“Swing and a miss” albums

[The Mirror]

Beating a dead horse, but traditionel Opeth just fully ended with Heritage.

It should have been a sideproject. Even if Mikael doesn't ever want to write Death Metal influenced music ever again it still should have been a sideproject and Opeth should have continued in being a live band only.

Even now after they have been a prog rock band longer than a prog death metal band, live the majority of the runtime is still made up by pre-Watershed stuff because that is what people want to hear.

I am fully okay with any artist being all over the place musicially (I mean I am one of the biggest Devy fanboys around), but if you just switch musical styles from one record to the next, never to return, it just isn't the same band anymore. Doesn't matter if the musicans stay the same.

 

[bloodocean]

Behemoth’s “The Satanist” - marked shift away from death metal and towards a stripped down black metal sound. Just lacks the intensity of their previous work.

CoB “Blooddrunk” - everyone says AYDY is where they went astray but that album slaps. Blooddrunk seems more like where they pivoted firmly away from hooky melodic content and into busy but boring riff salad songs.

Off the beaten path: “Wu-Tang Forever.” You’re not gonna top 36 chambers, but this seems to be where the shaolin shadow boxers fragmented from a tight unit into an incoherent mashup of 9 solo artists.

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Whoops forgot about Catharsis. So bad that robb had to reboot the band. And heritage is a big one as well.

 

[Riffer]

Limp Bizkit - Results May Vary
- While I enjoy some songs from this album, it was just a big let down coming off of the massive Chocolate Starfish. Losing Wes Borland didn't help either.

AC/DC - For Those About To Rock
- The opening title track is killer and a legendary song. They play it at every show to end the show. After that the album is "meh". Again, an album that was coming after the release of a massive album and the biggest rock album of all time.

A Life Once Lost - Iron Gag
- I love this album but they lost all kinds of momentum with this. They changed up a few things style wise and never really got back to the buzz they had with A Great Artist or Hunter albums.

 

[MFB]

Thats why I like Testament. Sure they did The Ritual, but after that each album got heavier and heavier. Literally wrote one of their heaviest songs as a fuck you for their label telling them to go "alternative."

The Ritual has "Electric Crown" so that alone makes it a good album at a minimum; I'd say the other 3 albums after that were just OK, nothing between Low/Demonic/The Gathering stands out to me besides two tracks - one being the self-titled track of "Low" and the other being "D.N.R."

Everything Coheed has done after Good Apollo IV.

They seem to be hit or miss after Vol 2, it's like:

Year of the Black Rainbow? Obvious miss
Afterman 1 & 2? Yes please.
Colors Before the Sun? Eh, sure, I guess
Unheavenly Creatures? Now we're talking!
A Window of the Waking Mind? I'll take what I can get

 

[CanserDYI]

Everything past "the new reign" by Born of Osiris.

 

[BenjaminW]

Rush’s Caress of Steel for sure.

I love Bastille Day and Lakeside Park, but everything else on that album sucks. The flip side though is we got 2112 and everything else that followed it because of it.

Van Halen III gets my vote too. Makes sense on paper for Gary Cherone to sing for Van Halen considering he was with Extreme and Eddie hyped him up as like the singer he never had, but the stuff they put out though wasn’t great.

 

[cwhitey2]

Rivers of Nihil’s “The Work.”

That album was such a snoozefest, I became totally turned off by the band. I won’t even listen to their previous album, which I liked.🤣

Tell me about it. When I saw them live the last time they came around, they played literally the most boring set imaginable.

 

[Matt08642]

Devin Townsend Project - Deconstruction

Ambitious and full of guests, but the only thing I remember about it 10 years later is that Devin was really proud about having fart and diarrhea noises in some of the songs, and found the word cheeseburger to be the pinnacle of comedy when talking about the album. I think I hated the superfan reaction to this even more than the album, with people just embracing the diarrhea noises. One of those moments where you take a step back and re-evaluate your involvement with a group lol. I still listened to a few songs or parts of songs, but overall for sure a turning point.

I'm sure there are a lot more examples I'm not remembering right now.

 

[bostjan]

I agree with everyone except @STRHelvete , since, love them or hate them, Death's output got better with every album.

