This list might have been shorter if not for my running into a few awful albums at the end of the year that I had been avoiding wisely up until that point. My morbid curiosity got the best of me, and what’s done is done. I’m paying the price for it by going back over the worst albums I heard all year. Let’s get this over with.
15.Ghøstkid-Ghøstkid
This was the debut solo album from the former singer of Eskimo Callboy, who had a pretty decent backing of hype heading into this release under the Ghøstkid moniker, but with the namesake frontman putting in no more than the standard performance on a bunch of poorly assembled tracks in an unappealing and dated poppy metalcore style, ultimately the eponymous album wound up disappointing me pretty substantially.
14.Powerman5000-The Noble Rot
Powerman 5000 are just such a low-rate band that even one of their more okay albums makes it here. While not as astoundingly, mind-numbingly basic as their worst material, The Noble Rot is still some of the most unevolved, underwritten, and forgettable electro rock and industrial metal I’ve heard from a big name artist. This is some eighth grade level songwriting here, and that’s a fuckin’ feat for a band that’s been around longer than any eighth grader has.
13.Corey Taylor-CMFT
There was a lot of hype around Corey Taylor finally coming out with a solo project, and it was pretty damn disappointing to hear a bunch of uninteresting classic rock too tacky for Stone Sour. CMFT focuses on the fun side that has made its creator such an enigmatic figurehead in the metal press, but its one-note approach does little more than highlight Corey Taylor’s songwriting deficiencies. I really could have seen this album turning out better too, with just some more time and care put into it, if a fun time of an album is what Taylor was going for. Unfortunately Taylor tried to make a party album and a grand ceremonial tribute to his greatness at the same time, and ego-petting and partying don’t really go hand in hand.
12.Evildead-United States of Anarchy
It has some good bones underneath it, but Evildead’s long overdue (if anyone was asking for it) third album wears out its welcome so quickly with some of the most adolescent thrash I’ve heard in a while. The band gets some good rhythms going and the vocals aren’t terrible either, fitting the older thrash style pretty well. But the band’s predictable formula tires out very quickly, and the political commentary of the lyrics is too cheesy and cringeworthy to ignore. It seems every year we get a handful of these kinds of albums that try to get into the simmering thrash revival with some ultra retro approach, and a good portion of those albums are from long-defunct bands who figure their primitive old-school approach might be a selling point despite their sounds often being even more juvenile against the backdrop of today’s metal landscape. So it’s not a huge surprise or anything to hear an album as ham-fisted and corny as United States of Anarchy; this year it just happened to be Evildead.
11.Five Finger Death Punch-F8
They may not always place highest in this list, but they always manage to make it here, and this was actually an improvement on the last album, not that that’s saying all that much. In fact, I’d say this is the only time in the band’s history that they actually shifted their trajectory upwards. But while the band’s ugly continual creative decay has been a hard thing to watch and made them the five finger punching bag of the metal world, there seems to be a large enough swath of mouthbreathing chuds who love their incoherent derivative shit and flock to their shows enough to put them in lucrative headlining slots and on top of the metal world. Goddamn that sure sounds a lot like someone else we all know doesn’t it. I’ve criticized them plenty in the past, and while indeed an improvement, F8 only mildly remedies the numerous problems with Five Finger Death Punch. Still septic to the system are the predictably formulaic and tiresome songwriting, the stale production, the corny butt rock choruses, the shitty bootlicking worldview that bleeds into Ivan Moody’s douchey and faux-deep lyrics, the contrived ballads and country-dabbling. Even with an improvement in the flow of the track listing and a few more bangers that somewhat hearken back to their first album, F8 is still an over-thought and overly calculated batch of Sirius XM fodder that’s trying to please everyone in some superficial way. I’ll grant that it seems as though the band realized they had been giving the more metal-immersed side of their fanbase that has been with them the longest smaller and smaller crumbs with each new album. I’m not gonna hold my breath for this being anything more than placating for the time being; I’m sure the next album will find the band back on whatever bullshit they feel (or their execs feel) they need to be on to pull enough streams from inattentive radio metal bros. I always end with the disclaimer that I still steadfastly stand by the band’s first two albums, and even American Capitalist to a degree, and that I totally acknowledge the immense potential for greatness this band could seemingly at any time decide to fulfill. Ivan Moody is a talented vocalist with a lot of star power and they really could have been the second coming of Pantera or singlehandedly ignited a new wave of American groove metal and metalcore or carried it on their own. But instead the band have followed the money on the path of least resistance to fast-track their way to the top of festival tickets, which I’m sure affords them quite enough luxury and comfort in life, more than most bands these days get, but it doesn’t exempt them from criticism, and unfortunately I think their legacy will show that they were a lowest common denominator kind of band at the end of the day when they could have been, again, like a second Pantera or something.
