The ten most disappointing metal albums

In the darkest recesses of the metal world, truly shitty albums lurk. Now, these albums aren't necessarily 100 percent shitty (there may still be some redeeming music to be found), but they are certainly incredibly disappointing, particularly given the otherwise worthiness of their creators. Plug your nose and dive on in to this cesspool of the ten most disappointing metal albums.

See also: - The ten geekiest metal bands - The 25 coolest Iron Maiden shirts we saw at the show - Tom Hunting of Exodus on how building a song is like building the best sandwich

10. Ozzy Osbourne - Any of his recent albums "Shitty" is a strong word for the last three Ozzy albums. A better way to explain them would be albums that you would skim past at the record store without stopping. It would strain your brain to name more than five songs out of the thirty-plus here. It's unfortunate that none of them stands out when you could easily name over a dozen Ozzy songs from twenty to thirty years ago at the drop of a hat, and even more if you're allowed to mistake Sabbath for Ozzy songs.

9. Morbid Angel - Illud Divinum Insanus Eight years could have any fan of any music starving for something fresh from the band, but instead of providing a feast of death metal, Morbid Angel spooned up stone soup for its fans. No one was licking ther fingers at this failed attempt to add an industrial sound. Despite receiving praise from big metal critics, Illud Divinum Insanus had many hard-core fans calling it Morbid Angel's St. Anger, an album that was shittier than 2 Girls 1 Cup. When a band like Morbid Angel, which thrives in a subgenre like death metal, with hard-core fans who don't like anything other than death metal, it's probably better to experiment with music like this in another collaboration.

8. Iron Maiden - No Prayer for the Dying No Prayer for the Dying saw the reflection of the first bandmember change since the bulking up of the vocals with Bruce Dickinson in 1982, and the replacement of Clive Burr with Nicko McBrain on drums in 1983. Usually known for great songwriting, Steve Harris and Dickinson turned in songs that were below par on No Prayer for the Dying. This record failed to produce any classics like those on Number of the Beast and marked the beginning of a series of flatliners in the '90s.

7. Slayer - Diabolus in Musica Diablolus in Musica embraced the nu-metal sound at the height of its movement -- a movement that had older hard-core metal fans bumping heads with metal younglings. This album, coming from one of the big four of thrash-metal bands, was a slash in the gut. Slayer lost focus on what defined them as pure aggressive dark beasts, while the band's idiosyncratic chaotic guitar fingering became more domesticated in wildness. They even started playing tours with nu-metal instigators like Korn, trying to keep up with the changing times by meddling with new-age heavy-metallers. God Hates Us All brought them back to their roots as the first wave of nu-metal bands began to fall by the wayside.

6. Exodus - Force of Habit With Force of Habit, at least Exodus didn't try to go from thrash metal to sounding like Genesis -- or worse, Phil Collins -- but the book closed on the chapter of Exodus with this album because they went from singing about killing people to "Lives his life thinkin' how to get ahead/Kickin' off his corporate shoes/Throws his credit cards in everyone's face/Name droppin' 'cause he thinks it's cool." Dudes should have at least sung about kicking this guy in the balls. Force of Habit was a derailment from the band's previous thrash-metal sound with a diluted fury and uncomfortable in the skin of experimental. Thou shall not sucketh, sayeth the Lord.

5. Megadeth - Risk Easily in line with Metallica's "The Black Album" yet eight years later, Megadeth notably recorded a more radio-friendly sound with Risk, losing its edge, which was dulled down to a butter knife. The hit single "Crush 'Em" -- a song played more at sporting events than for mosh pits -- blends a dark NIN techno beat with a catchy disco bass line that breaks out into funky guitar riffs and chants of "Crush! ...Crush 'em!" Mixing disco with thrash metal is like dressing up Gaahl in parachute pants. Disco didn't work for KISS, and it won't ever work for thrash-metal bands in the future. Risk is more disappointing than Megadeth's last few albums, but in contest with Super Collider.

4. Celtic Frost - Cold Lake Cold Lake was a failed attempt to sell out by Celtic Frost and was such a massive turd of an album that it is no longer available to buy -- and should be, shits and giggles aside. From the peaks of thrash metal that defined the Swiss metal groundbreakers, Celtic Frost base-jumped all the way down to the valleys of glam metal -- a popular subgenre at the time that ruined a few other albums on this list as well. The band transformed with massive makeovers to puffballed hairsprayed hair, acid-wash jeans, pink lipstick and womanizing song titles like "Dance Sleazy," "Roses Without Thorns," "Cherry Orchards" and "Seduce Me Tonight."

3. Judas Priest - Turbo After a stairwell of success with Point of Entry, Screaming for Vengeance and Defenders of the Faith, Judas Priest came out with a slew of commercial songs on the album Turbo. This knocked them back a few steps with the band's devoted fans, in spite of the album going gold in under two months. Technological advances with pedal boards at the time had the band experimenting with sounds that a guitar, bass, vocals and drums hadn't previously offered. This along with some elements of hair metal -- music that Priest's fan base despised but was otherwise exploding at the time -- made the band sound slicker than leather and hell-bent for unpopularity among its listeners.

2. KISS - From Dynasty to Music from "The Elder" Dynasty brought metal to a screeching halt in the late '70s when KISS decided to create a disco song. Thank God -- or the Devil -- that metal jump-started again in the early '80s. With too much outside influence about where the direction of their music should go, KISS ended up creating "I Was Made for Lovin' You," a disco-fied rock song that reached the top ten of the charts and shot them into much more commercial success. The Dynasty tour saw a decline in audience attendance, followed by Unmasked, with a major departure musically that failed to reach platinum, and Music from "The Elder" which received much resentment from its fans. Creatures of the Night was a slow and eventually successful attempt to kiss and make up with fans.

1. Metallica - Everything after ...And Justice for All Not only was Metallica able to offend thrash-metal fans with its self-titled 1991 album (aka "The Black Album"), which had a big, heavy sound but lost its speedy thrash, but the band also succeeded at offending hard-core Metallica fans with Load/Reload, and anyone with ears with St. Anger. It pains us all to even address the existence of Lulu. After Load/Reload, Metallica reverted back to its heavy roots with St. Anger, but disappointed fans with its stripped-down sound. Despite winning a Grammy for Best Metal Performance for the single "St. Anger," the album felt forced instead of natural, with a sound devoid of any guitar solos. It also sounded like Lars reverted to using the bottom of coffee cans as drums. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, suck!