History LoudnessWar / TheWorstOffenders

* Considering it was produced by Rick Rubin, it's probably not too surprising that Music/BlackSabbath were a casualty of this trope with their reunion album "13".

** ''¡Uno!'', ''¡Dos!'', and ''¡Tre! are also offenders. This may explain the release of ''Demolicious'', which contains stripped-down demo versions of the songs from these albums.

* Music/GreenDay's ''Music/AmericanIdiot'' and ''{Music/TwentyFirstCenturyBreakdown}}'' are both pretty clipped. The [=HDTracks=] versions have significantly more dynamic range than the original releases ([=DR9=] compared to [=DR5=] and [=DR6=], respectively). There were also vinyl editions which, judging from the dynamic range scores, may have been mastered from the same source as the [=HDTracks=] versions.

* Dann Huff is notorious for his overblown production in CountryMusic. He loves to turn all the guitars UpToEleven in spots where they don't need to be, and then sometimes throw a blaring string section on top of that.
** The worst examples are his mid-2000s Music/RascalFlatts albums (''Me and My Gang'' through ''Unstoppable''), where he layers strings on top of the guitars, causing Gary [=LeVox=], who already has an extremely high-pitched, nasal voice, to [[CarefulWithThatAxe practically scream]] just to be heard over the noise. Some of their songs from this era are almost literally painful to listen to for this reason, most notably the TitleScream on "Bob That Head".
** Huff also pushed Music/{{Lonestar}} to whiny theatrics between ''Lonely Grill'' and ''Let's Be Us Again'', but the production wasn't as bad.

*** It looks like they've settled down a bit with the brickwalling if ''Onwards to the Wall'' is an indicator of anything.
** Most {{Shoegazing}} bands that released an album after Music/MyVitriol's ''Finelines'' suffered from excessive loudness. This is why a lot of the albums get acclaimed for the song writing, but dodge perfect / near-perfect scores because of the poor productions quality. {{Shoegazing}} used to use loudness as a means to make all the effects pedals in the music more audible, but a lot of the more recent producers are CompletelyMissingThePoint and wind up brickwalling '''everything'''.
*** To be fair, the brickwalling on ''Finelines'' was the result of a bad producer and ExecutiveMeddling, as many live recordings mixed by the band don't have this problem.

* The trope is discussed by former ''Country Weekly'' critic Chris Neal in [[http://web.archive.org/web/20091108085038/http://www.the9513.com/everything-louder-than-everything-else/ this article]], mainly referencing Frank Liddell and Mike Wrucke's production on Music/MirandaLambert's ''Revolution'' album. ([[WordOfGod Liddell said]] that he tried to make "Only Prettier" obnoxiously loud [[InvokedTrope on purpose]], which actually fits the song's attitude, but the rest of the album has no excuse.)
** Frank Liddell and Mike Wrucke are very guilty of this on their work with David Nail and Eli Young Band, too.
* Many tracks on Thompson Square's two albums are so loud that they're fuzzy and distorted. The sound is likely due to their being produced by neophytes (namely, Music/JasonAldean's road band).

* Music/MarkWills' "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g_e5UMLOzo Take It All Out on Me]]" has a ''lot'' of clipping in the intro. To be fair, this seems to be a rookie mistake from Brett James, who is primarily a songwriter and made his production debut on that album.

* Tony Brown does this sometimes, too. Music/RebaMcEntire and Music/KellyClarkson's duet version of "Because of You" (from Reba's ''Duets'' album) is a bombastic mess — ultra-compressed guitars blaring throughout, and the instrumentation of the bridge mixed so absurdly loud that Reba is nearly inaudible.

* Brent Rowan can do this in a song with only three instruments. "Don't Make Me" by Music/BlakeShelton is a good example.

* Midnight Resistance's ''The Mirror Cage'' suffers dearly from brickwall limiting and clipping, despite the preceding album, ''Remote'', being at least a partial aversion.

* Both of {{retraux}}-electro artist Lazerhawk's albums are offenders to some degree, but the brickwalling and distortion on ''Visitors'' is downright atrocious. Too bad, this was an otherwise great album.

