Bands who's earlier albums are better then their current stuff?

[wankerness]

STAIND comes to mind.

'dysfunction' was quite heavy/brooding for it's time.. still gets me right in the feels sometimes. 'break the cycle' went somewhere new but retained much of what 'did it' for me, then 14 shades foreshadowed a much 'lighter' direction. After that, .

If i could afford it; i'd buy the rights to dysfunction and tour it.

Staind is a good one, almost no one ever thinks about them. Dysfunction is a cool album, it's like a way heavier guitar-wise Alice in Chains or something.

Opeth, but I give them (and other similar bands) a bit of a pass because their sound changed like 20 years into their career.

For me the killer is bands that seem like they're going to be awesome and then just aren't, or change their sound completely. Shadows Fall comes to mind, All that Remains too. Incubus for a non metal band, S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was cool as .....

One band that I think is the opposite of this is Dillinger. CI was crazy and different and will always stick out because of that, but Option Paralysis is a better album.

Incubus's Fungus Amongus/SCIENCE are also a pretty good answer. After that they turned into radio band with some light quirks.

Haggard and Green Carnation.

Green Carnation BETTER over time? Whattttt!?! "Light of Day Day of Darkness" is a super-ambitious masterpiece, and then their follow-ups seemed to be them trying to compete with the likes of Nickelback or something. Their third album in particular is vile. "The Acoustic Verses" was a step back up, but it seemed almost like an EP in preparation for an LP that never came, and still their second album was BY FAR their peak. Even their first album was far better than the "rock" albums.

 

[dr_game0ver]

Green Carnation BETTER over time? Whattttt!?! "Light of Day Day of Darkness" is a super-ambitious masterpiece, and then their follow-ups seemed to be them trying to compete with the likes of Nickelback or something. Their third album in particular is vile. "The Acoustic Verses" was a step back up, but it seemed almost like an EP in preparation for an LP that never came, and still their second album was BY FAR their peak. Even their first album was far better than the "rock" albums.

I don't disagree with you but the joke was more that they started as a forgettable death metal band.

 

[fps]

Most people are going to think this of their favourite bands who have been going a while. This is because they fell in love with the early records.
It's also because newer fans who get into a band through their new work are more likely to enjoy that current sound. Therefore what you're left with are fans who complain that their favourite bands don't make music that makes them feel like they did when they were younger. Which is more to do with the fans' developmental stage and life experiences at the time they listened to the music than it is anything else.

 

[wankerness]

Most people are going to think this of their favourite bands who have been going a while. This is because they fell in love with the early records.
It's also because newer fans who get into a band through their new work are more likely to enjoy that current sound. Therefore what you're left with are fans who complain that their favourite bands don't make music that makes them feel like they did when they were younger. Which is more to do with the fans' developmental stage and life experiences at the time they listened to the music than it is anything else.

I don't think this is true with most cases. Most bands that change for the worse over time don't attract new fans with the new albums. They're just bad. There's a reason they got popular in the first place and lost fans over time beyond simply "the old fans don't like the new sound!"

 

[wankerness]

Guys, you know what would be a better topic? Bands whose newer albums are better than their older albums? What do you all think of that?

That would be a more interesting topic, yes.

 

[Ordacleaphobia]

PII is good. I consider it to be a good blend of the Djenty, Proggy sutff with the softer straightforward stuff... BUT, the thing you gotta understand about me is, I like softer straightforward stuff, so to me Alpha and Omega stepping over towards the softer side wasn't unwelcome.

Fair enough. I dig both new and old Periphery so it's pretty easy to see both sides.
But oddly enough, my experience is the opposite, haha. I can't vibe with Juggernaut unless I really focus on it, the normal Periphery albums are more easy listening to me.

 

[steelprostate]

Kinda surprised to see people say Shadows Fall began dropping off with The War Within. I thought that album was absolutely killer. Not as heavy as Of One Blood or The Art of Balance, but overall I thought it was arguably their best effort. Then things fell off pretty hard. I don't think it's fair to say Dillinger's newer albums are any worse than their older ones. They're definitely different but still great. One band I'm glad I haven't seen listed, and don't think I'll ever have to worry about on a list like this is BTBAM. I find everything they've done to be mindblowingly good.

 

[SD83]

What? Have you HEARD The Burning Red and Supercharger? That .... was rank. TTAOE was a major return to form. They might be a bit boring since The Blackening, but their newer material is far better than The Burning Red and Supercharger.

