Let's talk about cases when consecutive albums put out by a band differ dramatically in quality. That is, when either:

(1) A band puts out a brilliant album and follows it with an stinker.

(2) A band puts out a piece of garbage and then unleashes a monster.

An example fresh in my memory is Ulcerate. In 2009 they released Everything Is Fire, a stunning slab of frantic, sinister, ballcrushing badassery. One of my favorite albums (nevermind death metal albums) of all time. But they followed it in 2011 with The Destroyers Of All, which sounded to me like a watered-down version of the weaker parts of Everything Is Fire. It seemed like their goal was to write a more focused and streamlined album, but instead it came out sounding like Ulcerate doing a parody of themselves. The aggressiveness and brutality that made up for the rare moments of weak songwriting on EIF were missing on TDOA and the songwriting on TDOA was much less compelling, leaving us with a directless, meandering, largely boring album (although it did have some breathtaking atmospheric moments), despite Ulcerate's effort to produce a work of unrelenting brillance.

Overkill's Immortalis and Ironbound is a huge gap in quality. I do like Immortalis, being a massive Overkill fanboy who can't dislike anything that they do, but it is one of their weaker albums; way to much midpaced groove, not enough thrash. Ironbound on the other hand completely shreds from the beginning to the end; my favorite album of all time actually. Can not find a flaw in it.

Horrorscope and I Hear Black is also a huge quality difference. Horrorscope is, of course, another classic, but I Hear Black is a pretty mediocre attempt at groove; my least favorite Overkill album.

Running Wild's The Rivalry and then Victory is a Class 1. The former is a fantastic album, but the latter is a pure stinker.

I absolutely agree Thrashierthanthou.

I am going to go with Megadeth. Going from Rust in Peace to Countdown to Extinction is a huge letdown. Rust in Peace is in my top five albums of all time. Countdown is one of my least favorite Megadeth albums, though certainly better than Risk.

The Rivalry is probably the worst of their good albums, and Victory is this sadly overlooked gem due to where it places in their career (namely post-Black Hand Inn).

Winds of Plague had a weird peak where they had Decimate the Weak, which was an atrociously bad cut-and-paste hackjob between deathcore, melodeath, symphonic metal, and brocore, which was followed up by The Great Stone War was was a surprisingly decent album thanks to the fact that they focused far more on symphonic melodeath, which was then followed up with Against the World, which went right back to the awful, awful formula of the first album. That middle album is by no means a classic, in fact it's merely decent, but the magnitude of suckage from either side of it makes it somewhat impressive.

I think Priest's combo of Stained Class to British Steel qualifies. There's a grand total of two songs I like on the latter, while the former is a goddamn classic of the genre, untouched by pretty much everybody.

Killing Machine / Hell Bent for Leather was in between Stained Class and British Steel.

There are a couple of moments in Sabbath's career I'll bet a lot of people would bring up in this thread, those being 1) The "brilliant" Sabotage to the stinker Technical Ecstasy, and 2) the "stinker' Never Say Die to the brilliant Heaven and Hell. But neither of those qualify for me, because even though I hate Technical Ecstasy and love Heaven and Hell, I also love Never Say Die and I'm not much of a fan of Sabotage.

Here's one I'll probably get some flack for: Sleep's Holy Mountain (brilliant) to Jerusalem / Dopesmoker (stinker). I don't see why so many people love (not just like, but love) Jerusalem / Dopesmoker. It's so fucking monotonous and boring.

There's another I'd suspect I'd pick, that being Rainbow's great Long Live Rock n Roll to Down to Earth. Since You Been gone is the only song I've heard from Down to Earth, and it's absolute shit. All three Dio era Rainbow albums are classics.

Also relevant to Megadeth, I find the gap from The World Needs A Hero to The System Has Failed to be pretty big. TWNAH is my least favorite Megadeth album, worse than risk-its just so dull, plodding and mediocre in every way (aside from Return To Hangar), while Risk at least had a few songs that I enjoy (Crush 'em, Breadline, and Ecstacy). TSHF on the other hand is one of my favorite Megadeth albums. The thashier songs on it are top notch, and the more midpaced songs are better than those of a similar style on Youthanasia and most of Countdown.

I always get those two mixed up in order of which came first. Anyway, point stands because Killing Machine is awesome and British Steel sucks.

