the calm is tied with shangri-la as my favorite icp release

they used to do a x-mas sale..

i like both projects but theyre kinda different than what came before them so i can see how some ninjas wouldnt dig em.. “Roseemary” and “Deadbeat Moms” & “Perfect Night” and “Thrill of the Kill” were always my least favs and kinda lackluster imo.. but the rest of the projects are dope.. Im a say “Crop Circles” and “Off The Track” & “Scatter Brain” & “Wind Me Up” have always been my favs.. “Madness” or “High Rise” might replace “Scatter” nowadays tho..

I agree that The Calm is way underrated. A lot of people hate on it. I like pretty much all the songs (Rosemary’s not great), and I consider Rollin Over and Crop Circles to be classic ICP. They claim it’s the only release they produced entirely by themselves; if that’s true, I don’t understand why they haven’t produced more of their own music b/c the beats are good. Being the first proper ICP release after the era of the Sixth ended, and since the sound is a little unusual (not “wicked” at all), I think a lot of people weren’t ready for it. But for the same reasons, I think it holds a special little place in their discography, and I’d live to see them do some of those songs live.

Eye of the Storm I’m not really familiar with at all. I wasn’t paying much attention to Psy at that time, and I had always thought it was Tempest outtakes until this post (is it not?). I will say that Little Yellow Bus is awesome and hilarious and I’m glad they’re playing it live. I may have to go back and finally check out this record.

That whole era (calm/tempest/eye) is weird b/c they hadn’t decided what they were gonna do next — after the Wraith, but before they decided (for better or worse…) to just do another deck of joker cards. Kinda like Bizzar/Bizaar, it falls outside of the decks and so it’s sometimes overlooked. Musically, If I Was a Serial Killer is kind of its claim to fame since they have closed w/ it so much over the years.

Noah Fence said
The calm and the tempest are my least favorite icp projects. Like Black Rain from lotus, everything they did at that time just seemed like they didn’t know what to do so they just tried to copy themselves. There were no surprises. There was no mystery. There was no charm. No insight. Nothing. It’s like they went on horrorcore.com in 2002 and said fuck it why try anymore lets just do the shit these guys are doing. 

I went back and relistened to those and eye of the storm earlier in the year and eye of the storm as the only one that made me laugh, made me think, made me wanna move. I don’t love eye of the storm but I keep a few of the songs in my random play folder. Not true of the other two. Even a decade plus later those sings kill any excitement or love I have of what icp do.   

I only agree with your opinion that Black Rain was a confused mess. What a strange album. More than a few great tracks, though. Just a weird time.

The Calm is awesome, front to back. I don’t give a fucking fuck what anyone thinks. Rosemary is dope as hell.

The Tempest is even better. 

Eye of the Storm is great, but I need to revisit it. 

I keep perfect night in a Halloween folder. Shoulda been a hallowicked track. 

The Perfect Night fit well as a Gathering release. Although I see how the autumn leaves line works with Hallowicked well too. 

Yeah weren’t feeling The Calm that much but still like a few tracks and deff don’t hate them as much as tacks of new ICP and The Wraith.

The Tempest – always loved this fucking album since day it was released. It deff wasn’t a jokers card (but I don’t think any of the new deck are Jokers Cards either) and it was diff but to me better as a whole than The Wraith and couldn’t understand the hate for it at the time.

Also I remember at the time feeling let down that it wasn’t what was intended for the original Tempest as it was supposed to be an almighty storm at the end of the world I was expecting something like Hells Pitt but louder, angrier and better then it was turned into a Rollercoaster ride instead of a life ending storm, big change Huh.

Think most people hated cos it was an album that wasn’t a Jokers Card and at the time they said they were not going to do cards anymore. So think people thought if we hate we’ll get more Joker Cards.

I mean who can argue with The Tower !!! Gotta be one of their best tracks ever. Only a couple shit tracks on the album where as it’s the other way around for the last 10/15 years there only a couple good tracks each album (excluding Phantom EP thats the thing they done since 90s)

Eye Of The Storm – This one I rate a lot higher than The Calm but as rightly said above this was a collection of tracks cut from The Tempest I believe and again this is still better than recent albums

They were good at the time and now looking back look and sound even better and the last time I had hope for ICP releases : (