“Swing and a miss” albums

[TheWarAgainstTime]

For me personally as these bands are obviously still successful, their albums after the one I listed fall flat for me:

Tool after Lateralus

A Perfect Circle after 13th Step

Dream Theater after Systematic Chaos (Octavarium is a mixed bag for me too, a lot of the songs feel like they're copying other bands)

Karnivool after Sound Awake. I do like the newest single though.

Northlane after Mesmer

A Day to Remember after Common Courtesy

Fear Factory after Archetype, though there's a few songs on following albums I like.

Hands Like Houses after Dissonants

Hot take but the only good thing Coheed did was Welcome Home imo. I just don't care for them, so there's that lol

+1 to Northlane, ADTR, and HLH

Parkway Drive - Atlas and everything after. I still personally like those albums, but they really did a dive headfirst into the "crowd chant-along arena rock" pool and mostly lost the original spirit of what made the previous albums so great.

Thornhill - Heroine. I really loved The Dark Pool, but this album shifted heavily into the "lo-fi horny vocal Deftones worship" vibe that I just don't dig.

Varials - In Darkness. I know their vocalist was having some trouble with his voice and wanted to try something less heavy, but it didn't click for me the way Pain Again or Failure//Control did.

Architects: Holy Hell and everything after. The band said Holy Hell had some unfinished demos Tom had made before his passing mixed in with completely new songs, which makes sense to me since that album was hit-or-miss IMO. I'm not really a fan of their new sound, but I do think it's better that they try something new rather than simply imitate Tom's writing style and fall flat.

 

[Crungy]

Totally agree on PWD, I haven't liked anything after Atlas. I haven't listened to tons of Varials but the new album wasn't doing a lot for me either.

 

[mastapimp]

A few of these are already mentioned and I totally agree:

Guns 'N Roses - Chinese Democracy
Fear Factory - Transgression
Megadeth - Supercolider
Opeth - Heritage
Rivers of Nihil - The Work
RHCP - Unlimited Love (I like the Dream Canteen songs much better)
Dream Theater - Octivarium, The Astonishing
Ozzy - Black Rain though Ordinary Man. I actually enjoyed Patient No. 9 a lot.
Tool - Fear Inoculum
Devin Townsend - Deconstruction, Empath, Ziltoid 2
In Flames - A Sense of Purpose and onward...

And maybe the biggest swing and a miss I've ever heard is Jeff Walker (of Carcass) doing a solo album of country covers "Welcome to Carcass Cuntry"

 

[MFB]

These two pain me to say as I do love both these bands, but, no one is without fault here.

Mastodon - The Hunter, truthfully the only song on this I ever really remember is "Black Tongue," and I have spun it so little I could count it on one hand. I used to say this and Once More Round the Sun were both misses, but the latter is actual much better than I remembered; Hunter just always seems more like a rock album from what I remember of it, and even the album art is just like, "yup, that is indeed, an album cover by a band."

Protest the Hero - Pacific Myth, I think I've only spun this twice and found nothing memorable on it both times. I don't get how people could hate Scurrilous or Volition, and I think they bounced back fairly well with Palimpset despite it taking forever between the two (understandable given Luke/Tim setting up Sheet Happens), but Pacific Myth was a real goose egg.

 

[CanserDYI]

Fear innoculum had some bangers on it, though, but yeah. Pretty anticlimatic after 10000 Days and almost literally 10000 days.

 

[The Mirror]

Trivium - pretty much every album between Ascendancy and their most recent one. Ascendancy is a masterpiece and of my favorite albums period but they just became stale during this long stretch, I'm very glad to see them writing interesting things again and playing some Ascendancy songs live. In Waves is a decent live song but the entire thing s a repeat of two 10 second riffs

Dude, Shogun is easily one of their best, if not the best record they did. They build on that album ever since and still use re-worked demos from Shogun for new tracks, which often end up being the best songs (like Phalanx on their latest record).

If anything Vengeance Falls and Silence in the Snow were the absolute low points of their career, with Crusade and In Waves being very hit and miss, but since Sin they are at the top of their game, mostly because they now stick to the Shogun style of songwriting.