I do agree with Zelkiiro that between those two albums alone, The Rivalry is the better one by a shot. However, grouping them in their respective fields, I go with BastardHead in that The Rivalry is a shot lower than the "golden era" of Running Wild, since I consider it the last album of that era (by a stretch). Victory was the beginning of the downfall, but at the core it's pretty damn good. Like I stated in my review, the songs from "The Tsar" up to and including "Return of the Gods" was the greatest run of songs back to back that this band (primarily Rolf) put together in the past 12 years. The Brotherhood had a share of good tracks, but they weren't grouped together.

As for another example, Desultory messed up big time going from the melodic death metal Bitterness to that rock-stinker Swalllow the Snake. What a horrendous pile of shit. A bunch of these bands that released one to a few albums ended up releasing something that ends up killing their short career. There are too many examples to list.

Krallice fits this thread wonderfully. I love their first and third albums dearly, but their second and fourth albums are utter shit to me.

I liked The Destroyers Of All. I do agree that they tried to add more dissonant moments in there but, just personally, I don't think it detracted from what they were doing from Everything is Fire. I know I'm in the minority, though, because a few people here don't tend to agree with me.

They're working on new material that'll be released in 2013, so I hope that brings them back to your liking.

i also like destroyers... even a bit more than everything is fire - seeing as tho' ulcerate was never really "about" brutality, it worked well when they toned it down a bit and added more atmosphere

but anyway, for the topic at hand, i'll nominate arsis - their debut was brilliant but the follow up (not counting the ep that came in between) was boring as hell

Aborted
Strychnine.213 (bad)
Global Flatline (good)

Strychnine.213 is easily the least interesting album Aborted have released. It's not unlistenable, but the riffs were not as punching and driven as they had been previously. Maybe it was the production that made it weak. Not sure, but when the Pantera cover at the end is the heaviest song on the album, you know you've got problems. A couple of years later, out comes Global Flatline, an absolute beast of an album where every song rips from start to finish. I couldn't have asked for a better comeback from these Belgian boys and they have delivered in spades.

Chimaira
The Infection (good)
The Age Of Hell (bad)

After The Infection, Chimaira went through a bit of a rough patch trying to keep members, and it shows. The Age Of Hell uses some of the weakest clean vocals Mark Hunter has ever had. The songs aren't as diverse and even the ending instrumental can't save it from oblivion. The worst thing they've released (yeah, I didn't mind Pass Out Of Existence). They had a good run and I hope they can get back to being my favourite metalcore album. For now I'll mostly listen to their other stuff.

Sodom
Better Off Dead (bad)
Tapping The Vein (good)

When I look through all of Sodom's albums, I can't help but see Better Off Dead as probably my least favourite. A wise man once said: "Even bad Sodom is good Sodom." I think that may have been The_Beast_in_Black, heh. Anyway, I agree: I actually don't hate this album, but the production is thin and the two cover tracks in the middle disrupt the flow of the album enough to make it bothersome. Thrash sort of died in the eyes of the metal community, so two years later they release Tapping The Vein, a death/thrash classic with some chunky riffs and Angelripper's vocals getting more of a death growl to them. This is Sodom back to their blistering best, a feat that they have yet to dip from, in my opinion.

Perimeter
Healing By Festering (good)
Odium Humani Generis (bad)

When I first listened to Healing By Festering, I was blown away. Very competent death metal with a little of their own flavour in it. Every song kicked so much ass and to this day remains one of my favourites. I praised it in a (shitty) review. The alarm bells started ringing when I heard of Odium Humani Generis when I saw that two members were missing and it was 15 minutes shorter than the debut. I bought it anyway and what I was greeted with was some watered down version of what they used to be with more filler than...a filling machine. A couple of moments here and there remind me of what they were capable of, but it wasn't enough. I hope for better things in the future for Perimeter, but I'm not holding my breath.

Fear Factory
Transgression (bad)
Mechanize (good)

After Transgression, I thought Fear Factory were dead. They were on life support and the band members seemed uninterested. The songs were completely devoid of life, despite some of them being okay, but it was certainly not the Fear Factory I knew. Five years later, armed with new-found passion and Dino Cazares, Mechanize, an album I find better than Demanufacture. The band is renewed and Burton's cleans didn't suck this time around! It also marked the first album since Soul Of A New Machine when I didn't have to skip tracks. Such an awesome album and it's now my most-played Fear Factory album.

