Wasted potential

[probablyoliver]

So I'm listening to Athlete's "Vehicles and Animals", a truly wonderful debut from a band who, based on this album, should have been a lot bigger and a lot better than part of the "easy-listening radio-rock C-team", because V&A is an absolutely fantastic slice of indie-pop summer sublimeness. It's a damn shame, because their later efforts were just totally naff.

So lets talk about other such bands who released a banging debut and followed it up with pure shite. I'm talking the likes of Futureheads, the Libertines, Ash, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. All of them had such potential.

[New Damage]

Well, slightly different to yours in the fact that they only ever released one album (and an EP before it consisting of most of the same songs) is Mother Love Bone. Lead singer Andrew Wood died a day or two before their debut album, "Apple" came out. It's a damn shame, it's a brilliant album. If they had continued on, the shape of grunge music and possibly rock music in general could look very differently now.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Audioslave is the big one for me. The first album was decent enough, the second was some of the most god-awful shit I've ever heard and the third showed slight improvement, but wasn't too much better than the second album.

[livid]

Actually, Audioslave seems to be the most obvious example. I mean, their self-titled debut was all sorts of awesome but then Out of Exile was just awful. Revelations was better but still nowhere near the quality that the self-titled album was.

Another is Drowning Pool but that's more to do with the fact that Dave Williams dying than anything else. After he died, the band just seemed nowhere near as good and it's rather unfortunate because they were a band that could've been real huge but after Williams died, they had nowhere near the quality they had with him.

[New Damage]

Audioslave? I'd say Out of Exile was on par with Audioslave, in fact slightly (only very slightly) better only for the fact that they had a bit more of their own identity, rather than RATM with Cornell singing or Soundgarden with RATM playing the music. The parts of OOE that do let it down is when they let Morello do his high-pitched noise shit. He's good at it, but it kinda ruins a song. Revelations again was good, but isn't up to the S/T or OOE standards.

To further elaborate on Drowning Pool, they stole the guy from SOiL to replace the dead dude, and SOiL could've been bigger after the fucking awesome, headbanging "Halo". Though I do like "37 Stitches" off Drowning Pool's new album, but the SD! theme "Rise Up" blows several types balls.

[ROC]

Weird. I enjoyed all of the Audioslave stuff, albeit in hindsight it was ridiculous to place Tom freaking Morello in a position to not rock out every song, and "Cochise" was maybe the only balls out awesome song they ever did.

Puscifer should've been a hell of a lot better seeing that the last time Maynard did a Tool sabbatical, it produced A Perfect Circle. Instead it produces boring electronica the level of MSI. Boo.

[Colly]

So I'm listening to Athlete's "Vehicles and Animals", a truly wonderful debut from a band who, based on this album, should have been a lot bigger and a lot better than part of the "easy-listening radio-rock C-team", because V&A is an absolutely fantastic slice of indie-pop summer sublimeness. It's a damn shame, because their later efforts were just totally naff.

So lets talk about other such bands who released a banging debut and followed it up with pure shite. I'm talking the likes of Futureheads, the Libertines, Ash, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. All of them had such potential.

But of your examples, The Futureheads and Ash both followed up pure shite with banging third albums, fourth and fifth too in the case of Ash. But yeah, add The Rakes to the list.

[Dont Fear The Reaper]

Id say Finch with their "What it is to burn" album which was fucking fantastic, they just seemed to fade away after that though

[GRIFT]

Neutral Milk Hotel... in that they just stopped. They put out two great albums in a very short period of time and then got all Salinger.

[Tarheels.]

Neutral Milk Hotel... in that they just stopped. They put out two great albums in a very short period of time and then got all Salinger.

Agreed. Avery Island was great, and Aeroplane Over The Sea is one of my favorite albums of all time. It's a shame that Mangum went into seclusion because that had infinite potential and I can't even imagine what they could have made had they still been together nowadays.

[gunnar hendershow]

Neutral Milk Hotel... in that they just stopped. They put out two great albums in a very short period of time and then got all Salinger.

This would be my example too. I wonder what other great music they could have come up with.

[Benji]

Not sure if it counts, but the New Radicals, splitting up after just one album still dissapoints me, since "Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too" was a brilliant and lively album. Also, Boxcar Racer with their single album, when blink split I would've chosen BCR over +44 and AVA every time.

