THE WORST ALBUMS OF 2021

AWWW shit here we go.  List season.  And we're getting started by TAKIN' OUT THE TRASH.

Here's how this goes: The way I do Album Of The Year lists is usually I put EVERYTHING on them.  In 2021, I listened to 157 albums and I've ranked them all.  Now, to give them all a number is an exercise in futility because what's the difference between 83 and 84 really?  So instead I have a tier system, with a Top and Bottom 20, and "Meh", "Okay", "Pretty Good" and "Honorable Mentions" sections in-between.

I've made a few tweaks to this year's lists:

1) I've added the "Meh" section to the Worst Of blog because these are albums that weren't really "good" per se, so including them in the Best Of would be more inaccurate than putting them here, where it's merely hyperbolic.

2) It's a Bottom 20 instead of a Bottom 10 because I originally had a "Dishonorable Mentions" tier, but then I had 10 entries in it so I just decided to combine them.

3) I normally put the songs lists out first.  I did a Worst Songs list last year for the first time and it did well and it was fun to put together, but I just wasn't feelin' it this year.  There were only six or seven songs I could think of off the top of my head that deserved a scornful/shitpost-y write up, and eh, I didn't want to waste brain cells on them.  As for the Best Songs list, a) I don't have that put together yet and b) I have this one ready to go so I'm putting it out first.

The iron is hot, so let's brand these motherfuckers "WACK".  It's the Worst Albums Of 2021!

MEH

These albums range from "merely competent but completely uninteresting" to "good concept, bad execution" to "I liked one or two songs" to "it didn't suck enough to stand out".


Alice Cooper "Detroit Stories"
Asher Roth "The Greenhouse Effect, Vol. 3"
Ayesha Erotica "Where is that DAMN Baby? (Deluxe)"
Benny Sings "Music"
Chris Cornell "No One Sings Like You Anymore"
Clowncore "1234"
Dave Holland "Another Land"
Dee Snider "Leave A Scar"
The Doobie Brothers "Liberte"
Duckwrth "SG8*"
Durand Jones & The Indications "Private Space"
Dvne "Etemen AEnka"
Electric Six "Streets Of Gold"
Employed To Serve "Conquering"
The Flashbulb "Seven Quarantine Poems"
Green Jelly "Garbage Band Kids"
Illuminati Hotties "Let Me Do One More"
Japanese Breakfast "Jubilee" 
Limp Bizkit "Still Sucks"
Loch Vostoch "Opus Ferox - The Great Escape"
NOFX "Single Album"
Peter Frampton "Peter Frampton Forgets The Words" 
Puma Blue "In Praise Of Shadows"
Really From
Sault "Nine"
Serj Tankian "Elasticity"
Sewerslvt "Skitzofrenia Simulation"
Shelly FKA Dram
Slant "1집"
Sneaker Pimps "Squaring The Circle"
Third Eye Blind "Our Bande Apart" 
Toad The Wet Sprocket "Starting Now"
Ty Segall "Harmonizer"
Voljum "dayscapes"
Wax People
Willie Nelson "That's Life"

• "Nobody's Fault" by Benny Sings is conveniently located at the front of the album because it's not just a nominee for my Songs of the Year list, it's the only song worth a damn on the whole project.  Other one-song wonders (or one and a half I guess) include: Durand Jones, Illuminati Hotties, Japanese Breakfast, Shelly FKA Dram and Voljum.
• The Doobie Brothers album starts off well enough, but by track 3 or 4 gets unfathomably lame.  Whatever the opposite of cool is, that's it.  Dork 10,000.
• Alice Cooper is the best album in this tier.  Could've granted it mercy and bumped it up to okay, but ehhhh if you've heard the album you might feel more inclined to put it here.
• Green Jelly really sucked, but they were self-aware enough about it to juuust avoid relegation.

THE BOTTOM 20

20. Transatlantic "The Absolute Universe"

Bloated and bland.  90 minutes of waiting for something good to happen, realizing about halfway through that even if it did it was too late, and knowing that the shorter version of the album wouldn't save it because there's just nothing to write home about.  Everything is competently played, but none of it sticks out so it's just the Shredded Wheat of music, left to sit in a bowl of milk for an hour and a half and served up as room temperature paste to your ears.

19. VOLA "Witness"

Expected to like this one; their 2018 album Applause Of A Distant Crowd really caught my interest.  But the sound of this album is way too clean, the riffs bore me to tears, the harmonies don't resonate with me and there's a freakin' RAP VERSE on this prog/djent metal album from people that can not rap?  What am I supposed to do with this?  I wanted to just put this in the "Meh" pile, but I had to go and give it another chance and it was even worse the next time around.  It's not just bland, but kind of annoying on top of it.  Not really sure why, but this was one of the most frustrating listens of the year.

18. Onyx "Onyx 4 Life"

Speaking of people who shouldn't be rapping: Onyx are done.  They had a good run, and it's a shame I've gotta say this because Against All Authority from 2015 was pretty good, but between the disastrous Black Rock from 2018 and this listless, lifeless set, I don't need to hear any new jams from South Suicide Queens.

