EP's vs LP's

[RexKeltoi]

For the most part I would have to go with EP's, you avoid fillers that you would have to skip over. Only exception is with concept albums where there is a full length narrative to be conveyed 🤷‍♂️  

[FatherAlabaster]

I lean towards albums. I like an immersive experience when I have time by myself for active listening, and I like zoning out to music while I work on visual art, so less frequent interruptions are better. Also I have a few EPs that I like a lot but most of my favorite music happens to be on full lengths. Sometimes I have to split an album in half because I don't have time for the whole thing with all the family distractions.

I don't run into the filler-track issue very much. If an album has songs on it that I dislike enough to make me skip them, I just don't wind up listening to it at all. 

[MacabreEternal]

As I get older, I lean more towards the EP in all honesty.  As someone with ever decreasing time for music or pretty much anything barring work, a good EP can fill a small hole after finishing work to decompress me into life mode.  If I click on an album now and it is longer than 30 mins I groan inwardly in all honesty which makes me fear genuinely for my enjoyment of music at large recently.

[FatherAlabaster]

36 minutes ago, MacabreEternal said:

As I get older, I lean more towards the EP in all honesty.  As someone with ever decreasing time for music or pretty much anything barring work, a good EP can fill a small hole after finishing work to decompress me into life mode.  If I click on an album now and it is longer than 30 mins I groan inwardly in all honesty which makes me fear genuinely for my enjoyment of music at large recently.

You're still doing better than me. I routinely go for weeks without listening to anything for enjoyment lately. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

I like full lengths under 40 minutes, and EP's of at least 18 - 20 minutes. 10 - 15 minute EP's just annoy me. No matter how good the music is, it just seems like too much of a tease. Just when you're starting to really get into it, it's over already. So I typically won't buy those super brief ones, unless maybe a band releases a few of them in a relatively short timespan and then I can play them together as if they were sides of an album. My sweet spot though is full length albums in the 25 to 35 minute range. I consider 25 minutes the minimum cutoff to qualify as a bona fide full length, regardless of how many tracks they break it up into. I suppose this is due to the types of bands I tend to gravitate towards typically releasing a lot of ~30 minute albums. I've gotten used to that runtime.

Which is not to say there aren't some longer 55 minute albums that I absolutely adore, but it has got to be a pretty special album to hold my interest for a solid hour. When albums get too long, let's say more than 70 or 75 minutes that's just stupid imo. I'd tell bands if you have that much music flowing out of you please break it up into two separately digestible, standalone 35 minute albums. That way the listener has the choice of playing one or the other or both if he so chooses. I understand like FA said that you could theoretically pause an album and come back to it later. But realistically speaking, chances are I won't come back to it later, I'm much more likely to just put on something else. So I'll generally deliberate the pros and cons a little longer when considering the purchase of an album that runs much over 45 minutes.

As far as the filler issue goes, I've noticed that 70's, 80's and 90's albums of traditional metal, or anything with clean vocals really did tend to be more erratic as far as the quality of the songwriting went from track to track. Back in the day I got pretty used to buying albums with as few as 2 or 3 tracks that I really really enjoyed. If an album had even 4 or 5 out of 8 or 9 total tracks that I thought were good, that was a major score. To find an album with no skippers at all was almost unheard of back then. That would have been like the holy grail of rock/metal albums. Because almost every album had at least a few weaker tracks, even if you didn't necessarily always go to all the bother of getting up to skip them.

But nowadays I don't seem to have that problem anymore with my black and death metal albums, or very rarely anyway. At this point if an album has even two songs I'd consider bad enough that I would feel the need to skip them, I probably wouldn't even buy it. Most albums these days get played straight through front to back no questions asked. Which is ironic because it's so much easier to skip a track now in the digital era than it was back then with those stupid vinyl LP's. I don't know if this means the average quality of metal songwriting has improved drastically over the years, or maybe I just relate to these more extreme sub-genres better than I did to the hard rock and trad metal of yesteryear? Some people would probably say that with extreme metal all the songs sound basically alike, so it you like one or two on an album you know you'll probably like them all. I wouldn't say that I agree with that take, but I suppose it is true that bands were more likely to make a conscious effort to try and vary the sound of their songs on an album more back in the day.

