As we look at bands that have longevity and continue making music to this day, we assess their legacy and their career through their albums. Bands like Overkill, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Megadeth are pushing double digits in album released throughout their illustrious careers. Fans can be picky about their favorite eras of a band or their all-time best album as well. Seeing constant debates online on which album is the defining record of a band. Was it the music? the lineup? the subject matter that made the album stand out amongst all the other albums the band had or has released?
Then, there are band’s that didn’t have that long of a lifespan. Bands that maybe went through internal strife’s while making an album, leaving to go on to make different music or form a bigger project now in hindsight. Releasing only one album either to close that chapter of the band or only releasing one album while fans patiently wait for a follow-up that might never come. Today, I wanted to look at bands that though only released one album in the band’s career, they were great records worth checking out. Some were albums that are still heavily praised by fans today decades after releases, many impactful in metal itself by streamlining the formation of new genres, and some are true hidden gems that are definitely worth a listen if you want to check out some short-lived projects that truly do leave a lasting legacy even in their brief existence.
Nailbomb: Point Blank
The side project of Sepultura front man at the time Max Cavalera and Alex Newport of Fudge Tunnel, the band infused industrial metal with the elements of thrash metal that Cavalera brought while with his time with Sepultura. Ranking highly with a lot of critics and many fans giving it high ratings on sites like Metal-Archives show that even thirty-one years, the album still holds up. Album opener “Wasting Away” is a pure pit-starter of a track. Driving drums and thrash-heavy riffage, it kicks the album off to appease the Sepultura fans. “VaI Toma No Cu” & “Gueriilas” has that early Ministry/Fear Factory tone to them in the guitar playing and drumming. Also songs like “Blind and Lost”, “World of Shit” and “Religious Cancer” are just straight bangers.
The band famously played the 1995 Dynamo Open Air Festival, which was recorded as a live album Proud To Commit Commercial Suicide. Following the performance, the band would break up and lay dormant for over two decades. Cavelera has revived the band for a couple performances, one as part of the Max Cavalera Dynasty Show in 2024, but Newport did not participate due to scheduling. As of this writing, there are just plans to perform as Nailbomb with a new lineup, but Cavalera has not hinted or mentioned any new music in the near future.
Crotchduster: Big Fat Box of Shit
A side project of Capharnaum member Jason Suecof, this unique death metal act grew in popularity for the band’s absurd take on death metal. Incorporating lyrical content about pure nonsense and sex akin to a teenager going through puberty, the project did grow an underground cult following. The band’s only release, Big Fat Box of Shit, was a truly unique album of musical genre hopping. Songs like “True Nature of Williams” has elements of classic heavy metal with chugging death metal distortion and drum machine drums, mixed with almost surf-rock guitar strums. Drawing a quirky comparison to Mr. Bungle at certain sections.
Even random tracks like “Cain Sings The Blues”, “Let Me into Starfish Land” add that cornball, pervy humor shifting into bombarding blast beats and unique power metal high vocals. Avant-garde, trippy and chaotic death metal that doesn’t take itself seriously at all to any degree. Lambasting conventional structured death metal and going for a GWAR/Mr. Bungle dynamic and the band just nails it perfectly. Making it an enjoyable listen for almost all types of metalheads. As the album delivers a little bit of something for everybody throughout the album.
Thergothon: Stream From The Heavens
Though short-lived, Finnish band Thergothon would leave an impressive, dreary impact in their melancholic wake. With the band’s 1994 album Stream From The Heavens, Thergothon would help innovate and form the genre known as funeral doom. Taking the rising sound of doom metal from the likes of Candlemass, My Dying Bride and Saint Vitus, but slowing the music down to a snail-like pace and adding so much atmosphere, dread and growling vocals that it truly captured the audio sounds of tragedy and bleakness.