___Symphony X ___

I think often times a band will release a pretty solid album later in their career and then they sort of doom themselves to this happening with whatever the next release is. For me, I got super into Symphony X when DWoT came out. It was their third album, so it was fun to try to track down their older stuff and being that those were older, the stakes were low for me. When Twilight in Olympus came out, and the playing on the guitars, drums, keyboards, and vocals were all heated up a notch and the songs were still pretty much just as good, my expectations formed that V was going to be great, and it was, then they got even bigger with Odyssey and Paradise Lost.

By that point, though, where was there to go? They were way bigger than you'd expect a prog/neoclassical metal band to ever get. But, needless to say that I had massive expectations for Iconoclast, and, although it was a great effort from the band and still had great playing on it, I just never bonded with it. I guess the songs didn't have whatever magical factor I had been expecting. Up to that point, every album exceeded the last in some way, so I think they just kind of saturated. I guess I don't really care, though, 5 kickass albums in a row is more than at least 99.97% of bands.

___Dream Theater___

For Dream Theater, I think the expectations were tempered before The Astonishing. Similar story, except I obviously heard of DT years before I heard of SX. But the second album got some airplay, so I was at least aware of them, but didn't really get "into" it until Awake. After that came "A Change of Seasons" EP or album or song or whatever you want to classify it as, it was super up my alley with an epic seven string tune that told an emotional story.

I think it's safe to say that the album that was released next was not what fans were expecting at the time. I really do believe that Falling into Infinity crashed their momentum moving forward. They were making a concerted effort to break out of their niche and become a pop/rock band without compromising much on their songwriting. But it was a mess. The songs that attempted to be more adult and mature ended up being good, but not the kind of good the radio was looking for, and definitely not the kind of good the fans wanted. The more energy-driven songs were definitely not what fans were looking for. So the album came out, flailed around to find its footing, fell apart, and then the band was bitter about it.

But then they captured lightning in a bottle. Coming off of a bunch of side projects, they regrouped with a new keyboardist and JP got a brand spanking new guitar endorsement deal and they released what was either their best or second best album, depending who you ask, and the momentum returned. Well, except the next album again pissed off fans (that one's a little more difficult to pinpoint why, but I think it's mainly that their influences were showing way too strongly).

Since then, it's been sort of a pattern of releasing a good album to get fans expectations up, releasing something nobody expected, which gets expectations way down, and then repeating. IDK, though, I've honestly stopped paying much attention to who used to be my favourite band in high school.

 

[RadoncROCKs]

Dream Theater - The Astonishing is a good one
Coheed - YOTBR and Color Before Sun also, just didn't hit minus one or two songs - but I really like the Amory ones and their recent albums

Iced Earth - Something Wicked Pt 2. Barlow was back, completing the Wicked album that Ripper had done tremendous with, and it just fell flat. No energy just boring.
Stone Sour - House Gold Bones Pt 2. The first part was great, but no real memorable songs on Pt2 and the completion of the story didn't do much
Trivium - pretty much every album between Ascendancy and their most recent one. Ascendancy is a masterpiece and of my favorite albums period but they just became stale during this long stretch, I'm very glad to see them writing interesting things again and playing some Ascendancy songs live. In Waves is a decent live song but the entire thing s a repeat of two 10 second riffs

 

[gunch]

Undying motherfuckin Light

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Devin Townsend Project - Deconstruction

Ambitious and full of guests, but the only thing I remember about it 10 years later is that Devin was really proud about having fart and diarrhea noises in some of the songs, and found the word cheeseburger to be the pinnacle of comedy when talking about the album. I think I hated the superfan reaction to this even more than the album, with people just embracing the diarrhea noises. One of those moments where you take a step back and re-evaluate your involvement with a group lol. I still listened to a few songs or parts of songs, but overall for sure a turning point.

I'm sure there are a lot more examples I'm not remembering right now.

I remember getting shit on for not liking this album. It's definitely the weakest DTP album

 

[oracles]

Everything Coheed has done after Good Apollo IV.

The Afterman double album was a straight up masterpiece though?

YOTBR was a definite miss, TCBTS was mixed, Unheavenly had some hits, Vaxis II is largely a miss imo, but Afterman is flawless.

