Hey there! A fun topic here to know what're your worst albums of metal? I'll go with the list here

1. Def Leppard - Hysteria (The lost of the NWOBHM)

2. Metallica - The Black Album (Losing thrash elements)

3. Sonata Arctica - Talviyo (No more Power Metal?)

4. Stryper - In God We Trust (Too over-produced)

How about yours?

The biggest turds i've heard in metal were:
Sonic Syndicate - We Rule The Night
Cryptopsy - The Unspoken King
Amaranthe - Helix
Suicide Silence - Suicide Silence
Babymetal - Metal Resistance
Within Temptation - Hydra
Semargl - Satanic Pop Metal

Poser Holocaust is (ironically) the shittiest, most poser thrash metal album ever. Thrash or Die's follow-up Melting Your Skull is better, albeit pretty generic.

For me, the few off the top of my head, because shit albums don't get repeated lessons for me, and are generally forgotten, are the Anthrax records with John Bush and the last 7 years of Virgin Steele's output. Both groups albums are all the more criminal given their earlier output, and the amazing drop off in quality.

Shoutout also to that Morbid Angel record for being hilariously shit. One of the very few that has actually stuck in my mind despite only hearing it once. Also, the reaction from the band at the negative reception of the record was one of the most amazing things I've witnessed in metal.

When you say "worst", does it come with the caveat as being from bands that should have known better?

Because if it doesn't, this is my contribution: https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/S ... ory/301776
https://youtu.be/rbDDQMPKSTo
https://youtu.be/uteiCE02xWQ

To me, this is laughable. While TBA is one of my least favourite Metallica records, there is no way it belongs in a thread of "Worse albums ever".

Now, Graveyard Classics....

I have to second that The Black Album is nowhere near one of the worst albums ever. It's still a competent heavy metal album even if it's not a thrash album anymore.

neither is Hysteria. sure, it isn't a metal record, but it's an incredible piece of glam/pop rock. to put it on a "worst albums ever" list is absurd.

Black Album doesn't belong on that list. It's not as heavy as the previous albums, but come on, it's probably one of the biggest gateway albums. And it's not even the worst Metallica album (Lulu and St. Anger are arguably much, much worse, and Load and Reload suffer from some of the same weaknesses as the Black Album). Also, popularity does not equal quality, but for an album like The Black Album to reach the heights it has, it has to do some things right.

Also, Talviyo is another weird chocie, since Sonata Arctica have been on a path diverging away from classic power metal for a while now. The only "return to form" was Pariah's Child, and even then some of its best songs owe more to melodic hard rock than to power metal. Unia is where they started on this divergent path, and it's a weaker album IMO (although The Harvest is a banger), with lots of songs going in multiple directions at once, as if Tony wrote a power metal song, then decided, "screw that" and added things to make it so it wasn't true power.

Metallica - Lulu
Bathory - Octagon
Ancient - Mad Grandiose Bloodfiends
Barathrum - Eerie
Burzum - Thulean Mysteries

Forbidden - Green

What a piece of shit.

Lulu isn't strictly a Metallica record. It is a terrible record for sure, but it's much more Lou Reed than Metallica.

Also, to shadow what others have said, TBA has no right to be here. You don't need to like it, and amongst Metal fans, it definitely is a polarising record, but it's not a contender for worst albums ever. It's ongoing sales, given its now over 30 years old, would suggest it's a contender for the greatest albums ever.

Coldseed - Completion Makes the Tragedy

Some short lived side project of drummer Thomen Stauch (ex Blind Guardian) with Björn from Soilwork on lead vocals. It's an astonishingly bad mix of nu-metal/groove riffs and trendy industrial tinged pop music. The production is terrible, and Thomen's drumkit sounds fake and programmed on purpose. Björn does what he can with the vocals, but the songs are so terrible he's dragged way down with them. I believe the album flopped hard when it came out, because nobody talked about it and Björn jumped ship shortly after.

The archives says they're still active, but with no vocalist listed I doubt they're doing anything.

Talviyo is a good album. People who only want that band to play Ecliptica over and over mystify me really.

In Flames - Sirens
Virgin Steele - Black Wine for Mourning
Megadeth - Dystopia
Morbid Angel - Illud Divinum Insanus
Havok - Conformicide

Off the top of my head... In Flames, Morbid Angel and Virgin Steele for being just awful cacophonous shit with unpleasant sounds abound, Megadeth for being like the distillation of dumb, unthinking generic metal and Havok just because I thought the lyrics were atrocious and the music dull as can possibly be.

