Albums which haven't aged all that well

[wateroftyne]

16 hours ago, jezzaboy said:

The Rush albums from the late 80`s - early 90`s. Hold your fire, Roll the bones, Presto etc. I tried to play them the other day but the production is terrible and the lyrics that at the time were meaningful, just sound like tosh to me now.

Still love the 70`s and early 80`s stuff.

NP's lyrics have never been great...

[thepurpleblob]

I was quite the Genesis fan as a teenager (back in the 80s!). I was listening to stuff like Trick of the Tail the other day and it all sounds rather twee now. I think I may have moved on. 

A lot of stuff from the 70s is incredibly badly recorded by today's standards. A lot of 'The Who' albums are just dreadful. Which is a shame...

[Elfrasho]

I don't mind poorly recorded stuff.. It is what it is. But the mental over production of alot of 80s stuff makes it quite hard to listen to these days, in my opinion! Def Leppard hysteria prime is example! 

[wateroftyne]

27 minutes ago, thepurpleblob said:

I was quite the Genesis fan as a teenager (back in the 80s!). I was listening to stuff like Trick of the Tail the other day and it all sounds rather twee now. I think I may have moved on. 

A lot of stuff from the 70s is incredibly badly recorded by today's standards. A lot of 'The Who' albums are just dreadful. Which is a shame...

Trick is a wonderful record. The 5.1 mix is marvellous..

Of course the quality of 70s recordings varies, but some of the greatest, most organic-sounding records were made during that time. I'm not sure I would put 'today's standards' up on a pedestal.

[EliasMooseblaster]

47 minutes ago, thepurpleblob said:

I was quite the Genesis fan as a teenager (back in the 80s!). I was listening to stuff like Trick of the Tail the other day and it all sounds rather twee now. I think I may have moved on. 

A lot of stuff from the 70s is incredibly badly recorded by today's standards. A lot of 'The Who' albums are just dreadful. Which is a shame...

I'm rather fond of Gabriel-era Genesis, but I know what you mean...something about albums like Foxtrot and Nursery Cryme does sound very much "of the '70s." Maybe "twee" is the right word; I think it's that aspect which some of their contemporaries (e.g., Pink Floyd and Camel) managed to steer clear of, and they seem to have aged better!

There's definitely a thing about "British production" as well - Genesis suffered from it, and I think the first two Who albums do as well. Almost as if they couldn't let go of the "stick the band in a room and put some mics up" approach. I think the finest example is probably the Moody Blues' Go Now, which sounds like it was recorded in a biscuit tin! Compare it to the much crisper sounds American bands like The Byrds and The Doors were getting at the same time, and you have to wonder what combination of the technology and the know-how some British producers were oblivious to...

[Graham]

Leading on from the other thread, I'd say Death Magnetic by Metallica

I think when it was released there was a sigh of relief that it wasn't St Anger mk 2,  and had better songs and (nominally) better production

The songwriting overall is probably better than St Anger which is good to start with, but goes downhill swiftly at the halfway mark but I much prefer the sound of St Anger.

Death Magnetic is horribly compressed and whoever had the idea of overdriving the snare, presumably so it sounds like Lars hits it really hard, is a muppet. Also, the songs on this record are over-long and meandering; sure there's solos again, but Kirk seems to have decided that 32 bars of wah pedal noise constitutes a solo.

Still, it's better than Hardwired; for what reason did they decide that the thing to do was release a double album?

There's been flashes of brilliance in their post-Jason output, but they really need to get rid of the yes-men, find a producer that will kick their derrières and isn't afraid to tell them an idea/song/album sucks and help them re-find the creativity they had in the 80s/90s

Things I'd like Metallica to loose:

Kirk's wah pedal

Snare rolls

The mastering compressor

James' Doctor Suess book of rhyming lyrics

[Lozz196]

Yeah I can`t remember which Metallica album it was but the snare sound really put me off of it, prob Death Magnetic going by the above.