* Music/{{Sigh}} have released a number of albums that qualify as victims of this trope, going back to 1995's ''Infidel Art'' at [=DR7=], which isn't terrible in and of itself, but there was quite a lot of clipping of the waveform. Of their original album releases since, ''Gallows Gallery'' and the band's most recent album ''Graveward'' are the only ones not to have any clipping, at [=DR9=] and [=DR6=] respectively (the latter was still obviously heavily compressed, but the mastering engineer took care not to clip the peaks). ''Ghastly Funeral Theatre'' and ''Scenario IV: Dread Dreams'' seem like they would be better, at [=DR10=], but there is still some clipping, though it probably won't be something casual listeners would notice. As for the band's remasters, many of them are brickwalled and clipped as well. Blood Music's 2012 remaster of ''Gallows Gallery'' is an exception (The End's 2007 remaster is not), as is Hammerheart Records' 2CD remaster of ''Scorn Defeat'' from 2011 (Enucleation's 2009 remaster, once again, is heavily brickwalled at [=DR5=], though at least this one isn't badly clipped). ''Scenes from Hell'', the band's worst offender at [=DR4=], was re-released in a 2CD version with an alternate master that is mostly free from this trope. And several of the band's albums have gotten vinyl releases, which are usually quieter. The lesson we can all draw from this is that it pays to do your research on the mastering of various releases of an album before purchasing it.

* Hypocrisy's album ''Virus'' has a total album gain of -14.09 dB, and one of the songs looks like [[http://www.devir.de/temp/hypocrisy.png this]]. Fucking hell.

** Part of this is due to the amps a lot of guitarists use, forcing everyone else to keep up. Modern PA systems have made the "stack" redundant, but between personal taste and the iconic image, many guitarists still insist on gigging with them. Interestingly, EricClapton and [[Music/TheWho PeteTownshend]] stopped using stacks decades ago, despite their role in popularizing them.

** Part of this is due to the amps a lot of guitarists use, forcing everyone else to keep up. Modern PA systems have made the "stack" redundant, but between personal taste and the iconic image, many guitarists still insist on gigging with them. Interestingly, EricClapton and PeteTownshend stopped using stacks decades ago, despite their role in popularizing them.

* BlackMetal band The Axis of Perdition's early releases were horribly clipped. Their first official release, ''The Ichneumon Method (and Less Welcome Techniques)'', is particularly clipped with a dynamic range of '''''[=DR1=]''''' and a RMS of -2.4 dB (making it even worse than Iggy Pop's notorious ''Raw Power'' remaster, which had a RMS of -2.5 dB. According to Audition, 10.5% of the recording is clipped). Fortunately, this tendency of theirs has abated with each subsequent release, to the point where their most recent releases, ''Urfe'' and ''Tenements (of the Anointed Flesh)'', are aversions of this trope - both of these are mixed extremely quietly for black metal albums (although there are also extended ambient passages on these recordings), coming in at around [=DR11=]. According to the band, the clipping on their early albums was apparently because they didn't know much about mastering at the time, though it is particularly strange that their second full-length album has clipping at odd amplitudes like -6 dB, depending on the track.

* Music/{{Burzum}}. His '90s stuff is mastered reasonably but ever since he got out of prison he's been brickwalling everything to death, even ''Fallen'', which he claimed was going to be mastered "as if it was classical music" (it's actually more clipped than the album that preceded it). Reissues of his earlier material thus far remain reasonably mastered.

* Music/{{Sigh}} have released a number of albums that qualify as victims of this trope, going back to 1995's ''Infidel Art'' at [=DR7=], which isn't terrible in and of itself, but there was quite a lot of clipping of the waveform. Of their original album releases since, ''Gallows Gallery'' and the band's most recent album ''Graveward'' are the only ones not to have any clipping, at [=DR9=] and [=DR6=] respectively (the latter was still obviously heavily compressed, but the mastering engineer took care not to clip the peaks). ''Ghastly Funeral Theatre'' and ''Scenario IV: Dread Dreams'' seem like they would be better, at [=DR10=], but there is still some clipping, though it probably won't be something casual listeners would notice. As for the band's remasters, many of them are brickwalled and clipped as well. Blood Music's 2012 remaster of ''Gallows Gallery'' is an exception (The End's 2007 remaster is not), as is Hammerheart Records' 2CD remaster of ''Scorn Defeat'' from 2011 (Enucleation's 2009 remaster, once again, is heavily brickwalled). ''Scenes from Hell'', the band's worst offender at [=DR4=], was re-released in a 2CD version with an alternate master that is mostly free from this trope. And several of the band's albums have gotten vinyl releases, which are usually quieter. The lesson we can all draw from this is that it pays to do your research on the mastering of various releases of an album before purchasing it.

