The 50 Worst Metal Songs Of All Time (long)

This is a piece I wrote quite some years ago and just found again. I know it's a lot of reading, but I think some people might appreciate it. 

Metal fans often face jibes from non-believers about their musical preferences. You know the general sort of criticism- you can’t hear the words, it’s all about Satan and killing people, it’s all just noise. Metallers are seen as less than discerning in their listening choices, just blindly headbanging to any old crap emanating from the stereo speakers.

 

We know better. Metal fans are some of the pickiest bastards in the world. If a band dares try changing their sound a little, explores something ever so slightly outside the square, plays too fast, too slow or cut their hair, the chorus of criticism is deafening. All the fan fuelled analysis of Metal means it should be fairly easy to get it right- basically, don’t do what the fans don’t like, and you’ll be right. However, despite Metal being well into it’s fourth decade of existence, bands still fuck it up.

 

You know the feeling. You’re playing a great new album, and all is going well. The music has hit just the groove, whether it be an intricately constructed haunting Black Metal atmosphere, the controlled aggression of a bludgeoning brutal Death Metal blast, or the beer swilling swagger of a traditional Metal tune, when all of a sudden, there’s the metaphoric fingernails down the blackboard. Yep, a dud track, a song so awful and out of place you reach for the skip button on your CD player. How could this have happened? Why? The band should have known better!

 

These occurrences are far more common than they should be. To that end, I’ve ratted out fifty of the worst offenders, in no particular order. It’s far from a definitive list, the compilation of such a list being far beyond the scope of a single person, but I do actually have all the songs listed. This list may pique your curiosity, but be warned: I’m not responsible for any mental scarring, damage to your audio equipment or public ridicule you may suffer if you deliberately hunt down these songs and actually listen to them.

 

So with that warning, pull out your most comforting album, crank it up loud, and prepare to be shocked, horrified and sickened by 50 of the worst Metal songs of all time!

 

Conditions for selection:

·        These songs have to be Metal. It would be easy to target Nu-Metal and Metalcore, because let’s face it, half of those bands couldn’t write a dirty limerick, let alone a song.

·        Signed bands. There’s plenty of shit out there in demoland, and that’s why those bands aren’t signed. These are songs some idiot paid to get on record, and didn’t know any better.

·        No obvious targets. Metal fans aren’t particularly keen on Metallica’s ‘St. Anger’ album, and slagging it would be like shooting fish in a barrel with a bazooka.

·        One song per band. As with the Metallica condition above, some albums have ended up so universally awful it would just be too easy.

·        It’s all my opinion. This isn’t the Ten Commandments of Metal.

 

1.      Bible Basher – Deicide

OK, so Deicide’s version of high speed Death Metal is generally quite consistent, never wavering far from the blueprint developed on the first two incendiary albums. “Bible Basher” is a vicious Satanic diatribe aimed at Christians who push their religious message. However, shouting “Bible basher, bible basher, bible basher, bible basher, bible basher, bible basher, bible basher, who is your God?” does not constitute a sing-along chorus, nor does it make a particularly scary song. In fact, try not laughing if you ever have the misfortune to hear it.

 

2.      31 Flavors – Sacred Reich

Sacred Reich’s politically loaded Thrash was generally quite intelligent and well thought out. “31 Flavors” wasn’t. Aimed at demonstrating the band’s musical tastes beyond Metal, it’s a Funk abortion, minus any Metal whatsoever. It compares music to ice cream, but frankly leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Rather a limp ending to an otherwise solid album.

 

3.      Road Mutants – Death Angel

What better way to follow up “3^rd Floor” than to recycle the same riff again, accompanied with some dumb-arsed lyrics about touring, and add a crap vocal melody? Impressed? You shouldn’t be.

 

4.      Knight Jumps Queen – Annihilator

Annihilator basically shot their load with their first two albums, and by the time tricky album number three rolled around, the ideas cupboard was bare. So why not write a song about shagging, but make it a bit more mature by comparing it to a game of chess. And let’s not bother writing a decent riff for the song either.

 

5.      Violence And Bloodshed – Manowar

Manowar is not the sanest band you’ll ever meet, but this is pushing it, even for them. Sure, they’ve done cheesier, but comparing the fight for Metal to the Vietnam War is pretty tasteless. I’m sure Joey De Maio would have more luck finding Metal mercenaries to go back to the South East Asian jungles with him by putting an ad in Soldier Of Fortune magazine, rather than Kerrang!...

