I love the album format. Probably somewhere around 90 to 95% of all the music I listen to is albums, start-to-finish. However, every once in a while an album comes along that I love, but it has just one track that I can't stand to the degree where I'll always skip it. And I'm not just talking about skipable take-em-or-leave-em tracks that are just sub-par. More often than not it'd be a song that is grating because of its sound or because it has some kind of element that just doesn't fit with the rest of the album.

An example of this, to me, is I See Lies by Nasum from the Inhale / Exhale album. I adore the album, I could listen to it all day. But that particular song I skip EVERY time because it has this added noise layer that makes it impossible for me to enjoy it. It has put me off buying the album on vinyl because it makes skipping it more inconvenient, so I've always just listened to the CD.

Another example is It Could Be Sweet by Portishead from the Dummy album. The dramatic melancholy brought by Beth Gibbons' vocals are an integral part of Portishead's sound, but the "You don't get something for nothing" line rubs me the wrong way so much so that I skip it every time even if I love the rest of the album. That particular vocal line just seems so sneering, the melody that she sings feels so annoying.


So, do any of you have any tracks that you ALWAYS skip? I suppose this thread is more or less only for people who listen to entire albums, and not people who just listen to individual tracks. Please don't make this a list thread! Remember to write a few words why.

I'd be curious to hear if anyone thinks a song that some people think are the worst are an important part of the albums in question.

At the Fathomless Depths by Dissection is the first one that comes to mind: i've got nothing against that track, but starting an album directly with Night's Blood is just too appealing!

Whourkr - "Nhosg" from the album Naat

That album was always a stepping stone for the type of music they wanted to play, so I can appreciate that they were still experimenting with sounds and things. Hell, "Hackta," the song that ends the album, is a cacophonous slew of noise and industrial harshness that I can sort of get behind. But "Nhosg" has the infamy of being by far the longest song on the short album, but also has the worst vocals ever, ending with vocals that would feel at home on a fucking Stalaggh album. The music also takes a nose-dive, too, eschewing a lot of the industrial noise from the three previous tracks. I absolutely have to skip it every time I hear the album.

All Shall Perish - "Greyson" from the album The Price of Existence

Not a bad song, really. An acoustic instrumental song, but it totally ruins the flow, even though the previous song ends on a melodic note. Skip.

None.

Do hidden tracks count? I skip like 9 out of 10 of those. I hate that crap, and it's rarely even something worthwhile.

I do tend to think about some bands as very album-focused, where I don't really skip anything, most of the time, because you could say I'm listening to the album, not to songs.
Some of the more song-focused bands (usually heavy, power, and thrash bands) I can skip something sometimes. It is usually a crappy ballad on heavy and power metal albums (Helloween's "If I Knew" springs to mind). For thrash metal albums, it's usually an instrumental ("To Live Is To Die"), a cover (especially at the tail end of the album - Sodom's "Don't Walk Away" for instance), or a rare case of something being terribly overlong (Exodus' "Atrocity Exhibition").

Overall, I don't skip many songs and I don't skip them consistently and all the time.

If it's where there's a hidden song after minutes of silence on the last track, I skip those 10/10 times. No idea why bands even do that.

I'd say bonus tracks and such wouldn't count as they're not as such part of the album proper. Stuff like live versions, demo versions, extra cover songs stuff like that would be "bonus" tracks. I skip that shit most of the time too. What an annoying habit, especially on reissues of old albums!



Same for me. It's pretty far apart that there's a song so grating that I'll invariably skip it, but it does happen.

Another one I just remembered i Remember the Fallen by Sodom from Agent Orange. That weirdly slow marching tempo and the way Tom splits up the words in the chorus is so annoying. Unfortunately I "only" have this album on vinyl, so I become a victim of my own laziness.

i can only think of one example right now (tho' i'm pretty sure i have a few) and it's a bit of a cop out, because it's not a proper song: the ominous circle put their debut out this year and it's a very good album, if you skip the over 4 minute long intro with vapid trying-to-be-dark mumbling that just sounds awful and embarrassing

i guess i skip some bonus/cover tracks off the ends of some albums, but that's at least as much of a cop out answer as an intro

Man, overly long intros kill the album experience for me. I love a good intro, but it has to be concise and fit with the theme and style. Some bands just tend to have waaay too long intros. Even if it's an atmospheric album, a boring intro is really buzzkill.

Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark is a lot better if you skip "The Apparition" (absolutely appalling song with basically no redeeming qualities) and "Weekend Warrior" (mediocre, maybe worth a B-side) and get it down to LP length.

Similarly Running Wild's Victory is improved greatly by going straight from the awesome speed-metal attack "Return of the Gods" to the anthemic, epic yet succinct title track: missing out the hopelessly mediocre "Silent Killer".

Jugulator - would be a better album if "Abductors" and "Decapitate" were never written.

