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Yeah I love me some good hard rock. Not too surprising since I grew up in the hard rock era after all, although my tastes run to the less commercial more garagey diy kinda bands. Polished rock, aka radio friendly rock, is not really my thing. So yeah all those "classic" rock bands from the 70's are gonna be the bigger selling radio darling bands, and back then the record companies had more influence over young bands and would often pressure them into finding better vocalists. The biggest selling stuff was all mostly vocal driven so they figured they'd need someone skilled in that area to put them over the top into the upper echelon of the bigtime multi-million sellers. But what happens with your lesser known bands is that a lot of the time singers who might not be as technically proficient can still become quite endearing to us when we listen to them repeatedly and get used to their voices. I take issue with your characterization of these types as sub-par though. Over the years I've put lots of vocalists into what I'll call the 'so bad they're good' category. Lemmy obviously comes to mind, the dude from Briton Rites, Joey Ramone, and I'm sure there are many more that just aren't coming immediately to mind. Mr Garcia falls into this category as well. He seems to be very polarizing, people have strong feelings about him as a singer one way or the other. I really like him myself, even though I'm not the biggest Kyuss fan. Their high points were very high, but for me they're few and far between. Those Kyuss albums were chockers with filler and other nonsense that was a waste of my time. So I can't listen to complete Kyuss albums, if anything I'll make a playlist of cherry-picked tracks, Gardenia, Green Machine, Thumb, Demon Cleaner...I like John better for his more riff driven hard rock stuff.  But unlike most people, technical vocal ability and superior musicianship just aren't qualities that are in any way important to me when I'm evaluating rock music (or trad heavy metal either). I value songwriting, cool riffs, heaviness and attitude. If you can play well too that's ok, but it's absolutely not required for my enjoyment. More than a few of my favorite bands started out barely being able to play their instruments. But they had that passion and they eventually became at least competent.  Predictably, you seem to dig the Sabbathy 'stoner' end of post-80's hard rock, while a good portion of the stripped down hard rock music I personally listen to and enjoy the most seems to get put into the punk rock category. Your Zekes and your Supersuckers and your Peter Pan Speedrocks and your Nashville Pussy's and your Mud City Manglers. Many of these bands I think formed as straight-forward hard rock bands (and they are) but then just got adopted by the punks for some reason. Maybe because of their rough around the edges sounds and counter-culture fuck you attitudes. But I'm not complaining, even though I've always identified more as a metalhead than as a punk. Because as an old boomer counter-culture guy I tend to actually really like punks better than most people. Not that I have any problem relating to "straight guys" like you either. Not to mention all those disco kids in school who laughed at me in 1976 when I thought the Ramones were hands down the freshest and most awesome rock band ever to come down the pike. Kids who I'd imagine are now 48 years later probably a bunch of 'straight' upstanding normie middle class suburban establishment guys who wear suits and blazers and slacks n shit. One question though, who's Roger Plant? Did he by any chance play on Opeth's Morningside?   Really? Just had a brief listen and that's not how I would describe it. I don't get the hype with these dudes. 

Blazon Stone - No Sign Of Glory  

Me too. I'll be into this ASAP.

Seconded w/ gusto

Morningrise was where I discovered Opeth. Love it to pieces, but BWP is their pinnacle which extends through the twins of Deliverance and Damnation. @markm, id hesitate to reconsider your back catalog rule with any other band, but Opeth is different. Everything they did from the first album through Ghost Reveries is worth your time. My Arms and Orchid both have some real gems. The Baying of the Hounds, Face of Melinda, The Moor... just so many great tunes.