 

[Crungy]

For me personally as these bands are obviously still successful, their albums after the one I listed fall flat for me:

Tool after Lateralus

A Perfect Circle after 13th Step

Dream Theater after Systematic Chaos (Octavarium is a mixed bag for me too, a lot of the songs feel like they're copying other bands)

Karnivool after Sound Awake. I do like the newest single though.

Northlane after Mesmer

A Day to Remember after Common Courtesy

Fear Factory after Archetype, though there's a few songs on following albums I like.

Hands Like Houses after Dissonants

Hot take but the only good thing Coheed did was Welcome Home imo. I just don't care for them, so there's that lol

 

[MFB]

I agree with everyone except @STRHelvete , since, love them or hate them, Death's output got better with every album.

___Symphony X ___

I think often times a band will release a pretty solid album later in their career and then they sort of doom themselves to this happening with whatever the next release is. For me, I got super into Symphony X when DWoT came out. It was their third album, so it was fun to try to track down their older stuff and being that those were older, the stakes were low for me. When Twilight in Olympus came out, and the playing on the guitars, drums, keyboards, and vocals were all heated up a notch and the songs were still pretty much just as good, my expectations formed that V was going to be great, and it was, then they got even bigger with Odyssey and Paradise Lost.

By that point, though, where was there to go? They were way bigger than you'd expect a prog/neoclassical metal band to ever get. But, needless to say that I had massive expectations for Iconoclast, and, although it was a great effort from the band and still had great playing on it, I just never bonded with it. I guess the songs didn't have whatever magical factor I had been expecting. Up to that point, every album exceeded the last in some way, so I think they just kind of saturated. I guess I don't really care, though, 5 kickass albums in a row is more than at least 99.97% of bands.

I always mix up Iconoclast with Paradise Lost, the latter of the two being all the more confusing because they have an album V: The New Mythology Suite which is based on John Milton's BOOK (or poem, whatever), Paradise Lost, and I always feel shitty because it's is a solid follow up to The Odyssey. I think for me, I tap out after those because it's just like, after the first 5 albums, what new territory is there to REALLY go to? I don't look at the rest with disdain or anything, but it's like, "OK, I've got these handful or slightly more albums that are all I need, and if I get tired of them, I'll check out the newer stuff."

Disagree with Death though, I should give their albums another listen but I know some of the stuff I've heard/practiced, I'm just guffawed by the transition where they seem almost nonsensical; just like a kid who had some riffs and was like, "I've got the riffs, might as well use them!" and then no one asked about it.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

Cult of Luna - The Raging River and A Dawn to Fear were both big misses for me. But that's okay because The Long Road North was 💥🔨

every Red Hot Chili Peppers album ever made

Blood Sugar Sex Magik is a timeless classic.

 

[Crungy]

I'd throw One Hot Minute in there as well, I think that's their best.

 

[gunshow86de]

Rivers of Nihil’s “The Work.”

Always risky to make a "death metal" album with precisely zero riffs.

 

[Drew]

I really do believe that Falling into Infinity crashed their momentum moving forward. They were making a concerted effort to break out of their niche and become a pop/rock band without compromising much on their songwriting.

I think that album is a lot better than it's given credit for, to be honest, but two things have to be kept in mind:

1) Dream Theater was never going to be a successful mainstream rock band, no matter how hard they tried. Certainly, not in 1997.
2) It's easily the most "song" focused album they've ever released.

It's not a sprawling prog rock masterpeice, but it's very focused, more accessible, and there's some great stuff on here. Some great technical moments, too - I think Petrucci's lead on "Take Away My Pain" is one of my favorites he's done - extremely melodic while still having some technical flash in there. But, at the same time, I definitely get that if you're a DT fan, you're probably looking for something more like "The Mirror" or "Pull Me Under" than simpler but still quality songwriting.

On my end, this kind of came at the start of a lull for me, but Joe Satriani's "Strange Beautiful Music." In the promo tour, he talked a lot about how they ended up using a lot of his DI-through-Palmer tracks from his demos on the studio recording because he'd finally stopped processing them while recording so his producer thought they could fly them right in. The downside is, the whole album SOUNDED like a demo, for it.