[Woodinblack]

I can't remember which but one of the foo fighters albums is so compressed up to the maximum it is unlistenable. Which is fairly common for a lot of 90s stuff

I love trick of the tail though, and love the production on it. I bought the remastered version and actually threw it away as it was so bad. The previous albums and can easily skip though.

 

[BrunoBass]

21 hours ago, bassbiscuits said:

Def Leppard's Hysteria sounds very dated now, in terms of production etc. I bought a copy a year or two ago having not heard the original for about 25 years since it came out, and it was a bit of a shock. Same as the albums I used to have from the band who supported them on some UK dates of the Hysteria tour - Tesla. Used to love them in late teens, but their albums had aged dreadfully.

Weirdly stuff like INXS 'Kick' which was released the same year (or nearly - i'd need to check) still sounds pretty fresh.

 

Yep, same year, 1987. Both big albums for me when I was in my teens. Agreed, ‘Kick’ still sounds fresh and punchy.

I too bought the remastered ‘Hysteria’ when it came out recently and like you I thought it sounded very dated, or just very much of it’s time. Luckily the songs are so strong I can kind of live with the dense production. 

Interestingly the other big rock album from that year was ‘Appetite For Destruction’ which still sounds remarkably fresh and current to me. Guns n’ Roses’ organic, live sound has travelled far better than Def Leppard’s Fairlight overload. 

[bassbiscuits]

1 hour ago, BrunoBass said:

Yep, same year, 1987. Both big albums for me when I was in my teens. Agreed, ‘Kick’ still sounds fresh and punchy.

I too bought the remastered ‘Hysteria’ when it came out recently and like you I thought it sounded very dated, or just very much of it’s time. Luckily the songs are so strong I can kind of live with the dense production. 

Interestingly the other big rock album from that year was ‘Appetite For Destruction’ which still sounds remarkably fresh and current to me. Guns n’ Roses’ organic, live sound has travelled far better than Def Leppard’s Fairlight overload. 

Totally - Appetite is another one i had on vinyl at the time (with the original banned cover...) but then bought again about 10 years ago and fell in love with all over again. Still sounds dangerous.

But Def Leppard have been an odd one for me. I loved them at the time, and still like to read interviews with them etc, but hearing the music again after all these years it did strike me as being very 'of its time' with extremely polished production etc. There are some good tunes tho, you're right.

 

 

[spongebob]

Funny how tastes differ - I've been listening to a lot of 80's Rush of late, and stuff like 'Hold Your Fire' and 'Presto' - at the time, I was just getting into them, and didn't care for the 80's clangy-ness of it all. Now, I really like them a lot more - 'Presto', in particular. To me, they've aged well. Better than 'Caress Of Steel' for sure!

I used to love the early Manic Street Preachers stuff, until Richey disappeared. However, those first two albums don't sound so great today. The stripped-back nature of 'The Holy Bible' still works. Guess there's a production lesson in there - less maybe is more! 😀

[thodrik]

5 hours ago, Graham said:

Leading on from the other thread, I'd say Death Magnetic by Metallica

I think when it was released there was a sigh of relief that it wasn't St Anger mk 2,  and had better songs and (nominally) better production

The songwriting overall is probably better than St Anger which is good to start with, but goes downhill swiftly at the halfway mark but I much prefer the sound of St Anger.

Death Magnetic is horribly compressed and whoever had the idea of overdriving the snare, presumably so it sounds like Lars hits it really hard, is a muppet. Also, the songs on this record are over-long and meandering; sure there's solos again, but Kirk seems to have decided that 32 bars of wah pedal noise constitutes a solo.

Still, it's better than Hardwired; for what reason did they decide that the thing to do was release a double album?

