Bands with potential that they never fulfilled

Night Prowler

Customer Deathcycle Manager
Staff member
Quite similar thread to "bands from fallen from grace" but with a different purpose. That one was more for bands that were big for a longer period of time (the way I see it).

This thread is more for bands who had great debut albums, and maybe one more after it, only to start sucking immensely, hence never becoming the "next big thing"/fulfilling their potential/living up to the hype. I'll start!

Ensiferum
IMO their first two albums are one of the best albums ever. And by that I mean, in Top 100 at least :p I'd describe it as Metallica playing folk/melodeath. Lots of influence in the riffs and production (Flemming Rasmussen produced the second one!). Yet after the second album, all members left except for one. Third album is very different, and although it has some good songs, overall it's nothing special. The next two are big failures. Nowadays, they can't capture 1% of the awesomeness of the early era of the band, live or in studio, which is quite sad.

Turisas
Again, first two albums are classics of the genre. Again, a Finnish band :p First two albums were varied, epic and bombastic. Third one was just OK. And the fourth one is a big pile of crap, and based on their attitude about it, they don't seem to realize how utterly crap it is. Also, numerous member changes after the second album made me stop care about the band altogether.
 
Annihilator. Alice in Hell (1989) was one of the best thrash metal albums ever. Ever. All killer no filler and all that. The follow-up Never, Neverland was also pretty good still. Then they became the Funny Jeff Waters Troupe and made an utter joke of themselves. A bloody waste, if you ask me.
 
Maybe not exactly the kind of band this thread is about, but one that comes to mind is Affinity, a little-known art rock band who released one album in the early seventies and then vanished, resurfacing only with a couple of archive releases decades later. I think they could have become great - save for an overlong and overdone cover of "All Along the Watchtower", their debut is consistently very good.
 
Avenged Sevenfold
Although their debut was poorly produced and pretty standard hardcore/metal/metalcore BS, Waking The Fallen was an amazing record. Sadly, everything they've done since has been trash.
 
Avenged Sevenfold
Although their debut was poorly produced and pretty standard hardcore/metal/metalcore BS, Waking The Fallen was an amazing record. Sadly, everything they've done since has been trash.
I like some of the stuff they did after, but generally I agree. Their latest album was one of the worst things I heard last year.
 
Samson. Perhaps not the debut album, but later albums and live performances showed that this band had everything to hit it big time.
Crappy management and other factors (one certain singer left the band, but before that, things didn't go that well either) fucked it all up.
 
Annihilator. Alice in Hell (1989) was one of the best thrash metal albums ever. Ever. All killer no filler and all that. The follow-up Never, Neverland was also pretty good still. Then they became the Funny Jeff Waters Troupe and made an utter joke of themselves. A bloody waste, if you ask me.

Had a song from that album downloaded through Napster back in the day. Liked it. Gonna give that album a full spin on youtube now.

Edit : seeing a tracklist now, that song is probably Allison Hell
 
Avenged Sevenfold
Although their debut was poorly produced and pretty standard hardcore/metal/metalcore BS, Waking The Fallen was an amazing record. Sadly, everything they've done since has been trash.
I agree with this as well. 'Waking the Fallen' is still one of my very favourite albums of all time, even up there with 'Piece of Mind' and 'Rust in Peace', but I wasn't happy when they decided to completely change their style. I appreciate that the vocalist may have had to change his approach to singing to avoid blowing his vocal chords but he didn't need to go all pop-punk nasally instead. The change in style of obviously motivated by more than just health or creative concerns.
 
I agree with this as well. 'Waking the Fallen' is still one of my very favourite albums of all time, even up there with 'Piece of Mind' and 'Rust in Peace', but I wasn't happy when they decided to completely change their style. I appreciate that the vocalist may have had to change his approach to singing to avoid blowing his vocal chords but he didn't need to go all pop-punk nasally instead. The change in style of obviously motivated by more than just health or creative concerns.

I honestly think the change in style was very much a health issue. He had a lot of throat problems due to incorrect singing and I think his voice was damaged by it - the natural resonance you hear on Waking the Fallen is completely gone by the next album, following his massive health issues. He seems to have finally come into his voice again on the newest album, unfortunately the songs are just really poor now.
 
Annihilator. Alice in Hell (1989) was one of the best thrash metal albums ever. Ever. All killer no filler and all that. The follow-up Never, Neverland was also pretty good still. Then they became the Funny Jeff Waters Troupe and made an utter joke of themselves. A bloody waste, if you ask me.

Thanks, Per, Alice in Hell is a great find.
 
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