I was gonna go with The Right Profile > Lost in the Supermarket > Clampdown.

I’d like to make a case for:

Dogs-Pigs-Sheep all day

F YES re. Achtung. It came out when I was a junior in high school and it’s always been my go-to U2 album. You could pick just about any sequence of three songs from that album and you’d be spot on. My favorite: “So Cruel” - “The Fly” - “Mysterious Ways”

For Tool, any three consecutive songs off of Undertow

If we’re going U2 then I’d say, from the same album, any stretch of Running to Stand Still, Red Hill Mining Town, In God’s Country, Trip Through Your Wire and One Tree Hill is going to be hard to argue with. With or Without You has just never really done it for me, and is frankly out of place on that album.

U2, The Joshua Tree: “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “With or Without You” (bonus: “Bullet the Blue Sky” is pretty great too)

I was gonna put your Achtung three songs but I listed Unforgettable fire instead, here it is again:

I like your Pink Floyd pick but mine has to be Dogs, Pigs, Sheep.

Some U2 fans will probably do the first three tracks off The Joshua Tree (Streets, I Still Haven’t Found..., With or Without You). I’ll change it up and say Even Better Than the Real Thing, One and Until the End of the World from Achtung Baby.

Well, in hard rock, I’d say that the first three tracks of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell album is a pretty tour de force opening for an album:

The nutters are pissed that this kid thumped the shit out of them. Instead of accepting defeat like the noble brave principled warriors they believe they are, the RWNJs are acting like the whiney wimp bullies they actually are and role playing as Mean Girls.

Everything mentioned is outlandish and disgusting behavior, but:

I know it’s like “not cool” or whatever to enjoy the sadness of an emotionally troubled young man, but knowing Allen grows up to become the Zodiac killer it seems like it’s OK in this instance.