Anyone have or know of albums where one half of an album is better/worse/different in quality to the other half?

Strapping Young Lad - Alien

The first 4 songs typify what this album is all about - heavy as shit with some killer riffs and, in the case of "Love?", a great chorus line. Track 5 still retains that, although in a different way for me, but the only truly great song after that is "Thalamus", with the rest of the album, while still being good, doesn't capture what the first 4 tracks built up.

Illogicist - The Insight Eye

All of this album is quite good, and Illogicist's best one so far. The first 4 tracks work great in showcasing what they are all about, but it's not until "Soundless Pain", half way through, where they really start to shine, and the last half of the album is superb. The aforementioned "Soundless Pain" and the next one "Core" are both the best on the album, with the following two also being fantastic.

I will probably think of more later.

The absolutely first (and only) thing that comes to mind is Endless Pain by Kreator. Where all uneven songs are sung in mild-harsh vocals while the even ones are more gutural/shriek-like vocals.

Uuuuh... Morbid Angel - Illud Divinum Insanus..?

Satyricon - The Age of Nero:
The first half (literally) of the album sounds good to me, but starting with "My skin is cold" and ending with "Den siste", the second half contains about half the intensity of the first four tracks. When I first listened to it, I thought I'd just lost interest half way through, but I've tried to listen to it separately in reversed order, and it doesn't help at all. I think they've put the songs in order from 1st to 8th starting with the one they liked the most and ending with their least favorite one.

Fear Factory - Transgression
First five tracks are standard Fear Factory style songs. The next five are the softer/experimental songs and covers (although I guess New Promise isn't too different from the first five). To me the album sounds like a re-release of two different EPs on the same disc with a 'new' song thrown on the end. If they'd have been allowed more time to finish all the songs I'm sure it would've had a better flow to it.

Metallica - Death Magnetic
To me, the first four songs are head and shoulders above everything else on the album. Although there are some decent songs in the latter part of the album, they don't match to the quality of the opening batch of songs.

Not strictly metal, but My War by Black Flag is certainly an album of two halves. Side 1 is your standard hardcore punk, whereas side 2 has much more of a metal influence; I'd even go so far as to say proto-sludge.

Virgin Steele's The House of Atreus: Act II. It's a killer record and the first half is absolutely fantastic - the second disk however, is a different story and has far too many interludes. ''Flames of Thy Power'', ''By the Gods'' and the ending track (though it's quite overlong I'd say) are killer songs but the rest just doesn't excite me. Seems like Defeis was running out of ideas when he wrote that stuff.

Conception's In Your Multitude. It's my favourite Conception album but really not that consistent. The first 5 songs aren't great and plain average at the best. The second half literally has highlight after highlight.

For a double album i´ll go with the latest Baroness output...Yellow its almost perfect while Green its...well, it isnt bad for sure but not nearly as good as the previously said.

I think Time is Up by Havok also bears with this cross, the first half (and maybe 3/4 of the album) its so damn good and powerfull but the last couple of songs are weak, repetitive and...well i just dont like ´em

Death In June have a few albums like this (in terms of sound, not quality); All Pigs Must Die starts out as Neo-Folk with accordions, but the second half is Noise, Alarm Agents w/ Boyd Rice does something similar, starting out as kind of trippy, strange folky stuff then going into a bunch of drone/ambient material in the second half. Both albums are great throughout in terms of quality though. David Bowie's Low starts out as kind of New Wave/experimental Rock, but the second side is (beautiful) early Ambient music. RE: Black Flag's My War...the first half really isn't standard HC, many of the riffs are far from typical Hardcore riffing. Second side is definitely proto-Sludge though, and the reason that's my favorite Black Flag album.

Hyprocisy's latest full-length. It goes: good song, crappy song, good song, crappy song, etc.

Bloodbound's Nosferatu has four excellent tracks of melodic heavy metal/hard rock starting it off, then a few pretty decent tracks, but the final four tracks are just not that memorable at all, and even steal melodies directly from the first four. Really if they had released the first four songs as an EP it would have been in the 90%+ range easily. But as it is, it's just a solid workmanlike album of melodic metal boosted up only by Breed's superior vocals.

Blind Guardian - A Night at the Opera

Starts REALLY strong with the first 5-6 tracks and then tanks pretty hard until the epic closing track, which is probably the best thing they've done. So, it kind of saves the latter half, but for the most part, the album goes downhill after a strong opening. This was the first album that came to mind for me.

Yeah you're right about the riffs on the first side of My War (I was somewhat hasty with my submission). I would have mentioned Bowie's Low myself, but you know this is a metal forum and all.

This was another I was going to mention, too, and I agree with you. First 5 songs, while not awesome, are all decent and listenable, while the next 5 are utterly awful before ending on a good song. I hope they don't make another album like it.

