The Worst/Most Disappointing Albums Of 2021

I have a bit of a reputation for hating everything, which isn't true, but I know where it comes from. I am not one of those people who holds back when I don't like something, nor am I going to sound like I'm in love if something is merely good, so I tend to sound far mroe negative than a lot of people who talk about music. I don't necessarily mind that, since I also am of the belief that if someone only doles out praise, it isn't very valuable. Hearing both sides, and knowing that the people you're listening to have standards things need to live up to, is the sort of thing that makes praise worth considering.

That being said, there are of course albums throughout a year that are either hugely disappointing, or nearly unlistenable. This is the day when I sum up the year's worst moments, in both of those categories. Let's begin with...

The Worst Albums:

5. MSG - Immortal

Michael Schenker has been putting out bland albums for years, and they continue to get worse as the voices he brings along wear out with age. Everything about their record sounds tired; the writing, the playing, and the singing. Schenker is regarded as one of the best lead guitar players ever, and these records are beginning to sound like nothing more than vehicles for that purpose. To be perfectly honest, I had even forgotten this album came out in 2021, that's how memorable it is.

4. KK's Priest - Sermons Of The Sinner

I am not a Judas Priest fan, but even that couldn't prepare me for the head-slapping boredom that is this spin-off band. KK Downing shows why he is the only person who has missed his presence in Judas Priest, turning out an album of second-rate heavy metal that hits on all the cliches. Ripper Owens delivers another anonymous performance, complete with occasional painful shrieking. The riffs are pedestrian, but inoffensive. The biggest issue are the lyrics, which spend most of the album talking about being metal, the greatness of metal, and other assorted bragging about how manly and awesome KK is for how long and how well he's been metal. It's weak, pathetic, and embarrassing that a man in his 60s still needs to bluster like that.

3. Leprous - Aphelion

Leprous has been making odd albums for a while now, but they have never gone so far down the path of being actively annoying. The angular structures and icy production are off-putting on their own, but the vocal approach taken through the record is what makes this album so disturbingly bad. Einar is trying to make a pop record, but he does so with a warbling falsetto tone that I would pick second to nails on a chalkboard, to go along with melodies that might be interesting if you saw them written on a staff. Hearing them, though, is a good case for wearing earplugs in your own home, and not just for loud concerts. This is an album I truly don't understand the intent of.

2. Steven Wilson  - The Future Bites

I understand that Steven Wilson is tired of making prog records, and that's fine. I understand that he wants to make a record with a more mainstream appeal, and that's fine. But he went and made an 80s pop record that has absolutely no pop to it whatsoever. This sounds to me like Steven trying to make the same shift from prog to pop that Phil Collins made with his solo career coming out of Genesis, but Steven isn't a good enough songwriter in this world. He seems to have no idea what makes a pop melody shine, which leaves this record sounding like an empty shell someone has extracted the candy from. A wrapper does shine, but it's supposed to contain something we actually want. This record doesn't.

1. The Offspring - Let The Bad Times Roll

I don't even know where to begin with this one. The production sounds muddy and cheap, and that's the best thing about it. Dexter's voice is utterly unrecognizable on the first song, and sounds damaged even after that. But what really pisses me off is that after a decade of waiting for a new record, The Offspring give us an album with two filler pieces, two more songs that had been previously released as singles, and a remake of their own song, just so they could try to one up Five Finger Death Punch's cover. When you boil it down, there's barely any new music on this record, and what is here is barely adequate. This album feels like an afterthought, something thrown together to get the fans to stop asking for new music. They got that part right. After listening to this album, I'm not going to want to hear anything new from them. I'm tired of being insulted.

The Most Disappointing Albums:

5. Daughtry - Dearly Beloved

I love the first two Daughtry albums. I won't apologize for that, because they are brilliant pop/rock records. He lost the plot along the way, when he decided to try to stay relevant and modernize his sound, so when the singles sounded like this could be a return to form, I was excited. What's disappointing is that I can hear the attempt, but he only goes halfway. There are elements of the old Daughtry sound on the record, and roughly half of it could go in the right direction, but they never commit to the direction, and the strains of modernity encroach from the other half of the record. It would have been an average album if it hadn't raised my expectations. For that, it must suffer.

4. Heart Healer - The Metal Opera

Magnus Karlsson has written a ton of great melodic metal songs, so what was promised to be his most epic project yet should have been a highlight of the year. Instead, what we ended up with was an album that collapsed under the weight of its concept. Metal Operas are difficult, and one trying to be as orchestrated as this can be even harder. In building such an epic sounding world, Magnus' usual melodic strengths got shunted to the back of the line, resulting in a collection of songs with less hooks and appeal than either of the albums he wrote last year. And when they is coupled by the cast of the usual singers, most of whom are not unique enough to make the characters stand apart, the whole thing becomes a long slog through material I know should have been far better. This is about as boring a record as he has ever been responsible for.

3. Foo Fighters - Medicine At Midnight

I shouldn't be disappointed in this one. Foo Fighters haven't made an album that's really impressed me since "Wasting Light", but what they are always able to do is at least come up with one single that I can add to a playlist of Foo Fighters classics. They are a singles band, after all, which makes it all the worse that there isn't any song on this album I hear as a great single. The entirety of the album is bland, blander, and questionable. To release such a forgettable record in the same year as their Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame induction is only more disappointing, because it puts back in the forefront of our mind how many great songs the band has.

2. Adele - 30

This record had an impossible task. It had to follow a record breaking album that also grew into perhaps the most timeless pop record of the last twenty years. "25" was Adele's masterpiece, showing her to be the most important artist in popular music. Anything that came after would struggle to live up to those standards, and having the secondary burden of being a divorce album, I shouldn't be surprised how disappointed I was in the results. Adele's healthy processing of her relationship has led to her being happier, but her music being less interesting. These songs don't have the burning pain that fueled her biggest songs, and that's even heard in how much of the record is sung with a softer voice. Without heartbreak, without that shared experience, her music has never sounded as old-fashioned as it is. Or as dull.

1. Transatlantic - The Absolute Universe

My favorite prog band pissed me off this year. This album is good, but not this album. Let me explain this again. There are two versions of this album, with different songs and performances between them. That means neither version contains all the best parts I want to hear when I listen to the record. It's disappointing they couldn't decide what form the album should take, because it meant we got saddled with needing to buy two versions of the record, when neither one is what most of us would consider the best possible track listing. Having to assemble my own version, which is unofficial and only listened to by me, is infuriating. This album could have been on my top albums list, if there was a version of the album I wasn't disappointed was missing something important. They shot themselves in the foot, and then tried to tell us the resulting hole was the stigmata. Nope. It was a bad decision that made a good album bad, and that's depressing, not just disappointing.