It doesn't get said enough, but artists are human just like us. They are capable of magnificence, but expecting greatness from bands at all times is an unrealistic target to set for our heroes. As such, even the best bands in heavy metal have some woeful albums in their catalog.
If the eerie opening to Black Sabbath's debut album is considered the originator of heavy metal, the genre is quickly approaching its 60th anniversary. The best metal bands have provided millions of fans across the world a place to purge their feelings, but this list is not about that. For all their strengths, metal's greatest bands have released some terrible music. Lots of it, actually, and these are the very worst albums put out by genuinely incredible metal bands.
10 Slayer
Diabolus In Musica (1998)
Slayer belong to thrash metal's Big Four. Filling their songs with violent imagery, serial killers, and Satan, and making it their brand to play thrash metal faster and harder than anyone else, the '80s were a great time to be in Slayer. As with so many other bands who started life in the decade of big riffs and bigger hair, the '90s were not kind to the aging metal-heads. Slayer proved no exception.
Embracing the trends of the time, Diabolus in Musica is comfortably Slayer's biggest misfire. Down-tuning their guitars to fit in with the nu metal movement, alarm bells started ringing when lead single "Stain Of Mind" sounded like Coal Chamber's "Loco" without the speed and conviction. The band traded in singing about Ed Gein to write a song about rugby ("Scrum"). The album's creepy artwork is perhaps the only redeeming quality, as Slayer bumbled their way through the late '90s, until the metalcore movement inadvertently made them relevant again.
9 Killswitch Engage
Atonement (2019)
When it took over heavy music in the 2000s, much of metalcore was too whiny for the existing metal audience. Such accusations never fit Killswitch Engage, as the band made up of of Overcast and Aftershock played hulking trad-metal riffs and had a singer in Jesse Leach, who had a grittier, more authentic voice than a lot of the bands of the time. They have a couple of legitimate classic albums, but Killswitch Engage's more recent albums have failed to impress.
After roaring back with the outstanding Disarming The Descent, Jesse Leach's second phase in the band has been creatively uninspiring. No album encapsulates this like the tired, disappointing Atonement. Flat and devoid of the ionate power that fuels their best work, it feels like a box-ticking exercise of everything Killswitch do well, delivered in the most mediocre way possible. With six years to do better, 2025's The Consequence is not much better, as Killswitch are seemingly going through the motions in the modern era.
8 Avenged Sevenfold
Hail To The King (2013)
It's an interesting question to ask, but can a world-class title track stop an album from being terrible? Avenged Sevenfold's song, "Hail To The King," understood the mission perfectly. The band sat on the cusp of being festival headliners, among a crop of their generation's bands who were perennial openers unable to make the jump to the top of the bill. A7X surgically implanted parts of every "classic" metal band they liked in place of their own personality, in a bid to overthrow the bands they watched go on after them. For five minutes and five seconds (and the hell-raising opener, "Shepherd Of Fire"), it worked impeccably.
The harsh truth is Hail To The King is the only moment Avenged betrayed their identity. It has the difficult caveat of being the first album after the loss of their childhood friend and key songwriter, Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan. It takes out all of the band's charm, eccentricities, personality and musical variation, and replaces it with a collection of songs that fawn over the bands they wanted respect from. The band's latest album is among their best work, so it is a tale that at least has a happy ending.
7 Trivium
Vengeance Falls (2013)
In recent years, Trivium have become very easy to champion. Their early release Ascendency is largely regarded as a classic, and since then they have never stopped improving their skills or adding to their arsenal. Their recent albums have something for fans of all subgenres, and Matt Heafey is one of the most natural leaders in 21st-century metal. But then there's Vengeance Falls.
Trivium had vitriol thrown their way for years over the "actually not that bad" follow-up to Ascendency, The Crusade, but it is the David Draiman-produced Vengeance Falls is the band's only actively bad material. Disturbed are a hard rock powerhouse with a very unique sound, with Draiman's musicality at its center. When his distinct ear was paired with Trivium's trad-leaning metal attack, it went together as well as peanut butter and gravel. Even the album's best song, "Strife," hasn't been in the band's setlist since 2022.
6 Iron Maiden
Virtual XI (1998)
Sometimes, it feels like a fever dream that Iron Maiden had a period that separates Bruce Dickinson's enormously successful eras. While the spiky, confrontational tone of Paul Di'Anno's vocals have an important place in Maiden's history, the period in which Blaze Bayley occupied the microphone is a much tougher sell. Much, much, much tougher.