 

6.      Necropedophile – Cannibal Corpse

Standard Chris Barnes-era Cannibal Corpse crap with little to distinguish it from any other song of the era. While there is a certain sick humour to be found in songs like “Entrails Ripped From A Virgin’s Cunt” or “Fucked With A Knife”, this song tries too hard to be offensive. It’s offensive to the ears.

 

7.      Metal Rap – The Lone Rager

The Lone Rager was actually the legend-in-his-own-lunchtime John Zazula, Megaforce Records founder. Recorded in August 1984, this is the first ever Rap/Metal crossover, and like pretty much everything else which combined the two genres, it’s crap. How crap is it? Well, Johnny Z can’t sing to save himself, and his rapping is even worse. The Rods provided the musical loop, but are probably too damn embarrassed to ever admit it. Still not convinced it’s crap? Try some of the rhymes: ”Yesterday’s giants grew bigger than ever/Sold millions of records as producers got clever” or “Anthrax, Great White, Dokken and Slayer/Everyone heavy, each musician a player”, and worst of all, “Metallica?...Spectacula!”

 

8.      Heavy Metal Hamsters – Helloween

This is from Helloween’s surrealist ‘Pink Bubbles Go Ape’ album, but there’s a line between surreal and fucking stupid. Any song which starts with the lyrics “There are some fellows, soft and mellow” is instantly in trouble. It’s as fluffy and nauseating as the rodents it describes.

 

9.      Anticop – Sepultura

“Antichrist” was a fairly good song from Sepultura’s early days. Sure, the lyrics were a little cheesy, but it had attitude. Max Cavalera thought it would be a good idea to change it’s name to “Anticop” and write some anti-police lyrics. What a dickhead.

 

10.   Rundgang Um Die Transzendentale Saule Der Singulaitat – Burzum

A ridiculously long song with a ridiculously long name. Basically, Varg accidentally left his keyboard on autoplay for 25 minutes and recorded it. As you’d expect, the little beeps and things do nothing and go nowhere, and don’t turn you into a Nazi. While the song isn’t really Metal, it’s on a Metal album.

 

11.   Wykydtron – 3 Inches Of Blood

The title should be a clue here. It’s your stereotypical killer robot scenario song, done completely straight-faced. Cheesier than a sailor’s foreskin after visiting a Turkish brothel, you’ll find yourself burning red with embarrassment if you hear it, because you can’t help singing along with it.

 

12.   Driller Killer – Mortician

Mortician have never been lyric heavy, because with a vocalist as guttural as Will Rahmer, it makes fuck all difference what the lyrics are anyway. “Driller Killer” takes this minimalism to new extremes, with no line of the song longer than three words. More than half of the two minute song is taken up with a movie sample intro, which is more interesting than the song. 49 seconds of music means you don’t have to write many riffs per song though.

 

13.   Buried Alive – Venom

The buried alive theme has oft been explored by Metal bands, but Venom’s take on the subject is quite unique in that it sounds like the band was buried and it was recorded six feet above their heads. And the strange thing is, Cronos seems too lethargic to be bothered by it. It’s like “Oh well, I’ll have a snooze and I’ll worry about getting out later.”

 

14.   Talk To Grandpa – Rage

English isn’t Peavey Wagner’s first language, but the lyrics to this song are just so damn stupid it’s inexcusable. Sally can talk to the dead, so he gets her to ask Grandpa where he hid all his money...

 

15.   Forever Free  -W.A.S.P.

The power ballad to end all power ballads. Blackie Lawless’ missus died a painful and lingering death and told him to be a man for once in his fucking life and stop blubbing about it, so he writes a weepy song instead. And of course, he sooks it up, even after she told him not to. The transitions between power and ballad are hamfisted and clumsy, and the lyrics schlocky and lame. In other words, a typical W.A.S.P. song.

 

16.   Mad Gone World – Overkill

Occasionally in song writing, correct prose grammar goes out the window to make words fit, but it’s not often a song title ends up with a phrase completely arse about tit. Apart from fucked up grammar, this song offers an out of tune guitar solo, choppy and jarring song structures, odd bits and pieces which just don’t fit together, and an ending which seems to take forever.

 

17.   A.I.D.S. – M.O.D.

Anally injected death sentence? That’s almost what this song did to M.O.D.’s career before it even got going. Billy Milano says he regrets writing this song, but he didn’t realise what a scourge AIDS was when he wrote it. Never mind though, he was so remorseful it was included on M.O.D.’s greatest hits album. It’s homophobic, not big, not clever, and not worth the effort.

