“Swing and a miss” albums

[wheresthefbomb]

Meet me in the parking lot after school, we're fighting m8.

I wouldn't call them all "misses," but nothing he's released has come even close to Labor Days for me. He really outdid himself on that one.

 

[BenjaminW]

I think you could make a case for Rush again from Test For Echo to Snakes & Arrows.

It didn’t necessarily kill their momentum because they still could perform to large crowds and people would buy/listen to their records, but that stretch of albums compared to what they’d previously put out since their last major dud in Caress of Steel just wasn’t the same.

TFE and S&A are generally regarded as Rush’s weakest albums, and Vapor Trails was a good comeback from their hiatus, but it was plagued by bad production. There’s good stuff on all these albums, but beyond that I feel like there isn’t much to it.

 

[Dr. Caligari]

For Testament I think:

The Legacy - Great.
The New Order - Almost as good.
Practice What You Preach - Not so good but not terrible.
Souls of Black - Meh.
The Ritual - No, absolutely not.
Low - Pretty good, cool drumming.
Demonic - I don't remember this.
The Gathering - Lombardo kicks absolute ass, the heavy songs are really cool but unfortunately there's some boring midtempo stuff also.
The rest - No thx. Feels like they're on autopilot.

 

[Esp Griffyn]

I'd vote for Vol3 by Slipknot. It has a few good riffs here and there but overall is pretty lacking in energy and intensity. The edge was definitely lost here and Slipknot started to transition away from their extreme metal-influenced sound towards something rather softer.

I wonder what went on behind the scenes with this album. It sounds like Jim and Corey were on a high from restarting Stone Sour and wanted to keep going with that style via Slipknot.

Regardless of how it occurred, it completely killed their momentum and they have been struggling to restart the engine ever since. The death of Paul Gray and firing Joey over his drug problems didn't help either.

 

[RoRo56]

I'd put forward Phronesis by Monuments. They never seemed to fully hit the stride they were capable of. From the start to the end of the album cycle the band went through a lot of members (Chris Barretto, Olly Steele, and Adam Swan all leaving, although Mike Malyan did return)

 

[Rob Joyner]

I'd vote for Vol3 by Slipknot. It has a few good riffs here and there but overall is pretty lacking in energy and intensity. The edge was definitely lost here and Slipknot started to transition away from their extreme metal-influenced sound towards something rather softer.

I wonder what went on behind the scenes with this album. It sounds like Jim and Corey were on a high from restarting Stone Sour and wanted to keep going with that style via Slipknot.

Regardless of how it occurred, it completely killed their momentum and they have been struggling to restart the engine ever since. The death of Paul Gray and firing Joey over his drug problems didn't help either.

totally agree. Vol 3 completely threw me off and I was never able to look back.

 

[Neon_Knight_]

I'd vote for Vol3 by Slipknot. It has a few good riffs here and there but overall is pretty lacking in energy and intensity. The edge was definitely lost here and Slipknot started to transition away from their extreme metal-influenced sound towards something rather softer.

More like away from their "nu-metal influenced sound" imo.

 

[Dr. Caligari]

I def find the first Slipknot easiest to enjoy. It had this great energy that I already didn't get from Iowa.

 

[bostjan]

Turn It Upside Down - Spin Doctors.

Yeah. You remember Spin Doctors? Pocket Full of Kryptonite? Jimmy Olsen? Two Princes? Little Miss Can't Be Wrong? They were huge in the early 1990's, inescapable. All those songs off their 5x platinum debut album that was #3 in the USA, #2 in the UK, #1 in both New Zealand and Australia, and #3 in the Eurozone. Remember their follow-up album? No, neither does anyone else. It peaked at #28 in the USA, and that was 100% because of the coattails of their debut. There was a single, something about Cleopatra's Cat, that failed to chart, and everyone hated the album, and then the band started to fall apart, with their guitarist quitting in the middle of a concert. Shortly after, their bassist quit whilst recording the next album, then the singer lost his voice due to chronic vocal paralysis. I think you could say that they exploded all over the music charts with album #1 and then abruptly lost all of their momentum with the second album.

