer - Pinkerton (I never related to an album the way I related to this one my first couple years of high school)
13. Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape (Popping this on can STILL immediately rocket me back in time to high school)
14. Poison the Well - The Opposite of December (this album is how I got into hardcore)
15. Converge - Jane Doe (this album completely obliterated my concept of what "music" is...the first time I listened to it I could only think: "Am I supposed to feel like this right now?")
16. The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity (see above)
17. Jimmy Eat World - Clarity (for a while, I hated Jimmy Eat World...well what do you want, all I knew of them was the music video for "The Middle" on MTV2. Then my friend Matt demanded that I buy this album and refused to burn it for me because the songs bleed together--which I'm glad he did. MAN did this album blow me away...the most beautiful, intricate, twinkly, breathtaking journey through pop music I've ever heard. It's pretty much been my soundtrack to love and heartbreak ever since...sure there are other albums but none hold up to this opus. I'm so, so, SO happy I own it on vinyl. I'm gonna listen to this right now actually.)
18. Bright Eyes - Lifted -or- The Story Is In the Soil, Keep Your Ears to the Ground (another one Matt introduced me to...when I asked him once what Bright Eyes album was his favorite--as research to see which one I would buy--he said it "would be like choosing his favorite limb." Once I became immersed in the music of Conor Oberst, I completely understood that statement. This album was where that started. It was also a step in the right direction as far as less accessible, more off-tune vocals by people that can't necessarily sing particularly well...a big, huge paradigm that I'm glad I broke.)
19. Against Me! - Reinventing Axl Rose (one more to attribute to Matt--if he or anyone else who KNOW who they are are reading this...shut up. Where Bright Eyes bent the barrier between me and more "punk" sounding vocals,--punk in spirit, in the sense that they can't necessarily sing well, not literally "punk sounding"--Against Me! broke it. I think the first time I actually heard it was at our friend's house while she was making us breakfast and I didn't particularly care for it. But after that he burned me a copy and I gave it a few more chances and eventually my love for it grew and grew to a wonderful climax with the now-legendary Against Me! show that Matt booked and which was mentioned in a few earlier posts.)
20. Catch 22 - Keasbey Nights (I hated ska before I heard this album. Thank you OT.)
21. Blind Guardian - Nightfall In Middle-Earth (sooooo many college memories come rushing back when I listen to this album. It really blew me away when I first heard it because I was amazed that cheesy power metal could be SO well done and so...well...powerful. When I showed it to friends of mine and they laughed I knew I had busted through another paradigm :D)
22. Yaphet Kotto/This Machine Kills/Envy split CD (this one is incredibly specific. I first heard this album on Valentine's Day of 2004 and as I was hearing it for the first time so too was my good friend Rudo. Eventually when the two of us came to the Envy portion of the split, both our lives were changed forever. I can't speak for him but I know personally I have NEVER, EVER been that deeply affected by a piece of music on first listen in my LIFE. It was otherworldly, really. We could hardly believe that human beings had made these songs. And when we heard the collaboration song that closed out the album...forget about it. We knew we'd never be the same.)
23. Bestial Warlust - Vengeance War 'Til Death (back to Rudo: the story of me getting into this album is that Rudo decided he wanted to do an "experiment" on me. He sent me the last song on this record, "At the Graveyard of God" and told me to listen to it and see if I liked it. I did, so he sent me the rest of the album which I also liked. This was the beginning of the difficult process of me getting into black metal and while I don't listen to most black metal bands I used to like anymore, there certainly was an important and well-worth-documenting period of time while I was in college where I listened to a great deal of black metal.)
24. Kayo Dot - Choirs of the Eye (this album did kind of the same thing that Jane Doe and Calculating Infinity did for me but in an even bigger way--although less impactful since it was later on in my life. This unclassifiable record flies in the face of everything you think you know about music and everything you think music is.)
25. Thrice - Vheissu (I never used to think very much of Thrice until I heard this album in a friend's car one day and deemed it worth checking out--amid accusations of devolving into "Thrisis"--Thrice meets Isis. Personally I get the Isis comparisons but this album is sooo beyond that. It touched me in a way that no album has in a very long time, which, after hearing so much and evolving in my tastes so much in the last 10 years, is not so easy anymore.)