2011: (Your) Most Disappointing Albums of the Year?

[LCArenas]

I'm curious to know. 2011 was a good year for music in which a lot of DTF's favorite artists released albums. Now that the year is coming to an end, which albums were not as good as you expected? They don't necessarily need to be bad, just disappointing.

I'll start:

Symphony X - Iconoclast
This album is not bad, but I expected another direction from SX. The albums that got me hooked to them were Divine Wings of Tragedy, Twilight in Olympus and V. The problem with Iconoclast is that it lacks a lot of the things that got me into them. One of those things is Russell Allen's current voice. Back then, Russell's voice could be heavy and, "graspy" (?) when he wanted to, but could be soft and melodic as well; he did both well. Now his voice only seems suitable for the first style of singing (That's one of the main reasons why I didn't like his work in Adrenaline Mob AT ALL). The other thing was the... "Symphonic" part of Symphony X. I've always appreciated the heavy part of SX, but in this album it seems that they've gone full Prog Metal style. I've heard some Groove Metal influences here and there, (Even some djent-y kinds of riffs, throw rocks at me, but I sure hear it) and that's not bad at all; But I miss the symphonic SX a lot. I even liked some songs of the album! End of Innocence, Electric Messiah, When all is Lost... As I've said, this album is not terrible, it's just that I find it far from being the SX I liked, and to be honest, I find it really uninspiring.

dredg - Chuckles and Mr. Squeezy
Yeah, a lot of people might agree with me in this one. This is also not a bad album at all; It's just "meh". I can appreciate parts of "meh" albums, but this a "meh" album that is coming from a band whose past 3 albums were mind-blowing (I think I don't need to point out how awesome they were). My problem with the album is not that it's different, the problem is, like Iconoclast, that it's uninspiring. It just sounds bland. There are some good songs here and there, Before it Began, Another Tribe, Where I'll End Up, The Ornament (Previous live versions are far superior, though), I might even like The Thought of Losing you. But for the rest... I don't know. Not really into them. Maybe it's because I had high expectations from this album.

Keep in mind that all the posts here will be opinions, so !

[BlobVanDam]

Arch Enemy - Khaos Legions
Their last couple of albums have been weaker, but they've always still had some killer songs to redeem them. This is the first Arch Enemy album that doesn't have a single song I that grabbed me. It's not bad, there's just nothing distinctive at all on it.

And Opeth, but that's enough said there.

[Gorille85]

dredg, Mastodon and to a certain extent Dir en grey.

[Dr. DTVT]

I'll kind of agree on the Symphony X.  It's not in my top 20 of the year, and depending on how my last haul or two goes could fall out of the top 25.

I'll add a few:

Opeth, as I expect anything they release to be top 10 or better, and Heritage is currently outside my top 15 and never got any traction into my rotation.  I preferred the retro stylings of Pain of Salvation more.

The Tangent's "Comm" failed to recapture the magic of their first 4 albums.  Too many line-up changes and its starting to feel like its being forced and not inspired.

and, I realized I'm going to get killed for this...but Devin Townsend's Ghost.  I listened to that album 3 times, and can honestly say I haven't felt like even revisiting it.  I'm not saying its bad, it's just not what I'm interested in musically.

[KevShmev]

dredg and Radiohead.  The dredg album just has very little that has any staying power, and the Radiohead, while very good, is very underwhelming after the greatness of In Rainbows. 

[The King in Crimson]

Opeth is at the top of my list. Heritage is not a bad album, but it's a pretty boring one. It has some standout songs, but listening to it as a whole just doesn't work. I lose interest around Nepenthe and then it meanders for a few songs until Folklore, then it gets pretty good... for one song. The production doesn't help either, everything sounds so lifeless.  The songs were so much better live, so much more energy, better dynamics, just so much better.

I feel kinda bad for putting Mastodon up here too, but The Hunter is kind of disappointing after the greatness of Crack the Skye. The album is incredibly consistent. I wouldn't call a single song bad, but it has nothing that really stands out and I don't think many of the songs will hold up as well as their previous catalog. It's good, just not great.

and, I realized I'm going to get killed for this...but Devin Townsend's Ghost.  I listened to that album 3 times, and can honestly say I haven't felt like even revisiting it.  I'm not saying its bad, it's just not what I'm interested in musically.

