or maybe 1000 covers of “4‘33’‘” by John Cage in different genres. heck, that could be even 10000 tracks! (cuz every track can last less than a second lmao)
hmm, I suppose AxCx could accept this task. rise from the grave, Uncle Putnam!
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I usually say it depends on the genre and style, but at the end of the day it comes down to how well-written and well put together it is.
For more extreme and intense genres (thrash, death, grindcore, crust, d-beat etc) I appreciate it being somewhere between 15-45 minutes, although I can name hundres and hundres of albums within the genres that push that and succeed.
For more atmospheric music like black metal, post-rock, ambient etc. I have no problem with albums being 90-120 minutes long.
But living the life I live, I rarely have time to sit down and listen to albums clocking in at 75+ minutes. I do it every now and then, but I’ll put on something I can listen through, and that’s usually not more than 60 minutes at the time.
But Reverend Bizarre’s III: So Long Suckers, Dødsengel’s Imperator, Oaks of Bethel’s Movements of Fire and Shadow I-III and Corrupted’s Llenandose de gusanos are all between 120-180 minutes long, and I wouldn’t want any of them to be a second shorter. I don’t get to play these albums too often, but when I do I an enjoying every single second of it.
On the other hand I would not want Mindforce’s Excalibur, Municipal Waste’s Waste em All, Evil Army’s self-titled, Slayer’s Reign in Blood or Hirax’ Hate, Fear, Power to be any longer, despoter clocking it between 16-28 minutes. They’re simply perfect as they are, and are usually on heavy rotation as I get to listen to all of them in one sitting without any problems.
So there’s not really any ideal lenght for me personally as both short, medium and long can be perfect in their own way, but 15-40 suits me better as I love hearing the entire album in one sitting, and I get to do that more often if they’re on the shorter side.
Being in a band myself I personally put a lot of thought into the lenght of the album. Currently working on an album that’s heavy, fast and aggressive, so it’ll be around 27-30 minutes long (Even though I have 70 minutes of music written for it). But the album after this, which will be a lot of the same but feature more parts that’s slower and epic, will probably be closer to 40 minutes again as it’s more suitable for the style. And so on.