10.Anvil-Legal at Last
Another year, another album of Anvil unable to evolve past their prototypic thrash of their forty-year-old origins. Though as tacky as ever, Anvil actually also managed to make a mild improvement on their last album on the musical front at least. The songs are a little more energetic and easier to get through, if not for the lyricism though. Anvil lyrics are never anything beyond a fourth-grader’s poetry assignment for their English class, but some of the Facebook boomer lyrics here are fucking cringy dude. A quick look at the track listing will let you know exactly where you’re gonna find the juiciest cringe, but honestly, even as far as cringe goes it’s nothing comedically special and cringe culture in general is played out anyway. So do yourself a favor and just ignore Anvil the way they deserve to be ignored.
9.Halestorm-Reimagined
It feels a little harsh to place an EP here, especially for a band whose album back in 2018 was one of the best things I have heard to come out of hard rock in a long time. But these stripped back covers and revisions of songs from the band’s catalog just suck all the oomph out of them, perhaps making the case by contrast for the importance of the role the rest of the band behind the indeed charismatic powerhouse frontwoman Lzzy Hale play in making their sound what it is. It’s unlikely this points to any kind of new direction for them, so I’m not particularly worried about them running into this problem again. Plus, I don’t think Halestorm and Lzzy Hale are like fundamentally incompatible with more ballad-y rock music, this forced balladization of older songs just did not work, and it makes perfect sense as to why.
8.Gama Bomb-Sea Savage
The fact that this album is only number 8 on this list is just depressing for its reminder of just how much shittier it got this year. The fact that there are seven albums from this yet worse than Sea Savage, goddamn. With one exception, this was maybe the stupidest album I heard all year, at least in the thrash department it was. God this thing is a sugar high mess. I feel like a toddler on an entire bag of Halloween candy or an elementary schooler on a 2-liter of Mountain Dew sat at a computer to program a thrash album would’ve probably come up with something like this. The erratic operatic highs and dumbass lyrics, it all just embodies everything that ever made thrash look bad. It’s like that drunk guy at a party who’s hyper as shit and doing a bunch of crazy stunts for attention because he thinks it’ll make the people there like him more, but really he’s just embarrassing himself. Yeah, definitely the worst thrash metal album I heard all year, and one I wish I could unhear.
7.Amaranthe-Manifest
One of the albums I was avoiding but reviewed late out of my own weird sense of obligation that I wasn’t surprised to find only validated my reasons for avoiding it in the first place. The weird combo of dancy pop music and power metal isn’t as crazy of an idea as it might seem at first thought. In fact, that’s basically in part what Babymetal are doing, and actually getting better and better at. But Amaranthe get the worst of both worlds with Manifest, unsavory pop melodies and utterly generic symphonic metal to make for something I’m not at all surprised I was so repulsed by.
