the Top 10 Worst Albums of 2021

In a year where music was less than stellar it seemed fitting to bring back this list. One of the things that made rap great in the 80s and 90s was rappers calling each other out for being whack. It provided a form of quality control. Now people have grown too sensitive for that kind of hard truth. There are those who would argue this is all subjective, but music is something that can be defined in technical terms, as well as artistic, how does it hold up over time. Chances are if it is hard is get through one listen it is not going to stand the test of time. Most of these albums it was hard for me to write a full review of as I could not listen to the album as a whole and had to skip around to try to find something to worthwhile to listen to. Sure, some of these might have sold a ton of album but the Fast and Furious movies are garbage in terms of storytelling, so the sheep are not a great barometer. So here are the top ten worst albums of 2021  

10--DED - "School of Thought" 

I mean half the fault here might lie in the PR company who sent this thinking that this was the kind of music I am into. Though I might send mixed messages since I do like Issues and the new Spirit Box was pretty decent so I can take commercial music if done the right way. Not that this sucks in the manner it was crafted, from a production and performance stance everything works, the source of inspiration is the problem. Metal is like funk you cannot fake it.  By the last song I no longer care what side of nu metal they are falling on and just want this to be over. 

9-Black Veil Brides-  'the Phantom Tomorrow"

Not a stranger to this list, these guys look like "Shout at the Devil" era Motley Crue, but sadly sound like Nickleback. Nickelback is at least catchy at times, these guys are just the blandest lowest common denominator radio rock you can imagine, you can never tell if it is their album or a beer commercial that just happens to crop up on Youtube when trying to listen to their album I could only take three songs. 

8-Tropical Fuck Storm - "Deep States" 

Weird indie rock and weird should be the good part , but instead they sound like a happy version of Xiu Xiu, which works against them since Xiu Xiu's most interesting quality is how well they personify their anxious depression sonically, this just sounds like punk rock for hippies in art school who want to seem cool by listening to this. 

7-Portal - "Avow" 

If you took every element of death metal that makes it boring when not balanced out by melody and songwriting and maxed, it out to the extreme before condensing it into an album then this is what it would sound like, along with a noisy mix that makes everything sound like grumbling bowels. The literal embodiment of sounding like shit/

 6-Lingua Ignota - 'Sinner Get Ready" 

The music is one of the worst things about going to church.  She took it and made it even more boring. Minimalism is not her friend no matter how desperately she wants it to be as it continues to point out the fact, she cannot write a song that is not boring as fuck.

  5- Maneskin- "Teatro d'ira: Vol. I"

Somehow the Eurovision darlings have hung their dresses on the gimmick of trying to build a career off their glam androgyny, much like their millennial fan base they just want this to be handed to them without realizing they have to do the work of writing actual songs, they just threw some riffs in a bucket and hoped for the best.  

4-Coldplay -  "Music of the Spheres" 

At best this band was a dollar store version of Radiohead that was watered down for mass radio consumption and castrated. Now they have added a largely electronic version of that, so homogenized electro version of their uber vanilla pop. Could not make through more than a minute of each song. 

3-Insane Clown Posse - "Yum Yum Bedlam" 

When your whole career is built around a cult like following that calls themselves family to rally around the fact you are crazy clowns rebelling against the mainstream and then make an album of boring pop that sounds like all the other boring pop, what do you have to rally around?  

2-the Body - "I 've Seen All I Need to See" 

 This album should have been called "I've Heard All I Need to Hear"  it would be edited down to a minute long.  Switzerland should have their suicide machines ready in time for this band's future releases and all copies should come with voucher for the beta test. 

   

1-Lil Nas X - 'Montero"

Why would any album have 26 songwriters, 15 producers and 23 engineers? that is a is factory manufacturing product not making music. The songs sound like they are the product of focus groups on pops music. The took the blandest parts of songs by the Weeknd, Drake, Cardi B and Kayne and used AI to try to pick the algorithms of what should work to make hooky radio songs, which nothing got stuck with my head and it felt like torture to force myself through the album. The public was fooled, there were people online saying he was punk for being brave. The news is you are not getting millions of dollars to make CGI heavy videos without being approved by the board of an entertainment conglomerate which is the polar opposite of punk. Who cares if he is gay or not, when you press play on a song that is not what matters, so the reason it is the worst album is despite all the money pumped into it all we have is a snapshot with what is wrong with the music industry and a slab of bland boring color by numbers pop.    

