The Ten Worst Albums by Ten Brilliant Bands-A Difference Of Opinion

Louder Sound dropped the ball on this.

Deep Purple
The Battle Rages On
Slaves And Masters

KI$$
Carnival Of Souls
Carnival Of Souls

Led Zeppelin
Celebration Day
The Song Remains The Same

Rolling Stones
Emotional Rescue
Bridges To Babylon

Pink Floyd
Soundtrack to the movie More
The Final Cut

Jethro Tull
The Jethro Tull Christmas Album
Under Wraps

Queen
Made In Heaven
Hot Space

Bob Segar
Noah
Brand New Morning

Eagles
On The Border
Long Road Out Of Eden

Kinks
School Boys In Disgrace
Phobia

For Deep Purple, if you look at the Ian Gillan era only, then perhaps The Battle Rages On is the least of the albums.  The last of the Roger Glover produced albums, it shows the clashes of style between Richie Blackmore who always wanted to dominate the band the way that he did with Rainbow, but as long as Gillan was part of Deep Purple,that wasn't going to happen.  It is a hard listen if you stopped listening to Purple.  However Steve Morse, not only saved Deep Purple but turned them into a long lasting band that made good to great albums, Purpledicular, the 1996 album is as good as Burn and perhaps Machine Head.   The worst Purple album was Slaves And Masters, to which Blackmore did turn them into the New Rainbow with Joe Lynn Turner taking over for Gillan on vocals.  To these ears, it sounds like uninspired Foreigner, and the worst use of Ian Paice on drums.

The only time I agreed with Louder Sound was Carnival Of Souls from Kiss, by then they were trying to join the grunge music scene and failed miserably, and getting hack producer Toby Wright didn't help much.  Psycho Circus , the so called comeback album with Ace and Peter was false advertising and can be considered just as bad.  But Into The Void was the only song performed by the original Kiss band which saves that from being the worst.  Kiss and grunge simply didn't mix

There are no bad Led Zeppelin albums, so basically Celebration Day got the nod for worst.  It shows that time and age and lowered Robert Plant's banshee vocals and a step down musically made Zep more metal than usual.  But even Robert Plant knew that Zep couldn't return back to the old daze and after this 2006 performance steered clear from Zep reunions.  But if you want real bombast, the original two LP Song Remains The Same is that.  The bonus tracks added to the CD does chop the Spinal Tap factor in half.

Rolling Stones-Emotional Rescue was a half assed effort and it did ushered in the era that the Stones quit making good albums and going for the dollars.  The Stones could make sloppiness into an art and Summer Romance and Where The Boys Go  are as punk rock as they ever got.  Jagger's infatuation with the Bee Gees high falsetto is noted on the title track, and She's So Cold is so much fun.  Alas, Keith Richards' vocal contributions to Indian Girl and All About You are turds and the record was doomed from the start with Dance Part 1.  The Stones nadir remains Bridges To Babylon, to which they discovered Techno (with disastrous results).

Pink Floyd's More soundtrack always gets dragged over the coals but I find it more listenable compared to The Final Cut.  The Nile Song gets closed to metal and Quicksilver points the way toward Ummagumma.  Before Roger Waters sucked all the fun out of Floyd, More shows a playfulness that Pink Floyd had even after Syd Barrett left.

Picking the Christmas album for Jethro Tull reveals laziness from Louder Sound.  Basically the last Tull album, it's a rare album that you can listen to all year.  Under Wraps should have been a Ian Anderson solo album but the 80's drums make it hard to listen to.  You can make a case for Rock Island or the lackluster From Roots To Branches but for Christmas albums, The Tull Christmas Album is a seasonal fave.

Queen's Made In Heaven turned to be the Freddie Mercury Memorial Album and it's taking the easy way out for posting the worst album.  Hot Space is a chore to listen through, maybe even more so than Made In Heaven.

It's interesting how Noah got picked as worst album from Bob Seger.  In fact, that record comes from a trio of forgotten Seger albums that have fallen out of print. After the underground success of Ramblin Gamblin Man, somebody decided that Tom Neme should write and sing most of the songs. Alas, the best songs were written and sang by Bob (Noah, Death Row). With Neme's goofy love songs, I can see why Seger disavowed Noah.  But then again, there's It's  A Mystery, probably the worst of the Silver Bullet Band era, but I'll go with the acoustically driven and sleep inducing Brand New Morning.  Bob's attempt to be John Denver I gather.

Another disagreement is On The Border, but this album showed the Eagles are in transition, going away from the country rock that put them in the league as Poco (unlike Poco, The Eagles had more friendlier sounding songs).  Don Felder's arrival would set the stage on the next album One Of These Nights.  If you go with the worst, you could argue for The Long Run, which imploded the band but Long Road Out Of Eden is two CDs of a lack of direction that was crying out for Don Felder, who by then got ousted by Don Henley n Glenn Frey. 


The omit is Alice Cooper.  Goes To Hell was chosen as worst AC album.  I have never that big of a AC fan, so I opted to replace Alice with The Kinks with worst album and what they would have picked.  School Boys In Disgrace was the last the soap opera concept albums that took the Kinks in parody territory.   School Boys is considered their least album before Ray decided to drop the concept albums and go back to writing rock albums with no theme.  The CD age showed The Kinks took advantage of the new format to make what would have been 2 record sets of ho hum material. The Columbia era consisted of a EP and a overblown album that made School Boys In Disgrace, Lola.  For the sake of the matter, neither Ray or Dave made another listenable album.

So it goes, another ten listings to debate.  Next time, OK Computer, hype or overhype.