Weird to think that, being someone who is not short on vitriol, the idea of compiling a 'Worst 5' list would be so hard. Maybe because I haven't listened to as much music as I would have liked this year? Maybe it is because I have all but given up on listening to bands with spikey logos and lots of o's and k's in their names or maybe it's just because the season of peace and love is kicking in? I must confess I initially struggled with five I found worth of rising themselves exceptionally above the parapet, but then it all kicked in to gear and I had to mention a few others on the way down...
Disturbed released an album so bland I can't recall it's name without looking on my Ipod but I don't want to risk messing around with the amazing climax of '100 Million Miles' Away by Monster Magnet. Frankly you could, even on 'Indestructible', rely on bouncing riffs and head nodding entertainment and vocal staccato, here not so much.
Serj Tankian followed up the anaemic 'Elect The Dead' with an album I couldn't even be bothered to make it to the end of in 'Imperfect Harmonies'. Boring, boring, boring. Get back with SOAD... you have? Great, this is irrelevant then.
Poker Whore Scott Ian and the guitarist from Anthrax who is not Scott Ian teamed up with the rhythm section of Fall Out Boy and fringe merchant Keith Buckley of Every Time I Die to form a 'super group' called The Damned Things. They pedal girlfriend appealing classic, punky, saccharine rock that grown men should be ashamed of. You hum it in the car and cry on the inside - expect this to come up again soon.
Rob Zombie 'Hellbilly Deluxe II' - going back to the well because your last two albums sucked Rob? Meh? 'Hellbilly Deluxe' never captured the heights of White Zombie and lets face it sequels are rarely better.
Fear Factory have spent most of the past couple of years trying to be as big a joke as Anthrax even to the point where two fat guys who were brought into the band tried to sue the fat guys who got them in because they wanted to use the fat guys original name. Or something. 'Mechanise' saw aspiring Mexican Pimp Dino and Burton 'Massive C Turn' Bell reunited. In a not-quite-as-stock comeback everyone creamed themselves over this. I was bored long before the vinegar stroke to be honest.
Ozzy Osbourne parted company with retired beer swiller and egg throwing, pinch harmonic overusing, twat merchant Zakk Wylde and recruited Firewind's totally Greek Gus G in a bid to make a new album that didn't sound like left overs from the cutting room floor of a Black Label Society album in 'Scream'. Needless to say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks - too many Beatles-esque harmonies, stock lyrics, and a man who sounds like his voice is shot no matter how many effects you smother it with? Check.
So without further ado or mentioning how limp Hellyeah's 'Stampede' was I give you.
5. Avenged Sevenfold 'Nightmare'
Is it cruel to single out a band who went through such a tragedy?
To be fair I've said worse about Paul Grey and I dislike Slipknot less... Avenged Sevenfold then, they are bollocks though aren't they?
Sure M Night Shadows can't scream anymore so they went all sleazy, sure the Rev was a great drummer, but your guitarists are called Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance for fucks sake, you look like a bunch of cunts and this album has one good track (Natural Born Killer for those interested) which you ruin by making people endure the shit around it.
Whether it's soppy ballads or the heavier numbers, I much more enjoyed the days when they tried to be the Orange County Killswitch Engage, and I hated them then.
They are the epitome of the Hot Topic image driven mewsick that chips away at the heart and soul of metal.
I'm sorry for your loss but please, please, fuck off.
4. Them Crooked Vultures 'Them Crooked Vultures'
Confession time, I last saw Josh Homme on T4 Music (Sunday morning hangover TV for Students and the dole queue generation) and he was wearing a pair of tight leather trousers and a tight, pink tank top playing an atrocious bubblegum pop song that I assumed was the latest piece of garbage to spew out of the celebrity ridden, travelling revolving door that has become Queens Of The Stone Age. From that moment my heart was broken, I mean sure he used to look a right twat in Kyuss but he never looked a complete cunt until then - The years of celebrity girlfriends, mates and every journalist wanting to blow you clearly having gone to his head.
So next up Super Vanity Project TCV featuring The Nicest Horse In Rock on drums, Homme on guitar, and John Paul Jones playing bass.
The album picks up almost exactly where QOTSA's last coaster left off and is a timely reminder than just as he was capable of writing direct killer riffs like '100 Degrees' on Sky Valley, he almost wrote the incredible self indulgent 'Shepherd's Pie' on Desert Sessions... this album is no different.
Excruciatingly irritating at times and fearfully boring in others it reminded me of why I walked away from QOTSA and openly wept over my Kyuss records. I mean I subject my girlfriend to a lot of crap musically but never has she actually begged me to turn anything off until I played this album.
