Helloween - Keeper of the Seven Keys II (good) to Pink Bubbles Go Ape (not so good). The second album has a couple of alright tracks (Kids of the Century and The Chance), but compared to the fantastic Keeper II it sucked.

Ensiferum - From Afar (awesome) to Unsung Heroes (dull as fuck). I would comment more on this, but I honestly can't remember enough about Unsung Heroes to talk about it. From Afar was pretty much the peak of their more symphonic sound, and then they went on to produce something very mediocre.

You mean the drop in quality from The Great Southern Trendkill to Reinventing the Steel?

At The Gates - With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness
to Terminal Spirit Disease
With Fear is a really underrated album living in the shadow of ATG's debut with a few problems (production, too long, no violin) but has some of the most distinctively complex (Beyond Good and Evil) and well constructed (Primal Breath) songs ATG did in their career. And then bam, Terminal Boring Disease which apart from the live tracks and the beginning of The Swarm, sounded only tangentially related to the ATG of the first two albums, leaving behind a lot of the style that made them interesting and unique.

Since this discussion has been going on recently in another thread, I'll only touch on this, but Cryptopsy - Once Was Not to TUK and then back to the new self titled album represents the traversal of a massive valley in quality. I mean, Once Was Not and the new album can hardly be called the peaks of the band's career, but it's safe to say now that TUK is among the most universally despised metal albums of all time.

Nightwish with Wishmater to Century Child

Such a massive change, former is a stunning power metal album and the last with Tarja's operatic vocals and the latter is where the riffs turned to turd, Tarja's vocals turned to pop and Tuomas forgot how to play keyboards decently

Yep stealing Mikeys layout here too

Anaal Nathrakh
Codex Necro (masterpiece)
Domine Non Es Dignus (turd)
Eschaton (masterpiece)

The Codex Necro is an amazing piece of brutal black/grind with excellent riffs, sharp songwriting, top level vocals, and varied songs despite having a constant approach of full on attack. DNED on the other hand is a borderline metalcore heaping of shit. I will say that it does have "Do Not Speak", which is the quintessential Anaal Nathrakh song, and has been the design of their music for the last 5 albums, and it may still be the best they've done it, but the rest of the album is super awful. Even if you include the EP in there, it's basically as good as Codex, it has even more inventive songwriting, but the first song sorta blows. Then they go and follow up the turd with Eschaton, which is everything DNED wanted to be and more, all the clean vocals and grooving chug riffs are there, but the hatefully full on attack remains as well. For me it is the best modern era AN album, and I'm pretty certain it always will be now that they have sacrificed groovy chugs for deathcore chugs.

Ahab
Call of the Wretched Sea (good)
The Divinity of Oceans (bad)

Starting with a mildly proggy and very poppy take on the funeral doom genre, Ahab's debut is something that could have gone very wrong but didn't. Eschewing the mournful tones of many of the genres standards, Call of the Wretched Sea mixed lengthy melodic and beautiful pieces with massive, headbangable and catchy riffs which were more crushing than emotionally sapping, mixed in with soothing clean vocals, and a low vocal that again was more overwhelming that depressive, it flew in the face of the genres standards and it ruled. Divinity... ramped up the progginess, prettiness and sucked out about 75% of the impossing riffage, and pretty much showed us exactly how the concept could have gone wrong.

Annnnnndddd I'm bored already, I'll do more next time I have nothing better to do.

edit: One more for the road

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats
Volume 1 (bad)
Blood Lust (Awesome)

Blood Lust is the single best retro 70's album going around. It doesn't sound like Ghost or Devil's Blood so it isn't in that same zone, but fuck it, it sounds old. It's probably got the most swagger of any album I've ever heard, all the songs are so freaking catchy and groovy, the songs only have like 3 riffs in them but everyone is a toe tappin' head noddin' good time. So much freaking fun. Volume 1 is absolutely none of that, the entire riffing style is different, the entire stonery rocking back and forth thing doesn't exist on it. It is tedious as fuck.

That was actually pretty good, I may have to check out the album after all. However, nowhere near the Dio era stuff.

What the blue blistering fuck?

EDIT: Mkay I read your review and I'm gonna walk away slowly.

From ...And Justice To All to TBA: they go from intricate, pissed-off, political, powerful thrash, to very unchallenging, poppy, commercialized radio metal, complete with a pussy power ballad barely better than the likes of something like "Every Rose Has Its Thorn".

Darkthrone's Panzerfaust to Total Death. The later is not an appalingly bad album, the drop in quality is enormous compared to it's predecessor.

Bethlehem brilliant first album followed by the boring Dictius Te Necare

Everything Deicide did after Legion. They never made any particularly good music after the first two albums.

Ildjarn' Strength and Anger is what you expect from Ildjarn, which for me is good. The following album, Landscapes, sucks badly.

Might catch flak for these, but they're true IMO. Decapitated went downhill HUGE between Winds and Nihility. Same with Zyklon between World Ov Worms and Aeon. Those two are the first things I can think of. I feel like I should remember more though, like there's something obvious I'm missing.