Shape Of Despair
Shades Of... (bad)
Angels Of Distress (good)

Shades Of..., Shape Of Despair's debut, really lacks variation, which is something weird for funeral doom, but that's how I felt about it. Every song was in 3/4 time and that gets very tiresome when you're getting through it. One year later, they release one of my favourite funeral doom albums of all time in Angels Of Distress, an album I don't even think they can top. Excellent use of violins and emotion-drenched vocals. The only album to ever make me cry.

I think that'll do for now.

Agreed - I've never understood why Countdown is so... tolerated. Youthanasia and even Cryptic Writings are superior by miles in my book. I was going to mention the difference between Endgame, a genuinely superb record, with tasty riffs and some genuinely memorable songs, and Th13rteen, which is dreadful, filled with quite-literally recycled material.

Blind Guardian between Nightfall in Middle-Earth and A Night at the Opera. The first is widely considered their best album (although I do want to note that BG is one of those bands with a string of albums so strong that "best" is almost irrelevant) yet the follow-up is just fucking terrible. And they haven't fully returned since - their last album was a good effort, but it still has a hint of that yucky sound on ANATO and the follow-up (which also sucked).

I disagree with you on that one, i find A Night at the Opera Absolutely amazing! i really loved its complex song layouts and the grandiose vocal layering, probably second to Nightfall, (that's just my opinion, and i do love every album B G have released)

Anyway, i would like to mention Hypocrisy Catch 22 was very very lame, had a strong Nu metal feel and just didnt feel right for Hypocrisy (with the exception on 2 catchy songs) then they released "The Arrival" one of my all time favorite albums

Also.. i would like to add i agree with MikeyC on Aborted! Global Flatline was a great comeback for a great (was..is) a great band

Probably not the worst example but Razor. One minute we've got the thrashing madness of Open Hostility and then the next we've got Decibels, which is almost unlistenable. I don't know what the fuck happened.

Emperor- "Anthems" (Amazing) to "IX Equilibrium" (alternating between boring and terrible with few redeeming qualities) was the first example that came to mind.

An obvious one but the increase in quality between Maiden's "Virtual XI" and "Brave New World" is astounding.

I was going to say Emporor myself, but between IX Equilibrium and Prometheus - I don't mind the former, although I'm not a huge Emperor fan to begin with.

They say that the new material is sounding more violent and ugly than past releases, which I like the sound of. I have high hopes.

For me it was the opposite with these two. I felt like Strychnine was a good direction for Aborted. I loved the samples on this album and the musicianship was very tight. Global Flatline was the first Aborted album I skipped. They basically gave into the whole "fans want us to return to being brutal" thing and put out an uninspired album with several songs already available on a prior EP.

I quite like MikeyC's format, here; will rip it off shamelessly.
Here's one:

D.A.M.
Human Wreckage (so-so/shitty)
Inside Out (fantastic/awesome)

That band's debut didn't have much to say apart from: "hey! I'm technically a thrash album; I have hardcore punk influences in spades and also more melodic elements, but I don't have the first clue what the fuck to do with them, so I just plod along at mid-pace with my generic, samey basic riffs until you realize I'm just a really expensive Frisbee. And how was your day?". Don't take my word for it, pick any of those long-ass sleeping pills in music form: boring, boring, boring! Then, they changed one guitarist (and no doubt, chief composer), and as a result, the follow-up to this embarrassment had this to say: "yo, man! I know you love relentless speed/thrash riffage in the vein of early Overkill, but you're also into insanely epic, melodic yet ballsy USPM stuff like classic Helstar. How about both, then?". Hell yeah, it's awesome, awesome, awesome!


Well, there certainly is a drop in quality, since Long Live is arguably the best album of the Dio era, of which it'd be a euphemism to state it's their best era; but it's first and foremost a big change of style and direction (from rock 'n' rollish, semi-epic hard/heavy to hard/heavy-ish, semi-poppy AOR). 'Down to Earth' is more decent than "Since You've Been Gone" alone would have you think, though. That song is okay for the poppy charts whore that it is, but it's a commission to an external songwriter and is way more sugar-coated than the rest of the album. This might redeem that album in your eyes (if it doesn't, stay away from it! that's the absolute best it has to offer).

BOO! HISS!

Better Off Dead is just as much a classic as anything else Sodom did up until the mid nineties (when, like you said, they were still awesome despite being worse). It's a bit different but I think that's what makes it stand out so much, I love the element of sleaze they added. There's a dirty rock n' roll vibe to their brand of thrash and it works beautifully. I won't deny that they're better at rip roaring intensity, and that's why I agree what the albums bookending it are better, but it's really only by a hair.