17. Four Stroke Baron "Classics"

Produced by Devin Townsend and the leadoff single "Friday Knight" was pretty decent.  What went wrong?  The whole rest of the album, that's what went wrong.  The riffs (and pace) are relentless in their repetition and the singer's whine gets old reeealy quick.  Though it might actually help to hear more of him, because he's buried in the mix.  Can barely make out a word.

16. Jimmy Edgar "Cheetah Bend"

The song with Danny Brown is good, but the rest of this is the same trap beat fed through pipe reverb with some shitty guest work.  Grating as fuck.

15. Andrew W.K. "God Is Partying"

I seem to be the only person who didn't like this album.  A lot of reviews have been glowing with praise at his new, more metallic direction, but after track two the album gets into Contemporary Christian aesthetics real quick.  I got nothing against Christian music, worship music, whatever.   It's the generic nature of a lot of it, the audio equivalent of the flavoring of a Christ wafer if you will, that turns me off.  And when it's done on instruments that sound that cheap, it's an extra layer of blah.

14. Tomahawk "Tonic Immobility"

What the fuck happened here?  I liked their 2013 album better than the Faith No More album that came out two years later.  But this is the screamy, jump around with seemingly no purpose pants-on-head Mike Patton that I can't really vibe with.  

13. Mammoth WVH 

Take the most boiler plate rock radio record you can think of and make the boiler plate version of that.  This has no soul.

12. Darkside "Spiral"

See previous entry, but replace "rock" with "house" or "techno".  (Whatever one works.)

11. Infinity Shred "EP002 (Recovery)"

See previous previous entry, but replace "rock" with "prog wank" and you get why it's two entries further down.

10. The Queers "The Queers Save The World"

The most amateur on purpose thing, but not in an interesting way.  It's just a band who can't play well not playing well and not really recording well either.  But it's not even bad enough to sound shitty; it's just...slop.  The past-the-sell-by-date gruel of punk music.

9. The Armed "Ultrapop"

I really don't see what everyone else sees in this.  I will give it credit for having something to it; I refuse to believe the vast majority of the listening base could be that easily fooled so there's gotta be something there; damned if I know what it is.  The mastering is super loud on purpose and people act like that's a plus because it was intentional.  So the same thing that made the Baroness album completely unlistenable from two years ago is supposed to make me jizz my pants now (especially when mastered about three times as loud)?  This is a giant pile of empty to me.  Maybe it ticks the same boxes Black Metal does?  That's the best guess I can field here.

8. Disclosure "Never Enough"

So indistinct that I literally confused Darkside with this one because both bands started with a D.  THIS is the boiler plate house music; like the most you've ever heard.  Nicholas Jaar was on the other one; that's on the list because...well, if I confused it with this it couldn't have been all that memorable, right?  Well, there you go.

7. Rhododendron "Protozoan Battle Hymns"

Don't remember much specific about this album, except that it was spastic and drove me up a wall.

6. Deep Copy "Blue"

Ambient drone just isn't my thing.  To me, it's my refrigerator with effects on it (which might sound better than this EP). 

5. Dirty Honey

Greta Van Fleet is to Led Zeppelin as Dirty Honey is to Guns N Roses.  Except Greta Van Fleet has upside.

4. Aaron Watson "American Soul"

The complete antithesis of "soul".  2017's Vaquero is one of the only country albums I ever paid money for, because "Run Wild Horses" is an amazing song.  The rest of the album had a charming, if slightly backwards, humanity to it.

THIS conglomeration of dreck right here is the most boiler plate genre-trope album of the year.  You will never hear another Country album more generic than this one, and I will never hear another Aaron Watson album because of it.

3. Typhoon "Sympathetic Magic"

Sad boy indie shit of the saddest caliber.

2. Floating Points, Pharaoh Sanders & London Symphony Orchestra "Promises" 

Literally 47 minutes of the same riff over and over again.  Nothing else happens.  You could call this a meditation, but you don't get the LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA if you're trying to meditate.

No, if you're trying to meditate, gets some Grade-A Capital "B" Boring like:

1. Drake "Certified Lover Boy"

What?  It's fucking Drake.  He's always at Number One.

His success is not why I put him here, though.  It's his complete lack of effort.  This album is the laaaaaziest piece of shit I heard all year out of almost 160 albums.  There is NO effort anywhere on here from Drake.  Yebba?  Sure, she tried, but Drake's not even on that song.  Lil Wayne stole the goddam show on his track and he stopped trying in 2005.

I'm complaining about Aubrey Graham's slothful display here because I know the guy can make good songs.  His batting average sucks, but we have "Forever", "Too Good", "Nice For What", even "Laugh Now, Cry Later" to a certain extent...He couldn't put up at least one song with a hook?

But that's the thing.  He knew he didn't have to try.  He got all 21 songs from this 86 minute surprise album to debut in the Top 40, with nine in the top ten.  He's the first rapper that can actually claim what KRS-One did: He was Number One, Two, Three, Four AND Five.  And he didn't really have to lift a finger.  This is an enterprise on autopilot, serving no one but its investors.

It's the Number One album America deserves.  Which makes it too on the nose, and that's another strike against it.

I'm done talking about shitty albums.  There were WAY too many good ones this year to dwell on the bad, so let's just switch gears to the greatness.  Next time, we'll be counting down THE TOP 20 SONGS OF 2021, so stick around for that.

Love Over Fear.