I may have missed it in an above post, but Ritchie Blackmore comes to mind: defining blues hard rock with Purple and Rainbow, then ends up looking like an extra from Lord of The Rings and singing folk songs in Blackmore's Night.
BLACKMORE'S a 'lost cause' certain rock muso's that moved in the same circles as Blackmore in his 'rock years' reckon he's a 'joke figure' for the last 15 years with his BLACKMORES NIGHT project.
Another muso that changed musical styles to some extent was RONNIE MONTROSE. MONTROSE the 1st album was a brilliant HARD ROCK album but Ronnie gradually over several years moved into instrumental jazz music although he has released the occasional 'rock album' down the years.
Back when I was into death metal my favorite act was Cryptopsy. They were really good with Lord Worm and had a couple missteps without him but it all came to a crashing hault when they decided to play mallcore music.
Death metal Cryptopsy:
Still a f@!@!ng awesome song. \m/
Now here's deathcore Cryptopsy:
I like some deathcore. And I like when bands branch out. But this **** is just bad. Annoying and boring. Lord Worm is essential to Crytopsy in my view. If they had branched in this direction with Lord Worm, that would have been so much better.
In my view the guy who morphed with the times better than anyone was Neil Young. He never managed to make waves in the 80s, but when the 90s started rolling around the vogue was switching back to what Neil Young had been doing since day one, and he grabbed the reins effortlessly. Long before grunge ever hit it big and had a mainstream audience Neil was creating feedback drenched anti-solo'd disillusionment exorcisms, in fact as soon as grunge actually "hit" Neil imediately backed off and did a James Taylor style lite-folk record, which pretty much proves Neil was legit and wasn't latching on to any trends. It's pretty staggering really, for a guy who grew up listening to Roy Orbison to have been so on the edge in the early 90s. In 89-91 Neil was as relevant and innovative as anybody else in music. Sonic Youth was opening for him and they were kind of tame compared to Neil! (Case in point, Arc is more of a pure noise record than anything Sonic Youth has ever done).
Lol I was exposed to one of the songs on this Cryptopsy album, I really regret asking for a sample. Damn was this album bad.
I love extreme metal but this fits extremely shit. Bands who are prepared to risk with straying do so at own peril because a lot of the time especially in metal bands who try such risks alienate a lot of fans.
I know I may get slammed for this but I stopped liking Silverchair from Neon Ballroom onwards. Was no fan of the more ballady, softer rock side of them.
Phil Collins went from drummer and second singer on the great Nursery Cryme and Selling England By the Pound albums to solo performer on the nauseating singles, You Can't Hurry Love and Another Day in Paradise. Later, in a radio interview, he said he never liked Emerson, Lake and Palmer anyway.
King Crimson made one of the first progressive rock albums with In the Court of the Crimson King in 1969. It included the barnstorming 21st Century Schizoid Man. Robert Fripp formed a band in the early eighties and called them King Crimson, but they sounded like Talking Heads and wouldn't play 21st Schizoid Man live. He should have called them Crimson Heads or something, but definitely NOT King Crimson.
John Lennon with Revolution No. 9 on The Beatles (White Album) in 1968 moved about as far as it was possible to get from greatness to manure.
Part of the process of straying away from "roots" is more or less progression. Whether in one's humble opinion be for the good or the worse. In Flames for example did so and lost many fans due to them being stuck in their old sound and not in their new. Half of this result is people are inflexible with the peculiar; being that it fails to follow in their previous album footsteps. It's a risk perhaps, but it's worth taking. A new sound is necessary and refreshing. An improvement if you will. I don't like listening to album after album with the feel of re-spinning the same repetitive cycle. Change is natural. Say a band like Deftones for instance. Their music was full of pain, melancholy, anger, lingering dark vocals from my love Chino Moreno. If fans expected them to sustain the familiar Adrenaline (1995) to Diamond Eyes (2010) how is that to be admirable per say? Bands who play it safe, stay in their comfort zone, and don't experiment are not a band that is fully growing or expanding their wings. It's part of the developmental talent and if it's there why not go outside of the box? Potential is there to go far and beyond what has already been done. True fans will stick with you regardless of iffiness/distaste on what they haven't yet adapted to. Innovative brilliance is often turned down in the beginning.
Yes, not all bands turn out better in the result of losing roots, but I firmly believe in a balance.
A balance that may level within time and passion for what formed them into what they are and have became in present time.
Risks are not always worth taking. Some bands need to know when is a good time to take one and be aware of the fact they are responsible for what their experiment could do in terms of the fanbase. Most risks have definitely not paid off. Plenty of examples of it include Megadeth with Risk, Metallica with St Anger, The Haunted with the Unseen album trying to sound like Tool, Morbid Angel trying to mix death metal with industrial and electronic techno sounds, Celtic Frosts Cold Lake to an extent even though I liked that album.
One thing that bugs me is how bands get such a holier then thou attitude that they take a risk and expect every fan to be accepting of a change. Open mindedness is obviously something fans need to be more of but at the same time some bands seem to have big enough egos that they expect everyone collectively to embrace the new sound. Lars is the most guilty of this calling everyone closed minded for not liking the St Anger drums which is rightly hated on because the idea of an album built on first song takes is pathetic anyway.
Point I am really trying to make is I respect bands who want to expand their sound or explore uncharted waters but at the same time, don't expect everyone to just get on board with it blindly...unless they are a particular fanboy.
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