So for me it's more about improving rather unpopular late-period albums by trimming excess material that really doesn't need to be there, rather than songs I really hate. If they came up on shuffle I might listen to all of these, but they just drag down their respective albums. There's a lot to be said for the c.45-minute LP for creating quality albums.

This might be blasphemous for some but I skip the quieter acoustic tracks from Acid Bath like 99% of the time ("The Bones of Baby Dolls" and "Scream of the Butterfly" from WTKSP as well as "New Death Sensation" and "Dead Girl" from PTT). Every now and then I might let one play if I'm in the right mood, usually "Scream of the Butterfly" or "Dead Girl." On paper, I should love these songs. An acoustic track with Dax's amazing vocals should appeal to a fan of acoustic grunge ballads of the 90s such as myself, but instead these tracks are just boring. They're not catchy at all and only serve to take the energy and momentum out of the albums. Really my only gripe about these two otherwise incredibly iconic masterpieces.

Does half a track count? Electric Wizard has a song on Come My Fanatics called Ivixor B / Phase Inducer. Ivixor B employs some Indian/something similar woman singing, and it is quite different, but quite nice. I like it. Then Phase Inducer comes in for several minutes of random sound effects. Yawn. *skip*

I'm starting to get to the point of auto-skipping with FX from Black Sabbath's Vol 4 too.

I usually turn Hail to England off after Army of the Immortals. Black Arrows is absolute garbage and Bridge of Death doesn't quite make up for it.

Lulu is an easy listening album. Just skip every track.

Casio strings played over a howling wind sample before going to a 4-track black metal song is legendary in itself, but sometimes I skip them. There are cool intros too, like Oden's Ride Over the Nordland by Bathory and Midnight on KD's The Puppet Master.

Ronnie from Metallica's Load is fucking weak. Didn't like it back then and don't like it now. That riff is annoying. Yes, there are some other pointless tracks on Load, but Ronnie is the lowest.

I don't know if this meets your criteria, but when listening to Sentenced's "The Cold White Light", i always stop the last track "No One There" prematurely, as the increasing volume on the sound of those fucking birds(?) is horribly loud and terrifying. I always skip the end of Devin Townsend's "Things Beyond Things", due do the blood curdling scream at the end. (Oh god, a few times I've forgotten and almost died).

A recent one that comes to mind is skipping ManUnkind when listening to Hardwired. If i plug Lords Of Summer in there instead, it becomes a better album (for me).

I generally have my music player on shuffle, and despite ratings of songs, I will almost always skip something by Motley Crue, Guns N Roses (I only have one album on there), and Manowar.

Bridge of Death took me a while to really enjoy, but I think it's a superb song now. Don't give up on it!

I agree, i really dislike random heart attack moments in albums. Ondskapt's song Witch has another one in the end wich i could gladly live without

TON: "Skip It"

Leave the hall!

I've always wanted to make a version of that album with:

1. the unpixelated full cover art
2. removal of almost all of those lame extended intros
3. removal of "Brain Dead", "Decapitate", and "Dead Meat"
4. inclusion of "Rapid Fire '98"
5. readjust the track list to put the best tracks up from (see "Screaming for Vengeance") but still end with "Cathedral Spires" as the epic album closer

I think that would make the album twice as good.

I Ain't Superstious and Anarchy In The UK. Both album mood killer covers.

The Meads of Asphodel have this problem to a severe degree, it's what prevents them from being the truly amazing band they should be. "The Excommunication of Christ" has "Jezebel and the Philistines" which *must* be skipped for the ultra annoying samples. "Jihad" has an overlong intro and an overlong interlude "Tanks in the Holy Land".. "Exhuming the grave of Yeshua" suffers from the inclusion of a boring intro (which is silly to even have because "God is Rome" would be a fantastic opener). "Jihad" and "Exhuming" don't have it so bad, but "Damascus Steel" is the most effected by this problem. It has an overlong intro and the completely un-listenable tracks "Wonderful World" (a horrendous Louis Armstrong cover) "The Gods who mock us" (an un-amusing and extremely drawn out gimmick track) and finally the final track "Beyond death and darkness" has a pointless long silence with a hidden piece of the song at the end. The song and the hidden part are both good, but the silence is incredibly annoying and I edit it out of my ripped copy. "In the name of god welcome to planet genocide" has an overlong intro (pattern here) and a very long and very pointless silence in the closer which I also edit out. "The murder of Jesus the Jew" is where they started getting their act together on this problem, and doesn't have any tracks which must be skipped, though "Jew Killer" can be hard to explain to people sometimes even though the lyrics have nothing to do with Nazism or approval of killing Jews. Then they messed up again on "Sonderkommando" by including Hitler samples on the intro track "Children of the sunwheel banner part 1"! It fits the artistic narrative of the album, but it makes it really hard to play the album whenever anyone else could be listening (like at home or in the car). It's not very easy to explain to normies why you're listening to music with Hitler speeches in it, ya know? A must skip. Finally, "Taste the divine wrath" has no tracks that need to be skipped by either the Meads or Tjolgtjar. The Meads half is some of the best songs they've ever done which perfectly capture all the musical and thematic inspirations they've been working on since the first demo. Fucking perfect release. So out of their main releases, there's only two which aren't damaged by must-skip songs. Sad state of affairs for what is musically one of the best bands going right now. Hopefully they don't mess up whatever new thing they're working on now with must-skip tracks.