* Intentionally invoked by a number of Noise and early {{Industrial}} artists, most notably by Whitehouse on ''Birthdeath Experience'' (1979) and ''Right To Kill'' (1984), on which ''everything'' is "in the red". HellIsThatNoise, indeed. Averted by legendary harsh-noise artist Music/{{Merzbow}}, whose production tends to be frighteningly clear.
** Someone hasn't heard the man's mid-1990s works, particularly ''Pulse Demon'' and ''Venerology'', the latter having [=ReplayGain=] values in the '''negative twenties'''(and a DR of ''0''), and also contains what might be the loudest track ever put to compact disc in "I Lead You Towards Glorious Times"

** Signum's ''For You'', also on AVB's Armada label, is even worse. Is it trance, or unlistenable wall of white noise anti-music?
* Even happy hardcore/hard trance has been affected. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERrAJs_LHBw This]] is pure EarRape.
** In fact, Blumchen exhibited this trope way back in 1996 with ''Herzfrequenz'', which has an overall range of -5 [=dBFS=].

* ''Stitches of Eden'', Helalyn Flowers' second album, was ruined by this trope, after their first album, ''A Voluntary Coincidence'' averted it. Inexcusable. For comparison, here's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTgmJ-g52i8 "Digital Blood"]] from the first album, and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKd_QgOmIls "Your Killer Toy"]] from the second. ''White Me In / Black Me Out'' is also rather compressed, although definitely less clipped than ''Stitches''.

* Anything produced by Yasutaka Nakata: technopop group {{Music/Perfume}}, capsule, MEG, Music/KyaryPamyuPamyu, etc. Nakata's production has steadily been pushing the limits of what compression can do with every successive release he's worked on. His 2011 albums, capsule's ''WORLD OF FANTASY'' and Perfume's ''JPN'', hit ''[[Music/RedHotChiliPeppers Californication]]'' levels of distortion, to the point where melody lines that are supposed to be dead centre are wobbling around the stereo field from all of the other instruments momentarily hogging frequency range. Things also have a habit of ducking out of the mix for split seconds all over the place, much like the music ducks out when a voice speaks during a radio commercial, due to Nakata's ongoing quest to make every second of a song hit 0db.

** This actually started before ''Californication''. I just listened to ''One Hot Minute'' for the first time in awhile and it could have been called ''[[IncrediblyLamePun One Hot Master]]'' - it's really compressed as well, although not as badly as the commercially released mix of ''Californication'' was. Looking at the waveform bears this out; it's almost a solid brick wall except for a couple of acoustic tracks. Is anyone surprised that this was a Music/RickRubin production?

* Music/TheStrokes' ''Room On Fire''.
** Especially daunting since their debut album was widely considered a breath of fresh air from this.

* Apparently the new Music/JoyDivision collector's edition albums are squished. Martin Hannett would have been furious.
* Ben Folds' 2008 album ''Way To Normal'' was badly compressed in its initial release -- and fans complained so much this time that the studio actually reversed course. The album was rereleased barely a year later as a deluxe 2-disc set, ''Stems and Seeds'', with all the tracks "demastered" and some other goodies included to justify the purchase.

* Music/{{Gorillaz}}' ''Plastic Beach'' and Music/{{Spoon}}'s ''Transference'' have been "mastered" by Vlado Meller, so there's a very high chance of this bullshit.

* Why Is Angels & Airwaves album ''LOVE'' so normal-volume, but if you play ''I-Empire'' it's twice the volume? Imagine, you're about to go to sleep, ''I-Empire'' in your CD player just about to start up at what you deem a normal volume, then WHAM! Your ears hurt from the dB count. So you end up adjusting it so ''I-Empire'' sounds normal and everything else all quiet-like.
* Music/{{REM}}'s Collapse Into Now, particularly the songs Discoverer, All The Best and Mine Smell Like Honey. The vinyl version of the release is much better and, when equalised properly has about the same fidelity as the Lifes Rich Pageant LP.
** This was also the case with their previous album, Accelerate, so it's not entirely surprising.
** See also: ''In Time: The Best of R.E.M.'' Limiting all over the damn place, giving formerly lively songs a much duller feeling. Good luck trying to find an authentic, pre-digital fuckery version of "Bad Day" (unless you count "It's The End of the World as We Know It...")
*** Well, demo and live recordings of Bad Day from 1986 were bootlegged long before the song's official release, but despite being exempt from the loudness war, aren't as good transfers as the official (but brickwalled releases).
*** Their 1994 album ''Monster'' is an early example of this trend, though it was probably invoked deliberately to give the album a more raw sound.
*** Peter Buck noted that they wanted to show they weren't just a jangle band, and they were also inspired by the grunge of the time.

* Killing Joke's latest single, ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=497TdtnoQu8 Endgame]]''.

