10 Major Albums Where Everything Went Wrong

If there's any band that knows a thing or two about career resurrections, it would have to have been Van Halen. After losing one of the almighty frontmen in rock with David Lee Roth, the kings of glam metal proved that they had what it took to last, drafting in Sammy Hagar and going on to even more critical acclaim in the years that followed. With Sammy gone at the tail end of the '90s though, they could do it all again...right?

While the idea of bringing in Extreme frontman Gary Cherone wasn't the worst idea on paper, Van Halen's third self-titled release is still one of the most baffling fall from graces in rock music. Just leaving Cherone to copy Sammy's singing style, the entire album just runs like a scatterbrained amalgamation of riffs that add up to nothing by the end of every track.

Though the skeletons of decent Van Halen songs are in here somewhere, it's hard to sift through everything when you're dealing with some of the most befuddling lyrics in the hard rock canon and a singer who's singing sounds like a broken air conditioner at the absolute worst of times. Although we eventually got a return to form of sorts with a Different Kind of Truth in 2012, this was looking like the dark final chapter in Van Halen's evolution for a long while.