6.Trapt-Shadow Work
Yep, I listened to it. God, no wonder this band is flailing in irrelevance with aggressive MAGA nonsense being their only audible desperate plea for attention. The album, thank fuck, isn’t steeped in the same bitch boy tantrum that the band’s singer has engaged in all year to the point of getting his band’s Facebook page banned for hate speech, and the music isn’t like offensively poorly made or anything like that either. There’s clearly a conscious meeting of the baseline requirements for the type of music they make, but holy fuck it’s so damn flavorless and predictable. It’d be one thing if this was the trendy thing to be doing, but this diet hard rock for people who think Three Days Grace is too wild has been out of fashion for over a decade. And Trapt are just recycling the same dumb formula that overstayed it’s welcome in the early 2000’s. Yeah, I’m not surprised at all, but god, it’s the kind of thing that has to be apparent to the band themselves too unless they’re lacking of any and all self-awareness. Trapt have thrown themselves to the forefront of the online metal world’s discourse by being an annoying, toxic, and childish presence all year; the silver lining being the unity among metalheads in roasting their laughable posturing about their Pandora numbers and the juicy memes about their one hit “Headstrong” that rile the snowflake singer up without fail. And this shit album is just another reason to laugh at them and more fuel to roast their crybaby Trumper frontman with. Go back into your hole, Trapt. 3/10
5.Unleash the Archers-Abyss
I talked about it in my review, but there really is only one simple thing that sinks this album so low. And that is just how incredibly low-effort and lifeless it is with a genre that’s supposed to be so life-affirming. Power metal isn’t the most highly revered genre in metal, but that’s just for its cheesiness. I love it; when it’s at its best, it’s some of the most inspiring metal music out there and I genuinely wish there was a bigger demand across the board for it. But Unleash the Archers just sound so flat and unenthusiastic in this album, and, sorry, in power metal, unabashed enthusiasm is just nonnegotiable. The guitar parts are phoned in and lacking in imagination, and the vocals especially are so narrow-range, it’s all so antithetical to the ethos of power metal and it doesn’t make a strong case for itself. I’ll leave it there; this album is lazy and lifeless so I feel no need to waste any of my time and work on it.
4.Burzum-Thûlean Mysteries
Ol’ Varg must’ve needed a new wizard hat or camouflage pants or whatever goofy shit he’s been doing since retiring the Burzum name to focus on his racism and LARPing because I thought Burzum was supposed to be finished. I thought you were done with Burzum, Varg. Apparently not too done to not dump an hour and a half of embarrassingly half-baked ambient dungeon synth song fragments that sound, so many of them, quite obviously unfinished. Varg Vikernes has been a washed-up shell of the musical god the various weirdos who idolize him make him out to be for a long time now, and it has shown in the gradually degrading work he had put out after his release from prison. Yet after clearly not caring about creating music in any meaningful way for a long time, Varg drops this heap of shit in his fans’ laps. I suppose they deserve it, but I’m sure some of them are delusional enough to lap it up with a smile on their face while still believing their white nationalist idol to be a musical genius. Again, it’s entirely dull ambient music, not metal at all, but it deserves to be shit upon for its astounding laziness and purposelessness.
3.Asking Alexandria-Like a House on Fire
Doubling down on exactly the unflattering crossover of pop music with their significantly sanitized butt rock in their apparent quest for arena glory that started with their self-titled album back in 2017, Asking Alexandria’s bid for the big spotlight that Imagine Dragons occupies didn’t get any stronger this year with Like a House on Fire. After three or four years of aiming for this style, the band still aren’t even all that competent with the basics of fucking pop rock, which is pretty downright laughable. Honestly, for an album so high up here on my shit list, my feelings on it are more or less just that of unsurprised disappointment; as soon as I got a feel for what the band were doing with the album, I knew it was going to be a mess of predictable results. And lo and behold. This was just such a wholly inexcusably floppy paper towel of an album, and one more Asking Alexandria release I know I won’t be returning to ever again.