Katatonia did both within a 5 year span:

Last Fair Deal Gone Down - Great album, and a favorite among many of their fans

Viva Emptiness - Disappointing, easily the band's worst album in my opinion.

The Great Cold Distance - A fantastic comeback album, where all of the mistakes of the last album were fixed.

Agreed, Nightfall in Middle Earth was terrific...while A Night at the Opera was super disappointing and just boring. The band still hasn't really recovered from it, although their last two albums were better than A Night at the Opera. I think their best work is behind them, which is sad to say.

Count me among the people who think Better Off Dead is a great album.

Continuing the Sodom-theme.

Get What You Deserve
Masquerade in Blood

1994's Get What You Deserve is astoundingly good, considering it's a thrash album in 1994 from a veteran band. With former Living Death drummer, Atomic Steif and Andy Brings's rawer-than-hell punky guitar, the band had a really good chemistry and songs just simply kick arse. It's got tons of energy, memorable songs and - to be honest - it's the band's last great album. In comparison, 95's Masquerade in Blood is sloppy, poorly executed and generally lacks memorable songs (it mostly passes by in a blur of generic, muddy thrash with the exceptions of the title track and 'Fields of Honour', which fare well enough despite poor execution). Combine that with a mediocre new guitarist and this album really was the runt of the Sodom litter (for 1995, at least, they've done much worse on their latest album, though).

Oh shhhhiiiiit forgot about Katatonia's ups and downs. I definitely agree with your take, Evoken, in part. Viva Emptiness sucked, but an even bigger difference was Brave Murder Day and Discouraged Ones. BMD is amazing, hypnotic, and melancholic. A fantastic album that ends up being followed by what I consider the band's worst. DO has horrendous vocal delivery, poor riffs, boring atmosphere, and songs that went nowhere. A colossal failure of an album that astounds me by the number of fans it has.

Drudkh - Autumn Aurora = entrancing black metal. A classic of its style.
Drudkh - The Swan Road = muddy and boring as hell. Only topped by the shitpile that was Blood in our Wells.

Gorgoroth - Pentagram = under 30 minutes of vicious black metal. Cold, devastating, and a frenzy of some of the best riffs Infernus was able to create. Hat's vocals are piercing and those songs are some of my favorite. "Måneskyggens Slave" is untoppable.
Gorgoroth - Antichrist = under 30 minutes of mostly drivel. Has one song that's definitely good (2 overall that are good) and the rest is plodding and recycled garbage. Gets carried away with its improper delivery. No one had it in them to make that album.
Gorgoroth - Under The Sign of Hell = the band shoots back from the gutter to create another classic black metal album. Has all the goods that Pentagram had but now with Pest, who kills on vocals.

Iron Maiden - Seven Son... = this isn't my all-time favorite Maiden, but it caps off the '80s run pretty well. Very enjoyable songs across the album that makes it solid and complete. I own it and I love it for those reasons, and of all the '80s full-lengths this was the last one for me to get into.
Iron Maiden - NPFTD = fuck this. Half an album that's worth anything, and even then it's hard to drudge up anything of value that you couldn't find on the '80s material. Listening to this was like listening to burnouts scramble for something big and failing miserably.

Running Wild = The Brotherhood. Not especially good in its own right, but enjoyable to a degree. Strip away the bad tracks, and what's left (on the proper version) is the final run of Rolf Kasparek's creativity. 7 pretty damn good songs given the lack of proper tools. Couldn't ask for more at that point in the band's career, and keeps the genuine RW fervor as best it could.
Running Wild = Rogues en Vogue = The Brotherhood wasn't great, but it's a milestone of epic proportions compared to this crock of shit. I'd call this the band's worst album by a stretch. I haven't reviewed it yet because I hate this album so much. Maybe one good song, and a few good "moments" like in "The War" and stuff, but overall the album has songs that are mostly shit, has one of the worst production jobs I've ever heard at this level, and makes me feel like shit.

I'm actually going to say Ihsahn's last two solo albums have fallen into this trend. "After" was an astounding album and the end to a really solid trilogy of albums, which upped my hype for "Eremita," only bringing my expectations crashing down. It's not a bad album and I love anything Ihsahn seems to touch musically, but Eremita turned out to be such a disappointment. I bought it around release and have only listened to it about 2 1/2 times since as compared to the countless spins of his previous three albums.

