There Is A Hell > Suicide Season > That's The Spirit > This Is What the Edge of Your Seat is For > Count Your Blessings > Sempiternal
The Sadness Will Never End is amazingly prescient in informing the blueprint for the rest of their career
At the very least, that and the title track where an indication for the direction of 'There is A Hell...'
The Sadness Will Never End with some little changes could have totally been on There Is A Hell, what a cool song for them at that point in their career
Suicide Season hasn't aged well, but it has a few songs that still go off like the aforementioned ones and "Death Breath".
I'd add 'It Was Written in Blood', 'Chelsea Smile' and 'Diamonds Aren't Forever' as well. 'Diamonds...' because how much fun it was live (see Reading 2011 performance, which for me was them at their peak and one of the best sets of the day.)
Sempiternal is cool for refining the sound of TIAH and kinda modernizing it/expanding to a bigger audience but the urgency/charisma is nowhere near as palpable as it is on TIAH, not to mention it's less sprawling and experimental, leaving it frankly just not as impressive
'Sempiternal' doesn't have a single track I like, was and still is a disappointment to me coming off of the back of 'There Is A Hell...'. 'Hospital For Souls' is the only track worth mentioning and even that lifts too heavily from Underoath's 'Casting Such a Thin Shadow'.
I’d actually argue that Casting sounds a lot more like Suicide Season. Also, my biggest gripe with Sempiternal is the way they mixed/EQ’d the vocals. So much high end, which takes some getting used to.
See section of 'Casting...' that starts around 2:58 and then section of 'Hospital For Souls' that starts at 1:05. I also dislike the production on Sempiternal, but as someone has previously stated none of their albums have had amazing production (Even 'There Is A Hell...' the guitars can sound sharp or muddy in places).
Definitely wouldn't use this word, more like "Linkin Parking"/2002 Nu Metaling it. Which isn't surprisingly with Terry Date behind the board and is fine if you like that kind of sound but if I wanted to listen to early Linkin Park or Nu Metal I'd just listen to that. I agree that they made the 'There Is a Hell' sound more accessible however, but in the process of doing that lost what was so interesting/refreshing about that album in the first place.