[AlSymerz]

I'm too much of a tight arse to buy EP's when they 3/4 the price of a full length album. I used to buy the occasional 12 inch in the 80's and 90's but that was more for the covers than the songs.

[JonoBlade]

I originally assumed this post was trolling us, because how many "classic EPs" can you name?

Haunting the Chapel maybe?

But then everyone started answering like it was a serious question.

I am with @GoatmasterGeneral in that a 10-15 minute EP is pretty much pointless. It can only serve as a stocking filler of leftover tracks to release in between albums when you want to keep a buzz going.

[AlSymerz]

Alternatively a full length CD is just the stocking stuffed with filler to bulk out 3 or 4 new tracks. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

5 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

I originally assumed this post was trolling us, because how many "classic EPs" can you name?

Haunting the Chapel maybe?

But then everyone started answering like it was a serious question.

I am with @GoatmasterGeneral in that a 10-15 minute EP is pretty much pointless. It can only serve as a stocking filler of leftover tracks to release in between albums when you want to keep a buzz going.

Well let's see, besides Haunting the Chapel there was Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales and Emepror's Return EP's. The Helloween EP, the Overkill EP, Nuclear Assault's The Plague, Sodom's In the Sign of Evil, Destruction's Sentence of Death, Kreator's Flag of Hate, Fate's Nuns Have No Fun, Exciter's Feel the Knife, Razor's Armed & Dangerous, Dicharge's Why?, GBH's Leather, Bristles, Studs and Acne. Apparently there was a Possessed EP in '87 but I don't remember ever seeing that one in the stores. You probably loved the Queensryche EP but obviously I'll pass on that one. That's 16, but I can't really think of any more from back in the day, so yeah not too many in the grand scheme of things.

Nowadays a lot of the bands I listen to like to release EP's, but probably not too many of the kinds of bands you generally listen to. I always wonder wtf is up when a band goes a few years without releasing anything, then drops a two or three track EP on us. I mean c'mon dudes, in all that time you couldn't have written even two or three more songs to make it a full length, even if it is on the shorter side? How hard is it to come up with 25 minutes of music, or at least 20+. Maybe they just don't want their fans to forget they exist?

[RelentlessOblivion]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Well let's see, besides Haunting the Chapel there was Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales and Emepror's Return EP's. The Helloween EP, the Overkill EP, Nuclear Assault's The Plague, Sodom's In the Sign of Evil, Destruction's Sentence of Death, Kreator's Flag of Hate, Fate's Nuns Have No Fun, Exciter's Feel the Knife, Razor's Armed & Dangerous, Dicharge's Why?, GBH's Leather, Bristles, Studs and Acne. Apparently there was a Possessed EP in '87 but I don't remember ever seeing that one in the stores. You probably loved the Queensryche EP but obviously I'll pass on that one. That's 16, but I can't really think of any more from back in the day, so yeah not too many in the grand scheme of things.

Nowadays a lot of the bands I listen to like to release EP's, but probably not too many of the kinds of bands you generally listen to. I always wonder wtf is up when a band goes a few years without releasing anything, then drops a two or three track EP on us. I mean c'mon dudes, in all that time you couldn't have written even two or three more songs to make it a full length, even if it is on the shorter side? How hard is it to come up with 25 minutes of music, or at least 20+. Maybe they just don't want their fans to forget they exist?

Is also the Deathcrush EP by Mayhem, one of only two things that band ever did that I actually enjoy. I get mixed up between demos and EPs quite often, especially when it comes to stuff from the 80s. In general though I’m with you I’d rather get a full album even if I have to wait a little longer.

[JonoBlade]

12 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Well let's see, besides Haunting the Chapel there was Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales and Emepror's Return EP's. The Helloween EP, the Overkill EP, Nuclear Assault's The Plague, Sodom's In the Sign of Evil, Destruction's Sentence of Death, Kreator's Flag of Hate, Fate's Nuns Have No Fun, Exciter's Feel the Knife, Razor's Armed & Dangerous, Dicharge's Why?, GBH's Leather, Bristles, Studs and Acne. Apparently there was a Possessed EP in '87 but I don't remember ever seeing that one in the stores. You probably loved the Queensryche EP but obviously I'll pass on that one. That's 16, but I can't really think of any more from back in the day, so yeah not too many in the grand scheme of things.

