Album Niche-Normie Tier List (670 views)

[clem]

Disclaimer: Some normie music is really good. In fact, quite a lot of normie music is really good. There's nothing wrong with liking extremely popular and accessible things. Every tier gatekeeps on the ones below.

S Tier
- Batshit insane. Your brain will be beaten senseless by this audio, and only by coming to embrace that sonic assault can you get anything out of this.

A Tier
- Thoroughly inaccessible. Myriad strangeness awaits you, and there is little to truly latch onto. Only faint hints of musical normality exist here.

B Tier
- It's pretty daunting stuff. But there are clear recognisable musical components, and it hasn't entirely abandoned the idea of people enjoying it purely as a listening experience.

C Tier
- A mixture of esoteric and pedestrian. It presents a bit of a cerebral challenge for listener, but there is still comforting familiarity in spades. 

D Tier
- It's still normie, but it throws a few reachable curveballs to give it some flavour beneath the sugar coating.

E Tier
- It's basic. Fairly cookie-cutter, but more distinctive, and with more personality than the utmost milk and toast music. Predictable, but you could pick it out of a crowd at least. 

F Tier
- The blandest, vanilla-est, most by-the-numbers, artistically faceless stuff on the market.

[Goober]

Dua lipa's Future Nostalgia is S tier, Please do fight me.

[clem]

The Dillinger Escape Plan discog

A Tier:
"Calculating Infinity" (1999) - Pretty much every chord on the entire album is extremely dissonant. A large percentage of it is using weird meters and odd rhythms. Save a few sung-spoken chant moments, all of the vocals are guttural screams. Only the occasional jazz-tinged break, or the fact that the instrumentation/textures are a recognisable rock band set-up give this album any sense of normality. By far their least accessible.

B Tier:
"Dissociation" (2016) - Brutal at points, and some moments of release to let that settle. Daunting is the word, and I'll be honest when I say it's the only TDEP album where I don't find the payoff of its inaccessibility to satisfying enough to compel me to listen to it very often.

"Option Paralysis" (2010) - A lot of this album is heavy af. There are certainly a few points at which it is non heavy af, but even then, something like "Widower" (as genuinely brilliant as it is) feels like it takes a bit more effort to digest with your ears than the softer takes from Miss Machine and Ire Works that came before it.

"One of Us Is the Killer" (2013) - Neck and neck with Option Paralysis. The presence of the title track and "Nothing's Funny" maybe makes it slightly more accessible than OP. "CH 375 268 277 ARS" however, is some of their finest rhythmic shithousery.

"Miss Machine" (2004) - The addition of clean vocals definitely makes it a lot more accessible than Calculating; "Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants" and "Unretrofied" even have quite catchy chorus hooks. There are discernible melodies, and passages of consonance. That said, the more concordant moments are still quite artsy, and there isn't any shortage of near-grindcore stuff that wouldn't be out of place on the first album, and that tips it into the B Tier nicheness.

C Tier:
"Ire Works" (2007) - Despite the title, this is probably their least angry-sounding record. It's got some electronica-flavoured stuff and alternative rock-ish tracks, and in general a lot of songs are on the shorter side, which probably makes it more digestible if it's not your thing. It's more moody than impenetrable, which is still cool with me. If I was to give someone a TDEP record to get them started, this is probably the one I'd go with.

[Goober]

They are all great, there is no need to rank them.
(One of Us Is the Killer is the best one though. )

[Bink]

All Merzbow is S Tier

[clem]

Sonata Arctica is D Tier, with maybe some of the longer epics sneaking into C tier. Usually melodic and tuneful, with clean vocals and quite flowery keyboard sounds. Not too abrasive a soundscape for a metal band. The speedier songs, with frantic double-kick for the duration, and very shreddy guitar/keys solos of the Yngwie variety might sift out the pure vanilla-only folks. But I think most people who enjoy rock of some kind wouldn't feel out of their depth with SA.

[Deleted]

Most Bee Gees albums between 1981 and 2001 would fall into S or A Tier. (with the exception perhaps being E.S.P.)