[Guest Ant]

You know i was watching a video from Sum41 yesterday (Still Waiting) and they could have been huge. They seem to have vanished off the face of the earth.

[Rich]

You know i was watching a video from Sum41 yesterday (Still Waiting) and they could have been huge. They seem to have vanished off the face of the earth.

One of the guitarists left and they carried on as a very average 3-piece and seemed to lose their edge, also they aren't really considered "cool" anymore as they aren't apparently emo enough for the cool kids to like, no pop=punk only Bring Me The Horizon now .

[GA!]

You know i was watching a video from Sum41 yesterday (Still Waiting) and they could have been huge. They seem to have vanished off the face of the earth.

They're still big in America, their last album charted at number seven (their best position so far).

[YI]

You know i was watching a video from Sum41 yesterday (Still Waiting) and they could have been huge. They seem to have vanished off the face of the earth.

One of the guitarists left and they carried on as a very average 3-piece and seemed to lose their edge, also they aren't really considered "cool" anymore as they aren't apparently emo enough for the cool kids to like, no pop=punk only Bring Me The Horizon now .

To be fair. The singles from the last album got a bit of airtime. However, they lost the ethnic looking bloke, and literally half of the album was made up of the "Blink 182 Chord Progression"...in one album they've probably got more instances of the "C-G-Am-F" pattern than Blink have in their entire musical catalogue.

They do fit as wasted potential to me. As outside of a select few tracks, I haven't been impressed by their stuff outside of "All Killer No Filler", which I love with all my heart (mostly for nostalgia reasons and memories, but still, epic).

And CONTROVERSIAL...Reuben. I loved the first album. Meh on the 2nd. Hated the third. Did not like the change in style and sound.

As for Finch. They released a mediocre second album and split. They've got back together. Put on a rocking live show, and have just put out a badass EP with some quality tunes on it.

Another one. Hell Is For Heroes. AMAZING debut in the form of "Neon Handshake", were proper pimped in the UK alt-rock market. For whatever reason got dropped from their label, a bunch of other shit happened, eventually released the 2nd album, it was a pile of shite. Dissapeared off the face of the earth. Released a third, self-titled album to absolutely ZERO response (I found it by accident...I have still yet to find a review of it), which was pretty fucking great, but it went completely unnoticed, even by fans. Then they split (but may be getting back together...I don't know).

[probablyoliver]

And CONTROVERSIAL...Reuben. I loved the first album. Meh on the 2nd. Hated the third. Did not like the change in style and sound.

Another somewhat controversial one (well, as far as I'm concerned) has to be Million Dead/Frank Turner. The first couple of EPs were absolutely jaw-droppingly amazing. Then they release the 'A Song to Ruin' LP which was also very, very good. Then we get Harmony No Harmony which has its moments (After the Rush Hour, Living the Dream, Holloway Prison Blues), but it was essentially a break-up album, and every song alluded to the fact that they were done. Then Frank Turner decides to completely lose his edge and release a couple folk albums which just have no oomph whatsoever. I mean, they're not bad albums by any means, but there's just no power to them whatsoever. The lyrical wit is almost entirely gone, the tempo is slow and dull and outside of a few tracks (Worse Things Happen at Sea, Jet Lag, I Knew Prufrock Before He Was Famous, A Decent Cup Of Tea), he's just dull.

[YI]

Frank Turner live, the 2 times I've seen him, has been jaw droppingly awesome. Epic. Nothing bad can be said about his solo stuff.

Back to The Libertines. The 2nd album is good. Nothing in comparison to the first. But it's far from a terrible album. What Katie Did, Music When The Lights Go Out, Can't Stand me Now, Tomblands etc. are fucking amazing tracks.

[probablyoliver]

Yeah, Turner has a great live presence, I'll give you that, but his solo stuff just doesn't translate to record whatsoever.

I didn't think much of the Libertines' second album, and although there are some good tracks on there, they're outweighed by the bad stuff. And the wasted potential of the Libertines really come from that, as people were touting them as the best thing since sliced bread, and they ended up breaking up, doing their own thing for a while and then just floating off the face of the earth. Dirty Pretty Things were shite, Babyshambles were alright and I'm pretty sure only about 9 people in the entire world even know about YETI.

[Guest Ant]

Add Babyshambles to the list. Although i can't stand Docherty he used to make decent music