Death Magnetic is better than Metallica’s Metallica. That coming from a person who has been a fan since the 80s.

And Justice For All… By Metallica

Shinedown The Sound of Madness

I love all of their albums, but there’s something truly special about the musicality and emotional impact of the songs and album as a whole for The Sound of Madness

There subsequent albums are fantastic, but have more ups and downs than the consistent high bar of The Sound of Madness

Similarly, I think Disturbed Immortalized was Disturbed’s peak work, with The Light and The Sound of Silence being incredible peaks of their signature style and highly musical storytelling on a fantastic album.

Double Nickels on the Dime, Minutemen. Also probably the best power trio record ever made. Granted, they only made one more record before D Boon died, but as legendary as he is, Mike Watt has still never done anything as good since.

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002)

They had an incredible decade prior to this releasing 3 other top notch albums, but by far this one sticks out as the most successful and easiest to pickup. They have a lot more after this release as well, but I think Wayne found himself diving into an era of depression and it absolutely showed on those later releases. The last release was good but also nothing special at the same time.

Wait you think the Gorillaz fell off after Demon Days???

Metallica (Black Album)

Is this a joke? This is where they’re newfound mediocrity was cemented. They peaked at Ride the Lightning, everything after that was more and more watered down garbage.

Sorry, I meant I strongly disagree.

A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. And in no way do I mean this as a dis for anything that followed. A masterpiece is simply just that.

There’s argument to be made for several albums across their career (including their first), but I think REM’s Document was the last great one they made. I know a lot of people will cry and point to Automatic for the People, but they are wrong.

Sadly, Guns n Roses, Appetite for Destruction.

Nothing any of them have done since has matched the quality of creativity that they did on aod.

I’m not saying I didn’t like the use your illusion pair, and Slash has done some damn good work on specific songs in his various projects. But the band as a whole fell off hard after their very first. Axl in particular kinda lost his songwriting during use your illusion, which had some great songs, but it wasn’t consistently great as albums

Sam’s Town - The Killers

Long Live by Atreyu, though it feels kind of like cheating. They went on hiatus after leaning toward more casual songs with the two albums before, and came back five years later with an excellent album that made people think they were back to their roots. And then they started trending towards the more popular stuff again.

This seems to happen with progressive rock at alarming levels. They just reach a point where they take their pretentious bullshit a little too far, and the fans grow weary of it. You saw that with Jethro Tull, which pushed its luck with A Passion Play after scoring a critical success with Thick as a Brick. Yes took it too far with Topographic Oceans. I’m sure ELP has an album where they pushed the envelope a little too far and pushed away the audience in the process. Unfortunately, that had a pendulum effect, with ELP releasing the wimpy Love Beach in an attempt to reel back in those lapsed fans.

Massive Attack - Mezzanine

They still had a few good tracks afterwards but that album really was a masterpiece.

Murray Street – Sonic Youth