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Post by SLAVE_HEART on May 2, 2018 16:31:01 GMT -6
I have been through many different genre's of Christian metal, rock, and even Industrial. I can name so majny bands who had one or more albums that had the killer sound before they changed their sound and went soft, or experimented and their albums that followed leave me saying: WHAT.......SERIOUSLY!
Demon Hunter first albums were heavy, then they changed their sound Eowyn a female fronted metal band had their first album, silent screams and was KILLA, then they changed their style. Red had some awesome albums, changed their style and afterwards repented and released Of Beauty and Rage Impending doom's first album Nailed. Dead. Risen. was brutal and awesome, then changed to metalcore, I liked their old style better. My mother loved the band third day, at first, then they changed their style and my mother stopped listening to them.
So thus this thread is not only to discuss the bands we fell in love with, until
But also the bands we didn't love, until they changed their style!
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Post by avjr on May 2, 2018 17:16:23 GMT -6
I like it when bands change their sound. It gives me a variety. I love all Demon Hunter’s, RED’s, and Impending Doom’s albums. But I think you meant to say ID change into Deathcore. Since they used to be a Brutal Death Metal band. 🙂
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Post by Borndead on May 2, 2018 17:28:29 GMT -6
For me it depents from artist to artist.
Johnny Cash - i like his earlier stuff but LOVE his last few albums Metallica - i enjoy the first 4 albums, and love everything including St. Anger but don´t really like the last 2 albums Serj Tankian - like the first 2 albums but the later jazzy/opera stuff I can´t get into Immpending Doom - like the death metal stuff, enjoy the newer a bitt more
But in general, I´m all for artistic freedom. ^_^
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Post by SLAVE_HEART on May 2, 2018 18:13:42 GMT -6
It is cool when artists do have the creativity to do well with a change in style. IT does show that not all the songs and albums sound the same. Yet at the same time, It comes with a risk and a chance. As written by Borndead above me, he enjoyed the change of impending doom, while I wasn't liking it. It just depends on the audience and what their trying to cater to. I don't typically like albums where every track sounds the same, though all the tracks might be great. I had a Christian Metalcore Friend who collected it like it was going out of style and he summed it up when he said some bands are great and above average as long as I hear five or six tracks of other bands in between theirs in rotation. There are so many different ways to express yourself, and making music should never be about anything other than praising God and sharing his good news to others. It just feels sometimes I get fed with so much Gospel Hard Metal, that I have preference. For me all the genre's of christian metal and gothic and industrial I don't go to enjoying every underground release of that genre. But Over half my music is Unblack and I have found only 1 band I couldn't get into out of all I have collected. I just love it down to the raw rare underground releases up to the more popular Antestor, Crimson Moonlight, Slechtvalk, etc. And yes as borndead says artistic freedom rocks.
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Post by nocturnaliridescence on May 2, 2018 18:32:39 GMT -6
Demon Hunter first albums were heavy, then they changed their sound I haven't kept up with Demon Hunter. I do know their album "Storm the Gates of Hell" had a ton of softer songs, which was really strange considering how in-your-face the first track on the album was. I also preferred Impending Doom's earlier stuff. Their first demo/EP is insane. The few newer songs I've heard... eh. Although, I have heard the first song from their new album (that I think is going to be released soon?) and that sounds AWESOME. Another one that comes to mind personally, is O Majestic Winter. Their first album... well, a lot of people hated it lolol, but I loved it. It is the PERFECT blend of raw/experimental styles for me. But their music seems to be getting more "normal" as time goes on, and... eh, I respect it, but I just get kind of bored by it. I'm kind of tempted to add Arch of Thorns here, too -- their early, raw stuff seems better to me -- but I want to give their album more of a chance first. Let it grow on me a bit.
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Post by SLAVE_HEART on May 2, 2018 18:33:22 GMT -6
I have found the most AWESOME white metal gems in bands no one listens to or even knows exists. Yet sometimes their just comes an album in which every track is so incredible the whole cd gets intense and can be listened to repeatedly over and over, and then you hope they will do again with their next release...
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Post by SLAVE_HEART on May 2, 2018 18:43:10 GMT -6
It's not saying your no longer their fan, just a dissapointing release. Nor is it saying you hate their new sound, it's just not what you wanted. And you have people on both sides. I had a power 80's christian metal friend who was dissapointed with the new stryper recently released over the last few years because he didn't want another album that sounded like original stryper, while other people were happy and satisfied. Reviews of albums have both negative and positive sides to them. Even if someone is dissapointed with it doesn't mean it still won't be an album they wouldn't recommend.
