2020 WORSE ALBUMS

Usually I love Field Music. I find their brand of geordie chamber pop quirky and endearing. Sadly this record is an utter mess. It's an ambitious concept album about the long term impacts of the first World War and it fails on all levels. It is incoherent and musically stutters and confuses. It pains me to say this as I do love this band, but it has no redeemable features what so ever.

Michael "Moose" Thomas was a founder member of Welsh metal royalty Bullet for my Valentine. He left in 2017 to spend more time with his family. He obviously now wants to spend less time with them as he is back with a new band that sounds exactly like Bullet For My Valentine, just not as good Danzig - Danzig sings Elvis. Yes this is a thing. It's awful. Utterly awful Sufjan Stevens - the ascension. I love lo-fi alt folk Sufjan Steven's. I can’t stand electronica Sufjan Stevens. Sadly this is the latter. It is as bad as his last record Carrie and Lowell was good.

If this is modern indie I'll stick to my Metal. Thank you very much.

More safe and homonogised alt rock, this time from South Africa. Described in their promo as a homage to the Deftones and A Perfect Circle, in reality it's anything but.

I read a review which described this album as dark and brooding. Jesus, well that writer is going to have one hell of a shock when they discover doom metal. This album is about as dark as a sugar rush rainbow. It is inoffensive radio friendly alt rock. It has as much edge as a sphere. Dark and brooding my arse.

A long long time ago I loved the Levellers. They were the soundtrack of my first few years away from home. I have wonderful memories of jigging along to world freak show at various indie discos and screaming along to one way at the barrier for their 94 glasto headline slot. We have drifted over the years and it has been a long while since I have listened to a new Levellers album. They have mellowed and gone the way of my once beloved maniacs, namely writing songs for the radio 2 crowd. Never has rebellion sounded so limp and mediocre.

Very much a poor person's Alestorm, this is a dreadful album. Clumsy, unrefined and distinctly unfunny.

I adored this mancunian synthpop duo's 2011 debut, “Happiness”. It was a high tempo bombastic joy, full of big extrovert choruses. I have not checked in with them for a while and I am disappointed to find the spark has gone. Whereas their first record sparkled with playful self-awareness, this (their fifth) sees them taking themselves far too seriously. This is dour where it should be fun.

Highly sanitised and over polished pop punk. About as dangerous as bathing in bubble wrap. Wholly forgettable.

I just don’t get what people see in this lot. To these ears of mine, they sound like a poor person's Foo Fighters (and remember I believe the Foo's are rock music for those who don’t like rock music). This album did nothing to change my distinctly negative view of Biffy. In fact, it may have strengthened it.

A horrible, horrible record. Lacks any level of talent or creativity, seems to think being disruptive but is just a case of being loud and lurid.

Ross the Boss was an integral part of loin cloth wearing and irony free kings of Metal Manowar. He was unceremoniously fired in 1991 and ever since he has milked his connection with his equally revered and derided former employers. This is his fourth record under his own moniker and it's fairly standard trad Metal aside from one essential ingredient. It does not possess a single decent ditty. The songs are flat and bana, the whole thing is monumentally unmemorable.

Petrucci is the guitarist and founding member of prog metal titans Dream Theater. He is responsible for those highly technical widerly widerly solo that pepper their records. This is his second solo. It is essentially just those solo's for fifty five minute. It really is rather tedious and utterly pointless.

They are the embodiment of the Marlon Brando "could have been a contender" speech. Around 2013-14, they were mega hot on both sides of the Atlantic. Arenas and festival headline slots seemed within their grasp. Then their charismatic frontman Danny Worsop jumped ship in favour of a more traditional rock sound and they produced an absolute stinker of an album with Ukrainian stand in Denis Stoff. Stoff turned out to be a bell end and was unceremoniously booted out of the band. Worsop returned but the momentum (and most of the fanbase) was gone. Instead of building on their promise, they have instead veered towards the classic rock direction that Worsop feels much more comfortable with. “Like a House on Fire” feels false and faked. It is by numbers and comes across as utterly synthetic. This was their everything on red moment. It has come up black. Game over.

Like many, their 2001 debut "Is This It" blew my mind. It was earthy, minimalistic and direct. There are those that have called this (their sixth album and first in six years) a real return to form. I am not sure whether I am either not getting it or whether I have forever moved away from this style of indie, but I found nothing of interest here at all. It sounded safe, pedestrian and lacking any energy. There were no stand out tunes for me. Every song blurred into one and I came away feeling that they had lost that raw emotion that made them so special.

I wanted to love this, I really did. Apocolyptica are one of the most interesting bands in our universe. A Metal band that uses nothing but cellos, they have carved themselves out a very distinct corner of Metal dom. Their cello led versions of Metal classics are nothing short of awesome. This is their first fully instrumental original material album in seventeen years and... and... it's really rather dull. Horrendously dull. They have somehow removed all the interesting bits that made Apocolyptica so exciting a band and just released the dirge. Hugely disappointing!

Shouty, noisy and lacking in anything distinctive. Textbook Metalcore but lacking in any character or stand out moments.

One to file away under "Are they still going?" (or even "Why are they still going?"). It felt toothless and lacking in any real crunch.

Jesus! This is terrible. Overtly serious and full of woe is me angst, this is about as clumsy an approach to social issues as you are going to get. Couple that with a wishy washy pop rock sound and some of the worst white rapping I have had the misfortune to experience. Horrible. I would pay to never hear it again.

Not going to make any friends here, but Static X's brand of industrial nu-metal does nothing for me. I also feel awful slagging it off as Static X's main man Wayne Static passed away in 2014 and this is a tribute to him from his original bandmates. It's a Frankenstein's monster of half recorded material and I feel a heartless jerk for saying that I found it virtually unlistenable. But I did, so I will.

Highly theatrical goth metal. I found it hard to distinguish one song from another.

Former Eurovision winners who are actually much less Metal than they seem. This is awful, painfully awful. It's a fake compilation of tracks from a made up posse band. I listened to it so you don’t have to. Avoid!

Switzerland's biggest hard rock band (that doesn't mean much to be honest) with (surprise! surprise!) their 13th album. It's rather insipid and decidedly dull.