They can play Silence, Reckoning Night, Days of Grays, and Pariah's Child, too!

I'll even be generous and allow Winterheart's Guild, since it turns out I was conflating a bunch of songs on that album with the ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS "Champagne Bath."

I mean Days of Grays is probably the one they did that is the furthest away from anything close to PM except for a song or two. I dunno. Taste can be weird I guess.

The worst albums are certainly ones that I've never listened to in their entirety and never will. There's loads of bad music around, but that's mostly subjective. I dislike Amaranthe, for example, but I can see why someone would like them.

Then there's genuinely offensive shit, like Van Canto and the Graveyard Classics albums. No merit or purpose whatsoever, just soul-withering shittiness.

X-World/5 "New Universal Order" is pretty godawful. A side-project consisting mostly of notable heavy/power metal musicians playing industrial metal. What could possibly go wrong?

Cemetary's "Phantasma" is completely unlistenable too (pity cuz I liked their older albums). It reminds me a lot of that X-World/5 album, except I'm sure Mathias knows exactly what he's doing. Makes me wonder if he recorded Phantasma just to piss off Black Mark Production.

Woah those are fighting words, partner! Champagne Bath is super fun. Cool solo too. I think you mean the Misery or Draw Me.

Oh man.

I LOVE Hysteria by Def Leppard.

Despite their fine early work, Mortification deserve a place on this list.

Mortification - The silver cord is severed.
Mortification - Brain surgery.

I want to add "Triumph of mercy" but Steve Rowe's health was in poor condition then so it wouldn't be fair.

"St. Anger" without a doubt is one of the worst albums ever. I've been listening to my CD collection alphabetically since the summer, and I couldn't make it through 5 songs when I got to "St. Anger." The "Some Kind of Monster" documentary pretty much shows what everyone assumed happened with that record - no one cared. There was zero effort in every facet of that record. The riffs, lyrics, songwriting, and production all feel like it was the first idea or attempt and that's what they stuck with. And it's just extra insulting because they did it with more pro gear than most bands will ever see in their lives.

This last weekend, I ran through all the Slayer CDs I own, and "God Hates us All" is truly awful. I know a lot of people like to call it numetal, but I'd say it's got way more in common with tough-guy hardcore. The riffs rely on a lot of open note chugging, and the lyrics are just as shallow with their angst ridden themes. No wonder they were touring with Hatebreed at the time, they were trying to BE Hatebreed so hard.

Of course, Cryptopsy's "Unspoken King" is one of the worst albums ever. I thankfully never purchased it so I haven't heard it in years, but the way they tried to capitalize on a trend that was already on its way out just shows how out of touch and these guys were, and how lame they got trying to be career musicians.

There are plenty of other shitty albums, but these are ones that I think of right away.

Probably anything by Spin Doctors, I saw a video with the snippets of all the songs from the second album it was a review about how much the album sucks and God damn that music personifies the phrase "lame white people bullshit" holy fuck it's obnoxious its stupid and it has the pretense of being artistic too which only serves to make the whole thing that shittier. I'm actually laughing to myself typing over how much that music fucking sucks, I think If you enjoy that you suck too quite frankly.

God it's like the red hot chili peppers got so high on heroin they started violently shitting all over the place and mumbling like fucking toddlers.

Any takers for Insineratehymn or In torment in hell?

Dream Theater's pretentious but also truly stupid crock aka Metropolis, Pt. II: Scenes From A Memory surely qualifies.

Not metal, but I still gotta mention that any of the dogshit Kid Rock has put out is too much for me to bear.

Not really a fan of that album, either, but it absolutely doesn't deserve to be on any worst-of list - not in a world where The Astonishing exists.

The Astonishing was them trying to break out of their mold and it is decent in a twinkly happily ever after way but not substantial to last. Still, they were trying at least. I like it better than SFAM which isn't saying much.

I have to agree with this sentiment. I don't care about his political leanings but his music is rubbish. Whenever that stupid Cowboy song comes on the radio, I have to turn it off. Cowboy from Detroit... Go smoke a spliff with Scott Stapp in a hot tub with some hookers, you worthless piece of shit.