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Post by SLAVE_HEART on May 2, 2018 18:53:31 GMT -6
Bottom line is that regardless of quality all music about Jesus to praise Jesus with right intent is beautiful unto God, even if you never sell a single copy. In Psalms it is written, Human Praise is worthless. And God enjoys it all when you give him your best.
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Post by Thomas Eversole on May 3, 2018 12:33:06 GMT -6
SLAVE_HEART - very good thread you started here bro. I've felt this with multiple bands in the Christian metal scene. Mortification, when they went from death metal to thrash metal.... it seems the newer albums have made an attempt to revist the death metal genre, but... it still doesn't feel as outright brutal and intense as the first 3 releases. Paramæcium - in my opinion, their sound peaked on their sophomore album "Within the Ancient Forest". Their 3rd album, seemed to take a step back to what the first album did, and then they changed their name and style all together. (to this medium paced death metal) My biggest upset is/was Antestor. They started out doom/death, NAILED the black metal sound on Return of the Black Death.... then drifted more to this amalgamation of extreme metals. I could go on, but I honestly think, bands do this because.... they're ultimately not happy with their sound. Why change it if they're happy with it? Bottom line, any project of any genre, SOMEONE is not going to like it for whatever reason. Since its impossible to make everyone happy with music, it makes more sense (to me at least) for a band to be CONSISTENT - for better or worse.
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Post by SLAVE_HEART on May 3, 2018 17:14:54 GMT -6
My biggest upset is/was Antestor. They started out doom/death, NAILED the black metal sound on Return of the Black Death.... then drifted more to this amalgamation of extreme metals. I would rather jam to return of the black death and the forsaken than to omen. Not saying I don't like all their albums, but Return of the black death sounds way different than omen. Is it just me or does that also sound the same as crimson moonlight of which the Eternal emperor and the covenant progress, songs from the archives and earlier works until the covenant progress just wasn't the same afterthe covenant progress. Now don't get me wrong I love Crimson moonlights new stuff It's just I have so many Unblack bands that when I crave crimson moonlight I typically go for their earlier stuff most of the time. Slechtvalk is good, but what beats their earlier album the war that plagues the lands?
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Post by nocturnaliridescence on May 3, 2018 19:40:13 GMT -6
I really need to listen to Omen someday. All I know is the interlude track "Tilflukt", which is PERFECT. But the impression I get from others is that a lot of the rest of the album is... a bit bland?
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Post by Thomas Eversole on May 3, 2018 19:59:33 GMT -6
Is it just me or does that also sound the same as crimson moonlight of which the Eternal emperor and the covenant progress just wasn't the same afterthe covenant progress. I completely agree with you. It seemed the better their production got, the more they were missing soul. Why put as much heart and soul into it when it sounds awesome because of the production anyway? D: the impression I get from others is that a lot of the rest of the album is... a bit bland? Same thing as Crimson Moonlight, IMO. The money in the sound took an essence from the music...
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Post by Deepfriar on May 4, 2018 10:41:22 GMT -6
I love Antestor - Omen, though Return is still my favorite.
Some more examples of bands who changed their sound:
Holy Soldier and Whitecross both jumped on the grunge bandwagon in the 90's and many people hated it but I actually didn't mind. Though as drastic as the change was for HS (new vocalist too), I feel they probably should have changed band names.
Bride has changed their sound probably fifteen times. I liked everything up until Oddities. I could even tolerate The Jesus Experience, and I loved all of their older stuff, but not the newer stuff.
The latest A Hill To Die Upon was a pretty drastic change. I've made my peace with the album and can say it's 'okay', but I greatly prefer all of the previous albums.
Deliverance changed their sound a couple times. I pretty much liked everything (even River Disturbance). Not sure about the newer stuff though, kind of lost interest in the band to be honest. Not sure why.
Same story with Tourniquet. I liked most of their iterations but didn't follow some of the newer stuff.
Interesting topic indeed.
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Post by Deepfriar on May 4, 2018 12:20:47 GMT -6
Oh and... Mad At The World went from synthpop on the first few albums to Beatles-esque classic rock. First few albums were okay (I didn't listen to them until years after I was introduced to the band), but I loved the last two albums (The Ferris Wheel and The Dreamland Cafe).
