10 Legendary Rock Bands With Sophomore Slump Albums

As punk was just starting to inch closer to hardcore, Bad Religion were on the brink of something genius. After churning out their first album How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, the band had gotten a following that no one saw coming, with everyone loving what they heard and chomping at the bit for something more. The fans might have liked it, but the band went into the next record with the worst attitude possible.

Thinking that what they had done was just a fluke, Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz threw punk out the window on Into the Unknown, which is one of the wildest left turns that a band has ever made. Since their roots had always been in the punk scene, the sight of them going prog was enough to give everyone tonal whiplash, with half of the band quitting in protest and not even working on the album.

While this is definitely far from being the worst thing in the world, it is by far the worst album to have the name Bad Religion associated with it, sounding like an amateur bar band trying to suddenly reinvent themselves into Yes. It took a while for them to recuperate as well, with the band even naming their comeback EP Back to the Known as a sort of apology to the fans. Real classics like Suffer were waiting just around the corner, but it's scary to think that one of the greatest punk bands of all time were willing to piss it all away like this.