machine head

What makes a truly awful metal album? It’s not just a lack of riffs, awful production, or quarter-assed vocal takes. Most of these records suffer from overdosing on compromise, whether it’s hopelessly chasing a trendy sound or a failure to age gracefully; others have visions more realized yet too noxious to raise the horns with any pride. It shouldn’t shock you that most of these albums were released in the late 90s to the early 2000s – metal’s crisis years when older bands couldn’t make sense (or were outright hostile towards) nu-metal and what was left of alternative rock, and before the MTV2 Headbangers Ball revival both spread metalcore around the world and reignited a lot of older thrashers’ careers. Those really were the Dark Ages. Metal should make you want to sin for the greater go...