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Post by SLAVE_HEART on May 4, 2018 18:59:09 GMT -6
the impression I get from others is that a lot of the rest of the album is... a bit bland? the impression I get from others is that a lot of the rest of the album is... a bit bland? Same thing as Crimson Moonlight, IMO. The money in the sound took an essence from the music... Antestor and Crimson moonlight did this and I was like, both their beginning stuff ruled. I read even online about crimson moonlight who were one of the bands that were on the amazing part of history because they sold over 2,500 copies of covenant. They haven't done that since. So why change the sound? Yet of course there is probably pressure on every band to try and outdo their former albums or at least create one of equal desire. So many things about the industry and also band line-ups. Wasn't Simon Rosen a member of Crimson Moonlight, but he's not on the later release. Band change-ups can determine the fate of a band. A great example of this was the female fronted band HB. when they changed their female vocalist it wasn't near the same. Change-ups and losing band members or band splits. Like with holy blood and oskord. though holy blood is good, oskord is in my opinion a better style of folk unblack, though I still enjoy holy blood. It's just the band split up. Sometimes they rejoin like the upcoming release of divine symphony after their second album the history fell a little apart from what I heard for Scarlet Warfare. Spiritual warfare with missing members of divine symphony, though good still paled in comparison to reject darkness and the history. I am glad that they rejoined, and if they didn't split Scarlet Warfare might of been a side project. Change-ups.... Any good change ups that improved a band for any of you guys?
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Post by Borndead on May 4, 2018 20:42:16 GMT -6
Have to agree with you guys, Antestor and CM. Are definitely capable of doing great things but their latest releases honestly left me wanting more. Hopefully they´ll shake some earth with their new stuff.
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Post by exo on May 5, 2018 1:11:20 GMT -6
I’ve got perhaps a little different perspective. I used to HATE when a band changed themselves up. There’s a few bands out there that I would HATE for them to veer too far off what I’ve come to know as “their sound”. Bands like AC/DC, Amon Amarth, my bros in Dagon.....I KNOW pretty much what to expect no matter WHICH album it is, even if there’s some very noticeable (to me) tweaks that they’ve made over the years.
Then there’s a band like A Hill to Die Upon. The latest is VERY different from the previous three.....yet it still sounds EXACTLY like I expect AHTDU to sound. It’s honestly my favorite thing they’ve ever done. Maybe that’s because I’ve shared multiple meals with the guys, and would drive 4-6 hours at the drop of a hat simply to see them. Maybe it’s more a case of loving the guys so much they can do no wrong in my eyes musically. Shoot, to let a cat out of the bag, my ORIGINAL Vision for HOTBL2 was a track that I co-wrote lyrics for with Michael that was lost in a computer crash, and I never summoned what it took to re-track, because of the battle with the bottle I went thru 4-5 months back (I let more than one person down there....). Maybe it’s possible that I love those guys so much as people, that they could do a K-Popinfluenced album, and it’d be in my top 2 or 3 albums for that year.....I might just have some personal bias involved with their music.
Then there’s a band like Iron Maiden, where I legit can not choose between Number of the Beast, Powerslave, 7th Son, and A Matter Iof Life and Death for which is my favorite album. They’re all VERY different albums, and yet all undeniably “Iron Maiden”
There’s bands like Deliverance or Queensryche, where while I SHOULD , given most of my tastes have a HUGE preference for the early works, yet I gravitate towards their mid period stuff. Empire is THE definitive QR album for me. I’ll listen to Learn or River Disturbance before I EVER throw on Weapons of our Warfare, and my FAVORITE “D” album of all time is actually Assimilation. Drastic changes all over, by they somehow still manage to sound like QR of Deliverance, no matter what....maybe that’s because I didn’t get into either band UNTIL their “mid period” works, and worked my way backwards.
Then there’s Metallica. James Hetfield is the ONLY reason I even picked up a guitar, and the major reason I turned into a metal head. If the was not Metallica, there’d be no “exo”. I’m a self taught guitar player....but at the same time, Hetfield was very much my guitar teacher. I learned to play with a couple of tabs books, and playing along to Metallica CD’s starting in the spring of ‘94, and Hetfield was SUCH an influence on me, I could play every single note of the rhythm work for the song Master of Puppets 3 months after I got my hands on an electric guitar, and that’s not even a slight exaggeration. I took to that style of playing like a fish does to water. Then they dropped “Load”, and I was like “....OK, good stuff, but where’s the SPEEDS?”. Reload was “.....ugh, there’s not a track here I enjoy”. Garage Inc and S&M gave me brief hope...and then St. Anger hit, and I was just DONE caring about their studio output, other than morbid curiosity. It had NOTHING to do with the riffs, it had to do with the fact that a band of multimillionaire multiple time platinum recording artists tried to tell me that THOSE songs, with THAT production was somehow supposed to be taken seriously as a “finished product” I should happily pay money for. It’s still the ONLY Metallica album I don’t own....and yet I can hear what it SHOULD have been, and don’t truly begrudge them their experimentation even if I hate their results. A decade plus after St. Anger, they went and wrote one of the best riffs they’ve ever recorded.....
