I was going to agree with the original post but having ead some of the responses I am forced to agree with them: there has been some good music. As usual though we have to wade through the dross to find it. NOFX - War on Errorism, Descendents - Cool to be You. The good ones don't age and I'm still playing them.

I completely agree with this. It's hard to base a serious argument on something that has a very loose definition that can mean different things to different people. Personally, I think some epic albums are

Bleach-Nirvana
I Am The Golden Gate Bridge- Creature With The Atom Brain
Ten- Pearl Jam
Facelift- Alice In Chains
Insecticide- Nirvana

Now for all the nirvana haters to crawl out of their hidey-holes

I'd think that grunge is kind of the antithesis of an "epic" sound, especially on Bleach where it's really raw and stripped back.

Epic would be, if it had to be stuck in a bracket which is kind of nonsense anyway, something big and bombastic, something with longer song lengths, more complex arrangement and so on. So while I'd agree with Nimrods suggestion of Opeth (specifically I think Still Life is a fantastic example of an "epic" metal album in a positive sense rather than in a "oh look, it has keyboards" sense that some people attribute to "epic"ness (ugh, why did I say that?) in metal) I'd not agree with slightly more straight forward death metal like Decapitated.

But that's just me.

Winds Of Creation isn't very straightforward at all it isn't "Progressive" but it's sure not straightforward. But you're right it isn't epic, I just really like it. As for Asphyx, the title track of The Rack speaks for itself

Yes, I definitely think epic is a specific quality in music, as opposed to the co-opted modern catch-all positive adjective (taking over from such illustrious forebears as "neat", "cool" and "bodacious"). A similar but distinct quality is anthemic. I'd say epic is to do with ambition, ambiguous or conceptual subjects, and a large, expansive sound. Muse, are a band I don't like, but I'd say they have that epic quality.

My definition of epic is similar to what a fantasy movie is to the movie genre, thus an epic song would be to music. Long, over exaggerated, and with all sorts of instruments that would normally be in a classical song, but are used in the modern genres of music.

Yes, dynamics help, but there are tracks (Boris - Farewell for example) which are pretty much dynamic-less but I still think have some epic qualities.

As for length and instrumentation, again I think that's more genre specific, and what you describe asdf is pretty much just 70s "prog rock". I certainly think progressive music tends towards epic more than any other, but I can think of plenty of several epic sounding tracks that are just drums, guitars, bass and vocals.

And there's always 5ive (no, not that five...), who pretty well typify some of the elements I'm talking about, but consist of only a drummer and a lone guitarist:


I think one thing epic might specifically need is a lot of reverb or delay.

In my opinion, these are the most epicest albums of each decade:
60's: White Album-The Beatles
70's: A Night At The Opera-Queen
80's: The Game-Queen
90's: OK Computer-Radiohead
00's: Is This It-The Strokes

The 59' Sound was an epic in my view but not many people I know feel the same.

Ugh. So not funny.