Nowadays a lot of the bands I listen to like to release EP's, but probably not too many of the kinds of bands you generally listen to. I always wonder wtf is up when a band goes a few years without releasing anything, then drops a two or three track EP on us. I mean c'mon dudes, in all that time you couldn't have written even two or three more songs to make it a full length, even if it is on the shorter side? How hard is it to come up with 25 minutes of music, or at least 20+. Maybe they just don't want their fans to forget they exist?

I've heard precisely zero of those listed. Except unsurprisingly the Queensryche one (but not for 30 years - in fact I'm not sure I ever owned it except for a dubbed cassette). In any event that release only existed to get the band a record deal.

I've never even owned haunting the chapel as a standalone release since the editions of show no mercy and hell awaits I grew up with split the EP tracks across the two albums. They actually integrated them within the track listing rather than slapping on the end. 

But back to the original thesis "EPs v LPs." It's such a bizarre question to even ask, because history has so few examples of EPs that were better than the actual classic album(s) of any band ever. There may be examples of good or great EPs but to prefer that format suggests you don't have an attention span more than 25 minutes. My attention span is way longer than that. It goes all the way to 42 minutes.

Singles and EPs are for fairweather music fans that may as well listen to Spotify playlists curated by an algorithm that can tell you what you like.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

I've heard precisely zero of those listed. Except unsurprisingly the Queensryche one (but not for 30 years - in fact I'm not sure I ever owned it except for a dubbed cassette). In any event that release only existed to get the band a record deal.

I've never even owned haunting the chapel as a standalone release since the editions of show no mercy and hell awaits I grew up with split the EP tracks across the two albums. They actually integrated them within the track listing rather than slapping on the end. 

But back to the original thesis "EPs v LPs." It's such a bizarre question to even ask, because history has so few examples of EPs that were better than the actual classic album(s) of any band ever. There may be examples of good or great EPs but to prefer that format suggests you don't have an attention span more than 25 minutes. My attention span is way longer than that. It goes all the way to 42 minutes.

Singles and EPs are for fair weather music fans that may as well listen to Spotify playlists curated by an algorithm that can tell you what you like.

I think my attitude towards EP's has changed quite a bit over the years, because back in the 70's & 80's when I was a budding vinyl collector I wanted to save my limited funds to get full length albums which provided more bang for my buck as we say. But nowadays since I've gone all-digital about 12 years ago, if bands I like release EP's I can acquire them digitally usually for just a few bucks and they'll be there in my MusicBee library right alongside the albums. And like I've said, a lot of the goat metal bands I listen to will tend to release shorter albums in that 25 to 35 minute range as a matter of course. So if they drop an EP that's 22 or 23 minutes it's really only one track shy of being an official full length album anyway, so at some point the arbitrary distinction I make between albums and EP's starts to blur for me.

And then I've also seen lots of YouTube vids that'll say (EP) after the album title, but they run 30 or 40 something minutes which leaves me wondering like why would they be calling this an EP? I think I read a definition for an EP once that said it depends on not just runtime but the number of tracks. So I guess some people must consider anything with less than 5 or 6 tracks an EP regardless of length, but that's just stupid imo. I'm someone that starts an album and just lets it play through 'til the end. I'm not looking at the song titles or lyrics or anything. I couldn't tell you without checking how many tracks any of my favorite albums might have like I could have back in the day. At this point to me 40 minutes of music is 40 minutes of music, the number of songs that's broken up into is irrelevant.

But dude come on, you've never heard ANY of those 80's EP's?? Never heard Helloween? Not even the Celtic Frost ones when they put them on the compilation together? That's how I had them, Morbid Tales and Emperor's Return reissued together on vinyl in 1986, although mine had a different cover than the one in the video here. I can forget that you're a bit younger than me though so I guess you were just a little Kiwi kid in the 80's. But Celtic Frost was a HUGE band for me personally in the 80's, the way Judas Priest was for you I suppose. So hearing you say you've never heard this would be like someone telling you they're a metalhead but they've never heard Judas Priest's Sad Wings. There is no extreme black and death metal without Hellhammer/Celtic Frost. I'd gladly throw all my Priest and Maiden albums in the bin if that meant I could keep this piece of history. The Discharge and GBH Ep's were biggies for me as well, but I know you're not a punk guy so I wouldn't have expected that you'd heard them.

Celtic Frost - Morbid Tales/Emperor's Return, compilation 1986 Switzerland.