 

18.   I Am God – Unleashed

“I am God/I kill people just for pleasure”. Now, Johnny Hedlund wasn’t particularly mentally stable at the best of times, so it’s hard to know if this is just a fictitious song or if he really had a bit of a God complex. It’s pretty much bog standard Death Metal anyway, showing little of Unleashed’s new found sense of dynamics the rest of the album demonstrates.

 

19.   Welcome To Dying – Onslaught

Onslaught may have been confused as to why their career died, but need not have looked any further than this song. It sucks! It’s boring, dreary, and fucking lame! You guys used to know how to Thrash, but seemed to forget how!

 

20.   Gripping Obsession – The Great Kat

Katherine Thomas can fucking shred when it comes to the guitar or electric violin, but the daft tart can’t write a song to save herself. She seems to fly into a narcissistic rage while writing songs, so the lyrics make very little sense, the songs have no structure, except for wild solos flying all over the place, and she mentions her own name repeatedly.

 

21.   No More Time – Xentrix

Now, power ballads aren’t inherently bad, but they can be tricky territory, particularly for Thrash bands to whom subtlety doesn’t always come easily. Xentrix managed to fuck the ballad genre completely by writing one of the sappiest songs ever, dedicated to our dear planet Earth! That’s right, they wrote an environmental power ballad. The lyrics seem to be straight from a Greenpeace pamphlet, and the music is gagging, vomit-inducing fromage, dripping with over-wrought sentiment. Wrong on so many levels.

 

22.   Death From Above – Anthrax

Perhaps youthful exuberance could be an excuse for this song, but it hits a number of different cliches dead on. Neil Turbin desperately wants to be Rob Halford, but stretches his voice to breaking point. Dan Lilker wants to be Steve Harris, but gets buried by Scott Ian in, let’s be honest, his weakest performance ever. The “jet fighter, jet fighter” refrain is pretty fucking silly, and Turbin’s vocals are hysterical, particularly when he tries to hit those top screaming jet engine notes.

 

23.   Mental Slavery – Kreator

This song represented a turning point for Kreator. It was the “oh fuck, we’ve run out of riffs” point, so they started recycling stuff from the previous couple of albums. The silliest thing about this song, is despite the serious subject matter, Mille seems quite cheerful and perky while singing about “mental (happy riff) slavery”. Never mind, pretty much everything else Kreator has done could be used to demolish buildings, so one dud song in all those years is excusable.

 

24.   Thrashard – D.R.I.

These guys were once the fastest band in the world, so you’d expect a song called “Thrashard” would do just that, but it doesn’t. It’s mostly mid-paced bollocks, and about as exciting as talking about quantum physics at a party. This one trick pony of a band even forgot that trick.

 

25.   Robbie Soles – Mortal Sin

“Robbie Soles”, also known as R. Soles (arseholes, geddit?) is none too funny at all. While I’m all for juvenile toilet humour, chanting “arseholes” over and over just doesn’t cut it. It’s the sort of schoolboy humour which AC/DC do so well. Mortal Sin weren’t AC/DC. The main riff sounds like it was stolen from a cop show theme song too.

 

26.   Deeper Demons – Ripping Corpse

Ripping Corpse were one of the more unusual sounding Death Metal bands of their time, particularly Scott Ruth’s distinctive vocals. However, this song about their favourite porn star Shauna’s rise and fall just sounds creepy. It sounds like Ruth wants to eat her (cannibalistically, not sexually...), and the seemingly sympathetic lyrics actually revel in her demise. The band also played the song a bit too fast for their own good, not holding it together like they should.

 

27.   Enter The Eternal Fire – Bathory

This song is actually not too bad overall, until the last couple of passages. It starts cheesily enough with a cliched bell bonging away, but the completely fuzzed out guitar tones make up for it. The repetitive riff gets a little too repetitive though, and you’re left wondering if anything is going to happen. The answer is not much. Basically, Quorthon gets lured closer and closer to Hell’s flame, but it takes him five fucking minutes of Satanic mumbling to get there, and that’s where the fun starts... He falls into Hell’s flaming pits, and surprise, surprise, he gets burnt. That’s what makes this song so fucking dumb- if you fall into Hell’s fires, you’re gonna get a bit hot, so don’t fucking moan about it!

 

28.   Foetus Noose – Benediction

Dear Benediction,

               The day you guys can get pregnant is the day you can preach about the evils of abortion. Until then, keep your half-arsed fundamentalist ideas to yourself.

 

29.   Breed To Breathe – Napalm Death

Dear Napalm Death,

The same applies to you!

 

30.   Faster Than You’ll Ever Live To Be – Exodus

This song is a case of false advertising- it’s fast, but it’s not that fast. The entire ‘Bonded By Blood’ album is faster. It doesn’t even have an Exodus patented shoutable chorus.

