A couple of weeks ago we polled our writers to come up with a list of the 50 greatest albums of 2017 so far.
They came back with a list of new albums from classic bands — Deep Purple, faUSt, Hawkwind, Procul Harum and more — as well as the ‘state of the art’: Royal Blood, Hunter & The Bear, Goldray and Aaron Keylock, artists with a foot in the past but their eyes on the future.
We ran it in alphabetical order and then asked you to vote for your favourite albums. You could choose your favourite from our original list of 50, or you can add another choice by leaving a comment below.
Here’s what you voted the Albums Of The Year So Far…
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- They've been written off, broken up, reunited. Now Thunder want even more…
20) Big Big Train - Grimspound
19) Aaron Keylock - Cut Against The Grain
18) The Afghan Whigs - In Spades
17) Beth Blade & The Beautiful Disasters - Bad Habit
16) Royal Blood - How Did We Get So Dark?
15) Hawkwind - Into The Woods
14) Goldray - Rising
13) Styx - The Mission
12) Anathema - The Optimist
11) Aaron Buchanan And The Cult Classics - The Man With Stars On His Knees
10) Steel Panther - Lower The Bar
9) Chris Catalyst - Life Is Often Brilliant
8) Roger Waters - Is This The Life We Really Want?
7) Cheap Trick - We’re All Alright
6) Mastodon - Emperor Of Sand
5) Thunder - Rip It Up
4) Black Star Riders - Heavy Fire
3) Deep Purple - InFinite
2) Biters - The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be
1) Inglorious - II
It could turn into quite a year for Inglorious. Classic Rock’s reviewer said of the album that it was “as brazenly and unashamedly old-school as fringed leather jackets and Flying V guitars” and praised vocalist Nathan James: “[his] vocals have a remarkable knack of sounding like Glenn Hughes, David Coverdale and, on occasion – Hell Or High Water – Graham Bonnet when he was fronting MSG. It’s quite the feat”, while wondering if they were “so fully transfixed on aping 70s rock classics – a Deep Purple riff here, a UFO lick there – that at times they’re in danger of sounding like a very versatile covers band”.
Producer Kevin Shirley, meanwhile, said, “This is the best British band since… well, I could say The Darkness, but I really mean Led Zeppelin.”
In the same Classic Rock interview, James commented that he knew the album wasn’t perfect (“We made it in fifteen days!”), but he was playing a long-term game. The ultimate goal, he said, is to make “my Hysteria, my Appetite For Destruction, and to sing my songs for people for the next twenty years”.
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Are Inglorious really the best British band since Led Zeppelin?