Released after the band broke up to focus on other projects, this forty-minute funeral procession captures the true origins and roots of funeral doom metal. The melancholic and wailing vocals of Niko Skorpio on album opener “Everlasting” instantly give off the vibes of bleak, hopelessness and dread throughout the entire six minute runtime. Songs like “Elemental” tap into that ominous and foreboding atmosphere drone acts like Earth were truly building on, while the simplistic, snail-pace drumming of Jori Sjöroos just provide a barely-beating pulse to the band’s tragic and dark sound. If you are a fan of modern funeral doom acts like Ahab & Bell Witch, this album is a must listen to understand the roots and the sheer heaviness that this album would do in laying the groundwork for funeral doom.
Repulsion: Horrified
While Napalm Death, Extreme Noise Terror and Carcass were helping form the grindcore scene over in the UK in the 80’s, one band was helping form the grindcore scene in the U.S. Repulsion released their debut album Horrified in 1989, and with that, the American grindcore scene would be formed and that album becoming not only an introduction to grindcore in America, but would help inspire countless popular U.S. acts like Brutal Truth & Pig Destroyer. As well as being an influence for legendary death metal acts like Death and Cannibal Corpse.
At just under thirty minutes, the album is a whirlwind of the staples of what death metal and grindcore would be. Fast, thrash-influenced riffs and aggressive drumming, with an iconic album cover that matched the lyrics perfectly and embodies the harsh, violent nature of the band’s direction on the album. Matt Olivo and Aaron Freeman just shred and deliver heavy, pit-inducing riffs on songs like “The Stench of Burning Death” and “Acid Bath”. Scott Carlson’s throaty growls really shine on “Slaughter of The Innocent”, all while drummer Dave “Grave” Hollingshead just is unrelenting behind the kit. A true gamechanger for the U.S. in showing the U.K. wasn’t the only country that can go fast and short with their metal.
Weakling: Dead as Dreams
The band Silencer helped introduce the bleakest form of black metal known as Depressive Suicidal Black Metal (or DSBM for short). After the band broke up, many bands would attempt to carry the torch of the originators of the sound and one of those bands was Weakling. Releasing Dead as Dreams in 1999, their sound was melancholic, harsh and abrasive with the band’s musical tone and production style.
With six songs, each being over ten minutes (the title track being over twenty), the band really pushed into long-form, depressing and downtrodden black metal that accented the wailing screams and shrieks of vocalist John Gossard. “Cut Their Grain and Place Fire Therein” had some beautiful and ethereal sounding keyboards from Casey Ward. The manic and psychotic screaming on “This Entire Fucking Battlefield” is just pure, unhinged and demented. With the music matching the chaos and emotional anguish in Gossard’s vocal performance. Though the project only last two years from 1997-1999, Dead as Dreams would be hailed as a classic in the black metal scene as a hidden gem and a record to truly showcase how deep and dark the genre can go down the rabbit hole.
Thorns: Thorns
Norway’s Thorns took a creative and dynamic take on the black metal sound by including industrial elements into their version of black metal. Their self-titled 2001 debut added creative and out of the norm moments to a lot of their sound. Helping the band stand out amongst the traditional second wave black metal sound that many fans had dubbed “the norm” of the genre.
From the album’s opener “Existence” being a more straight-forward black metal sound, songs like “Shifting Channels” truly showcase the industrial influence and full embrace of breaking out of the cliché black metal mold. Even delving into ambient, post-metal and drone with the “Underneath The Universe” parts on the album. Though the band does release ambient/noise music for art galleries and exhibits under the name Thorns Ltd., the black metal era of the band has laid dormant. At the time of this release, though many bands would dabble in the industrial to modify their sound (Mayhem’s Grand Declaration of War and Gorgoroth’s Incipit Satan for example), in my opinion, Thorns did the best example of it at that time and the record still holds up over twenty years later.