 

31.   Weekend Warrior – Iron Maiden

This song pokes fun at middle aged fat blokes in footy shirts running around at the weekend kicking round a ball like teenagers, then spending hours at the pub getting plastered, and then buggering off back to their weekday jobs as drainlayers, or painters and decorators, or cab drivers. Way to alienate your core audience, Iron Maiden!

 

32.   Destroying The Manger – Nocturnus

Generally when bands come up with silly Satanic lyrics, it’s all for fun, but Mike Browning actually believes the crap he spouts. In this song, he’s going to build a time machine, zap back in time to the birth of Christ, and shoot Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Um, yeah...

 

33.   Another Fine Mess – Re-Animator

The premise of this song was quite promising. Not many Thrash bands ever wrote songs about the genius comedic duo Laurel and Hardy. However, the execution went a bit awry. See, the Re-Animator lads are hopeless fanboys, and the lyrics are sycophantic and arse kissing. The main riff of the song isn’t bad, but the song as a whole is a bit dull.

 

34.   My Open Mind – Acid Reign

‘Obnoxious’ was such a piss-poor album it completely fucked Acid Reign’s career. “My Open Mind” was supposed to be a song explaining why H didn’t play by society’s rules. It comes across as whining and complaining, and a bit precious. The music is flat and lacks any sort of inspiration. Acid Reign should have stuck to Bad News covers.

 

35.   The Winner Loses – Body Count

There’s a reason why Ice T is a rapper- he can’t fucking sing! From the first line of this song, he’s out of tune. The airy backing vocals and cheesy solos don’t help the song either. While the sentiment is good, this would have been better as a Gangster Rap song, which might have seen it work.

 

36.   Phallic Tantrum – Celtic Frost

The name says it all really. Tom G. Warrior’s penis throwing a strop. Instead of the insane death gurgling Metal monster of previous albums, Warrior fancied himself as Paul McCartney, but ends up sounding like Cronos from Venom with a blocked nose.

 

37.   Dawn Patrol – Megadeth

A bleak vision of a pollution devastated, post-apocalyptic planet, or two minutes of filler because Dave Jr. had a bass riff with no song to go with it. The little sucking mole sounds were probably Mustaine doing a line of something which he claimed he wasn’t at the time.

 

38.   Walk – Pantera

Re. Spect. Walk. What do ya say?

A. Nun. Ci. Ate. Say it again.

This. Song. Sucks.

Walk on home boy...

 

39.   Infecting The Crypts – Suffocation

This is fast. This is heavy. It has riffs by the truckload. The vocals are guttural and brutal. The jackhammer drumming is incredibly intense. This has all the ingredients for great Death Metal. Unfortunately, it’s a turd. It’s like having all the pieces for a kitset tank and then trying to make a fighter plane out of it.

 

40.   The Subhuman – Carnivore

OK, this is a demo, but it was re-released on an album. Anyway, it’s a 12 minute dirge about a caveman with an icicle for a penis. Pete Steel did well to leave it off the first Carnivore album, but then fucked up by including it as a bonus track on ‘Retaliation’.

 

41.   A Blaze In The Northern Sky– Darkthrone

This sounds like it was recorded from the bottom of a longdrop toilet. These fucking idiots made it sound like this on purpose too. It’s supposed to be frosty and grim and emotionless, but covers up the fact Darkthrone can’t write a decent song. The bass player’s union must have been picketing the studio too.

 

42.   Jugulator – Judas Priest

The dumbest title for a song ever. Dumber than Anal Cunt’s “Everything’s Gay”. Dumber than Dying Fetus’ “Kill Your Mother, Rape Your Dog”. Dumber even, than Lawnmower Deth’s “Cobwoman Of Deth Meets Mr Smellymop”. I don’t give a fuck what the song actually sounds like, because the title is so fucking stupid!

 

43.   ??? – Viking Crown

Yes, that’s the real name of the song. I wouldn’t have bothered naming it either. It’s a formless mess showing zero musical skill, structure or effort, even for Black Metal. It was supposedly a bonus track, but is more like a booby prize.

 

44.   I Spit On Your Grave - Dragon

If your idea of great Death Metal is indistinct, amateurish riffing, random timekeeping, monotonous, flat vocals, and third world production values, then, to mix a metaphor, this slice of Polish sausage could well be your cup of tea.

