10 Rock Albums That Are Way Too Bloated

As much as grunge may take credit with killing the hair metal movement, there's a good chance that Guns N Roses really beat Seattle to the punch. There may have been some great acts still converging on the Sunset Strip, but hearing Welcome to the Jungle turned everything on its head, leaving bands like Cinderella virtually obsolete. By the time the '90s got rolling though, it looked like the band was trying to grow up way too quickly.

Looking to move on from Appetite for Destruction, Axl Rose figured that the next album would be a double record of all new material, which meant that the end product was going to be messy as all hell. Since this was also the time when Axl was starting to build up the insufferable rock star persona on tour, Use Your Illusion is one of the most mixed bags to come from a mainstream rock band. Although there are some street level songs on here like Garden of Eden or Right Next Door to Hell, there's no reason to have two separate versions of Don't Cry or the industrial rock experiment My World, both of which seem high on the ambition of the project.

When they do rise to the occasion as one of the biggest bands in the world though, their ambitious side actually works, with November Rain and Civil War sounding like they're reaching those stadium heights that they filled on the back half of Appetite. The good songs are more than worth keeping around, but given all that went into this, it makes total sense why the rest of the band wouldn't survive to make another record together.