With their burly rugby-club mentality, Iron Maiden's fanbase are so ionate that they take over cities with their colors when the band come to town. Those diehards are the only people devoted enough to see past what an unadulterated turkey of an album Virtual XI is. Bloated, pompous, and a pale imitation of the characteristics that make Maiden one of metal's most important bands, the band's cinematic vision is replaced by a dodgy CD-Rom look at Virtual Reality and all of the ghastly late-'90s Microsoft Encarta-esque imagery you'd expect with it.
5 Korn
III: Who You Are (2010)
Johnny Cash's soul-searching musical expedition with Rick Rubin was all the rage in the early part of the 2000s. There was a principle that millionaire artists needed to reconnect with who they were when they made their most vital work. As Korn's line-up became unstable and their music declined, Korn turned to Ross Robinson to recapture their fire. After all, on their first run of albums together, this combo of producer and band changed the face of heavy music forever.
Reuniting in 2010, Korn and Robinson were in different headspaces. The grizzly reality is that Robinson is a creative maverick with a very unique and provocative way of working, and it's hard to convince someone who's never going to have to work again to put in the required effort when they don't want to. Korn III: Who You Are is not worthy of the band's name, as it sounds like a high school band being tasked to write songs that sound like Korn.
4 Rob Zombie
Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor (2013)
Spreading himself across movies, animation, and music, Rob Zombie is a never-stopping hub of creative energy. He knows who he is, what he likes and what he produces, and his audience are largely fine with that. There is a case to argue for Zombie no longer caring about his music as much as his other pursuits, and even the title of Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor sounds like a man who cannot be bothered.
There were telltale signs that music wasn't as important to Rob Zombie in these years, including majorly scaling down the spectacle of his live show. "Teenage Nosferatu Pussy," "Rock And Roll (In A Black Hole)," and "Ging Gang Gong De Do Gong De Laga Raga" sound like drunk people coming up with fake-but-funny Zombie song titles. This man wrote Hellbilly Deluxe and fronted Astro-Creep 2000. It is disingenuous to suggest Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor has the same level of care and attention as those records.
3 Bullet For My Valentine
Temper Temper (2013)
It is not an exaggeration to suggest that Temper Temper is so bad it derailed Bullet For My Valentine's trajectory forever. The previous album, the excellent Hot Topic-flavored Hard Rock Fever, saw the band headline the world-famous Wembley Arena on the final night of its touring cycle. They were ed by Bring Me The Horizon, and it was the biggest show played by a new British hard rock or metal band since Def Leppard. Prior to that, The Poison and Scream, Aim, Fire were both received rapturously.
It is genuinely as if Matt Tuck temporary lost his songwriting abilities. Nothing BFMV released has been as bad, before it or since. To call it amateur in its delivery, ambition, and quality would be an insult to amateur bands everywhere, as every lick of this features none of the star appeal or hooks of the preceding albums. The lumpen material across this record was so disastrous for the band, that Bullet For My Valentine never fully recovered their reputation.
2 Megadeth
Risk (1999)
It isn't a wild leap to suggest that nu metal is everything Dave Mustaine is not. Nu metal is playful, fun, and doesn't take itself too seriously. Dave is curmudgeonly, dour, and he is not one of life's jokers. Of all the shredders thrown for a loop by the sea change that happened in metal, Megadeth's Risk is the worst album put out by a member of The Big Four.
Of all of the crimes committed on this musical atrocity, Megadeth manage to make heavy metal boring. The never-ending "Prince Of Darkness," the cringeworthy repetition of "Insomnia," and the boogie-woogie awfulness of "Seven" are just a few examples of the dull, meandering nonsense churned out by Mustaine and his employees. For an amazing band, Megadeth have more than a few bad records, but Risk is comfortably the worst of them all.
1 Slipknot
The End, So Far (2022)
One of the most important metal bands in the genre's history, few bands have had as much immediate impact as Slipknot. An 18-legged mayhem machine out of a nowhere town in Iowa, Slipknot formed a bond in blood with their audience in 1999, built on the ion for creativity and catharsis through artistic release. It is not an exaggeration to say that the men who made the band's sensational debut album would be ashamed of The End, So Far.
The End, So Far is a pompous and directionless dirge. Slipknot are so far from their original mission statement on this record that the distance cannot be measured. Songs like "The Chapeltown Rag" and "Warranty" don't feel vital or hungry. They sound desperate and out of touch. While "Scissors" and "Vermillion" feel haunting and unsettling, "Yen" is bland and offers nothing of substance. Slipknot themselves don't seem to believe in this album either, with only three of the songs ever being put into the setlist in the years since its release.