There's been flashes of brilliance in their post-Jason output, but they really need to get rid of the yes-men, find a producer that will kick their derrières and isn't afraid to tell them an idea/song/album sucks and help them re-find the creativity they had in the 80s/90s

Things I'd like Metallica to loose:

Kirk's wah pedal

Snare rolls

The mastering compressor

James' Doctor Suess book of rhyming lyrics

All of this. 

I was sure that with Rick Rubin at the helm that Death Magnetic would have been great sounding, given it was produced not long after he worked on Christ Illusion by Slayer which in terms of mixing and mastering is pretty damn great. Death Magnetic is an uncomfortable listening experience at high volume as the snare drum is clipping the whole time

The guy who mastered it tried to say that it wasn't his fault on the basis that the mix was pretty much unusable by the time it got to him. There is cool article on Blabbermouth about how bad the finished product is (http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/metallica-s-lars-ulrich-breaks-silence-on-death-magnetic-sound-quality-controversy/). It can really be summed up in two quotes: 

Ted Jansen, the guy who mastered the album: "In this case the mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here. Believe me, I'm not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else."

Lars Ulrich: "It's 2008, and that's how we make records. Rick Rubin's whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers. Of course, I've heard that there are a few people complaining. But I've been listening to it the last couple of days in my car, and it sounds flipin' smokin'."

Arrgh. 

[Graham]

41 minutes ago, thodrik said:

All of this. 

I was sure that with Rick Rubin at the helm that Death Magnetic would have been great sounding, given it was produced not long after he worked on Christ Illusion by Slayer which in terms of mixing and mastering is pretty damn great. Death Magnetic is an uncomfortable listening experience at high volume as the snare drum is clipping the whole time

The guy who mastered it tried to say that it wasn't his fault on the basis that the mix was pretty much unusable by the time it got to him. There is cool article on Blabbermouth about how bad the finished product is (http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/metallica-s-lars-ulrich-breaks-silence-on-death-magnetic-sound-quality-controversy/). It can really be summed up in two quotes: 

Ted Jansen, the guy who mastered the album: "In this case the mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here. Believe me, I'm not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else."

Lars Ulrich: "It's 2008, and that's how we make records. Rick Rubin's whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers. Of course, I've heard that there are a few people complaining. But I've been listening to it the last couple of days in my car, and it sounds flipin' smokin'."

Arrgh. 

Reading that article, it's telling that Lars argument is that "Justice has a crap mix, so it's okay for our new album to have a crap mix" 😐

[PaulWarning]

probably just me, but producers messing about with the drum sound seems to age records, in the 80's it was the fashion to have enormous sounding snare drums high in the mix, sounds awful to me, now it seems to be clicky sounding kick drums, why can't they just record the drums how they're supposed to sound? some albums sound good because they do sound dated (mainly because they're recorded almost live) Elvis's sun sessions and the Beatles Please Please Me (mono) spring to mind

[gjones]

Any tracks with gated reverb on the snare, are unlistenable to me now.

[Maude]

1 hour ago, thodrik said:

All of this. 

I was sure that with Rick Rubin at the helm that Death Magnetic would have been great sounding, 

I've not heard Death Magnetic but I'm surprised it sound bad with RR on board. 

So many times I've been listening to an album and thought 'this recording is amazing', to then find out RR was in charge. Shame. 

[BrunoBass]

9 hours ago, bassbiscuits said:

Totally - Appetite is another one i had on vinyl at the time (with the original banned cover...) but then bought again about 10 years ago and fell in love with all over again. Still sounds dangerous.

 

 

A slight digression from the thread, but I’ve been listening to the newly released Deluxe Edition of ‘Appetite...’, particularly the 1986 demos of some of the songs that made it on to the finished album. They sound amazing; the structure, arrangement and even all the fills are exactly as they ended up, only without Mike Clink’s production sparkle. It impressed me that they were already fully formed as a band even that early. All that paying of dues in Sunset Strip bars clearly payed off. Worth a listen.

Anyway, back to albums that haven’t aged well! 