It's not too noticable a difference, but I think that Amon Amarth's Surtur Rising has a better second half. The first half is composed of inferior renditions of their past material, while the second half consists of better and/or more original songs all around.

If we're counting albums that go differently every other track (these types have been mentioned in this thread), then Intestine Baalism's 2008 album fits. Tracks 1, 3, 5, and 7 are the more "death metal" tracks. A lot more emphasis on brutality and riffing. Tracks 2, 4, 6, 8, and 9 have more emphasis on melody, particularly with some lead hook. It's like brutal death at one end of the spectrum and melodic death on the other.

No way, Punishment Divine and The Soulforged are amazing.

And to add to the Fear Factory one i'd say Archetype is the same, up to and including the title track its a decent album but then it turns to pure shit.

Oh and one i might get stick for: Painkiller. Its pure awesome speed metal up until Between The Hammer and the Anvil, then it turns into boring midpaced metal.

This is a great example Di6 does that on a few albums and I honestly dislike it. I'd rather them put all of the noise on separate albums because it really doesn't fit and disrupts my listening experience

I dunno, I thought that album was generally mediocre with only a few flashes of good songs (War of the Gods, Destroyer of the Universe and For Victory Or Death).

Still may not change your opinion but the way I see it, the first handful of tracks are so godly that they inevitably couldn't keep it up across the entire album. Those tracks are still good, perhaps even very good, but following the initial burst, I feel like they come up a bit short. Still love the album as a whole but it always loses me a little bit midway through.

Iced Earth-Dark Saga

You have awesome songs such as The Hunter, A Question Of Heaven, and Violate and then you have songs like The Last Laugh and Depths of Hell

Reverend Bizarre's Crush The Insects is kind of weird in this respect.

The whole album is good except for the disconnection in styles, where tracks 1-3 feel like a stoner doom EP strapped to the front of the trad doom LP that is the rest of the 80 minutes album.

Metal church's first album. The first half has amazing songs like beyond the black, metal church, and gods of wrath, and while the second half is good. It no where compares with epicness of the first half.

I've just thought of another one: Blood Duster's Lyden Na. This is an album of thirds. Disc 1 is death 'n' roll. Disc 2 is Blood Duster's usual Death/Grind. Disc 3 is Drone/Doom.

There's no Stoner on that album whatsoever. More up tempo songs does not equal stoner. I do agree that those three tracks are different from the majority of RB's output.

Destroyer 666's- Cold Steel is an example of this for me.

The first half is pretty aggressive and no frills black thrash, it's mostly good but not anywhere near my favourite material of theirs.

The second half (from 'the calling') is more melodic, although not in a forced way with a noticeably more epic feel.

Venom's "At War With Satan"!
The epic opening track is great but I can't say the same for most of those other songs like "Stand Up And Be Counted" and "Cry Wolf.
"Metal Black" started off well too but after "A Good Day To Die" it became recycled and repetitive.

W.A.S.P. - The Headless Children is front loaded with all their best, more "epic" feeling material. Particularly Heretic(The Lost Child), Thunderhead and the title track, which are some of my favorite metal songs ever. I enjoy Neutron Bomber, however the rest just feels like rather typical commercial 80's metal. Not bad by any means, just a comedown from the first half of the album.

Manowars debut? The first half is almost radio friendly hard rock, and the second half - minus that silly bass solo - is much closer to the epic metal sound they became known for.

Also I'll thrown in Venoms At War with Satan. The first track, which is half the album, is one of the greatest tracks Venom wrote. The second half is filled with lame 3 minute efforts that sound like watered down tracks that weren't heavy enough for Black Metal.

There you go: mystery solved.

@Venom's 'At War With Satan': I strongly disagree, there. "Cry Wolf" is one of Venom's all-time best songs, if you ask me, and "Genocide" is solid. The other tracks not so much, but still, it's not just the title track vs sucky fillers.

Most of Godgory's stuff. Their ballads are great, but the rest is pretty standard, boring melodeath.

Darkthrone's Panzerfaust - aside from the outro thingie tacked at the end, the two halves of the album have the exact same structure (a Transilvanian Hungerish song, a Celtic Frost tribute/ripoff track and a slow, droning, repetitive number). Hell, even the song themselves show remarkable similarities between each other.

The second half of Dimmu Borgir's For All Tid has a remarkably thinner and buzzier guitar tone, both on the original and on the remaster.

Slayer's World Painted Blood. Just listening to the album you can tell which songs are written by Hanneman and which songs are written by King. The Hanneman ones are pretty good. The King ones are fucking terrible (Americon.........)

Anathema's 2012 album. First half are the newly written songs, and they are far from as strong as the second half, that concaints older songs. Bad direction they're going.