They did get back together at some point, but I don't personally know anyone who cared, and then split again over some covid vaccine drama.

 

[TheBlackBard]

Has anyone said Vengeance Falls by Trivium, yet? I can understand how some might not like SITS or In Waves, but Vengeance Falls very nearly made me lose Trivium forever, especially with the song "Strife."

 

[Crungy]

@bostjan I didn't even know they had a second album lmao

 

[Drew]

FII always makes me take a look at Cleaning out the Closet. If we were to stay within the atmosphere of FII, I would swap more than a couple of songs with "Raise the Knife" or "To Live Forever". Within the scope of what that album is, I would've been more than fine with these being on the album instead of "Just Let Me Breathe" or the infamous "You Not Me". FII has great songs and some forgettable stuff on it, it's a roller-coaster with good highs (mostly the longer songs) and puzzling lows (notably the two aforementioned album fillers). That said, I do admit I'm a sucker for the title track of Octavarium, and would gladly listen to the whole record just to get there.

Never actually listened to Cleaning out the Closet, actually. I probably should. I generally like the more structured, song-focused sound, though I don't think either of those are really great examples of that...

...and 100% hear you on Octavarium. That was an album with some high points, but sounded mostly like the band just didn't know what they wanted the album to sound like... and then there's this sprawling 20-minute masterpiece at the end. Rudess takes a lot of heat for wanting to out-play Petrucci every time he gets a solo, but the pedal steel at the beginning is gorgeous...

 

[ErockRPh]

I'd vote for Vol3 by Slipknot. It has a few good riffs here and there but overall is pretty lacking in energy and intensity. The edge was definitely lost here and Slipknot started to transition away from their extreme metal-influenced sound towards something rather softer.

I wonder what went on behind the scenes with this album. It sounds like Jim and Corey were on a high from restarting Stone Sour and wanted to keep going with that style via Slipknot.

Regardless of how it occurred, it completely killed their momentum and they have been struggling to restart the engine ever since. The death of Paul Gray and firing Joey over his drug problems didn't help either.

Vol 3 is a personal fave, but I can definitely see your point. In my opinion, Iowa was closer to grindcore than nu-metal. Vol 3 was a lot more accessible, but it was the first step in a new direction that definitely was moving away from their first two albums. I still listen to Vol 3 a fair amount, but I gave up starting with All Hope Is Gone.

 

[destroyerdogs]

Vol 3 is Slipknot's best album, by far.
Anyone wanna fight?

 

[ArtDecade]

Vol 3 is Slipknot's best album, by far.
Anyone wanna fight?

Slipknot haven't released a good album - let alone a best album.
Anyone wanna fight?

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Has anyone said Vengeance Falls by Trivium, yet? I can understand how some might not like SITS or In Waves, but Vengeance Falls very nearly made me lose Trivium forever, especially with the song "Strife."

You can say that whole 3-album span was pretty bad tbh. It definitely peaked with Vengeance, but those 3 albums halted Trivium's momentum pretty hard to the point where Sin and the Sentence was considered a comeback album.

 

[BMFan30]

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.

Word for word, this is exactly how I feel about Opeth and all bands/artists that do this shit. It's as if you pulled this out of my gullet yourself.

I like all sorts of music despite anyones opinion on it but a cat in a bag is never appealing when you expected a Rottweiler in a cage.

 

[ErockRPh]

Deftones - White Pony

Wow, that's a bit of a spicy take, no?

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Wow, that's a bit of a spicy take, no?

Looks like the thread's going off course again lol. Going from albums that killed a band's momentum to "I personally didn't like this"

 

[BlackMastodon]

Yeah, no. You can't say White Pony halted their momentum.