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Let’s face it: being in a band is a business, and full-time musicians consider their creative moves in financial terms to some degree. Every band thinks about how their music will be received, whether they cop to it or not. Even the hardest-talking, most tatted-out metal guitarist will sit down once in a while, play something and think, “Well, that’s great, but that can’t go on our album.” Thus, an audience has been considered. Bands have an unspoken contract with their fans, and every new release renegotiates this contract.
Some bands stick with a tried-and-true formula. These include your High on Fires, your AC/DC’s and your Niles — bands who have virtually copyrighted a sound and an approach. They are the In-N-Out Burger of metal bands, serving the exact same menu for years not for lack of creativity but out of reverence to an idea. AC/DC are the paramount example of this, churning out album after album of dirt-simple, blues-inflected hard rock songs about fucking. Their fans are the millions out there who want dirt-simple, blues-inflected hard rock songs about fucking. They don’t want a band that’ll screw that up with a string quartet or an ambient track.
On the other hand, some bands boast that they only write music for themselves. Proud words are legion amongst metal musicians, but Necrobutcher’s rant in Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey
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In the most extreme case, musical self-gratification is directly hostile to listener expectations. Take Today Is The Day, for example. Everything from piano ballads to machine gun fire has been fair game on their records. However, main man Steve Austin pays the price for being a wild card. He stays afloat financially as an audio engineer and claims he doesn’t make a dime from fronting TITD. Their music remains firmly underground.
A band whose bread and butter is metal relies exclusively on fan approval. Contrary to the tough talk we’re used to, most bands would sweat if their live turnouts dropped sharply after a poorly received release. In the case of 1349, Revelations of the Black Flame
That’s why it’s so fascinating to see a band totally fuck with its audience’s expectations. It takes balls for a band to make a lateral move once it’s reached an apex. But sometimes the outcome is worth it. An example of this is Sepultura’s Chaos A.D.
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Considering that (first wave) thrash basically went extinct in 1992, this was also a wise professional move, though you could hardly accuse them of softening up. Black Flag similarly said fuck-you to their punk rock notoriety with My War
Dear readers, I ask you:
Who do you think took a courageous leap to genius?
Conversely, who soured a good thing?
Related posts:
An example of souring a good thing would be Cryptopsy – The Unspoken King (which you also decided to feature in the picture).
Once Was Not was just genius.
i don’t hear any difference in decrepit birth albums…
The second Decrepit Birth record almost sounds like a different band. It’s melodic and spacey, whereas the first one is 100% brutal. I actually like the change in sound.
Arise had some tribal drum elements that could have possibly presaged Chaos A.D. Most bands change their sound gradually and logically, I think (see Isis and Mastodon).
I like the unique sounds that Carcass and Entombed found with Heartwork and Wolverine Blues, respectively, though they probably pissed off diehard fans at the time. I’m not a huge fan or hater of Spheres, but I bet it lost Pestilence a lot of fans.
Anthrax probably should have changed their name when John Bush joined them. Good band, but hardly the same.
Hey! furiacontralamaquina kicked me here. I see you included Celtic Frost in the image, too. I think it’s an interesting addition not because of Cold Lake and/or Vanity/Nemesis, which were basically a change from goodness to shit, but because of Into the Pandemonium, too. That album introducted so many things that it made history. And it was for good, for the very good. But I’m not sure everyone liked it at first.
Other example of a big change (in this case from greatness to godness) is the entire career of Ulver, always evolving, completely leaving the metal world behind for good.
And yeah, Failtopsy. Once Was Not isn’t my cup of tea either, but the four first albums are just pure while(1){ fap;}
Although not metal, Radiohead are prime example of how to do this and still be successful. Both OK Computer and Kid A were radical shifts, but the still remain extremely successful.
Dillinger Escape Plan also pulled this off quite well despite dividng their fans. I think old and new sounds are of similar merit. This is much the same with their hero’s Faith No More who delighted in confounding their fans.
What’s bizzarre is how anyone could think that the band that produced a genre bending classic like Calculating Infinity would stand still creatively.
Devin Townsend does whatever he pleases for the most part, even managing to remake the mould in more subtle ways with SYL. His solo works change dramatically in intent with every record.
I generally prefer bands that stick to their artistic principles and refuse to stand still. I think it’s something that should be commended.
“Anthrax probably should have changed their name when John Bush joined them. Good band, but hardly the same” Hell, they changed their sound a lot after debut already.
Good: CoC going from thrash to metal with a southern rock tinge.
