10 Bands That Just Need To Stop

Once upon a time, there were bands regarded as "unstoppable" by fans and critics. They were world conquerors, masters of their genre. They could do no wrong, because they didn't know what "wrong" was. They topped charts, end of year lists, festival bills, the lot.

As it turns out though, they weren't entriely faultless. With the music industry and music fans being so fickle and hard to please, it can be a minefield of hit-or-miss experiments trying to get it right, and to keep people buying your music. It becomes a fine line of keeping the sound that made your band popular in the first place, alongside exploring new ideas to make everything sound new and fresh.

Granted, it's never nice to wish a certain group would stop doing the thing that's putting food on the table, but if there's a choice between continuing to add to their vast wealth or having to suffer through another album of boring tripe, then I know what side I'm going with.

For all the bands that reinvented, refreshed, experimented, took a chance and succeeded, there are many others that failed and have long overstayed their welcome.

Politically-charged and armed with a strong distaste for the UK government, Jonny "Itch" Fox and his band of merry men sought to name and shame those they felt had wronged the country. Their 2011 magnum opus Punk and Poetry covered everything a modern-day punk album should do; love, the voice of the voiceless, personal consciousness, and the future. It was sublime.

Any follow-up was going to struggle but Long Live the Struggle fell apart worse than Britney Spears, circa 2007. Musically sounding boring and generic, lyrically sounding like something a 13 year old would write in the back of their homework diary, not even guest spots from Tim Armstrong and Jason Aalon Butler could save this. It's no surprise then that Itch announced that the album would act as the band's swansong.

Well, at least for three years.

Reforming in 2015, hopes were high for comeback releases Off with Their Heads EP and The Gospel Truth but both are just abhorrent shells of their past, sporting the same problems as Long Live....

From here, it's hard to believe that a reunion/reconciliation between Itch and long-time guitarist Jamie Jazz would benefit the band in any way, it's probably best to assume the damage is done and move on.