I've never actually rated any journey albums. I just went on which I would grab first to listen
Frontiers is definitely an album of 2 halves. imo the first 6 tracks are virtually flawless.
I think it is widely accepted that they should have ditched Frontiers and Back Talk and included Ask The Lonely and only the young.
With those swaps it would be no 2 on my list
Haha, didn't intentionally mean to cause a wowser moment - purely just a numbers thing for me because as you might imagine, I'm not really strongly connected to any of the Journey albums in particular. Let's just say I far prefer the Dokken discography.
Looking at my scores, the first 6 songs on 'Frontiers' all score quite well, but it takes a massive nosedive for the last 3 songs. 'Trial By Fire' scores pretty lamely across the board but it's quite consistent. In fact, me rating 'If he should break your heart' so high is probably the single element that gets 'Trial by fire' across the line.
But if I thought about it deeper, I would prefer to listen to the 'Frontiers' album. So... let's just call those two a swap around.
Hmm, safe to say you're a bigger fan of the Roth era then...
Van Halen are my second favorite band, so I'll throw out just my album rankings...
1. 5150
2. 1984
3. OU812
4. Van Halen I
5. FUCK
6. Fair Warning
7. Van Halen II
8. Balance
9. A Different Kind of Truth
10. Women & Children First
11. Diver Down
12. Van Halen III
5150, 1984, and OU812 were a HUGE part of the soundtrack of my youth!
Hey man, it's all Dokken, so it's cool. I totally understand why some people prefer the slightly lighter, more "pop metal" sound of UFTA and ULAK over the others... both are GREAT albums as well. Other than Shadowlife and Don's second solo effort, Solitary, I look at all the Dokken releases pretty favorably.