10 Amazing Follow Ups To Masterpiece Albums
6. Room on Fire - The Strokes
Rock was in dire need of some sort of upgrade at the turn of the '00s. In the wake of bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit being held over from the '90s, there wasn't anything terribly new lighting up the charts or anything, with all of the cool indie bands being relegated to the underground music scenes and college rock stations. When you have the hooks like the Strokes did, sometimes you can find yourself going more above ground than you could have imagined.
Breaking out of the New York club scene, the entire rock scene had their earto the ground when the band released Is This It, with everyone and their mother cribbing notes from them from the Hives to the Arctic Monkeys. Although Room on Fire is still the standard Strokes material that held over from their debut, you can still feel them itching to experiment with what they could do, like the new wave sounds of 12:51 or making an old school doo wop sounding song on Under Control.
When this album does have its teeth out though, there's no one else who can step to it, with the song Reptilia taking all of the smack that came with their debut and condensing it into just a few minutes or the straight up decadence of the back half of Meet Me in the Bathroom. The copycats may have been out there at this point, but Room on Fire was the Strokes still staking their claim as one of the greatest bands in their field.