Should a band's inferior releases influence our judgment of their good ones? Poor releases, just as much as good ones, give us insight into the band and their career as a whole and shed light on their other works. After all, Darkthrone in 2010 has the same members as Darkthrone 1990: If their later releases show poor songwriting then it's absurd to attribute a flash of brilliance to their earlier music, just as absurd as it is to say they were in poor form when they wrote FOAD. Think about it this way: If you purchase an apple you're buying the whole thing, not just the parts you can eat. An apple is not only the tasty flesh but the core, seeds and stem. If you saw an advertisement showing the inside of an apple, just the core and seeds, you would probably say 'well i'm not going to buy that'. But those bits - however undesirable - are necessary part of the apple and part of its whole. I just don't think it's right to say 'I like Darkthrone, but only their early stuff.' Each album shows me a different facet of Darkthrone and over 10 years of releasing crap shows me I don't actually like Darkthrone that much. The album/band distinction just seems totally nonsensical to me, we should stop severing parts of discographies and accept a band/composer entirely without reservation. There was no such absurdity in the classical era - a composer was the sum of his works.