I feel like the only person who loves In War and Pieces. You all suck!

The only other example I can think of would be Sepultura, as Arise is a monolith in early 90s thrash, and Chaos AD is pretty much the death knell of it. I can think of plenty of great albums followed up by bad ones and vice versa, but not many classics followed up by embarrassments.

I love it too! I even like Masquerade in Blood. Give me more "Scum"!

That's nothing compared to Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing being followed up by Grave New World.

Sigh - Imaginary Sonicscape (great)
Sigh - Gallows Gallery (bad)

Imaginary Sonicscape is one of the best black/avante-garde albums i've heard that has the quality of experimenting but still has some catchiness to it. the influences of black metal, jaxxy, psychedelic rock all come together so well on that album. With Gallows Gallery, gone are the growls and although some psychedelic qualities remain, its just a really boring album to me and one I just haven't got into

Queensryche's 'Operation: Mindcrime' to 'Empire'. 'Empire' is not a bad album, but I was bitterly disappointed by it after the near-perfection of 'Mindcrime'. I'll also say 'Promised Land' to 'Hear in the Now Frontier'. With 'Promised Land', they made a great album by paradoxically moving further from their roots. They went even further with 'Frontier', but fell flat on their faces in the quest for airplay. Just terrible.

I'll bring another pair of albums of Maiden: A Matter of Life and Death is a real masterpiece (with a strong atmosphere) while The Final Frontier is just plain bad and boring.

Helloween
Rabbit Don't Come Easy (bad)
Keeper of the Seven Keys - The Legacy (awesome)

Helloween had a rather schizophrenic pair of albums here in that Rabbit... is just a big cobbled mess of annoying crap with maybe two or three decent songs thrown in, and Keeper - The Legacy is maybe their best album ever, with a strong, unified feel, a definite style and attitude and hooky, masterful songs all the way through. Big difference in quality.

Rage
Strings to a Web (awful)
21 (good)

Strings to a Web was pretty much everything bad about modern Rage albums, from the tendency to write stupidly directionless and irritating songs to the tendency to drag on forever with a million random jazz/prog interludes with some pop sensibilities thrown in. It went nowhere and was as frustrating as any album ever was. 21 however ruled with big hooks, big riffs and big fun.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought Eremita was disappointing. I've listened to it three times and I can't get into it, at all. I liked his last couple solo albums a lot (After, AngeL), but something about this new one just isn't clicking with me. I think the songwriting is just all over the place, and the songs just aren't that strong.

First thoughts:

Borknagar
from Universal to Urd

The former is an utterly pointless, uninspired piece of music from a band who doesn't know what to do with themselves. Urd, on the other hand, is not only one of the best albums of the 21th century, but also a great mixed bag of everything Borknagarish. Though the reasons of this change of quality is obvious.

The Monolith Deathcult
from The White Crematorium to Trivmvirate

The White Crematorium is a typical brutal death metal album, things are done pretty much by the book, with a few hints of an electronic spices. A boring album, to be honest.
Then comes Trivmvirate, and takes the game to a whole different level. Things are still brutal, but also god damn interesting! The electronic influences are flawless and this album is simply full of killer songs.

I think Ihsahn did it twice: The Adversary was pretty good, Angl was very lacking; then After was incredible - and the best Ihsahn album IMO - to Eremita, which was again a letdown. Hey, this means the next album will be awesome!!

Bloodbath is a good call here IMO:

Breeding Death to RTC - the Ep was pretty good, whereas RTC was barely average.

RTC to Nightmares Made Flesh - from the very lacking RTC, they brought Pete Tägtgren to growl and Swanö switched to guitars to unleash a relentless behemoth of brutality and catchiness with awesome production, songwriting and performance. Axenrot's drumming there was incredible and Pete growled like Satan himself.

NMF - the rest : with Swanö out, Bloodbath turned into a more brutal and modern band with a huge lack of variety; the songwriting quality also dropped, with a technical brutal dm Ep + a very inconsistent album.

So Far, So Good, So What was not a very good album in my opinion, but it was immediately followed by one of the best albums of all time.

I was also gonna mention the obvious Pantera transition between glam and thrash, but that's more of a gap of genre and not quality. I personally love both Power Metal and Cowboys from Hell.