10 Most Disappointing Hard Rock Albums Ever Made

Given all the setbacks Pearl Jam had to deal with, their first album streak showed that they could turn sh*t into gold. Even when the Ticketmaster debacle had them holding onto their sanity by a thread, Vitalogy managed to still blow away their competition on songs like Nothingman and Spin the Black Circle. When you grind like that for too long though, you get that one moment where everything goes off the rails.

Still nursing their wounds from Vitalogy, No Code is a reflection of everything wrong with Pearl Jam at the time, with Eddie Vedder deciding to take the reins of the songwriting. It wasn't exactly the most subtle of power shifts either, with bassist Jeff Ament almost quitting the band after no one told him that they had started recording. Speaking about it now, even Eddie tends to look at this album as a bid for career suicide, saying that he had tried to get as impersonal as possible in both the lyrical and musical department.

That doesn't stop the traditional Pearl Jam magic from rearing its head every now and again, with both Hail Hail and Lukin being some of the most punky bits of their '90s output. Though none of Pearl Jam's previous albums were necessarily a fun listen, this was the first time where it feels like the album itself doesn't want you listening to it.