[bazzbass]

Listening to 80s albums makes me appreciate the Beatles even more. Their albums still sound fantastic and relevant. FIFTY years later............

 

And yes, listening to Nevermind leaves me with the impression that they sucked so much that they had to speed or slow things so much that they are impossible to play along to now, nothing is standard tuning . And I don't mean alternate tunings, just flat or sharp..

Junkies without tuners is a BAD mix lol

[mikel]

21 hours ago, thepurpleblob said:

I was quite the Genesis fan as a teenager (back in the 80s!). I was listening to stuff like Trick of the Tail the other day and it all sounds rather twee now. I think I may have moved on. 

A lot of stuff from the 70s is incredibly badly recorded by today's standards. A lot of 'The Who' albums are just dreadful. Which is a shame...

I think we have become too used to the over produced, glossy, grid tempo albums over the last decade or so. For me its the musical content that counts not the quality of the recording process. Listen to some of the old Blues and Jazz classics from the 40s and 50s, no production but great songs performed by legends. The 60s and 70s stuff is the same, just different recording methods. Song quality over polish anytime, for me.

Edited July 6, 2018 by mikel
Additions.

[Lozz196]

8 hours ago, BrunoBass said:

A slight digression from the thread, but I’ve been listening to the newly released Deluxe Edition of ‘Appetite...’, particularly the 1986 demos of some of the songs that made it on to the finished album. They sound amazing; the structure, arrangement and even all the fills are exactly as they ended up, only without Mike Clink’s production sparkle. It impressed me that they were already fully formed as a band even that early. All that paying of dues in Sunset Strip bars clearly payed off. Worth a listen.

Anyway, back to albums that haven’t aged well! 

I`d not heard of this, will have to check it out as Appetite is one of my all time fave albums.

[Monkey Steve]

On 04/07/2018 at 16:40, bassbiscuits said:

Def Leppard's Hysteria sounds very dated now, in terms of production etc. I bought a copy a year or two ago having not heard the original for about 25 years since it came out, and it was a bit of a shock. Same as the albums I used to have from the band who supported them on some UK dates of the Hysteria tour - Tesla. Used to love them in late teens, but their albums had aged dreadfully.

Weirdly stuff like INXS 'Kick' which was released the same year (or nearly - i'd need to check) still sounds pretty fresh.

 

I just got Def Leppard's remastered collection Vol 1 - actually for the first two albums which haven't previously been remastered, but it goes up to Hysteria. 

Easily the weakest of the bunch - you can hear the progress from raw heavy metal to overproduced pop as the albums progress, and while Pyromania's electronic drum sounds are very dated now, it's the full AOR production of Hysteria, drowning in saccharine backing vocals, synth lines and electronic drums that marks it out.  Not that you'd know if from the accompanying book, which seems to think that the astounding album sales (can't dispute that, they shifted a lot of units, no mistake) means that it's one of the best rock albums ever made...I humbly beg to differ...

[PaulWarning]

3 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

which seems to think that the astounding album sales (can't dispute that, they shifted a lot of units, no mistake) means that it's one of the best rock albums ever made...I humbly beg to differ...

big sales and good records are not related at all, big sales could mean people bought it because it was easily accessible and dumbed down, not always true but more likely to be if it's an established band already

[Thunderbird]

Just gave White Zombies Astro creep 2000 a listen liked it at the time but seems so dated now I turned it off as it just seemed old and boring maybe my tastes have changed ?

Edited July 6, 2018 by Thunderbird

[Woodinblack]

I still like that album, but then I like most of his newer ones as well

I don't think it sounds dated, but some albums if you don't really like them anymore seem dated because you used to like it before and now don't. To me all blues sounds dated - even if it is new, but I know that is because I used to like it when I was young but now don't.

[mikel]

In a truly musical sense you would hope all stuff from the 20th century would sound dated now, or you could argue music must not have progressed. Just a thought.