what's the most successful album to be followed up with a complete failure? who's completely and utterly fucked themselves, commercially? with an actual album, within 5 years of the big album?
lots of bands have a massive hit, and then follow it up with something more challenging, but in the cases i can think of (eg in utero, kid a) this has worked fairly decently (call in utero "dark" all you want, but it's sold more than five million copies)