I'll agree with this though, since I've only listened to it twice I don't feel as sure with my opinion of it yet, but I honestly don't remember a single thing from the album. Nothing. It was just pure background noise.

[Perpetual Change]

dredg, for all the reasons already stated.

Road Salt 2 as well. If the best stuff from RS1 and 2 were combined to one disc, it might actually be pretty good. However, instead we got an album that, in my opinion, was more of the same of the first one, only worse in certain ways. It's really time for PoS to move away from the whole 60/70's rock gimmick now.

[Nic35]

dredg

[sonatafanica]

i would say dream theater but i didn't expect much out of it anyway

but still it didn't have to be so bad.

[Fluffy Lothario]

Opeth - Heritage. Akerfeldt, gripped by a midlife crisis, tries to go arty and forgets how to write a decent song along the way.

Radiohead - The King of Limbs. Thom Yorke's as dreary as ever, and this time, insufferably boring to boot.

Bic Runga - Belle. Five or six years without an album, and she returns with half an hour of fairly lackluster stuff, for the most part.

[MK_Ultra]

Opeth and Mastodon have already been said, but I might put Trivium there as well, seeing as I'm not sure if the album is 'incredibly consistent' or 'incredibly samey'. I probably expected more after the greatness of Shogun as well.

[Zydar]

Opeth. Although I'm slowly warming up to it, it still isn't anywhere near my favourite Opeth albums.

[Zantera]

dredg and Radiohead.  The dredg album just has very little that has any staying power, and the Radiohead, while very good, is very underwhelming after the greatness of In Rainbows.

I agree with all of this pretty much.

[comfortablydumb]

I'd have to say the new Primus album.  It simply sucks! Hard!

[Sigz]

Protest the Hero and BTBAM.

[Phantasmatron]

Opeth.  It was just...boring.  Not bad, just...boring.  Not what I've come to expect from them, at least not lately.  I find some of their earlier stuff boring, but the last several albums were all very good at not boring me to death.

Combo breaker, I guess.

[The Dark Master]

Queensryche - Dedicated to Chaos:

While it would be gross understatement to say that the once-great Ryche has suffered a serious decline ever since losing their musical direction sometime in the mid-90's followed by the departure of chief songwriter Chris DeGarmo, their most recent artistic abortion, Dedicated to Chaos was still a very unpleasant surprise of mediocrity.  But DTC both much more, and much less, then simply a bad album by former prog-metal titans.  Dedicated to Chaos was a nauseating apotheosis of sorts, because this album proves once and for all that Queensryche is so far lost, primarily due to lead singer Geoff Tate's dislike of everything that once made this band good, combined with the apparent apathy of the other remaining members,  that any hope of them ever making another half way decent hard rock record a la 2009's American Solider, let alone something that even approaches the sheer mastery of epics like Operation: Mindcrime and Empire, is long since gone.   Among the album's 16 tracks, there was only one that would have even been good enough to be filler material or more likely a b-side on a previous QR record, even by the relatively lax standards on other post-DeGarmo releases.  DTC is proof positive that Queensryche has sunk so low that they will never see the light of day ever again, let alone approach their former brilliance of ages past.  This band has buried themselves with pointless stylistic middling and a career killing mid-life crisis the likes of which would be spectacular to observe if it weren't so heartbreaking to consider all the promise and potential that was forfeited.

[indalo]

Megadeth.

I love Megadeth, one of my favourite bands and I think all their cds are good/great cds. And TH1RT3EN is not a bad cd but it's very very poor... old songs, uninspired riffs, very strange production with very different sound between songs... I think it was made without enough dedication, only to end their contract (I think TH1RT3N ended their contrat  ).

Resume: not a bad album buy veeeeeeeeeeery disappointing. Not bad but their worst.

