For more than 3 decades Aussie rockers The Church were my favorite band. Then Forget Yourself came out in 2003. One listen, back to the used CD bin the very next day. Horrid excuses for melodies, lifeless rhythm section, horribly compressed production, lead singer Steve Kilbey off-key for a goodly portion of its length. I went to one of their top fan forums, and was shocked and appalled to hear people saying it was their best effort yet, and when I pointed out its flaws I got flamed for my efforts. I didn’t remain a member there for very much longer.
They remained my top band past tense at least for another decade (#2 now), but I have literally nothing from them from that year forward, other than their two unplugged albums.
Only last year did I discover that the entire thing was basically a series of demos, recorded in one take. That a band whose sound (formerly) depended on solid production & intricate execution it made me wonder what in the f. they were smoking to have decided to have recorded it in that fashion.
I can not stand Iron Maiden’s Book of Souls. I mean, who the hell needs an 18 minute song about a hot air balloon? I can’t remember the last time I listened to it.
I have the rather unpopular opinion (among Maiden fans) of a similar nature, however, over the year’s it was more of a realisation that early maiden was very much progressive metal, which was really an unknown thing at the time. Later Maiden would become I’d call “cliche metal”, but Di’Anno’s one was far closer to things like Rush with it’s long songs, long solos, songs about stuff and good lyrics which somehow got lost past Number of the Beast.
Looking at the credits, it was mostly Harris and some Di’Anno in the first two, and then much more of Adrian Smith was involved and Dickinson, Harris was still involved but much less.
I like a lot of Dave Edmunds’ albums and there are some I’ve enjoyed many times over the years, like “Repeat When Necessary”.
The one I can’t stand is “Subtle As A Flying Mallet” in which Edmunds does vintage favorites like “Baby, I Love You” and “Da Doo Ron Ron”, largely in an apparent attempt to recreate Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. What he actually manages is a murky, echo-laden effort that sounds like the musicians are performing down in the Marianas Trench.
I completely agree. I’d been a devoted fan of everything with Steve Hackett in it (from Nursery Cryme to Wind and Wuthering), and I’ll throw in Trespass because it’s where the core Genesis sound was forged by Phillips and Rutherford. But ATTW3 disappointed me so badly, it was the last Genesis album I ever bought. Without Hackett they were dead to me. I listened to it twice, maybe 3 times? then forgot about it.
Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait and Modern Times.
The 1973 disk titled Dylan is not to be mentioned in the canon of Bobby’s works. It was a spite release by Columbia of the worst crap they could find in their vaults. So, out of Dylan’s real albums, Self Portrait is legendary for Dylan giving the finger to his fans. Self-indulgent is more like it. But at least that had a motive for being bad. Modern Times was meant sincerely, I think, but I could not listen to it more than once. I suspect it was the stupid mustache that made him sing so poorly.