The Top 10 Worst Albums of 2018

It is that time again. Here we take a look at the worst albums of the year. They come from various genre's though most are sadly on the harder side and either punk or metal, with a few wanting to be metal. The score from my reviews to help determine the ranking, on other lists I also used how many times Last FM told me I listened to each album , but since I only listened to these once and was glad to be done, we are just going by how low they scored. Rather than posting media of a track from each band I am leaving a link to the review, which will contain Bandcamp or Full Album Streams. Ok enough talking about it, the time has come to dig into the top ten worst albums of 2018.

10-Pink Cocoon-"Alienation" 

 This band from Montreal plays a Feedback soaked style of proto-doom. Even with the raw sound of their mix some interesting guitar tones seep out. The vocals sound more like they are from an indie rock band than a harder rock band. The guitar solos consist of trickling chaos and melting effects pedals.While a finely tuned ear can pick out where all of this is coming from, hip teenage on drugs, who are into the Flaming Lips but want something with a more dangerous edge that is not as heavy as metal might latch onto this album. It might have been more common place in the 90s and would have appealed to the college crowd them. As it is this album started off a better listen then kinda fell off course when the drugs kicked in for them. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2018/06/pink-cocoon-alienation.html

9-Mammoth Grinder-"Cosmic Crypt"

  In music journalism there seems to be two schools of thought either paint the band into the picture of who you want your audience to be or if you are really into kissing a record label or P/R companies ass, paint them into being who they want them to be. I try not to play into either school and try to just call a spade a spade . It's what I used to like about rap from the 80s or 90s they had a quality control and used to call out rapper who were whack, These days that only happens in the comment section of music blogs and tend to devolve into trolling with not reference point or fact. I can say this band is not whack as they are good at what they do , however what they do is very easy to define. I think these guys benefit from the fact that they come in so heavy it makes it sound like there is more of an original flavor than might really be there it's not until the fourth song "Divine Loss" that I am able to hear a clear cut distinction between songs.

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2018/01/mammoth-grinder-cosmic-crypt.html

8-Machine Head- "Catharsis" 


 While they are not letting freedom ring with a shot gun blast, the first song was aggressive enough to almost work though on the second listen it seemed like they were angry in the same way Slipknot is angry. If you think that is a good thing then we are going to have differing views on what we want out of this album. There were only two songs that did much for me. These guys know what they are doing I would expect something a little more mature from a 50 year old rather than teenage temper tantrums, that brand of angst could be more refined.

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2018/01/machine-head-catharsis.html

7-Thou- "the House Primordial"

 I guess this album got my ears tuned up to review the new album from the Body that was sitting in my in-box.The Body was better and I normally don't like them. The first two songs were decent and the rest of the album is really heavy. Once again they latch onto heaviness without committing to writing an actual song. They have some good sounds and it's disappointing that they did not live up to the promise of the first two songs, but if you need heavy as fuck then this is for you

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2018/05/thou-house-primordial.html

6-Light the Torch -"Revival" 

 How is Howard Jones doing now that he is not in Killswitch Engage? Well that depends on what side of the band did you like?A- The side that owed more to 80s thrash metal than Myspace?Or B- the big hooky choruses that made them more accessible.If you answered B, then you can go check your friend's list on Myspace and masturbate to the girls that never talked to you on their in the first place on there because they were porn robots. Now for the rest of us who like heavy music. This album sounds more Sevendust than Killswitch Engage. This gets worse with each passing song

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2018/04/light-torch-revival.html

5-Portal-"ION"

 Things were getting weird. It was my first time sitting down and giving a solid listen to one of the albums from this Australian project albums. I have heard lots of good things, and caught a song here and there, but never immersed my self in them. These guys have said fuck accessible we are going straight for crazy as god damn hell.It opens with noise and then bursts into noisy discordant chaos that can be linked to the DNA of death metal. It's not something I need to listen to more than once. If you like both noise and death metal in a blender then this is more your speed

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2018/01/portal-ion.html

4-Ghost-"Prequelle"