Bad: Metallica after “…And Justice for All”
Yyrkoon drastically changed their sound from the passable melodeth/thrash of ‘Dying Sun’ to the superb straight-up death of ‘Occult Medicine’. They then failed disappointingly to make a second high-quality album in the same vein with ‘Unhealthy Opera’…
Bands that have changed their sound for the worse are innumerable! An example from last year: Amoral followed up the excellent melodeth ‘Reptile Ride’ with the miserably bad pop/rock of ‘Show Your Colors’.
I wasn’t expecting to see Pure Reason Revolution here, even on a single image! Love Vincit Omnia was kind of a downturn for me after their orgasmic debut, but it’s an intelligent move for them I think. I’m hoping to see a mixture of both of them on their third album as I’m not quitting them just for one album I didn’t like.
Usually I prefer bands that evolve; those that are willing to explore new things are always more rewarding bands to follow. It would be very hard for me if some of my favourite bands started doing the same record over and over again, as AC/DC does. Having an established sound may be good, but I prefer an album that doesn’t sound at all as the former ones than listening to the “same” album twice.
I tend to have great expectations towards these kind of bands, and when the sound change is not what I wanted I may like it or not, it’s part of the bussiness I guess. I’m not that attached to a band and I don’t feel like the “owe” me something, so if the change doesn’t please me I won’t be upset or feel like I’ve been betrayed….
Voivod! I wouldn’t necessarily say that their transition to prog-influenced hard rock ruined them (though I’m only lately coming around to this opinion) but I still very much prefer their early records.
The TV spots promoting the Turbo album are golden. Rob Halford with a combover mullet, oh my!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqSLDJ-SWSY
I think this matters more when you are 17 years old honestly. I’m 35 now and when a band I enjoy makes a sudden left into extreme sucksville, I generally don’t care all that much…I just don’t bother with whatever new and awful sounds they conjure.
I remember when the Earache/Columbia thing happened, I couldn’t stand Heartwork or Wolverine Blues…and over time I grew to love both records when I eased up on caring whether or not a band lightened up or “sold out”. There’s a drastic difference between Swansong and Cold Lake…I don’t remember Jeff Walker teasing his hair or writing songs about chixxx, and there’s the issue for the most part. Dudes (and ladies) get older and have a pretty natural tendency to revert back to the sounds that brought them to metal in the first place, most notably with Americans, the English, and Northern Europeans…classic rock(The Hellacopters, Cathedral, Spiritual Beggars to name a few). I don’t hear many folks complaining about the Floydianisms of the last few Enslaved records, probably because it’s been a progression over several albums and the band speaks openly about their influences and motivations. Cryptopsy, on the other hand, made an abrupt turn into wanting to open for Slipknot…it’s pretty transparent, and requires little in the way of understanding.
People (usually) aren’t stupid when it comes to moves like this, it’s easy to make the transition when it seems to come from a legit, honest place…not so much when it’s a blatant attempt to earn a larger paycheck.
I read that Neurosis got a lot of shit when they changed, adding keyboards etc. I think it was a natural and amazing transition, but some people didn’t want them to change/evolve even if it was for the good of all. I think that is they grey area of considering the listener. Sometimes the artist needs to take a chance and evolve ideas, even if it threatens their extinction (hopefully it’s well calculated). I have a question: what about bands that evolve, but faster than the rest of their listeners, and only later do people realize the relevance of their music/change? (think Harvey Milk).
Oh! yes! Helloween. ‘Pink Bubbles Go Ape’ and ‘Chameleon’. They weren’t very good.
It’s been a long time since I really cared for a good band selling out… It only takes one masterpiece for a band to join the pantheon AFAIK. Most great metal bands eventually succumbed to awfulness, it’s not the sort of music you can build a carreer out of easily. I guess what’s worse for me is a good band putting out a masterpiece and then three or four records of gradual decline, even if say, record five is a bit better than record four or whatever, they’re only good enough to remind what could have been after the debut but not bad enough to leave well alone. Memory Garden made a classic with ‘Tides’ for example and all their other records, whereas not tragic, were just meh. It says a lot that I caught them live a year ago and most of their material was from the first record.
Candlemass have gone off the tracks a few times but usually the resultant records were good or great. First record without Messiah, ‘Chapter V’, is mostly brilliant. Even the Sabbath drone ‘From the 13th Sun’ was really inspired and has aged very well. The Candlemass offshoot Abstract Algebra was monumental. First Krux record was merely good. It’s only when Messiah returned that Candlemass began to cater to fan expetation of how they should sound like and at the same time simplify and modernize that the results became tragic.