* Music/TheWhiteStripes' 'Icky Thump' album is a particularly bad offender, the drums being VERY noticeably distorted on many tracks, to the point of the album being unlistenable on most speakers
** This has long been a [[ArtisticLicense trademark of the band]], actually.

* Music/GreenDay's ''Music/AmericanIdiot'' and ''[[{{Music/TwentyFirstCenturyBreakdown}} 21st Century Breakdown]]'' are both pretty clipped. The [=HDTracks=] versions have significantly more dynamic range than the original releases ([=DR9=] compared to [=DR5=] and [=DR6=], respectively). There were also vinyl editions which, judging from the dynamic range scores, may have been mastered from the same source as the [=HDTracks=] versions.
* Live's ''Throwing Copper'' still has a good deal of dynamic range, especially when compared to most of the albums on this list, but significant portions of the album are brickwalled and clipped. Notable that it predated ''(What's the Story) Morning Glory?'', which is usually regarded as the point where this trope got really, really bad, by about a year (released in 1994).

* Mark Wills' "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g_e5UMLOzo Take It All Out on Me]]" has a ''lot'' of clipping in the intro. To be fair, this seems to be a rookie mistake from Brett James, who is primarily a songwriter and made his production debut on that album.

* Even happy hardcore/hard trance has been affected. Just [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERrAJs_LHBw listen to this]]. Pure EarRape.

** Some have cited this as a result of excessive cocaine use by all parties involved. Cocaine can apparently affect your hearing and as such probably shouldn't be used by recording engineers. Though in all fairness, working with the Gallagher brothers in the studio would drive anyone to narcotics in the end.

** All of Oasis' work qualifies, really. Even ''Definitely Maybe'' was pretty damn loud (especially by 1994 standards,) although it isn't as badly clipped as anything they released after it.
* Pop music is not immune to this either. ''[[http://www.mindspring.com/~mrichter/dynamics/dynamics.htm Heart in Motion]]'' by Amy Grant and ''Stripped'' by Christina Aguilera are the most commonly cited examples. Brandy's Full Moon has also been [[http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=bd35efbff5babeb883c6961def275418&showtopic=27691 singled out]].

* Music/{{Rihanna}}'s "Only Girl (In The World)" is quite obviously brickwalled, being actually ''distorted'' during parts of the chorus.

** Likewise, Website/{{Cracked}}'s article on [[http://www.cracked.com/funny-6246-loudness-war/ the Loudness War]] expresses shock at seeing Music/CelineDion, "[[{{Friends}} I'll Be There For You]]" and Music/RickyMartin being louder than ''Music/{{ACDC}}''.

* Music/PixieLott. For example, listen to "Boys And Girls", which painfully blares in your ears from beginning to end. Also {{lampshaded}} with the album titled ''Turn It Up Louder''.
* Many songs by Music/{{Lights}} fall victim to this, such as [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPLRkyGU3cM "Second Go"]], and even worse [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK0Vg34Nv7I "Saviour"]], where the chorus is completely brickwalled. Her sophomore album ''Siberia'' has taken this trend further, being distorted to the point of unlistenability. ''Little Machines'' has noticeably better dynamics than her first two albums, but at least two of the tracks, namely "Up We Go" and "Same Sea", still have horrible clipping during their choruses, which appears to be intentional overcompression.

* Fifth Harmony's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4JfPlry-iQ Bo$$]]" is almost '''headache-inducing''' with how loud it is.
* Music/{{Sia}}'s ''1000 Forms of Fear'' The single ''Chandelier'' in particular is mastered at [=DR3=] and has very audible clipping. It holds up better than rock music of similar loudness, but it still sounds bad.

[[folder:Psychedelic]]
* Music/TheMarsVolta's ''Deloused in the Comatorium'' and ''Frances the Mute''.
** These also contain extended quiet passages, so that the brick-walled bits hit you EVEN HARDER.
*** Every single Mars Volta album contains some degree of clipping, although ''Octahedron'' is significantly less clipped than the rest. Then again it's supposed to be their "acoustic" album (although, true to form, it's not entirely acoustic). However, ''Nocutourniquet'' is bad enough that even the mastering engineer has [[https://twitter.com/#!/hebakadryy/status/185105490387275777 disowned it]], indicating that she was forced to master it that way by either the label or someone in the band. At least some of the vinyl editions, contrary to popular belief (including the previous form of this very entry), are also clipped. This also affected many releases by Bixler Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez' previous band, At the Drive-In, so it's not a new problem.
[[/folder]]

* Music/RiseAgainst are basically war criminals in the loudness war. War criminals with an army and tanks and [=CDs=]. Very compressed, very loud [=CDs=].