[wolfking]

Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn of Events:  This just didn't do anything for me.  I felt the songs were quite plain and boring and the vocal melodies were lacking.  There are albums this year that I dislike more, but this one is the one that disappointed me the most.

[jcmoorehead]

Opeth - Heritage is up there, it isn't a bad album by any means but I feel it has a few good songs and the rest I don't really care too much about. Fully appreciate what they tried to do but it's just lacks any overall punch.

Aside from that I haven't listened to much else that has disappointed me, I haven't heard the new Symphony X, Iced Earth or Megadeth yet so there is still time but I feel those might have to wait until next year.

[necrotomist]

Opeth, Heritage for sure. Not that it blows... If anything, the way it's recorded and all is at least worth some major respect.. But the songs just don't stand out and to hear that from one of my all time fav. bands makes me sad.

[Lowdz]

i would say dream theater but i didn't expect much out of it anyway

but still it didn't have to be so bad.

Are you sure they didn't put the Arch/Mattheos in your ADTOE box instead? That one was awful- samey, heard-it-all-before music, then that voice on top... awful.

And Queensryche's DTC. I wasn't expecting greatness after the last 18 years to be honest, but even with such low expectations I was disappointed.

[wolfking]

i would say dream theater but i didn't expect much out of it anyway

but still it didn't have to be so bad.

Are you sure they didn't put the Arch/Mattheos in your ADTOE box instead? That one was awful- samey, heard-it-all-before music, then that voice on top... awful.

lol wut?

[Mladen]

Symphony X

Just not what I want to hear from this band, sorry. A couple of good songs and cool riffs, but still my least favorite release of theirs.

[ThroughHerEyesDude6]

3 Doors Down - Time of my Life
When I listen to it, I don't hear anything that stands out as it should. 3DD is better than this and I kind of expecting something of the same capacity as their self titled album. I was pretty disappointed with it.

Opeth - Heritage
Although I like it now, when I first heard it, I was livid. Dude7 knows all about this. I was confused, angry, and I kinda felt robbed. Now I see it for what it is, but not at first.

That's it. Otherwise I enjoyed errthing else I picked up.

[TAC]

Alice Cooper-Welcome 2 My Nightmare

Honestly, I didn't have high expectations for this album, especially after hearing I'll Bite Your Face Off from the last tour. An absolutely brutal title and chorus. I loved Alice's delivery, sound, and character in his voice, but the songs are just not there. Something ridiculous called The Underture closes the album, which is basically an instrumental mash up of the original Nightmare. Might've made more sense to open the album with this.

Unfortunately, I stopped getting excited for a new Alice album many years ago. In the last two decades, he's really only released a couple of good albums and the rest have all been wastes of time. He's basically been touring the same set for the last dozen years.

[Genowyn]

Protest the Hero and BTBAM.

what

[Accelerando]

I'll have to say Coldplay. I really, really liked Viva La Vida, but their new album, Mylo Xyloto, really feels like there is a lack of coherence

[kirksnosehair]

Symphony X - "Iconoclast"
I had hoped that Symphony X would resurrect the Symphonic side of their writing, but unfortunately we were treated to another fairly generic-sounding progmetal album that fully wastes Russell Allen's vocal talents by having him sound like he's been gargling with broken glass on most of these tracks.    This one was the final straw for me with Symphony X and they've been removed from my automatic purchase list.  I also won't be purchasing physical media from them in the future and will instead download from Amazon.com if they can manage to put together something that interests me next time.  I'm not holding my breath, though.

Opeth - "Heritage"
Monumentally boring free-jazz noodling dominates the middle of this snooze-fest with some pretty cool tracks in the beginning and end.  I get what they were trying to do, I guess, and I actually prefer the singing to all of the silly growling that usually accompanies their albums, but this just too big of a change for me.  I don't listen to Opeth for this.  I listen to Opeth because they typically amaze me with bone-crushing riffs and brutal onslaughts of savagely delivered heavy metal interwoven with beautiful acoustic passages.  It was the contrasts that made Opeth special.  Without those contrasts, they are a bland progrock band with great potential being wasted.