3. Bullet For My Valentine 'Fever'
Vocalist Matt Tuck claimed they weren't even sure they were metal in the press run for this album. He always thought of them as just 'rock' apparently. Nice try little man - see I always thought of you as a decent enough bunch of guys who had witnessed the success of fellow sheep fanciers Lost Prophets and tried to weld a brighter than the sun pop sheen onto a couple of cast of Machine Head riffs.
Fuck man, you had the same hair, the same cut off t-shirt look, the same guitar, the same stage stance... you couldn't be anymore Rob Flynn if you tried, in fact Rob Flynn isn't that Rob Flynn... so now you are rock what the hell are you going to do with that heaviness?
Please don't get me wrong I saw these guys when they only had an EP to their name, it was good. I thought they would mature into a fairly decent band but every album gets progressively worse. The music has gone more towards the desperately poppy, the lyrics were written using the rhyming dictionary and the whole thing is just so... so... nothing.
It's not pop, it's not metal, if Occam's Razor suggests a middle point is rock then yeah, I guess you are right Matt, you guys are totally rock... pink rock, cheap pink rock you'd find on some tacky tourist shit hole sold by an owner desperate to furnish his child support and drinking problem, or maybe the one with a pier and friends of Dorothy in abundance...
As you quite rightly say on 'Four Words (To Choke On)' Look. At. You. Now.
2. Linkin Park 'A Thousand Suns'
It must suck to start with the 'Black Album' of your career really. Hybrid Theory destroyed the charts and seemingly for forever you couldn't shake Bennington and Shinoda off the TV, radio, or your leg it seemed and fair enough it remains to this day a great, great album. However despite the remixes, dalliances with Jay Z and steadily declining albums Linkin Park refused to get out whilst the going was good.
'A Thousand Suns' is that crunch point, they could not realistically make another 'Linkin Park' album that was weaker than the last and either needed to reinvent themselves or wither and die. Sadly for those of us with ears, they chose the former and released an album that has more in common with Depeche Mode than chart bothering rock music.
Words cannot describe the bafflement to be honest. They appear to have ditched the drummer, the bassist and the guitarist - I assume they still have the DJ given the bleaps and squeaks all over the damn thing - but then again I'm sure between Mike and Chester they could remember to hit start on the Casio keyboard they used to make it whilst the other one was singing.
It has two intros for a start and by the time I heard first/third track proper I was pissing myself laughing it was that amateurish... it doesn't matter how much you swear to appear bad Mike or guest with Cypress Hill you are not Sean Carter, this album is a joke.
It would slide right in to the number one spot if I honestly didn't used to love them so much and can't help think that any minute now they are going to hold their hands up and say it was all a prank.
Nice one guys... now about 'Minutes To Midnight'...
1. Korn III "Remember Who You Are'
When I round up on history I will tell you how Korn's eponymous debut is one of the most important albums of the nineties, but for now just be content that I believe that Korn's last good album was probably 'Life Is Peachy'...
This has been touted as a much welcome return to form for Baskerfield's most famous son's - Jonathon, Munky, Sausage Fingers and Rent-A-Drummer woke up in a cold sweat of poor reviews, declining albums sales and realised it wasn't a bad dream; Brian 'Head' Welch did indeed jump for Jesus, David Silveria became a male model and yes Reggie did record a solo rap album.
The result is a trip back to the master producer Ross Robinson - the man who pioneered the Nu Metal sound with Korn, Limp Bizkit and Slipknot and made Davis sound like he was shouting from the khazi was he cried 'You can suck my dick and fucking like it' on 'Faget'.
The much vaunted result is a renaissance for Korn, allegedly.
Personally I don't get it - Davis somehow sounds worse than he did 16 years ago (possibly due to his insistence on trying to 'sing'), Sausage Fingers still can't tune, yet alone play, his bass and Munky reveals the not-so-secret fact that Jesus' favourite NuMetaller was in fact the driving force in keeping Korn interesting.
It's lumpen, sludgy and frankly cringe worthy, it shows nothing of the song writing nouse of 'A.D.I.D.A.S' or 'Freak On A Leash' and none of the raw emotion of anything off the first two albums. The whole thing whiffs like a band so far past their sell by date it's unreal - for crying out loud if Linkin Park who have been massively successful realise they can't fool people with the same thing anymore then surely these idiots would take a look around (see what I did there?) and realise it's just not good enough to make an album that sounded fashionable for 18 months back in the nineties?
The worst thing is they'll probably sell a butt load of t-shirts and tour tickets, they may even sell a few albums but the sad fact is that this is a band who are now a bona-fide headliner, a band who exhibit no imagination, no stage craft and were very much a thing of zeitgiest.
Coming from a band nine albums into their career it shows that they have scraped the bottom of the barrel and are no more current than if they had had their DNA pulled from mosquitos found in hardened amber.
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