I don't really understand all the hate those two records get. The burning red wasn't great, but Supercharger? I'd take that one over Bloodstones any day. I just tried to go through Bloodstone and... nope. I love "Now we die", but the rest sounds like they have a one-page list "how to write a Machine Head song" and they just do their homework. There's nothing bad with that Motörhead did that for approximatly 700 years, it's not like they will ever release something that's actually "bad" if they continue just that way. But then again, if I had to name my top3 Machine Head records it would be 1)Blackening/TTAOE, 3)Supercharger, so what do I know

 

[Esp Griffyn]

As soon as I saw this thread I though Mastodon, a thousand times Mastodon. They exploded out of the blocks with their first full length, "Remission", lost a little bit of steam with "Leviathan" but still released a killer album and then things started going wrong. "Blood Mountain" was the first album to me where it sounded like they realised things were going wrong but still tried to make music in the mold of their good stuff. After that things very sharply went downhill. They went from having the fire so perfectly encapsulated in their music as crushingly powerful metal band with a unique sound to being a crap prog rock outfit.

I'll cite a few points that I think have diluted their sound and ruined them, in no particular order.

* Brann Dailor forgetting what made him a good drummer. He started off as having their amazing, super-busy style. He was chaotic and always sounded like it was all about to fall apart, playing with the beat to lengthen and shorten bars, fills and snare rolls up the ying yang. I remember him saying this is due to being self-taught, he just started playing how he felt he should play. But sometimes when you play by feel and then start analyising what you're doing, you confuse yourself to the point where you can't remember how you did it in the first place. Brann seems to have tried to clean and tighten his style to be a more conventional (and boring) metal drummer. Now the drumming is flat and lifeless. This probably hasn't been helped by his insistence on singing.

* Everyone singing parts. Brent Hinds used to be a great guitarist, he's never been much of a singer, but he can't help himself but put loads of vocal parts in. Same again for Brann Dailor, who isn't a great singer but it seems like this band is suffering from Mike Portnoy syndrome, where members become so determined to exert creative control over the band they start singing when it was really not necessary. Troy Sanders seems to have blown his voice out too, he just sounds weak and tired these days.

* They've become self-indulgent. They used to be tight and focused and if a song was long it was long for a reason. If there were solos and leads, they served a purpose. Brent Hinds isn't a great soloist, but it seems like every song now includes a mandatory rambling pentatonic solo. Remember that lead break in "Megalodon" that splits the song in half? Wow, what a fantastic bar of music that is. Contrast that to the aimless, directionless pentatonic bar room solos Brent knocks out these days.

* They've lost the spirit of the original band. Ok, unlike Slipknot who promised to break up if they lost intensity (and reneged on that, realising the money was too much to give up), Mastodon never made any promises to keep their passion, creativity and intensity, but it's disappointing all the same to see them dragging the good name of the band through the mud with successive prog rock turds. They were AAA grade searing metal with a unique sound, now they're just a bloated old stoner rock band. What broke them, was it Brann losing his sister, Brent's rampant alcoholism or did they just stop giving a ....?

I still hear and see very occasional flashes of the old brilliance, but it's buried so deeply under a mountain of hubris and ego that I doubt it can ever be recovered. Someone should call a vet, I wish that tired, sick old Mastodon could be put to sleep.

 

[gunch]

Oh yeah, The End, from the most cathartic and intense mathcore to radio metal in the span of 1 album

 

[MFB]

I'm throwing Mars Volta in this category. I love Deloused in the Comatorium, and Frances the Mute, and it's not to say their newer stuff is bad per se; it just feels meandering and not quite as focused as the rest.

 

[wankerness]

As soon as I saw this thread I though Mastodon, a thousand times Mastodon. They exploded out of the blocks with their first full length, "Remission", lost a little bit of steam with "Leviathan" but still released a killer album and then things started going wrong. "Blood Mountain" was the first album to me where it sounded like they realised things were going wrong but still tried to make music in the mold of their good stuff. After that things very sharply went downhill. They went from having the fire so perfectly encapsulated in their music as crushingly powerful metal band with a unique sound to being a crap prog rock outfit.

I thought most people were talking about the last two albums when mentioning Mastodon in this thread. You don't like Crack the Skye? I think that's BY FAR their best album, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that thought. Leviathan was the first one I liked. I've warmed up to Remission a bit over the years, but I still think it's a lot worse than the three that followed. The last two albums didn't make me very excited, but I liked a few tracks on them enough that I wouldn't list them in this thread yet.

