Full disclosure - My CD collection of around 300-400 albums is long gone, and now the only format on which I own music is vinyl. Suffice to say, my standards for purchasing on vinyl are far higher than back in the days of CDs, so an album has to be good-to-great to warrant a place in my collection.

Having said all that, I just spun my copy of Fabulous Disaster, and it cannot be denied that it's a subpar album. To be fair, the first two tracks are undeniably brilliant, and the third track is a lot of fun but remains, at the end of the day, a cheesy 80s metal anthem. After that, it's mostly very forgettable, and occasionally vomit-inducing ('Low Rider') late 80's thrash metal of the kind that ushered in the demise of the genre.

Having said all that, I can't imagine selling off my copy of FD. I've definitely sold off better albums, and there are better albums out there which I wouldn't consider buying. I guess it's based purely on the notion that Exodus are important enough to warrant owning 2 albums (I've also got a copy of BBB), thus separating them from your Lȧȧz Rockits and your Vio-Lences...

What are the admittedly mediocre albums that you will never part with?

My copies of No Prayer for the Dying and Virtual XI are the first things that come to mind. I do get some enjoyment out of them, but I can admit that they're mediocre albums that I mostly enjoy due to my fanboyishness.

My standards for music purchasing have also gone up dramatically in the last couple years. I listen to a lot of music on Spotify at work and make a point of listening to albums I'd never heard before, so I've adopted an intense "try before I buy" method. There's too much great stuff out there to settle for B and C grade albums the way I did as a kid and sadly I don't even get around to all the amazing stuff I hear.

I happen to own Ancient's worst album "Mad Grandiose Bloodfiends", but I won't part with it because I like the artwork. Same thing for Barathrum's "Saatana"

My vinyl copy of..

Dorsal Atlantica - Musical Guide for Stellium
Mordred - Fool's Game
Sentinel Beast - Depths of Death
Chateax - Firepower

Not terrible albums, but don't do much for me musically. I'm keeping them due to their very fetching artwork and I have them all framed up and displayed on my bedroom wall.

hmn... lemme see...

Kreator's Endorama comes in mind, and then there is Hypocrisy's Catch 22, Dark Tranquillity's Projector, Opeth's Damnation, Metallica's Load and Reload respectfully...

This. Same goes for any weak album from a band I like, because then I have this hole in the discography and it bugs me. Slayer's Diabolus in Musica, a couple of Rush albums, Ozzy's Bark at the Moon.

Metallica - Kill 'em all. Just for the sake of nostalgia, otherwise, cannot stand this record.

Not a big fan, but that is actually one of Ozzy's better solo albums...

God Among Insects - World Wide Death...fucking terrible band and album, some of the worst death metal ever released. I've tried to sell off the CD numerous times to various different record stores and nowhere will take it, not even FYE (the store where I originally bought it).

Bands with huge discographies like Maiden, Slayer, Priest... I won't part with the "weaker" albums. I don't believe I own any albums that I would not listen too. Like CF "Cold Lake" and St. Anger were gone from the get go.

A couple others that I own that I'm not a big fan:
Asphyx- God Cries
King Diamond- Abigail II
Grave- Hating Life
Atrocity- BLUT

I am without your loyalty to Maiden. My No Prayer for the Dying LP was jettisoned a long time ago.

Hypocrisy-Abducted. Roswell 47 is one of the greatest DM songs ever but the rest of the album is average at best.
Dusk (US). Majestic Thou in Ruin. It's out of print but I already have the compilation album which has all the tracks anyway.

But why keep it still?

Demonic by Testament. I don’t know why but I’ll never part with it. I just love it and have strong nostalgia for it even though I know it’s not that great.

Dimmu Borgir - Spiritual Black Dimensions
Listened to Enthroned Darkness Triumphant and Stormblast at a friend and loved the albums, so when Spiritual Black Dimensions came out i bought it right away, what a disappointment. But at the time it wasn't so easy to get new music so i listened to it a bunch of times and for that reason it still spins from time to time, The Insight and the Catharsis being almost the only good reason to do so.

Not an album but I'm going to include this one as well:
Cradle of Filth - PanDaemonAeon (VHS)
Having bought and loved "Dusk... and her Embrace" and "Cruelty and the Beast" CD's, I proceeded to buy the VHS tape as soon as it was available at the local store, to this day I still count From the Cradle to Enslave as one of CoF worse songs and other than the live footage there's little else to enjoy in this one.

On a little side note somewhat related, i miss these times, it was a nice feeling to buy a new CD or tape and run home to listen to it for the 1st time, no idea if you're going to like it or not. Nowadays i always check albums online before buying, so, mistakes like the ones above don't happen anymore, but that magic is also lost. Sadly i can't control myself and always check.

I've got like 4 crates of records. Nowhere near enough to worry about purging yet. The majority were had through discogs so it's pretty curated but you can find a few stinkers.

Thrust 's debut is the first that comes to mind. For example, I can't even remember what it's called. We might play the first or second half while drinking, but never the whole thing.

The 1389 / Satanic Forest / Kolac / Eris split comes to my mind. I only keep it to show the awkwardly shitty yellings on the first track xD

See I think if anything my standards for purchasing are low. If it's 65% or higher, I'll get it. Anything lower I'll only get by means of completing a collection (Scorpions - Eye II Eye, Megadeth - The World Needs A Hero, etc.)