Heaven & Hell: The Devil You Know
An almost Black Sabbath reunion of the Dio-era of the band w/ Vinny Appice on drums, Heaven & Hell would be an homage to that era of the band with the formation of this new project. 2009’s The Devil You Know captured the roots and sound of the Dio-era of Sabbath with modern production and a sound that pleased both die-hard metalheads. Selling very well, peaking at number 8 on the Billboard 200 and received praise from critics and fans upon release.
From the opening of “Atom and Evil”, that classic Tony Iommi doom and gloom guitar strums, combined with Dio’s haunting and ominous vocals, it was heavy metal 101 and off to a great start. The album’s lead single “Bible Black” has such an earworm riff, mixed with an instant headbobbing drum beat that it just hits that nostalgic feeling right on the nail. Songs like “Double The Pain” also has the same aesthetic, while leaning more towards a classic heavy metal sound, mixed with sludgy doom in Iommi’s guitar tone and playing. Sadly, the band would break-up following Dio’s passing in 2010. Three years later, the members would rejoin Black Sabbath w/ Ozzy on vocals to record the band’s final studio album 13 released in 2013.
Probot: Probot
A passion project for Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, he did something with Probot we all dreamed of when we were younger. Where we’d have our favorite vocalists perform on songs we wrote. The project featured metal legends King Diamond, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Tom G. Warrior of Celtic Frost, Cronos of Venom and so much more. As each track featured a guest vocalist on it.
The album’s lead single “Shake Your Blood” captures the gritty, sleazy attitude of Motörhead. “Red War” matches the groove and bounce of Sepultura w/ Max Cavalera on vocals. The moody, D.R.I. crossover thrash sound of the late 80’s/early 90’s is prevalent on “Silent Spring”. And album closer “Sweet Dreams” embodies the aura and spirit of King Diamond, while also adding elements of 70’s progressive metal that comes straight out of the southern rock-era. A true star-studded performance from all the vocalists and Grohl perfectly matching the feel and style of the front man performing the song musically.
diSEMBOWELMENT: Transcendence into The Peripheral
Atmospheric and dark, with elements of doom and death metal, Australia’s diSEMBOWELMENT landed with a gritty and cavernous thud with the band’s 1993 debut album. Bringing driving and aggressive death metal drumming, with vocals so soaked in reverb and chorus, that many can site bands like Portal taking inspiration from. Moments of post-metal, funeral doom, and death metal are just layered throughout the entire album and embodying the early stages of the death/doom hybrid that would come in later years.
Album opener “The Tree of Life of Death” has moments of blisteringly fast death metal drumming straight off a Cannibal Corpse album, before hitting the brakes hard into a sludge-like dirge throughout the song’s ten-plus minute runtime. Renato Gallina’s vocals shift from ominous chanting, almost ritualistic, to deep gutturals throughout the entire album. “Excoriate” push the band’s sound into almost straight death metal w/ the cavernous vocals and doom atmosphere that reminds me of Immolation. And “Cerulean Transience of All My Imagined Shores” is just a titan of a closer for the album. As the weight of the band’s sound was encapsulated on this record, Transcendence into The Peripheral is a true masterpiece of experimentation, avant-garde and creativity that any fans of post-metal acts like Neurosis or Isis NEED to check out.
There are so many bands that are out there that only released one album (I am aware of this before you point it out and that I didn’t cover every band, hence the meme). But, thanks to the help of the r/MetalForTheMasses subreddit, they were able to provide some of the heavy hitters mentioned in this article, but also some deeper cuts. Below is a “honorable mention” section of some other albums you should check out if you want a deeper dive into the underrated one album bands in extreme metal:
Caladan Blood “Echoes of Battle”
Gorement “The Ending Quest”
Avast “Mother Culture”
Death Strike “Fuckin’ Death”
Lykathea Aflame “Elvenefris”
Demilich “Nespithe”
XXX Maniak “Harvesting The Cunt Nectar”
Trees of Eternity “Hour of The Nightingale”
Vinterland “Welcome My last Chapter”