That covers their main releases which include original material, anyway, the rest of their ephemera is mostly useless rock and punk covers and gimmick tracks from compilations and the like. Easily skippable but not must-skip.

Fucking Iced Earth.
Dark Saga had Last Laugh and I Died For You(People think Watching Over Me was a bad ballad but at least the chorus was good)
Something Wicked had Disciples of the Lie(My Own Savior much better than this "thrashy" song) and Reaping Stone, I think I only listened t Reaping Stone like once in my life.
Horror Show didn't really have bad songs, but just boring ones. Imhotep had a fantastic opening riff that delved into boring repetitiveness, Jack is lame as hell, Ghost of Freedom is cheesy as fuck except for the last chorus at the end of the song, which isnt enough for me to listen to the whole thing.
Dystopia had Anthem and Anguish of Youth while Plagues of Babylon had like 75% of the album be skippable.

Covers on otherwise dark thrash albums are almost always terrible ideas. Don't even get me started on that "Immigrant Song" cover on Leave Scars

As for non-covers, I tend to skip "Angel of Disease" on Covenant; there's something in the overall tone and bounciness that just doesn't agree with me.

"Bare Bones" on Horrorscope. The only speedbump in an otherwise flawless experience. Intro is too long, and the rest of the riffs feel like ones that wouldn't or couldn't fit elsewhere on the album. Just has a comparatively rushed feel to it.

Im-Ho-Tep is my 3rd or 4th favorite IE tune

I also love the Portishead song Zerberus mentioned, and all the sampling/gimmicky/atmospheric stuff the Meads do as well lol. And some of Acid Bath's best tunes were the ballads mentioned here!

Opeth albums have me skipping around a lot - basically anything where Mikael sounds like Alanis Morisette I skip over.

Also Can I Play With Madness. Turd song on a beautiful album.

.

i mean it's not a bad song, but it fucking drags on far too long. I'd add Dragons Child to it, but the chorus and solo are pretty great.

Oh, I just remembered;

THESE BOOTS. What a horrible idea and placing.

Exact song I was thinking of when reading this thread title

Like many others, I usually listen to albums in full, but I tend to skip:

Iron Maiden - "Satellite 15"
I've programmed my iTunes to start the song with the snare hit of "The Final Frontier".

Edguy - "Aren't You a Little Pervert Too?!"
I know it's a joke song, but it's absolutely awful. Always finish the album after "Dead or Rock".

Avantasia - "Inside"
Dreadful ballad.

Metallica - "Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)"
Deleted off my iTunes. Really boring.

Metallica - "Free Speech for the Dumb"
Terrible and repetitive way to start Garage Inc. "It's Electric" works much better.

Type O Negative - "She Burns Me Down"
One of the few Type O songs that grates me a little. That mid section is such a slog.

That one synth track on Decapitated's Winds of Creation. Feels so out of place.

"The Frayed Ends of Sanity" from "...And Justice for All". That Wizard of Oz garbage at the beginning gnaws on my patience.

"Quest for Fire" from "Piece of Mind". I can't get past the annoying opening line about dinosaurs. It's a painful moment on an otherwise excellent album.

The first track on Magnus - Alcoholic Suicide.

the album is some GREAT death/thrash, but it starts off with the most UNLISTEABLE garbage for some reason!

So the worst songs on meh albums? Alright.

Slayer's "Dead Skin Mask" on Seasons in the Abyss. It's a slow-paced Slayer song among other slow songs on that album. It follows "Expendable Youth" which does the same thing but better, but the worst part is the girl sample trying to talk over the music at the very end. Whoever thought that was a good idea needs to be kicked in the dick.


Prisons have halls. I, for one, am a free man!

I never skip that. It's what Pete would have wanted.

Don't do that on Bolt Thrower - Mercenary Digipak first press !!!!

I love Iron Maiden's "Powerslave", every song, except for "Back in the Village". "Flash of the Blade" rocks, "The Duelists" is so great that I forget Dickenson sings in it those solos are just magnificent, and then you want to hang yourself when you hear something as bad as "Back in the Village" right before such an awesome title track. I just don't understand, with all the caliber and quality music on that album, how did they still throw in that awful song? They didn't need to pad the album with any filler but they still did and whoever let that one through has worn out many a skip button on plenty of boom boxes.

How about Onslaught's "Asylum" off of In Search of Sanity?

I wonder how many people skipped past that intro track every single time they'd listen to the album.

One minute, I can understand. Two minutes, maybe. But FIVE?