 Everything following this band's first album has fallen flat. It's not been metal, which isn't the main problem. The main problem is the fact that it has sounded like Abba covering Blue Oyster Cult. Yep some real Satanic shit if you are a fucking pussy. So "Rats" the lead single off this album was encouraging as it sounds like they are now trying to rip off "Bark At the Moon" era Ozzy. since only the first half is worth a shit. If you think this is metal, the world doesn't need you and I encourage taking the needed measures like walking out into traffic as it is what Satan would want.


https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2018/06/ghost-prequelle.html

3-Cemetery Lust- "Rotting in Piss"

 If you put Venom, Possessed and early Slayer in a blender the results would be this band. Those are all bands I liked a lot in high school. The energy they recapture certainly carries the first song. Then things go down hill, it's so redundant it fades into the background. Thrash should hit you , have sharp enough hook to grab your attention and keep you coming back for more. If you are too young to know better then I would suggest checking out albums like "Show No Mercy" and "Seven Churches"

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2018/06/cemetery-lust-rotting-in-piss.html

2-Bullet For My Valentine- "Gravity" 

 If you are looking for these guys to get heavy this is clearly not the album for that. They are given you a collection of power ballads for millenials who missed out the 80s, but through a filter of slick production that makes most of the radio rock sound the same. They fully commit to bringing the ballads and break out the acoustic guitars on the last song. Selling out made sense back in the day when people bought albums , but now not so much. If your goal is to get on a tour with the Foo-fighters then maybe. I'll give this one a 4 as it wimps out at every turn and is not true to who they used to be, not that who they were was that hard core in the first place , but I prefer the more Motley Crue version of this band

. https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2018/06/bullet-for-my-valentine-gravity.html
 

1-Zeke - "Hellbender" 

 This one might have gotten the lowest score I have given an album, since lower than 3 means I typically can't get past three songs. Good thing they were short as it made it a little less painful. I would tell you if you are into this sort of thing to round it up to a 3, but chances are you will die of alcohol poisoning before you get a chance to make it through this entire album that for some reason Relapse records is seeing fit to release, I guess they need a tax shelter. I was about to say to take into consideration that I am not the biggest fan of punk, but that's not right as I do like punk done right with some thought put into the three chords it uses. https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2018/03/zeke-hellbender.html

Portal :"ION"

Things are getting weird. This is my first time sitting down and giving a solid listen to one of the albums from this Australian project albums. I have heard lots of good things, and caught a song here and there, but never immersed my self in them. I just listened to the new Tribulation, which crossed from death metal into a more accessible sound. These guys have said fuck accessible we are going straight for crazy as god damn hell.It opens with noise and then bursts into noisy discordant chaos that can be linked to the DNA of death metal. The mix keeps this from soundings as dense as most death metal is. They are technical and precise while being all over the place. If you though Deathspell Omega gets nuts well these guys are further out into the mouth of madness.

It sounds like the vocal where recorded backwards. It sounds like breath is being sucked back in rather than forcibly expelled. Vocally this makes for less powerful growls and more of a breathy mutter. I find myself asking if this music is meant to be engaged or endured. The musical quality begins to get obscured on "Husk". Big on blast beats that are whipped out in a spastic manner. By the time we get to "Phreqs" things are beginning to run together and sound similar. I am also less impressed by the acrobatics and waiting for more song development. Noise is a big part of what they do, it takes up the first minute of the blast fest that is "Crone". I can still appreciate the extreme nature of what they do, I need more dynamics. The expand and retract of this bands revolves around noise. I like the chant of "pray for sickness" , but I need a little more than that to hook me in. I had to give "Revault of Volts" a second listen, because it went by in a blur. Only marginally more impressed by the song than the blur.

"Spores" finds the band continuing to grow more abrasive and noise ridden. "Phantom" finds them blasting even faster than before. When it comes to the closing song "Olde Guarde" I wonder who they can keep this up for ten minutes. Songs at this speed tend to be shorter since you have already raced to the finish line. They slow a little the three minute mark, but the guitars keep buzzing like a hornets nest.Then it delves down into a darker and more minimal passage that sounds like a guitar being played while someone drowns. I'll give this album a 6, I respect what they are doing it's just not something I need to listen to more than once. If you like both noise and death metal in a blender then this is more your speed.This is being released on Profound Lore