So there’s the opposite of what is explained on this piece too, when bands feel like experimenting but instead retread their past and that results in awful records.
I don’t know anyone that is upset over Voivod changing their sound. They left usually 3 amazing records before mutating into the next thing. What, would people want more messy sloppy war thrash like the first 2 LPs, they’re not enough?
Helm, you speak as if changing the sound was equivalent to selling out. I think that’s not what you want to say anyway, but I just wanted to remark that. Sometimes bands can get tired of their own music and want to move to another thing, just for de-intoxicate themselves.
Cave. In.
I noticed that you’ve got Turbo in your photo collage. I think Turbo is a great album. Priest has always wrote those pop type metal tunes. Its in their blood. Yes, Turbo is on the pop end of the spectrum, but it is still a satisfying listen. Yes, the lyrical content makes we wince occasionally, but the music itself is not short on riffage and hooks. I feel that some of their more interesting solo work is on their too. The song Reckless has somehow flown below the radar. Thats a really heavy song that could have come off of Defenders.
ballener0: yes I see what you mean, I didn’t mean to imply that any shift of sound (especially the more gradual ones) means the band is selling out. However since we’re talking about it I tend to use selling out a bit more broadly, as in, not just the change of sound that is calculated by a band, manager or label to help them get paid more money (that’s a very lateral definition that arrives to confusion when a band attempts to sell out and nobody is buying, like say with Cold Lake. Was that or wasn’t it a sellout record by the strict definition?) but also those changes in sound and aesthetic that occur so the musicians can 1) finally explain to their aunt what exactly it is they’re doing with their lives 2) helps a girlfriend to sing along with their material 3) allows peers to respect them more for ther musicianship 4) makes outsiders think the band has something ‘worthwhile’ to say and so on. All these external motivations becoming something more than latent, becoming the driving force of material, I generally count as ’selling out’ with the emphasis on the ‘out’. I understand Heavy Metal as an ingressive persuit. If other people like it, fine, if not, fuck them. That’s the only attitude that suits it as far as I’m concerned. Of course there are mitigating factors and it’s also not unheard of for a band to put out a sell-out record that I will unwittingly tend to like more than their earlier material and I don’t think that’s a contradiction. Such material has succumbed to external pressures and is probably not very much metal, but it still might be great music and it still says a lot about the human condition. I just wouldn’t go to it for inspiration and pride of inner strength.
In my terms, Cold Lake is a sell-out for some reasons, but if Tom Warrior had stuck to his guns and defended his artistic choices then I’d be fine with it (the record itself is not so bad after all) but hearing him now being all reactive and saying how it’s the worst piece of shit ever makes it even more a sell-out record and him a very dubious character. I can see a band making a dud song that they’re not particularily fond of anymore, but a whole *record*? Have some dignity about it!
Darkthrone, from Soulside Journey to Transilvanian Hunger.
Not sure you can say one’s “better” than the other, but man, oh man, could they be more different?
Annihilator has changed its sound in a very weird way, from Alice in Hell and Never Neverland, which was classic thrash with a touch of Priest, to the pop album that was All For You. Pretty radical.
Also, on the positive end of the spectrum, there’s Suicidal Tendencies, who went from hardcore punk to straight crossover thrash.
Hell, if we’re talking about Darkthrone, we might as well talk about their whole career. Now there’s a band that appears to have never sat still and also have gone back to its roots as Astral Zombie was talking about, all the while never really caving to any sort of fan expectations (although it’s debatable whether this is applicable seeing as how their fanbase is smaller than, say, that of Cryptopsy or Carcass…)
On the flipside, one of the most “tr00-I-don’t-give-a-fuck” bands, Burzum, have released an album that sounds like classic Burzum and nothing like the poorly-received synth stuff he did back in the 90s, thus ironically proving that the one band that claims not to give a shit about listener expectations actually does…
It’s very rare, in my opinion, that bands sell-out. The problem I have with how Helm is painting it, is unless all the band members come out in the press/media/personally and tell you their reasons then you really don’t know why something changed or not. Say for example, a band becomes very technical and adopts all sorts of new influences between the first album and the third. One could say, “hey, they changed their sound because they wanted to be respected as great musicians and not seen as immature punks… therefore they’re sell-outs”. In reality though the band may have changed because in those 3-4 years they learned how to play their instruments more and were simply bored with playing things so simply. Further, it might be like, “I love Pink Floyd, but hell if I can even sound close to Gilmour when trying to write a solo.” Four years later of practice and you’ve become a guitar god….. now, what are you going to do? Not play like that because your fans expect you not to do so because you didn’t on your first album you wrote when you were 19 or say screw it and play to your heart’s content?