 

[mastapimp]

These two pain me to say as I do love both these bands, but, no one is without fault here.

Mastodon - The Hunter, truthfully the only song on this I ever really remember is "Black Tongue," and I have spun it so little I could count it on one hand. I used to say this and Once More Round the Sun were both misses, but the latter is actual much better than I remembered; Hunter just always seems more like a rock album from what I remember of it, and even the album art is just like, "yup, that is indeed, an album cover by a band."

Protest the Hero - Pacific Myth, I think I've only spun this twice and found nothing memorable on it both times. I don't get how people could hate Scurrilous or Volition, and I think they bounced back fairly well with Palimpset despite it taking forever between the two (understandable given Luke/Tim setting up Sheet Happens), but Pacific Myth was a real goose egg.

I loved the Hunter and still do. Bedazzled fingernails is one of my favorite Mastodon songs. Also, the artwork is an actual wood carving. I didn't appreciated as much until I saw the making of video.

 

[bostjan]

Guns 'N Roses - Chinese Democracy

Heh, I'd say that the band lost all of its momentum leading up to that. Hell, they exploded into the fast lane with Appetite, and have kind of been mostly coasting ever since, but Izzy exiting the band put the transmission into neutral, and Gilby was able to quickly restart the engine whilst coasting, but only for a second, then Slash left and all the king's Bucketheads and all the King's Bumblefoots couldn't save it. But honestly, The Spaghetti Incident should be the album listed here if any apply. By the time Chinese Democracy was announced, I think most people had totally forgotten G'N'R still existed, and the surprise that there was new music coming gave them a huge boost in momentum that they obviously couldn't manage, and then, by the time it came out years (decade?) later, any remnants of momentum the band had had from their one good album in the late 1980's was completely dissipated into heat from friction.

 

[John]

Absolutely relevant submission from start to finish:

Eric Clapton albums discography - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Emperoff]

Opeth - Sausage

I know it thas been said already, but never enough times.

 

[ArtDecade]

Silverchair - Young Modern

Most listeners outside Australia stopped listening after Freakshow, but the band was off to new and interesting art rock directions and Diorama was Daniel Johns' artistic (if not pretentious) peak. Young Modern was the new and different directon of the same ambition and even more pretentious, but it just falls apart, which in turn tore the band apart.

Young Modern was about as big as a disappointment as could be following the brilliant Diorama. I had hoped that Daniel was going to carve out a career as a hard rock Brian Wilson, but instead he became the lost version of Brian Wilson that dissolved into memory.

 

[Crungy]

I have some respect for Daniel Johns for having integrity (I guess?) by continuing to evolve musically but I feel the direction he went didn't do a lot for his career. He's insanely talented and I get to a degree child stardom fucked him up but still. Unless there's something behind the curtain, I think the podcast about him last year made him seem like a dick. I lost a lot of respect for him unfortunately and I think he's one of the most talented musicians ever.

 

[STRHelvete]

To answer honestly (I still hated Death, tho), I think that once I like a band or musician I'm cool with the journey they take. Even when they make something different I can still enjoy it for what it is. I've never bought anything from someone I really like and ended up disappointed. It may not have been what I wanted but I still enjoyed it.

I think the only time this happened was with the Spice Girls album 'Forever'. Spice was a great first album that had a lot of good moments, Spiceworld brought in a band and they had lots of different elements from latin music, motown, r&b, rock, etc. The actual music, instrumentation, and variety of styles was impressive. Everything about the group was turned up to 11 which fit for the image of the band.

Then Geri left, they released Forever and they sounded like every generic 2000s r&b/pop girl group. I blame that on Darkchild who was the producer as he'd done stuff with people like Brandy and I feel his work is really dated. Everything about the Spice Girls was taken away and I guess they called themselves trying to grow up and be taken serious..but the Spice Girls aren't supposed to be that way so that album lost everything.

I don't hate it and there are good songs on it but the magic that they had was gone.

 

[Decapitated]

Shaq Fu: Da Return. Just didn’t hit as hard as Shaq Diesel.

