Which album was a band's creative zenith/magnum opus before falling off?

Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt

Blood Sex Sugar Magic by Red Hot Chili Peppers

Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

R.E.M. - Automatic for the people

Gorillaz fell off? Since when?

Pink Floyd - The Wall

Not their last album before Roger Waters left the band (that was The Final Cut, the album which followed), but it was far superior, and arguably their best album-- and inarguably their magnum opus.

The David Gilmour-led era of Pink Floyd was ok, but it would never reach the fevered heights and sick intensity of the Roger Waters days.

Massive Attack - Mezzanine

They still had a few good tracks afterwards but that album really was a masterpiece.

Metallica (Black Album)

Is this a joke? This is where they're newfound mediocrity was cemented. They peaked at Ride the Lightning, everything after that was more and more watered down garbage.

Sorry, I meant I strongly disagree.

The Suburbs by Arcade Fire

Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica

This is really the only band I have that hipster thought that they were better before they got big. This was the last album they made that I love every song on. Then they dropped Good News for People Who Like Bad News and their style was almost completely different, but also got many more people listening to the band.

Similarly I liked Kings of Leon before they changed the original vocalist. They had a rather unique sound when I discovered Aha Shake Heartbreak, but by Only By The Night, they had completely lost everything about their sound that I liked.

Sadly, Guns n Roses, Appetite for Destruction.

Nothing any of them have done since has matched the quality of creativity that they did on aod.

I'm not saying I didn't like the use your illusion pair, and Slash has done some damn good work on specific songs in his various projects. But the band as a whole fell off hard after their very first. Axl in particular kinda lost his songwriting during use your illusion, which had some great songs, but it wasn't consistently great as albums

Claude Debussy - Claire de Lune

The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium

Weather Report - Heavy Weather

Rush - 2112

Mr. Bungle - California

Dr. Dre - The Chronic

Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle

Wu Tang Clan - Enter the 36 Chambers

Beastie Boys - Paul’s Boutique

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

Getz/Gilberto/Jobim - The Girl from Ipanema

Mozart’s Requiem (good place to peak!)

Metallica - Master of Puppets

Cynic - Focus

Death - Human

Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten

Eric Johnson - Ah Via Musicom

Steve Vai - Passion and Warfare

Yngwie Malmsteen - Rising Force

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

Radiohead - Kid A

Deftones - White Pony

Secret Chiefs 3 - Book of Horizons

Dream Theater - Scenes from a Memory

The Allman Brothers - Live at the Fillmore East

Michael Jackson - Thriller

Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

Girl You Know It’s True- Milli Vanilli

Breakfast in America - Supertramp

And Justice For All.... By Metallica

Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine

A Rush of Blood to the Head by Cold Play...

Of what came after I like X&Y and Mylo Xyloto too, but this one was their best.

I know bands can change their style over 20 years, and I'm glad the band can be happy touring and making music they like and I don't hate people that like their new stuff, but something about the brilliant, raw feeling their music had (imo anyway) gave way for generic electronic music trend-chasing. When I heard "Higher Power" I was like "wow it's The Weekend just with Chris Martin singing."

Wait you think the Gorillaz fell off after Demon Days???

Wait a second, no way you're slandering Plastic Beach like that. PB is equal to DD, some days it hits better even.

Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.

Green Day - American Idiot. It's not that I dislike what came after, but 21st Century Breakdown feels disjointed, the Trilogy has really low lows, and they stopped being ambitious after that and just put out two "pretty good" albums and one awful one.

Also even if you don't like their '00s sound, I seriously don't get why Dookie is more well-liked than Nimrod beyond "it had more hits and I heard it first."

Wolfmother by… Wolfmother

I can name every song and lyric from that album but don’t ask me about anything else by them. Iirc the band basically split post album

This seems to happen with progressive rock at alarming levels. They just reach a point where they take their pretentious bullshit a little too far, and the fans grow weary of it. You saw that with Jethro Tull, which pushed its luck with A Passion Play after scoring a critical success with Thick as a Brick. Yes took it too far with Topographic Oceans. I'm sure ELP has an album where they pushed the envelope a little too far and pushed away the audience in the process. Unfortunately, that had a pendulum effect, with ELP releasing the wimpy Love Beach in an attempt to reel back in those lapsed fans.