Metallica's "black Album" is an obvious answer, but a lot of '80's metal bands did that; i.e. "Wimp out" and go for a more commercial, "glam" type sound after a couple of decent albums and after gaining a decent following. They're hardly alone, and certainly not the worst offenders by far. For Example: I didn't even realize for the longest time that the Discharge that recorded "Grave New World" was the same band that wrote the "Hear Nothing Say nothing..." album. Then there was "Practice What You Preach," "Innocense Is No Excuse" (Saxon), "Theatre of Pain" to name a few.

You could go the other way, and say that the quality difference between "Painkiller" and it's predecessor is certainly a huge one- that being, "Painkiller" kicked ass while "Turbo" sucked it. Sometimes (though less frequently) albums will vastly IMPROVE in quality from one to the next.

Agreed with godsonsafari about Decrapitated, Winds is a great album, Nihility (and everything follwing) is total unfiltered shit. probably the biggest one album drop I've seen mentioned so far.

Disagreeing on The Black Album, Justice sucked ass, in a different way no doubt, but it is poop.

Thought of more dropoffs. Figures.

Dim Mak: Dudes from Ripping Corpse start new band, theme it to kung fu. Enter the Dragon? Fucking awesome. Intercepting Fist? OH GOD NO. Everyone promptly forgot their existence.

Theater Of Tragedy: Not a big fan, I'll admit. But Aegis to Musique was catastrophic. Musique is legit one of the ten worst albums ever released. And that brings us to...

Pyogenesis: Ignis Creatio was a really good record. Sweet X-Rated Nothings was not as good. Waves of Erotaisa was probably better and it was just an EP. And then there's Twinaleblood. And that, folks, is why no one talks about the first few Pyogenesis records.

Burzum: Filosofem to Daudi Baldrs. C'mon. Be real, y'all.

So you like it even better than 'The Dark Ride'? Man, it's hard to keep track, with you. For my part, I pref... well, "prefer" would be too strong a word, but I was actually less annoyed by my experience with 'Rabbit' than with the faux-Keeper.

Agreed.

Obviously. Took me a solid minute to realize that by "To Be Announced", you meant the black album...

Glad you liked it. Of course, not quite on par with the Dio era, but still a decent album.

That much is very true, especially of virtually all thrash bands in existence at the time. I vehemently disagree with your implication that 'Practice What You Preach' would fit in that category, though, let alone out-blackalbumize the black album (perhaps it's 'Souls of Black' you had in mind?). As for Priest, you forgot about 'Ram it Down'; it came between 'Turbo' and 'PainKiller' (this thread seems to have the bizarre ability to make people forget random Priest albums). Regardless, the point certainly stands that 'PainKiller' was a tremendous and really unexpected boost in quality from its predecessor.

I heard it both ways, since I'm at the crossroads ( ). I really really like AJfA, and even think "Blackened" is one of their best songs ever, but I also think it showed various signs of dilution compared to their earlier classics. That said, even in the AJfA-is-poop camp, the consensus seems to be that solid poop is allowed to frown upon diarrhea.

I agree on Ahab and Ulcerate (from good to bad), and have to add:

Cradle Of Filth - Thornography was dull as hell, and it's the only album by the band that I never did possess, but Godspeed On The Devil's Thunder was a return to form, even though I prefer their earlier sound.

Atrocity - First two albums featured great death metal, but then they turned to shitty gothic/electro stuff, before eventually putting out something listenable with Atlantis again.

Negura Bunget - OM is among my all-time favorites, but Vîrstele Pămîntului stirred nothing in me... it just feels soulless to me.

How do you think it doesn't live up to the Keeper name? I'd say it fits in perfectly aside from lacking some of the old members, which I never glorified to begin with. They both have the same set-up, variation between songs and mood changes. Unless you're just a big Kiske/Hansen devotee I don't see the difference, aside from perceived quality - and personally I think new Helloween is way better than their 80s stuff. They found their real voice and style with Deris.

I like The Dark Ride about as well as Keepers III. But Keepers III is longer and feels a little more mature overall...just depends on mood really.

Interesting. I think you're the only one I've seen who is the opposite. I don't agree but I can see what you mean. I'm glad Aborted gave in (if that's truly what happened), because Strychnine.213 didn't work for me.


I never thought of it as a "sleazy, rock n' roll" sort of feel, but I can see your point. After Agent Orange, I felt it was a bit of a dip, and if they clipped the covers, or put them at the end, I think it would've been better. I don't hate it, but I would rather play something else. "An Eye For an Eye" and "Capture the Flag" are cool songs.


I agree that Get What You Deserve is a better album (actually one of Sodom's best overall), but I've warmed up to Masquerade in Blood and its unusual snare tone (reminds me of Destruction's Metal Discharge). You didn't like their latest? I thought it was good.


I don't hate Domine Non Es Dignus, but I agree it's their worst alongside Passion and I would like to listen to their other albums. Eschaton is awesome.

Are you kidding?! Debut is good but oh boy if Dictius Te Necare isn't one of THE BEST BLACK METAL albums ever written. Never bored with it.

The vocals are hard to get into in Dictius Te Necare. It's certainly an acquired taste.