I don't pay attention to Queensryche, Megadeth or Pain of Salvation any more and based on what I've heard about their releases, I've made a good decision there.

[lordxizor]

Dredg without a doubt. Highly anticipated and pretty terrible.

[ZKX-2099]

Opeth is at the top of my list. Heritage is not a bad album, but it's a pretty boring one. It has some standout songs, but listening to it as a whole just doesn't work. I lose interest around Nepenthe and then it meanders for a few songs until Folklore, then it gets pretty good... for one song. The production doesn't help either, everything sounds so lifeless.  The songs were so much better live, so much more energy, better dynamics, just so much better.

I feel kinda bad for putting Mastodon up here too, but The Hunter is kind of disappointing after the greatness of Crack the Skye. The album is incredibly consistent. I wouldn't call a single song bad, but it has nothing that really stands out and I don't think many of the songs will hold up as well as their previous catalog. It's good, just not great.

Thank you for posting exactly what I was going to say..... fucking Heritage...

[Jaq]

Definitely Opeth. It's been out for ages now, I've listened to it a lot, and I still think Heritage is a disorganized mess of awful songwriting with far too much emphasis of "Opeth plays 70s prog" and far too little emphasis on actually making interesting songs.

Not sure I get the hate for Iconoclast, though. The band's been following that through-line musically since about Twilight, getting heavier with each album, but to me they still sound like Symphony X. They always leaned more towards being a power-prog metal band than this symphonic prog with metal it seems a lot of people think they are.

[LCArenas]

Yeah, I might add...

Opeth - Heritage
As well. It's not like I'm some sort of "IF IT DOESN'T HAVE THEM DEATH GROWLS I AINT WASTIN MAH MONEY ON IT, DAMMIT" guy. I adore Damnation and it might be on my top 5 Opeth albums, but... I think Heritage misses some "Atmosphere". One of the reasons why I like Opeth is because you feel some kind of atmosphere with each album. It happened since My Arms, Your Hearse (Even in some parts of Morningrise). It kind of submerges you into the album and into the music and, Call me crazy, but it makes you feel the album more, instead of just sit there and hear it. That "ambient" is not present in Heritage. Some songs are boring and you can't (Or at least I can't) get into the songs well. Folklore is great mostly because it did submerge you in the song IMO. As for the rest... I liked Heritage and Marrow of the Earth, enjoyed I Feel the Dark and most part of Nepenthe; But the rest just sounded a little bit uninspired, and like I said before, void of the atmosphere I enjoyed in the rest of their albums. Again, not a bad album. I even like it more than I did when I first heard it.

[dongringo]

Queensryche - Dedicated to Chaos:

While it would be gross understatement to say that the once-great Ryche has suffered a serious decline ever since losing their musical direction sometime in the mid-90's followed by the departure of chief songwriter Chris DeGarmo, their most recent artistic abortion, Dedicated to Chaos was still a very unpleasant surprise of mediocrity.  But DTC both much more, and much less, then simply a bad album by former prog-metal titans.  Dedicated to Chaos was a nauseating apotheosis of sorts, because this album proves once and for all that Queensryche is so far lost, primarily due to lead singer Geoff Tate's dislike of everything that once made this band good, combined with the apparent apathy of the other remaining members,  that any hope of them ever making another half way decent hard rock record a la 2009's American Solider, let alone something that even approaches the sheer mastery of epics like Operation: Mindcrime and Empire, is long since gone.   Among the album's 16 tracks, there was only one that would have even been good enough to be filler material or more likely a b-side on a previous QR record, even by the relatively lax standards on other post-DeGarmo releases.  DTC is proof positive that Queensryche has sunk so low that they will never see the light of day ever again, let alone approach their former brilliance of ages past.  This band has buried themselves with pointless stylistic middling and a career killing mid-life crisis the likes of which would be spectacular to observe if it weren't so heartbreaking to consider all the promise and potential that was forfeited.

I couldn't have said it better.

[Jamesman42]

Opeth - Heritage
Within Temptation - The Unforgiving