* Music/{{Queen}}'s latest compilation, "Absolute Greatest", has the dynamics sucked right out of it. You know how the first verse of "We are the Champions" is really quiet, then the loud chorus comes blasting out? Prepare to be severely disappointed.

**** Peter Buck noted that they wanted to show they weren't just a jangle band, and they were also inspired by the grunge of the time.

* Ditto for Music/TheBandPerry's first album. It's not as noticeable since they tended to play more subdued ballads, but on the song [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eiZIL_KYyU "Double Heart,"]] they just let 'er rip, and it always sounds like it's being listened to on a radio in another room.
** Their second album is also guilty of this thanks to notoriously hamfisted producer Dann Huff, who loves to drench everything in as much overdriven guitar as possible (see "DONE."). He has been criticized for his bombastic production most on mid-2000s Music/RascalFlatts albums, where he layers strings on top of the guitars, causing Gary [=LeVox=], who already has an extremely high-pitched, nasal voice, to all but scream just to be heard over the noise. Some of their songs from this era are almost literally painful to listen to for this reason.

* The trope is discussed by former ''Country Weekly'' critic Chris Neal in [[http://www.the9513.com/everything-louder-than-everything-else/ this article]], mainly referencing Frank Liddell and Mike Wrucke's production on Music/MirandaLambert's ''Revolution'' album. ([[WordOfGod Liddell said]] that he tried to make "Only Prettier" obnoxiously loud [[InvokedTrope on purpose]], which actually fits the song's attitude, but the rest of the album has no excuse.)

* The entirety of the ''[[TouhouProject Toho]] {{Eurobeat}}'' series, apart from ''Vol. 7'' and ''Vol. 8'', is guilty, but ''Vol. 9'' and ''10'' are by far the worst offenders. All of the songs on these two are sheer brick walls with near-zero dynamic range and constant audible clipping. Even the songs by Odyssey, who normally avoids this trope, as mentioned on the "Aversions" page.

* [[OneBookAuthor One-album wonder]] Gearwhore's ''Drive'' is brickwalled beyond belief, e.g. constant clipping of percussion on "Accelerator" and "11:11", and "Train" is almost a perfect rectangle. This was 1998, mind you.

* The entirety of the ''[[TouhouProject Toho]] {{Eurobeat}}'' series, apart from ''Vol. 7 and ''Vol. 8'', is guilty, but ''Vol. 9'' and ''10'' are by far the worst offenders. All of the songs on these two are sheer brick walls with near-zero dynamic range and constant audible clipping. Even the songs by Odyssey, who normally avoids this trope, as mentioned on the "Aversions" page.

* The entirety of the ''[[TouhouProject Toho]] {{Eurobeat}}'' series is guilty, but ''Vol. 9'' and ''10'' are definitely the worst. All of the songs on these two are sheer brick walls with near-zero dynamic range, along with clipping aplenty. Even the songs by Odyssey, who normally avoids this trope, as mentioned below.

** ''[[Music/TheDownwardSpiral]]'', also released in 1994, has the same deal as ''Throwing Copper'' - overall there is a lot of dynamic range, but the loudest portions of the album are brickwalled and clipped. This would continue with most of Music/NineInchNails' releases throughout TheNineties and in fact dates all the way back to their 1992 EP ''Broken'' (although the version of this that I have may not be the same as the original release). However, knowing Reznor's perfectionistic tendencies, it's quite likely that he intended the clipped parts to sound exceptionally distorted, so your mileage may vary as to whether this counts as a straight example of this trope or whether it's a subversion.

* Frank Liddell and Mike Wrucke are very guilty of this on their work with David Nail and Eli Young Band, too.
** Many tracks on Thompson Square's two albums are so loud that they're fuzzy and distorted. The sound is likely due to their being produced by neophytes (namely, Music/JasonAldean's road band).
** Ditto for Music/TheBandPerry's first album. It's not as noticeable since they tended to play more subdued ballads, but on the song [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eiZIL_KYyU "Double Heart,"]] they just let 'er rip, and it always sounds like it's being listened to on a radio in another room.

* Most of Cole Swindell's debut album displays a pretty nasty case of this, as it was the very first production credit for Music/LukeBryan's guitarist Michael Carter (who produced all but one track). On nearly every song, it's hard to discern ''anything'' other than way-too-loud guitars.

* Music/RiseAgainst are basically war criminals in the loudness war. War criminals with an army and tanks and [=CDs=]. Very compressed, very loud [=CDs=].

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