I haven't heard really any Bethlehem in a long time. I should dust one off and give it another go.

It has nothing to do with vocals, the songs just feel soulless to me.

Katatonia from Dance of December Souls to Brave Murder Day was a huge change in quality. The former is one of my favourite albums ever...the latter one of my most annoying ever.

Sentenced went from the speedy wild and untamed beast during North from Here to a dull pseudo rocking band on Amok.

Virgin Steele released Life among the Ruins not promising much. Next thing you know, they come up with The Marriage of Heaven & Hell: Part I which was the start of getting their things together.

An obvious one would be Grave Digger's 'Stronger Than Ever' followed by 'The Ripper'. It was the same band, just different names.

Pain Of Salvation was the first band that came to mind for me. The drop from Remedy Lane to BE was pretty noticeable but the two Road Salts completely blew me away after the somewhat mediocre Scarsick. Something similar happened with Jon Oliva's Pain as Global Warning was decent enough while Festival was absolutely astronomical.

I'll also second Overkill, Pantera, Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest.

"Into the Pandemonium" > "Cold Lake"

They both suck equally.

I agree with Marag. Though I never did like Bethlehem very much, Dark Metal was at least pretty good while Dictius just plods along with not much of interest happening.

I've tried to listen to Bethlehem a few times and could never find something interesting to make me want to come back to it.

I know many here have an undying hatred for Iced Earth's later day output, but I think they qualify:

The god-awful "Crucible of Man" followed by "Dystopia" which saw the band at their best since "Something Wicked"

Why? I can understand not liking BMD, specially taking December Souls in consideration, but besides that terrible track with clean vocals(can't remember the name), I don't see how it can be one of the "most annoying ever"

Because it's absolutely dull - nothing in it really gets me excited or anything. I've heard the album many times and wanted to actually like it but man, it just doesn't do anything for me. The vocals stink, the songs tend to sound similiar, the guitarwork lacks quality riffing..I could go on probably.

The first thing which comes to my mind is band Dark Tribe. In Jeraspunta, what a monstrous masterpiece of bestial ritualistic black metal, highly original, each track stellar... than 6 years of waiting, high expectances, and finally an album which sounds almost like "old recycled junk which didnt make it to the original In Jeraspunta".

Strapping Young Lad
Alien (good)
The New Black (bad)

I like everything SYL have released, to be honest, but Alien was the one that I keep coming back to, and pretty much still do. It's ferocious and has some of the best songs they've ever recorded, such as "Skeksis" and "Shitstorm". I personally think it surpasses City as the quintessential Strapping Young Lad release, and it shows Devin Townsend at his most uninhibited. One year later, all that changes with The New Black, which is a lot cleaner and has more of his other bands' influences, which doesn't really fit Strapping Young Lad's style. There are still cool songs like "You Suck" and "Hope", but overall it was a massive step down from what they had done. It also had an ominous "last album" feel, which turned out to be correct.

Into The Pandemonium was definitely a disappointment, but at least it had a few good songs on it, and didn't constantly embarrass itself anywhere near as bad as Cold Lake with its wannabe hair metal crap. Actually, if I had to big a biggest change for Celtic Frost, it would be inbetween ITP and To Mega Therion instead, but more because TMT was just so good, rather than ITP being bad. Not bad, just a big step down from what came before.

I feel that The New Black should have been released under the name of his solo material.... But Devin still had to make one last SYL album (contract), so he HAD to release it under the SYL name. Maybe devin didn't want to make another album in the style of Alien/City, so he made something he actually wanted to make. I still think it's a great album, very fun and diverse. It has lots of great songs like Almost again and the super cheesy but super awesome Far Beyond Metal . Come to think of it, Almost again is one of my favorite songs of his whole discography.

Fuuuuuuck yes. Never heard volume 1 but blood lust is such an awesome album. One of my favourite releases in years.

I agree with droneriot, ITP sucks badly. In fact I was going to mention them in this thread, but I forgot.

Oh, yeah, I understand he had to make it, but it's still under the Strapping Young Lad moniker. I agree that the songs are still good, and especially the ones I mentioned are my favourites, but Alien was so awesome that it was going to be difficult to top that one anyway. I understand and realise the diversity, too, which is something in its favour.

What, you must be out of your mind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKvGr95WBRU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKvGr95WBRU#t=5m15

Imo the debut is fantastic

Meshuggah comes to mind immediately.

Obzen was great, Kolossus... I wouldn't say it was bad per se, but nowhere near as good as Obzen. Doesn't have any killer songs that stand out to me.

MY DYING BRIDE

As the Flower Withers (-)
Turn Loose the Swans (+)

MDB's debut AtFW was a bad written boring album with no memorable riff and poor vocals. It has a dirty sound but the album is just bland and doesn't do anything for me. While the follow up TLtS is a masterpiece in gothic doom metal. Here the growls are much better and the inclusion of clean vocals adds a lot of emotion to the songs, not to mention they are fucking awesome. It has lots of memorable riffs and also adds new instruments like violin and keyboard which helps create the melancholic atmosphere for which MDB would be known for.