Finally, I look at my own music. My HOTBL1 track, with it’s blackmetal meets Slayer, with a melodic bent” sound, is very, VERY different from my HOTBL2 track that is essentially straight up Amon Amarth worship, tuned to drop G#....both of THOSE tracks are very different in end result from the “guitars only demo” stuff on My SoundCloud page.....which is also different from the previously mentioned “first time writing any lyrics” thing that should have happened; THAT track is very much a death/doom number. (And the intent is still to record it, the timeline is simply indeterminate at this point). Shoot, there’s some riffing i’ve sent Thomas’ way to check out that is back to the whole “thrashy blackmetal” thing.....but it’s ALL “me”, and MOST of my output will eventually show up under the “StormSinger” moniker simply for no other reasons than my own artistic tastes are that broad...
I think what i’m trying to say is that as long as there is SOME recognizable characteristic to what a band puts out, I don’t care what route they go, because of how broad my own artistic output is....
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Post by Deepfriar on May 5, 2018 1:40:31 GMT -6
Then there’s a band like A Hill to Die Upon. The latest is VERY different from the previous three.....yet it still sounds EXACTLY like I expect AHTDU to sound. That's an interesting way to put it. They definitely still sound like themselves, and the music is spot-on. I think the problem is that I haven't had much time to listen to music lately so it hasn't had a chance to grow on me. Their sound on the new release is a bit more restrained than previous efforts, so I have to alter my expectations a bit. Normally, I want to hear ferocity when I listen to AHTDU; but, this album is not about ferocity. Rather, it seems to be more about melody. Another band that has changed its sound quite a bit is Pink Floyd. Nothing will come close to The Wall for me, though. KoRn has switched it up several times and remained consistently good. I can't speak for that dubstep album though, because I stayed far away from it lol. I even enjoyed Untouchables, and I thought Take A Look In the Mirror was a landmark even though it received mixed reviews. I never understood how See You On The Other Side was more favorably reviewed than TALITM. SYOTOS was okay, but not nearly as good as the previous album. Nine Inch Nails' sound seems to keep evolving too. Really, when you think about it, every band (or at least most every band) is constantly evolving so as to not become stale. There are, of course, exceptions. Breaking Benjamin has always pretty much sounded the same. The first album was a tad less polished, and the second album a tad heavier, but then the rest of their albums have been pretty consistent. I hear the new album is pretty much the same (and good). I haven't picked it up yet but I will eventually. Coheed and Cambria has changed their sound a couple times, but each step in their musical journey seemed to somehow build on what came before it. Such a good band. The latest album was a bit of a disappointment, though... only had about four really good songs (and I had liked every single song from their entire previous catalog). Hopefully they can rebound from it. Anyone else like Coheed? Enough rambling, I think it's time for bed. Good night, metalheads.
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Post by nocturnaliridescence on May 5, 2018 8:37:32 GMT -6
Breaking Benjamin has always pretty much sounded the same. The first album was a tad less polished I thought of Nephesh when I made my first post here, but realized the only major "difference" was what you said here - the production. Like, I'm certain that even if the album and EP had the same production values, they wouldn't sound "the same", but not really different enough to mention in a thread like this. It'd be really cool if they rerecorded their debut someday.
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Post by Deepfriar on May 5, 2018 11:06:06 GMT -6
A Nephesh re-record would be amazing indeed, but I'm proud to own the original too.
Sanctifica totally changed between albums. I haven't listened to Negative B much at all, but Spirit of Purity is one of my favorite CBM releases period.
Vardøger made a drastic change but I like both before and after. Major props for maintaining excellence across genres.
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Post by Thomas Eversole on May 5, 2018 12:21:15 GMT -6
To clarify, I'm perfectly fine with a band evolving but staying them. I haven't listened to the whole new Dimmu Borgir, but.... some tracks sound QUITE different than their prior releases, but I don't mind at all because it sounds good, dare I say an overall improvement, and it sounds like them.
Carach Angren, just the opposite. Their newest seems to be cookie cut "concert ballads", and the fast and brutal elements are all but completely gone. Still sounds like them, but this evolution looks more like a bad mutation to me.
Personal preference galore.... D:
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Post by Kaiheijinshu on May 5, 2018 13:29:08 GMT -6
I agree with the point regarding Carach Angren. I own their first three albums, but I cannot really justify purchasing their two most recent. They are alright for one of two listens, but they do not have the same essence as the older music.
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