Regarding a few of the albums mentioned in the article/picture I’ll say this:
Celtic Frost – Cold Lake was a screw up whether by trying to make it bigger or not. Yet if Monotheist doesn’t convince you that they are genuine when it comes to their music then you’re lost. Further, that album still showed them as experimental (which they’ve been since Hellhammer, Triumph Of Death is not a typical song).
1349- Revelations… was a stab at a different sound, which was well needed after 3 albums of “blast,blast,blast”. They hardly perfected it though and it came out as a mixed bag (like post-The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, but pre-Meddle [I think this comparison is brilliant for a few reasons]). Hopefully on the next album they’re blend their styles better (Cosmo, I really doubt they’re going to jump right back into their old sound as if nothing happened).
Judas Priest- There’s actually quite a few similarities between Turbo and Defenders of the Faith. And if you’re not going to call the later a Metal classic, then you don’t know Metal.
While Metallica and Radiohead might be the most well-documented extremes of ‘bad/good’, here are 4 potential career-killing albums that are damn near classic:
Rush-Caress of Steel (1st ‘concept’ piece, almost dropped by label)
Kinks-Muswell Hillbillies (superb country concept album)
Elton John – Tumbleweed connection (best thing he ever did)
Trail of Dead – Source codes and tags (excellent album no one heard)
Here are 4 albums which basically maimed/killed the band:
Creeper Lagoon – Take Back the Universe and Give Me Yesterday
Black Sabbath – Born Again/Seventh Star (take your pick)
Deep Purple – Stormbringer (again, Glenn Hughes…coincidence?)
Soundgarden – Down on the upside (much better than Scream)
…only Iommi was able to eventually pull out of that tailspin. Hopefully Soundgarden do too.
@Hell: totally agree with the dignity issue, but not with this: “I understand Heavy Metal as an ingressive persuit. If other people like it, fine, if not, fuck them.” I strongly believe that not only heavy metal but music itself as a form of art shall be something that doesn’t seek approval of no one except the artist. Maybe it’s a very simplistic approach since it’s hard to determine where the artistic side of this ends and where the economical side starts: we can’t forget there are bands that are lucky to make a living out of music.
It can be a blurry frontier sometimes and we never know all the factors implied. For me it’s complicated to state a band sold out with certain record because I don’t know what would I have done in their situation, so in the end I just listen to it if I like it and if I don’t then I won’t do it. Complaining about that is useless in my opinion, I can only regret what I believe has been a lost oportunity for the band to release a record that pleased me. Even when it is clear that there has been an external intromision, what can I do? I prefer to stick to what the band may offer on future albums than complaining about one I didn’t dig. I’m happier that way
I agree there’s nothing to do and I rarely complain because really, I’m not invested in the carreers of bands. When a HM masterpiece is released it’s a small miracle, I don’t expect lightning to strike twice. I love Orphaned Land and the new album is a big disappointment but that doesn’t change how great Sahara or Mabool still are so, oh well.
And yes as TheWolf says above, who really knows when it’s really a sellout and when it’s honest maturation. The theorizing can be an excuse for some to be perpetually grumpy and annoyed at how the world fails them, for others they’re an excuse to examine human situations and put their own ethics and aesthetics in order via external abstraction.
Wow, by chance I’m listening to ORwarriOR now! It takes a long to enter into it, or at least that’s my case; I loved Mabool at the first listening, but ORwarriOR seems more demanding to me. If you haven’t listened to it “enough” try giving it more chances, I was disappointed at first just like you
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Personally, I feel that one of the most dramatic changes for the better happened with Deathspell Omega between their Burzum worship albums and Si Monumentum. Talk about a transformation.
Darkthrone en Pantera are the most dramatic successful makeovers.
Most people hate Metallica’s (Re)Load and St. Anger, but I think they’re good albums when taken on face value, although certainly not of the level of Master of Puppets.
What didn’t work for me was Paradise Lost’s synth pop period. One of the big attractions of the band is Gregor Mackintosh’s lead guitar and that element was completely missing.
The biggest stagnation for me is Tool. This is a band that in its early days was really original and had a huge impact, but the two albums after AEnima were just more of the same.