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002)

They had an incredible decade prior to this releasing 3 other top notch albums, but by far this one sticks out as the most successful and easiest to pickup. They have a lot more after this release as well, but I think Wayne found himself diving into an era of depression and it absolutely showed on those later releases. The last release was good but also nothing special at the same time.

Green Day - Dookie

Radiohead - Kid A/Amnesiac

System of a down - Toxicity

Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the deaf

The Offspring - Smash

I love that game!

At the drive in - Relationship of Command
Refused - The Shape Of Punk To Come Tocotronic - Digital ist besser

Funny with Metallica … I think there’s an argument that Death Magnetic (2008) is, for the thrash fans, the “Black Album” they wanted.

Btw, in relation to many bands that appeared on this new century, it is a bit controversial to say they are falling off after their first album.

Since 2000, countless bands have released a great first album and then ""disappeared"" or the hype just stopped. Alt-J are a good example.

Bush: Sixteen Stone

Mathew Sweet: Girlfriend

NIN - The Fragile

I'm not saying Minutes to Midnight was Linkin parks zenith. But I thought it was fine, it was different for sure. But not bad at all IMO.

After that however, I don't think they released a single song i liked.

Double Nickels on the Dime, Minutemen. Also probably the best power trio record ever made. Granted, they only made one more record before D Boon died, but as legendary as he is, Mike Watt has still never done anything as good since.

Stone Roses - Stone Roses.

Their debut album put them on a very high pedestal that they were never able to match.

This is gonna be a really spicy take - Nightmare by Avenged Sevenfold. Pretty much every song is a banger and Save Me is a masterpiece. The singing is on point. I debated Waking the Fallen, but sadly I feel that some songs on that album just aren't up to the same quality (and Nightmare is much more approachable).

As for albums after Nightmare, Hail to the King was okay, The Stage was good but flawed (we got so many songs, but the mixing wasn't very good imo) and Life Is But A Dream is.... Just not good - again, in my opinion as a long-time fan.

Before Nightmare, self-titled was okay (certain songs like Unbound kinda pull it down for me, but they're not straight SKIPS per se) and City of Evil was amazing but not quite Nightmare quality in my opinion (just because of Matt's nasally singing, especially in songs like Seize the Day). WtF I've already went over, and Sounding the Seventh Trumpet honestly only had a few good songs in my opinion.

Stadium arcadium - red hot chilly peppers

RAM - Daft Punk

Evenessense - fallen

Lateralus - tool

Lonerism - Tame Impala

Dunno if they are falling off, but since Lonerism , they (or just Kevin Parker) are more focus producing music aside psych rock. Nowadays, Its visible Kevin is more focus on pop music, and his collaborations explains his focus.

He is now producing the new album of Dua Lipa. And the last song from her, has clearly new Kevin vibes

They Might Be Giants - Flood

A Perfect Circle - 13th Step

Sam's Town - The Killers

Rust in Peace - the magnum opus of all humanity has to offer

Endtroducing

• Last Splash by the Breeders
• White Album - The Beatles
• The Wall - Pink Floyd

Death Magnetic is better than Metallica's Metallica. That coming from a person who has been a fan since the 80s.

A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. And in no way do I mean this as a dis for anything that followed. A masterpiece is simply just that.

Shinedown The Sound of Madness

I love all of their albums, but there's something truly special about the musicality and emotional impact of the songs and album as a whole for The Sound of Madness

There subsequent albums are fantastic, but have more ups and downs than the consistent high bar of The Sound of Madness

Similarly, I think Disturbed Immortalized was Disturbed's peak work, with The Light and The Sound of Silence being incredible peaks of their signature style and highly musical storytelling on a fantastic album.

Agree with lots of others here so I'll say

Paul Simon - Graceland

Marilyn Manson - Holywood

Murray Street -- Sonic Youth

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Cursive - The Ugly Organ

LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening

Avenged Sevenfold - White Album

Therion : Lemuria / Sirius B (released on the same day)

There's argument to be made for several albums across their career (including their first), but I think REM's Document was the last great one they made. I know a lot of people will cry and point to Automatic for the People, but they are wrong.

Long Live by Atreyu, though it feels kind of like cheating. They went on hiatus after leaning toward more casual songs with the two albums before, and came back five years later with an excellent album that made people think they were back to their roots. And then they started trending towards the more popular stuff again.