To answer this question, here are a few:

Sponge - Wax Ecstatic
System of a Down - Mesmerize
DevilDriver - Winter Kills
Rob Zombie - Educated Horses
Ghost Bath - Funeral

All of these are here to stay either because at one point they meant a lot to me, or because they're really fun to visit like once a year or so. Also, I don't really sell stuff I don't listen to anymore. Even if it's collecting dust, it's a part of my collection because at one point it meant enough to buy.

I can't imagine a used record store declining a specific CD.

They gave me some BS about it "not being in their database".

@true_death,
What I meant was that you could simply get rid of it in a number of other ways. If you dislike it so much, it doesn't seem to make sense that you'd keep it and keep being upset about it.
In other words: If someone gave me a pop music album, I would neither listen to it nor let it stay under my roof, but gift it to somebody, "forget" it in a public space or just throw it in a garbage can.

Well, I kept it for years because I figured one day it would finally "click", since I got it when I mostly only knew the big names in death metal (Morbid Angel, Deicide, Death, etc.) and wasn't very familiar with the grittier side of the genre. But that never happened...over the years I've tried to give it to friends but everyone just reacts with laughter or shock at how bad it is, and I've never found any takers. I never threw it away or abandoned it because to me, it's fun to pull out once in a blue moon just to laugh at, though to be honest I don't know where it is right now, probably buried in my closet or basement along with other "unmentionables" . It's not like I've kept it as part of my main collection or anything.

I'm not really fond of any of Iommi's solo discography, but I'm never partying with any of it, and I will continue to buy any solo albums he puts out.

Sargoth - Lay Eden in Ashes. Absolutely typical speedy black metal in vein of Dark Funeral but I'm listening to this from time to time and having good feeling from this)))
Novembre - Dreams D'Azur. I don't know why people ignore this album, in my opinion this is just beautiful mix of aggression and romanticism made by very keen composers.
Norther - Death Unlimited. As far as I know a lot of people consider them as offsprings of CoB, but this album has balls. Thrashy, speedy music recorded simply brilliant.

Green Jelly's Cereal Killer, which my dad gave to me as a kid (he was going to throw it away otherwise) and is also my first CD.

^ I actually love that album lol. 333 is good too.

On subject, my answer is "not many" seeing as how just the other day I culled all of my physical media collections of anything I don't like/want anymore. I did keep my copy of JP's Turbo though - easily the shittiest album I own by far - but I won't part with it because it was donated to me by my beloved uncle from his personal collection. Unfortunately it's the only JP I own. Wish he had gifted a copy of Stained Class instead hahaha.

I tend to not part with anything physical I've bought after the age of 17 or so, good or bad. Some because they complete a collection, but most because that was when I found P2P networks and/or YouTube grew and I could sample albums before buying them.

That said, I offloaded a ton of shitty "getting into the scene" death and -core CDs from around then. Piss off, Overcast and SFU.

Devin Townsend was on a tear with everything he released being brilliant and then Synchestra came out. It was the first album of his that I actually concluded that I don't like. I'll never get rid of it though.

I have over 3000 CDs and over 800 Vinyl (haven't bought a CD in 4 years). I've never sold or traded anything from my collection. There is some absolute TRASH in there.

I doubt I could ever bring myself to throw out my copy of Repentless. I go it day one and was shocked to hear how god awful it was. That being said, I listened to it over and over again just so I could digest the crap being presented to me and ended up using it as background noise quite a bit too. I'm too sentimental for that turd to ever seriously consider flushing it.

Other than that, I have a copy of McFly's Room on the 3rd Floor which I got when I was younger and was the first real CD I ever owned. Again, I've too many fond memories of listening to the same three tracks over and over again to ever think about throwing it out. Please never tell anyone I know in real life that I own a copy though.

Not even Fused? I still think that one is pretty excellent. I totally sold my copy of Iommi though, such an odd compilation of 2001 weirdness...

Nope, never really liked Fused either.

EDIT: Musically, Fused never did much for me, but I think my biggest gripe with it is Glenn Hughes' vocals. I just hate his voice on it.

Darkthrone A Blaze In the Northern Sky
Pretty fair music, indeed, though not great, imo. The reason it'll stay (and we got serious storage problems with the thousands of CDs, VHS tapes, DVDs Blu-rays...that we've accumulated) is that it was one of the original releases that turned me on to Black Metal. I'm a sentimental sort.

Some of the horribly saccharine goth metal I've got in my collection

eg:

Crimson Tears - Voices
Dark Princess - Stop My Heart
Reflexion - Dead to the Past

There's nothing wrong with them per se; they're rough, very earnest, lyrically about sixteen years old, and really not all that great. I keep them because they remind me of being about that age and living away in a house with black curtains and lots of candles. Happy, silly times.

I absolutely love Razor to death, and they're probably my favorite band coming out of Canada. That said, I purchased their album "Decibels" during Headbangers Open Air and I must say I didn't really like that album too much. But still, not exactly gonna toss it or sell it or anything like that.

Man that's harsh. Emperor Magus Caligula does some pretty brutal vocals on the album and tracks like "Chainsawed Christians", "Purified in Carnage" and "Uhr-Nazuur" are not bad at all.

Most of the later Unleashed albums are on thin ice but every time I think about selling them and listen to them again I think "Oh yeah, Viking death metal!". They might be a bit generic and silly but hey, still better than so much other crap.

As to how to dispose of the ones that you've finally reconciled yourself to clear-out: leave'em in a laundrymat.

Yup, Roswell 47 was the reason I bought the album in the first place. The rest is okay, but none of the other songs really are as good as that one.

A bunch of Striborg albums. There's like one or two songs on each of them that I do like to occasionally revisit, but this isn't something I can sit through a lot of the time anymore.