Terrible albums with really good guitar tones.

[rokket2005]

I was trying to think of more albums and was reminded of some of the mid 2000s power metal a buddy of mine lent me back in the day. Started listening to Heavenly's Carpe Diem album cause I remember not being that into it. Not only is the guitar tone sick it's a pretty banging album too.

The real answer here is everything RHCP has put out since like 1997. Frusciante's guitar tone and sometimes his playing is the only redeeming thing about that band. Specifically By The way. Terrible songs, insufferable shit from Kiedis, boring drumming from chad smith as always, I can take or leave flea.

 

[gabito]

Load / Reload.

 

[SJShinn]

Load / Reload.

I was just about to say both of these. St. Anger too. I like the less produced sound.

 

[Drew]

What is, every Creed album before Mark Tremonti went to play in a good band?

I also can't say without any certainty since I haven't heard a song of there's since 1998 or so, but weren't Nickleback also the PRS/Gibson combo into Dual or Triple Recs? I feel like people used to at least give Kroeger credit for his tone if the albums were milquetoast to hell.

Even more so, every Nickelback album after "The State" (which had some pretty good songs, and pretty average guitar tones).

 

[NorCal_Val]

Vinnie Vincent “Invasion”(1st album).
Terrible songs, far beyond awful solos, annoying high pitch vocals. So bad.
Buuuuuuuuuut…, the rhythm guitar tone was pretty decent/aggressive.(Laney amps, if I recall correctly)

 

[JSKrev]

Vinnie Vincent “Invasion”(1st album).
Terrible songs, far beyond awful solos, annoying high pitch vocals. So bad.
Buuuuuuuuuut…, the rhythm guitar tone was pretty decent/aggressive.(Laney amps, if I recall correctly)

Awful songs, for sure. But those solos were distastefully awesome!

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Y'know everyone here is saying creed but I thought the guitar tone was just okay? First album has awful guitar tone, next 2 kinda has a generic Recto tone.

It wasn't until Alter Bridge started that he got really great tone. The End is Here on One Day Remains... It crushes.

 

[wankerness]

Literally every Limp Bizkit album fits the criteria. I don't think any LB guitarist ever got bad tone.

I dunno, I sorta think most of 3 Dollar Bill Y'All sounds like crunchy crap. It's SO dry. I'm thinking of things like the main Counterfeit riff or the outro to Faith. Both the heavy distorted tones and the clean ones on songs other than Faith just are not my thing. I agree that the two follow-up albums sound great, never listened to anything later.

I think most of what I would say has already been said. A lot of those nu-metal albums and adjacent sounded great. It was always weird when usually reliable producers would suddenly spit out something that sounded like ass (I think of like, Ross Robinson and The Burning Red vs all the great sounding ones like Slipknot's debut or Glassjaw or At the Drive In or whatever). Though he was also responsible for Three Dollar Bill Y'all!

One I can think of from another genre is Dimmu Borgir's stuff like Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia. I wouldn't call them TERRIBLE necessarily, but it was just so annoying to us casual black metal fans that didn't believe you had to sound like shit (ex Ulver - Natten's Madrigal) to be good that the only BM bands circa 2000 with stellar production were Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth. As time went on that stopped being the case when we'd get bangers like Enslaved - Below the Lights. But there were a couple years there where if you wanted good sounding black metal, you had to listen to the bands everyone hated!