There is some talk in the system of a down thread, that at 36:11, the album "mezmorize" is too short. I personally think that an album should be no shorter then 30 minutes (unless there is a major bargin the first week). And also, i think that if there is a greatest hits album, it should fill the full 80 minutes.

Depends on who it is. If it's Celine Dion. 20 seconds is more than enough.

I think Mesmerise is short because they have another one coming out fairly soon as well.

= J

"I don't like dachshunds their legs are too short..."
"But they're long enough to touch the ground."

In other words, as long as they need to be.

I think demand for every piece of data to be used up on a CD can sometimes ruin a good album- tacking on bonus tracks or filler can ruin the mood set by an good album. Of course, if the album demands to be 75-80 mins long then that's great too.

Depends on the artist. Dream Theater can fill an entire 70 minute CD with 4 songs, but 30, two minute punk songs might be overkill or simply filler.

Depends on the artist. No good album is too long and no bad album is too short

I think an album by an artist I like should be between 45-60 minutes. However, in general I subscribe to the as long as it needs to be camp.

I think around 60 minutes.

I'd feel ripped off if I bought a 30-minute CD for $13 by one of my favorite artists, and even more so if they waited like 3 years to bring it out.

Which makes it especially shitty. Why not just make 1 long album?

I don't have a problem with short albums, but anything less that 35 minutes is getting a little short for a full priced CD.

maybe people feel that one long 75 minute soad cd would be overkill.

Don't most soad fans have short attention spans from too much video game play to want a long album?

I'm always happy with the 40-50 minute mark. I'm probably in the minority here, but there's nothing more frustrating than a really great album that's a few songs too long. I enjoy the occasional "epic", but a great 40-minute album will always get more replay.

I prefer my albums around an hour, with few or no filler songs. Too short, or too many filler songs and I feel like I got jipped.


That's the main issue there, rather than just the lenght per se. They could have just held off, finished it all, and put out one long album (their other albums are kind of long if I recall correctly) rather than cashing in twice.

SOADs other albums are quite short, actually (all under the 50-minute mark, if not less than 40).
Honestly, I don't care how long an album is. I think SOAD chose to release two separate short albums because they probably have a different "feel" to them, (think Radiohead with Kid A and Amnesiac, even though I hate to use them as an example) and finding a flow for ALL of those songs just wasn't going to work. I'm more bothered at the way the new album's packaging was designed (essentially: backwards), but this IS the band that had a CD called "Steal this Album!".

Wait....what was I laughing at again?

I think anywhere between 45 minutes - 60 minutes is good. The only benefit to the SOAD disc is that it's cheap compared to most new releases.

I'm not sure what to make of that comment. The only reason it was called "Steal this Album" is because all the songs were leaked on the net about right around the release of Toxicity. They weren't going to be used at all because they weren't even mastered yet. Rather than just ditch them or use them as B-sides, they recognized an opportunity to release another disc of material on the cheap to tide fans over until the next disc. Brilliant, really.

The Coup had their album come out in 1998.


Then there's Rykodisc's "Steal This Disc" series from the late 80's.

Anyway, I think most albums should be in the 35 minutes category. I really like shorter albums as they tend to be extremely cohesive. If you have filler on a half-hour album, you have some problems to deal with.

BTW, did you guys know that the reason CDs are 74 minutes is because that is the exact length to play one of Beethoven's symphonies? An exec. at Sony (I think) picked it for that reason.

What I was sort of trying to say was that the packaging of Mezmerize seems to indicate that it's an attempt to kind of mess with the marketing and design of digipaks (most open like a normal jewel case essentially, whereas Mezmerize opens the opposite way, with the "spine" being on the "wrong" side, so to speak). So, my comment about "Steal this Album!' was my "I can't hold it against them because they have an album with that title, which also messes with the whole industry of buying/selling/marketing albums" statement.

*cough*

Something like that.

ie: Go S.O.A.D.!

The only way to go.

Green Carnation - Light of Day, Day of Darkness:
1 track = 60 minutes.

i.e. Modern rock/pop/rap/country less than an hour. Prog = 60-74 minutes all the way.

From other threads I just found out the new album by The Locust is 10 tracks and is about 10 minutes long...

i'd say all alone.