 

Helloween EP - Germany 1985, Everyone had this one back in 1985 Jon, where the fuck were you? @24:20 it was just barely an EP. Victim of Fate went on pretty much every mid 80's heavy metal mix tape I ever made. Strangely though this EP and Walls of Jericho are the only two Helloween releases I've ever heard. Because a lot more thrash albums started coming out in '85 and that made all these heavy metal bands seem a bit less important to me. These guys went on to be a pretty big band I think, but I heard they went soft-cock on us so I never bothered to check out anything after the first two records. I like bands that can keep it hard for the duration.

 

14 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Is also the Deathcrush EP by Mayhem, one of only two things that band ever did that I actually enjoy. I get mixed up between demos and EPs quite often, especially when it comes to stuff from the 80s. In general though I’m with you I’d rather get a full album even if I have to wait a little longer.

I forget about Deathcrush, because I never heard it when it was first out in the late 80's. It was more than 15 years later before I ever heard it. And so I guess I lump it in with the other 90's bands I was discovering around that same time in the early 2000's. It remains to this day the only Mayhem release I care about. This and early Darkthrone created the template for a good portion of the black metal I enjoy. Not that I can even remember the last time I listened to this. Guess I should do that now.

Mayhem - Deathcrush, Norway 1987. A true EP at 17:27

 

[AlSymerz]

According to wiki, which of course is correct because it's wiki.

An extended play (EP) is a musical recording that contains more tracks than a single but fewer than an album or LP record. Contemporary EPs generally contain up to eight tracks and have a playing time of 15 to 30 minutes. An EP is usually less cohesive than an album and more "non-committal".

But the term is obviously very flexible.  because they then add.

An extended play (EP) originally referred to a specific type of 45 rpm phonograph record other than 78 rpm standard play (SP) and 33 rpm long play (LP), but as of 2024, also applies to mid-length CDs and downloads as well.

So it basically applies to anything.

S.O.D. released a 2 track EP called Seasoning The Abyss

Toxic Holocaust released several 2 and 4 track EPs

King Gizzard released a 9 track EP

Hellbringer have an 8 track EP

Then there is the DRI EP that has 22 songs and only runs for 16 minutes and was then released in a longer format as a 44 track album.

I don't know what the longest EP out there is but you can bet there is some doom or stoner bands that have gone over the suggested time of 30 minutes.

 

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, AlSymerz said:

According to wiki, which of course is correct because it's wiki.

An extended play (EP) is a musical recording that contains more tracks than a single but fewer than an album or LP record. Contemporary EPs generally contain up to eight tracks and have a playing time of 15 to 30 minutes. An EP is usually less cohesive than an album and more "non-committal".

But the term is obviously very flexible.  because they then add.

An extended play (EP) originally referred to a specific type of 45 rpm phonograph record other than 78 rpm standard play (SP) and 33 rpm long play (LP), but as of 2024, also applies to mid-length CDs and downloads as well.

So it basically applies to anything.

S.O.D. released a 2 track EP called Seasoning The Abyss

Toxic Holocaust released several 2 and 4 track EPs

King Gizzard released a 9 track EP

Hellbringer have an 8 track EP

Then there is the DRI EP that has 22 songs and only runs for 16 minutes and was then released in a longer format as a 44 track album.

I don't know what the longest EP out there is but you can bet there is some doom or stoner bands that have gone over the suggested time of 30 minutes.

The terms single, extended play, and long play are pretty self explanatory. But it's up to each of us to decide exactly where the dividing line is between extended play and long play. I've always used 25 minutes as the dividing line separating the two. I read that was the definition somewhere along the line many years ago and it stuck with me. There was also a track count component to it, but I can't remember if the cutoff was 5 or 6 tracks. Personally I think the track count is completely irrelevant anyway. There have been hour long LP's with just one single track. Runtime should be the only consideration. 

But obviously everyone is free to use their own criteria. If someone prefers to use 30 minutes or 7 tracks as the minimum to qualify as a full length LP that's up to them, it doesn’t matter to me. I think it made more sense to differentiate between the two formats back in the vinyl days of 7 inch, 10 inch and 12 inch releases. But now that we're well into the digital era, who really cares if a 27 minute album is an EP or an LP? It's still a 27 minute album either way no matter what anyone wants to call it.