Every music act out there has released at least one lousy record, not even the Beatles
or the Rolling Stones could hit it out of the park every time.
Some of them, however, get away with a saving grace.
These are the albums that, for all their faults, have one decent song to their name.
Released in 2003, Metallica's St. Anger has since become known as the record that nearly
broke up the most popular metal band in the world.
A post-rehab James Hetfield sounded strained and off-key in many places, and there wasn't
a single Kirk Hammett solo on the entire record.
PopMatters accused producer Bob Rock of, quote:
"...designing the album to sound like five-year-olds just learning to play on coffee cans and Fisher-Price
musical equipment."
There's only one exception.
"Some Kind of Monster" has a heavier-than-heavy riff and sounds so dark it feels like it could
have come from Black Sabbath's Paranoid or Master of Reality.
Yes, the drums are a problem, just like everywhere else on the album, according to Pitchfork,
Lars Ulrich:
"...had taken the return to 'real Metal' quite literally, playing a drum set consisting of
steel drums, aluminum toms, programmed double kicks, and a broken church bell."
Here, however, the power of the riff and Hetfield's voice overcomes that weak foundation.
Fifteen years after the end of their last tour, Guns N' Roses, at this point pretty
much just Axl Rose and a smattering of merry henchmen, finally released a new record: Chinese
Democracy.
This was an album which Paste called, quote:
"...a bottomless pit dug by disposable income, a persecution complex, and egomania."
"Cos sometimes we'd stop Chinese, and then start it again, but, I was like going,
'you know what ? Nah I wanna, it's like, let's just forget that song.'"
The only track which makes any kind of mark is the aptly-named "Better".
It's a mid-tempo head-nodder that combines Rose's interest in studio tweaking with classic
guitar rock and a slew of my-woman-done-me-wrong lyrics.
There's a bit of a thrash-y tantrum during the chorus, but otherwise Rose and co. ride
that guitar groove for the song's entirety, and it works so much better than the rest
of the album.
Drummer Bill Berry left R.E.M. in 1997, and although the remaining members carried on
as a trio, it wasn't hard to notice their subsequent music lacked something critical.
The electronic blips of Up and overarching sadness of Around the Sun failed to make up
for it, as did the drab, monochromatic lull of 2001's Reveal.
Village Voice declared:
"Reveal is a drowsy album about daydreams, a sleeping pill for the unconscious.
It makes you wonder if R.E.M. have finally decided to live up to their name."
The standout track on the album is "Imitation of Life," in which a small army of acoustic
guitars and a squirrelly synthesizer amplify Michael Stipe's near-nonsensical lyrics about
sugar cane, lemonade, and freezing rain.
Longtime R.E.M. fans are well-acquainted to such abstractions, and the instrumentation
on the track gives it a dense yet summery feel, something the rest of Reveal sorely
needed.
During the 1990s, Smashing Pumpkins turned out one snarling, era-defining dark grunge
jam after another, with such hits as "Today," "Cherub Rock," and "Bullet With Butterfly
Wings."
That was, until they released MACHINA / The Machines of God.
With this album, they lost all of their magic and none of their self-righteousness.
AV Club's Stephen Thompson wrote:
"Everything about MACHINA is capital-I important, with virtually every element delivered in
gaudy excess."
"People are almost asking us to apologize for being ourselves which, seems kind of strange,
you know."
But there's at least one decent track on MACHINA: "Stand Inside Your Love."
Even critics who were unimpressed by the rest of the album often see the latter as a high
point for the band.
Christopher John Farley of Time called the song "thunderously tuneful," while Jason Ferguson
of MTV said the song possessed a "'Cherub Rock' bombast."
Depending on who you believe, Sammy Hagar either walked away from Van Halen in 1996
or was unceremoniously jettisoned from the band.
After a brief dalliance with David Lee Roth, Eddie and Alex Van Halen brought in ex-Extreme
singer Gary Cherone to front the third lineup of the band, for 1998's imaginatively named
Van Halen III.
The results were dismal at best.
According to the fourth edition of the Rolling Stone Album Guide, Cherone shows off, quote:
"...even less personality than Hagar, though he can't really be blamed for the lifelessness
of the music on Van Halen III; he's just hired pipes."
The one song on the record that had any life was lead single, "Without You."
While Cherone shouts like he's trying to out-Sammy Sammy Hagar, it actually works here when coupled
with Alex Van Halen's mountain-moving drum work and all the scratchy pick slides and
syncopated riffs added by Brother Eddie.
For about six minutes, it really sounded like this iteration of the band might just have
worked.
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