 

[BenjaminW]

Absolutely relevant submission from start to finish:

Eric Clapton albums discography - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The thing with Clapton for me is that I love Cream, the Beano album, and Derek and the Dominos. But anything post-Derek is hard for me to get into. I sometimes have to remind myself that Eric Clapton in the 60s is the same Eric Clapton we see today and not somebody else.

 

[rokket2005]

Soilwork - Sworn to a Great Divide. Just awful. Peter leaves and it quickly devolves into total garbage. STD wasn't good either but this album was so disappointing to me.

In Flames - A Sense of Purpose. I didn't like Come Clarity, but it at least sounded like an In Flames record. This doesn't. It sounds like a bunch of high school friends making a demo before they go off to college so they have something to remember their band.

Aesop Rock - The Impossible Kid. This album sounds like Aes decided that since he signed with Rhymesayers he should make the same kind of crap that Atmosphere had for the previous 10 years. I don't understand this album at all. Everything cool that he had done since Float is nowhere to be seen on this album.

Mew - Visuals. +- was a definite step down from their previous albums, but Bo leaving hurt the songwriting even more and it made this album such a snoozefest.

ORBS - Past Life Regression. Their first album Asleep Next to Science is one of the top 5 best Prog Metal albums of all time. This album is just super weird and doesn't have any cohesion at all. I was really excited when this album was announced but left confused when it came out. I can listen to it now, but it's not the masterpiece that their first album is.

 

[lost_horizon]

Thought Industry made the craziest Prog you have ever heard in your life (Songs for Insects, Mods Carve the Pig) then makes a lo fi rock album called 'Short Wave on a Cold Day' with some absolute normie bangers on it.

Pyramaze which is a collection of label talent has recorded completely different lineups for multiple albums but I think 'Immortal' was their best with Matt Barlow on vocals. The follow up without their founding members 'Disciples of the Sun' sucked. Many amazing musicians in this band but not making anything worthwhile.

Equilibrium 'Sagas' with the crazy pan-flute solo's was probably my favourite album of Epic Death metal (listen to the song Mana which goes for 16 minutes) of all time but the follow ups since then have been missing pan flute (who isn't even listed on their wikipedia page as a band member on the main) and more commercial sounding.

Dream Evil the brainchild of producer Fredrik Nordstrom has always been amazing, I mean the sound, quality of the lineup (Snowy Shaw, Gus G Niklas Isfeldt) the songwriting ('United' has 15 tracks and 5 bonus tracks) and then with 'In the Night' it felt like the band had run out of ideas.

Bonus: Dream Evil current guitarist Mark Black aka Markus Fristedt with his 7 string

 

[Big_taco]

I loved the Hunter and still do. Bedazzled fingernails is one of my favorite Mastodon songs. Also, the artwork is an actual wood carving. I didn't appreciated as much until I saw the making of video.

I remember wondering what they would do after Crack the Skye and being let down by the Hunter, though I think that was the album that really pushed them over to a bigger audience overall it definitely feels like the last straw a lot of older fans. “Blasteroid” is a super fun track and there’s a few others I really enjoy now.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Rush’s Caress of Steel for sure.

I love Bastille Day and Lakeside Park, but everything else on that album sucks. The flip side though is we got 2112 and everything else that followed it because of it.

One of my favorite examples since it's a great strike one strory. Rush were already being pestered by Kiss to push their sound to be the next Zeppelin but they pushed for their own sound to their detriment. Hell their tour was billed as Down The Tubes. But Caress of Steel needed to happen since Rush took an amazing mulligan swing and laid the groundwork for prog music to come.

Adding to the list:

Celtic Frost - Cold Lake

Low hanging fruit. Tom G Warrior being a bit happier and getting his new lead guitarist from a rebooted lineup to write most of the music certainly aren't the ingredients of a good Celtic Frost album. One of the many examples of an album being lambasted by fans, critics and Tom G himself in hindsight.

 

[vilk]

Swansong by Carcass. They tried to make it too rock n roll.


Also, Revelations of the Black Flame by 1349. What the hell was that? So glad they didn't keep with it.


Also maybe it's a little too soon to say so but I hope Deafheaven bounces back from Infinite Granite. I actually don't mind some shoegaze but there's already other shoegaze bands so please go ahead and bring back the aggression that made Deafheaven extreme.