 

[Esp Griffyn]

I thought most people were talking about the last two albums when mentioning Mastodon in this thread. You don't like Crack the Skye? I think that's BY FAR their best album, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that thought. Leviathan was the first one I liked. I've warmed up to Remission a bit over the years, but I still think it's a lot worse than the three that followed. The last two albums didn't make me very excited, but I liked a few tracks on them enough that I wouldn't list them in this thread yet.

Crack the Skye has it's moments, but for the most part I find it to be ponderous and contrived. That for me was the turning point where they seemed to become focused on pomp and bluster rather than just cutting out sharp, hard-hitting songs. Many of the my stated reasons for disliking newer Mastodon began to manifest on CTS. Although I think CTS is a 6/10 album at best, things went sharply off a cliff for The Hunter.

 

[chipchappy]

Metallica for sure.

Pantera post VDOP days (with the exception of the tasty solo in Floods)

Wasn't as into anything after Everything Went Black by Black Flag

Static Age is really the only Misfits Album that does anything for me

Mudvayne after their first album

Anything after Alive or Just Breathing by KsE

Limp Bizkit's 3DBY was killer and everything after that was lame-ville.

I feel like Lamb of God really hit their stride on Palaces. Everything after that seemed like an echo of it. Although Sacrament had some solid tunes and Wrath definitely had some bangers as well.

Truthfully there aren't a lot of bands that have consistently wow'ed me throughout their discography tbh. Although that is a bit of an unrealistic expectation I suppose.

 

[dr_game0ver]

Helloween

 

[InFlames235]

Pretty much every band I can think of isn't as good after a certain amount of releases. I mean, think about it - a lot of us write music - how hard is it to consistently come up with great ideas? There's only so much in the well.

I have to give HUGE props to bands that, while not as good, still put out incredible music for the amount of albums they have. Coheed & Cambria, Opeth, Dream Theater (some will laugh at this), Symphony X are a few that come to mind. Honestly, it's astonishing these days when a band doesn't lose their magic by the third album. So many great bands I can think of that had an incredible two albums and then faded incredibly.

 

[oompa]

Haha what a provoking thread title So I'm in the camp where it'd probably be quicker to list the bands that this didn't apply to than the other way around.

But to add something to the discussion, stuff like Mastodon's Leviathan and Gojira's From Mars To Sirius made me a bit of a cynic when it comes to album releases (*cough* pun very much intended, Cynic).

It's because I remember listening to these iconic albums and thinking "wow, they found something unique here, if this is the stuff they do from now on their next album will be the bestest" and then they just.. don't make any more albums like that one. After enough times I just get cynical

Or just old and cranky. Probably just old and cranky actually, but I don't mean that a group just makes better and then worse albums, I mean albums where a group clearly found some different style and/or sound that I just dig artistically. Nowadays when that happens with a new band I just assume they'll "miss the point" and make a worse/more stereotypical album next

 

[celticelk]

.

Incubus's Fungus Amongus/SCIENCE are also a pretty good answer. After that they turned into radio band with some light quirks.

I quite liked Make Yourself as well, but I'll agree that they fall off pretty sharply after that.

 

[celticelk]

I don't think anyone's mentioned Baroness yet. Red and Blue were amazing progressive sludge, Yellow & Green was more classic-rock-influenced, but still had some great songs, and Purple was just kind of meh.

 

[runbirdman]

I have always been an enormous Mastodon fan but I really did not enjoy The Hunter or Once More 'Round the Sun as much as I enjoyed every other album. I like the raw sound present in Remission and Leviathan. Leviathan as a concept album is awesome. "Blood and Thunder" is a masterpiece and "Naked Burn" showcases the vocal cohesion they have strived for since. Blood Mountain was fantastically produced but had a few weak/ generic tracks (i.e. "Hand of Stone" and "Circle of Cysquatch"). Then comes the fork in the road with Crack the Skye. I think Crack the Skye was a tremendous album that showed a maturing band. I love every track on the record. It's not the tour de force that you had with Remission and Leviathan but it sounds like everyone in the band was at their best for the album. And then... Bleh. I'm not even sure how to rationalize the shift to The Hunter and OMRTS. It just seems as though every member of the band has decided to be a centerpiece and the albums fall flat because of it. The were heavily criticized for Crack the Skye's more melodic approach and it sounds like they just said, "We'll show them," and made albums that were heavier for the sake of being heavier with none of the depth of their previous albums.