2.Hollywood Undead-New Empire, Vol. 2
Coming on at the last minute to get on the scoreboard, reliably, is Hollywood Undead. When I reviewed both volumes of this project earlier, I referred to them as “corporate Linkin Park”, and I stand by that 100%. This album especially showcases nothing but what an incoherent, vapid, clout-chasing act they are, with such a corny, focus-grouped sound that sounds like it was made in a lab by a bunch of out-of-touch boomers. God, they could’ve been safe too if they had left it with the more tolerable first volume back in January, but this follow-up sequel from just this month was exactly why I had avoided listening to the first installment in the first place. And I should’ve never played this second one either. The album opener, “Medicate”, is probably the worst song I sat through in my own volition this year, and the rest of the album doesn’t get much better. It’s nothing new for Hollywood Undead after I gave their 2017 album my award for least favorite album of that year: more unfitting interplay between machismo posturing Eminem-cosplay and the sappiest, wimpiest radio rock and pop choruses; more cringy tough-guy struggle bars; more forgettable-at-best instrumentals. Congrats again, Hollywood Undead, you made one of the worst albums of the year once again.
But even worse than Hollywood Undead is an album that I feel like is already so legendarily bad, that there is no other album that could’ve been sat here. It had to be this one.
1.Six Feet Under-Nightmares of the Decomposed
Shitty metal bands everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief any year Six Feet Under decide to put out new music because any album they release is just about bound to end up as everyone’s #1 worst album of the year, and boy is that guarantee becoming more and more airtight with each successive release. It’s truly astounding too how Six Feet Under manages to outdo themselves every time. I don’t even want to think about what could possibly come after Nightmares of the Decomposed; we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. But for now, holy fermented shit, this thing is not just bad, it’s like the holy grail of terrible TERRIBLE albums and I don’t want to know what kind of apocalyptically despicable album Chris Barnes and company could possibly conjure to outdo this one. And make no mistake, it’s still Chris Barnes dragging this band down. I gave this album a 1/10 instead of a 0/10 because there was at least a sliver of salvageable instrumentation on it, as thin of a sliver as it was, a few halfway decent musical ideas of you squinted hard enough. The instrumentalists are checked out and clearly just participating for the paycheck, but I can’t even imagine what kind of professional instrumental performance could possibly overshadow the embarrassment that Chris Barnes put to tape in the studio here. Maybe that says it, because it honestly sounds utterly unprofessional. It’s baffling how this got through management and sound engineering to be released to the public because I don’t think I’ve ever even heard any amateur high school band’s vocalist sound this bad. Vocal ingenuity is generally something to be applauded in the metal world, and pioneers like Randy Blythe, Dani Filth, and Travis Ryan deserve all the praise they get for their innovation with dirty metal vocals, yet what Chris Barnes has “invented” here on Nightmares of the Decomposed to compensate for his continually-deteriorating vocals is just sad. The man simply cannot perform highs anymore, clearly, and the alternative is this fucking comical, cartoonish squealing that sounds more like a bratty toddler gargling their own snot than it does anything fitting for a death metal record, even a death metal record at stupid and cheesy as Nightmares of the Decomposed. Chris Barnes should be thankful that metal is not a sport and that there’s not nearly as much of an abundance of performance statistics to point to and analyze to see what kind of records are broken in a legendarily awful performance. I feel like if there were any kind of performance stats to pull up, this album would have to break some kinds of records. Like this is worse than that 7-1 Germany-Brazil World Cup game, this would be like if the Brazilian team all got unholy levels of blazed and repeatedly scored on themselves because they kept going the wrong way and kicking the ball into their own net, and then pissing their fucking shorts. Even in 7-1 defeat, Brazil had more dignity than Chris Barnes here. Six Feet Under and their label have to know they are a laughing stock and that people will listen to them at this point for the sheer entertainment value of how mind-blowingly awful they sound. It’s not an illegitimate marketing tactic, and it’s the only explanation I can come up with for how this passed inspection. If that’s their mission, to be a spectacle and instill cringe in death metal fans in a regular ritual of comically stupid performances across every successive album, they’re sure doing it, and I guess this baffling headache-trophy is their well-earned prize. Congratulations Six Feet Under, you did it again! Worst metal album of the year.
