10 Terrible Songs on Classic Metal Albums

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Many classic albums have their hiccups.

Few albums are perfect and even the best metal albums of all time have fat. Some might be filler tracks, but these songs in particular nearly sunk their entire album.

Although everything around these songs are great, these are the moments where quality clocks out, either not fitting in with the rest of the project or failing to keep up with an album’s pace.

In the artists’ minds they may serve a purpose in the context of the album, but there’s no reason to listen to these songs if they come up on a playlist. 

These records should be golden from back to front, but these tracks are why people use the skip button.

KORN – “ALL IN THE FAMILY”

As forefathers of nu-metal, Korn has an immense library of killer tunes. 

“All In The Family” is not part of that collection. Instead of Korn’s typical inner torment, Jonathan Davis decided to trade the corniest bars ever with Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst

The thought of Limp Bizkit and Korn collaborating may have been a nu-metal fan’s dream, but ‘All in the Family’ is flat-out cringy. Davis and Durst challenge each other to a freestyle rap battle and neither of them land a single punch in their verses, instead leaning into using homophobic slurs at each other. 

The backing track isn’t anything special either, sounding like Ross Robinson filler. Granted, Davis does own up to it, saying that he was drunk when he made it and that he doesn’t like looking back on it that often. 

Nu metal always had its fun side, but middle school rap battles have better bars. 

DEFTONES – “PINK CELLPHONE”

Deftones does whatever the hell they want.

Even though they weren’t the heaviest band in the world, the mark they left on metal is still being felt today. There might not be a bad album in their discography, but some of their best material has some rough patches. 

‘Pink Cellphone’ isn’t a terrible song from back to front. There are the makings of a good song here, until everything gets put on pause for the interlude. 

While bringing in a guest verse from Annie Hardy isn’t the worst idea, having her leave a voicemail about sex ruins the flow of the song. It also gets uncomfortable towards the end of her verse, where she starts making insensitive comments about British people and the…suggestive way their teeth look terrible. 

There’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, but most of us are nervously laughing as we wait for it to be over. 

METALLICA – “ESCAPE” 

You’re not going to find a better run of thrash metal than Metallica’s first 3 albums. 

The band kept getting better and better until Master of Puppets, and Ride the Lightning was the moment where everything started falling into place. When recording wrapped, they had enough in the can for a perfect 7 track album…so why are there 8 tracks? 

Well, when Lars showed the album to the label, they thought the band needed one more song and suggested they make something a bit more commercial. Long before The Black Album, ‘Escape’ is the closest ‘sell-out’ song you’d find from ‘80s Metallica, sounding somewhere between Thin Lizzy and the more anthemic songs from Judas Priest. 

While the bridge kicks ass, even James Hetfield doesn’t defend it, never playing it live and grinning through his teeth when the band played it for Lightning’s anniversary. 

The label may have wanted a hit, but you’ve crossed a line when ‘Nothing Else Matters’ packs more of a punch. 

PEARL JAM – BUGS

By 1994, it wasn’t fun to be in Pearl Jam

Eddie Vedder hated being famous and used Vitalogy as a way to alienate his fans. While this album does have some of the band’s best tracks, “Bugs” is a song designed to piss people off. 

In between classics like ‘Nothingman’ and ‘Corduroy,’ this is the result of Eddie finding a used accordion and making up a song about bugs. 

Eddie is known to be candid with his lyrics, but this song makes you concerned for his mental health, as he talks about wanting to either eat the bugs, kill them, or become one with them. 

The album gets weirder from there with the song ‘Stupid Mop,’ but this is the song that makes you wonder what the hell the studio looked like when they were recording this. 

There’s nothing wrong with getting weird in the studio, but the guys in Primus would be telling you to tone things down if they heard this. 

GUNS N’ ROSES – MY WORLD

Guns N Roses’ Use Your Illusion is a beautiful mess. 

Over 2 discs, the World’s Most Dangerous Band gave us some of the best rock and roll they can deliver. Given Axl Rose’s perfectionism how the hell did ‘My World’ make the cut?

After bookending both albums with another version of ‘Don’t Cry,’ the album closes with this song, which is Axl’s attempt (and failure) to make industrial music. 

Although you can hear him trying his best Trent Reznor impression, he ends up sounding like some a high schooler. Legend has it that Axl was high on shrooms when he actually recorded this. 

That had to be some strong stuff if he thought that this was worthy to be on the same album as  ‘Civil War.’

NIRVANA – TOURETTE’S 

Once Nirvana hit it big, Kurt Cobain was pissed. 

After the success of Nevermind, Kurt held nothing back on In Utero, making an uncompromised version of what he thought Nirvana should be. We did get some bangers but we also get…let’s call them moments. 

Right before the album falls to Earth on ‘All Apologies,’ ‘Tourette’s’ hits like a strange fever dream. While you could call this song punk, this 1:36 is Kurt venting in song with incomprehensible lyrics.

It isn’t about anything poetic, but knowing what comes next, Kurt’s screams sound scary. In between the loud guitars and the shrieks, this song Kurt getting out all of his frustrations in one go.

ALICE IN CHAINS – IRON GLAND 

Alice in ChainsDirt sounds like it was written in hell. 

In between songs about drug dependency and withering away, ‘Iron Gland’ comes on like a bad acid trip. The song was never supposed to exist, formed from a guitar riff that Jerry Cantrell messed around with in the studio that drove the band crazy. 

After Tom Araya from Slayer came into the studio, he ended up on the final track, delivering the screams over top of the riff. There’s a good song in here somewhere, but the whole thing is dropped after a minute or so. 

This may have been a funny joke that happened in the studio, but just because the band is having a good time doesn’t mean the listener is. 

KISS – TOMORROW AND TONIGHT

KISS has always been about getting their songs on the radio.

And since ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ became the biggest song of their career, why not do it again?

‘Tomorrow and Tonight’ is as cornball as Paul Stanley ever got, trying to just copy and paste what he did on ‘All Nite’ with much less success.

Compared to ‘Shock Me’ or even ‘Detroit Rock City,’ this song tries to be a party anthem but instead comes off as a song that would play over some cheesy ‘70s TV show. 

Even at KISS’ peak power, this one doesn’t quite strike. 

LINKIN PARK – BLACKOUT

A Thousand Suns is one of Linkin Park’s most polarizing albums. 

After playing nu-metal for a decade, hearing them pull influence from Radiohead was jarring. They still rocked, but the best was hard to get to. 

Right after ‘Waiting For the End,’ ‘Blackout’ is the experiment that should have been left behind, containing only a few verses and Chester Bennington screaming his lungs out over a backing track that doesn’t go anywhere. 

The song is meant to be abrasive, but it feels like a mismatch between the band’s nu-metal past and what they tried to accomplish on this record. 

Chester had a one-of-a-kind scream, so why put it in a song that doesn’t let it shine?

TOOL – MANTRA

Tool takes their time when making their classics. 

Before the 9-minute journey of ‘Lateralus,’ we get ‘Mantra,’ complete with a full minute of white noise. When the band were working in the studio, the haunting voice on the record came from Maynard James Keenan gently squeezing his cat and holding him up to the microphone.

It might make for a good story, but when you’re listening to the album in full, you’re waiting for this to be over so you can move on to the next track. 

Lateralus is already packed to the gills with great tracks, so you don’t need to give the kitty time on the mic either.