JesusfreakHideout.com: Top 15 One-Album Wonders

As music fans, we hear a lot of new music all the time from promising new artists. Some national debut albums really leave a mark on us, getting us pumped for the artist's career ahead. Sadly, some of these artists never even make it to album number two before they stop making music, break up, or just disappear.

This list is a countdown of our top 15 "One-Album Wonders" -- bands that released just one album before disappearing from the map for one reason or another -- leaving us to wonder what could have been with album number 2.

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#4. Roper
Brace Yourself For The Mediocre

Release Year: 2004

After Guerilla Rodeo proceeded to not proceed, Five Iron fans were still kinda hoping for something to fill the gap. That's when Reese Roper announced what would take the place of Guerilla Rodeo. He resigned with FIF's label, 5 Minute Walk, and announced that his new band Roper would be releasing their debut album. It was almost like another Guerilla Rodeo album, as the overall style was fairly similar, but with the different band members, you could tell there was a different energy and songwriting style.

The thing with Roper is that, while many (myself included) have referred to their music as "Five Iron Frenzy without horns," this has come to serve as a gross overstatement. Sure, the vocals and lyricism is the same, but other than that, Roper is a very different animal. There seemed to be more punk influence ("You're With Stupid" and "Day of Pigs"), and there were several instances where Reese used brave Saint Saturn-esque synthy sounds ("Hello Lamewads" and "1985"). They actually felt closer to Yellow Second than Five Iron.

There were more Roper albums planned, at least as far as "We want to do more Roper albums," though I doubt any new songs were actually written. As with their cover of Shania Twain's "You're Still The One," Roper wanted to cover a different country song on each new album. But the Roper experience turned out to be pretty bad for the members. Reese to this day will say that Roper is the most fun band he's ever been in, but because of the debt and broken promises all around, the band has been laid to rest. Now we just need Reese to do his part in his other side projects...come on Reese!
- Scott Fryberger

Visit our Roper page for more information about them...