I came away from that documentary with the opposite point of view - they poured everything they had into St. Anger, but they were a complete mess. The production was stopped halfway through, and some stuff was discarded and other stuff was kept. The band members couldn't get along at all - everything from James' mental space to the recording schedule, to even basic stuff like Kirk not understanding how to play a riff or Lars' awkward timing over some of James' riffs when they're jamming. They paid obscene amounts of money for a live-in therapist, and even talked to Dave Mustaine (which was a much bigger deal back then than it is now) to sort out Lars' issue with him.

Basically, everything about that documentary made it clear why the album was going to be a trainwreck (even though I do actually like it), but I wouldn't say there was no effort. They just really weren't capable of much better at time.

I'd compare it to the Anvil documentary. In isolation, it's hard to understand why Anvil never became a very big band, but once you see the movie, their career makes a lot of sense.

Not sure on the worst, but in no world are Hysteria or the Black Album the worst in any way shape or form.

I know Hysteria gets lots of flack from metal heads, but the album is a masterpiece in production and songwriting blending rock and pop.

Hysteria is one of the greatest pop rock albums of all time.

Some peoples choices here are bizarre. I know it's all opinions and whatever, but it just seems like it's a 'pick a popular album and hyperbolically hate it to the extreme.' I mean, someone said Dystopia by Megadeth. Sure, it's not great, but worst album ever? It's not even the worst Megadeth album.

I mean I don't really know how you'd quantify worst ever. I guess the only concrete answers would be the St. Angers, Illuds, etc and even then you have people who would disagree. I quite like Lulu for instance. Interesting stuff. Dystopia I just genuinely really fucking despise on every level, so I just went with my own opinions which is the only way to keep this interesting. The thread would be like three posts long if we were just listing the ones that objectively have the most negative reviews and nothing else.

That's fair enough. Like I said, I understand it's all opinions and such. I just find it difficult to wrap my head around someone hating Dystopia more than say Risk, Super Collider etc.

It's just such a featureless, bland distillation of all the worst things in modern metal. Inoffensive to insane levels, no interesting ideas, just lowest common denominator garbage. 'Look at us, we're doing the retro thing now.' Admittedly I'm not really comparing it too hard to other albums by them because I just don't really care much about the band anymore in general. But hearing it a few times and it was just so fucking empty really. Lyrically terrible too.

You guys are only scratching the surface and listing the worst albums of known and popular bands.

You gotta dig deeper: Some of those nazi shit bands put out some pretty terrible music, even disregarding the lyrical themes, it's just bad on every level. And then there's stuff like Cemetery rapist and Torsofuck... a whole other level of suck. Or outsider weirdness like the infamous Thrash Queen album. You can find some utterly horrendous metal albums out there if you look hard enough.

"Hysteria?" "St. Anger?" "Cold Lake?" Albums like these are certainly dissappointing from a fan's perspective, and in many cases, simply bad on many levels. Inoffensive, bland, watered down, half-assed, zero effort or passion- plenty to hate on with these kind of records. But even these records have a lot more going for them then scraping the bottom of the barrel stuff like that Car Door Dick Smash band, for example, or any number of terrible garage-level black metal and goregrind bands.

Nitro's O.F.R. and Seven the Hardway's self-titled are the two that have always stuck out for me. Given the ridiculous talent level in both bands, the fact that their music is so grotesquely terrible is really something. Nobody needed Jim Gillette yelping in six octaves at the same time with no sense of tone or melody, and nobody needed to hear Mark Boals, the go-to session guy in power metal, doing a weird Chester Bennington meets Fred Durst set of vocals (in 2010!!!) while Tony MacAlpine chugs away on an 8-string tunelessly. Mind-boggling, the both of them. Of course, probably still better than bad bedroom projects I suppose, but bedroom musicians don't bring expectations to the table.

This! One good contender of the worst album list is that Aryan Blood comp I reviewed a while back. Even if you were to somehow move past the cringy NS themes, the music doesn't do anything special and is something you could get from much better, non-racist bands.

You raise a very good argument, and I fully agree that they put a lot of effort into putting out an album, but when it comes to all the creative aspects themselves, they just all seem really lazy. I feel like those two ideas can coexist at once?

I'm sure albums from bands like Aryan Terror or Cemetery Rapist are as awful as they sound, but knowing that firsthand would mean I'd have to go consciously seek them out and hear them in the first fucking place.