 

45.   Battery – Metallica

“Battery”? Metallica? Am I insane? Um, not quite. See, the original is a killer of a track, a Thrash masterpiece. See, the shit version of “Battery” appears on ‘S&M’. Yep, violins, oboes, French horns and triangles don’t mix very well with rapid fire, mega-amplified Thrash riffs. You’ve gotta feel sorry for the poor bastard sawing away on his double bass trying to keep up with James Hetfield, or the guy going blue in the face puffing on his bassoon. It would be funny if the end result wasn’t quite so dire.

 

46.   Kranked Up And Out – Napalm

Steal a Discharge riff, bridge it with shouts of “Krank, krank, krank”, and you’ve got a song! Well, sort of a song. Um, we better hide it at the end of the album, because it’s pretty bad, and by then, no one will notice.

 

47.   Blizzard Beasts – Immortal

If this song was a drum solo, it would be amazing, because Horgh, he of the bullet belted beer gut, utterly destroys his kit. The rest of the band unfortunately, can’t keep up. And the vocals sound like The Penguin from Batman did them, which is probably quite fitting for the name of the song.

 

48.  Silent Night, Bodom Night – Children Of Bodom

“Brave Sir Robin ran away/He bravely ran away, away/When danger reared it’s ugly head/He bravely turned his tail and fled”. Sorry for the Monty Python interlude there, but that’s what the first melody of this song reminds me of. This has harps and a harpsichord and orchestral sounding keyboards. Um, this is supposed to be a Metal song. Reckon the band might fit in a few guitars and things some time?

 

49.  Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence – Dream Theater

The problem with Progressive Metal is that the interesting bits are few and far between, interspersed with boring atmospheric bits, or wussy acoustic parts, or wanky overindulgent instrumental masturbation. In fact, Dream Theater got so distracted by all the Prog-tastic possibilities with this song, they recorded a 42 minute song with about 42 seconds of interesting bits.

 

50.  Planet Caravan – Black Sabbath

Back in the early 70s, Black Sabbath were bigger than pretty much everyone, and as a result of their success, they could afford the best drugs. Whatever chemical inspired this song was a retardant, because this fucking blows. No bastard was co-ordinated enough to plug their instrument in, so it’s an acoustic hippie love-in. Perhaps you’re supposed to be stoned to understand it, but sober, it’s the audio equivalent to the drips of piss left on the end of your dick when you forget to shake.

Vim Fuego wrote: This is a piece I wrote quite some years ago and just found again. I know it's a lot of reading, but I think some people might appreciate it.

Very enjoyable read, even if I disagree vehemently on quite a few counts. For example, I found 31 Flavors an actual eye-opener and always enjoyed how it managed to piss off tough, macho metalheads. Buried Alive is one of my favorite Venom songs and one I used to cover with my band where were kids. Jugulator is just awesome. So is Welcome to Dying, Walk and OF COURSE Forever Free by WASP and Thrashard, which is one of DRI's best songs ever and I feel sorry for any soul who doesn't get that.

Helloween have done far worse songs than Heavy Metal Hamsters, though if you wrote this some time ago they may have been released afterwards. They're both from Straight Out of Hell. Those songs being Wanna Be God and Asshole. One is a poor Queen tribute/imitation (of We Will Rock You's style). The other just sounds totally immature. Heavy Metal Hamsters I prefer to think of as quirky. 

adg211288 wrote: Helloween have done far worse songs than Heavy Metal Hamsters, though if you wrote this some time ago they may have been released afterwards. They're both from Straight Out of Hell. Those songs being Wanna Be God and Asshole. One is a poor Queen tribute/imitation (of We Will Rock You's style). The other just sounds totally immature. Heavy Metal Hamsters I prefer to think of as quirky.

siLLy puPPy wrote: Vim Fuego wrote: To be honest, I love quite a few of these songs too, but it doesn't mean they're not bad songs. Ok. I admit i love some bad songs myself. In fact i love LOTS of bad music in general, but WTF, i just don't give a flying fuckeroonie

adg211288 wrote: Helloween have done far worse songs than Heavy Metal Hamsters, though if you wrote this some time ago they may have been released afterwards. They're both from Straight Out of Hell. Those songs being Wanna Be God and Asshole. One is a poor Queen tribute/imitation (of We Will Rock You's style). The other just sounds totally immature. Heavy Metal Hamsters I prefer to think of as quirky.

If there was a Maiden song I'd consider as bad it's (obviously) The Angel & the Gambler. What was Steve Harris thinking, I don't know. Had that song been like 4 minutes long, it would have worked nicely. 

Vim Fuego wrote: I avoided glam metal as much as possible. WASP is the only really glam thing on here.

Vim Fuego wrote: I avoided glam metal as much as possible. WASP is the only really glam thing on here.