mmm... in flames is one of the gazillion million bands that become more crappy after every new release. in flames has been poop after colony album. before that it was pwnz.

i respect your taste however you have to understand that bands change with time.

If you like their new music or not is not important.. the important thing is that they change. If you want the same music as in 'Colony' you can listen to 'Colony'. =)

change is always good. or making something original. but making poop album by album is bad :(

What you say means all bands should change their style after every few years.

They don't have to, I just think it is cool that bands are changing their style.

I do think though that some bands change their style at the expense of large parts of their fanbase. Like metallica did for a while for example. Their sound was so different that the people that loved them from the started didnt like it anymore.
New style/sound can be good, but if it changes too much it can be quite bad and a bit disrespectful to the fans that supported the band in the past.

I think it would be very disrespectful from fans if they wanted that a band continues to produce almost the same music for ever.

Think about it, you don't listen to only one band for years, instead you probably listen to different things every day. With what reason could you ask a band to play the same music for years on end?

Well most bands tend to evolve musically, that is only natural (unless you're talking about Iron Maiden :p).

But if you for example have a band like Metallica, which with load and reload changed so much it was virtually a completely different band.
It depends on the band alot I think.

Dream Theater for example, my fave band is expected to experiment alot, but then again, they are prog, so =)

so what should Metallica have done in your opinion?

They could either form a new band with exactly the same members (maybe change the bassist :P) just because they want to do something different.
Or they could go ahead and write something similar to what they did before just because people tell them too.

I don't see any good reason to do either, really.

They are free to do whatever they want. I cannot tell them to do anything. But when you look at the way the did act, they lost alot of fans. Or like in my case they didnt really lose a fan, but i really cba to care anymore.
But lets look at what they did do in this case. They first changed their sound a bit (became more of a mainstream band), then they lost their bassplayer. The St. Anger album is definately one of their worst albums to date. But despite that, they have lately regained some of their fanbase again, and confidently I say that has alot to do with them starting to play their old classics again on their liveshows. If you look at the press and fancomments they get all over the world, in the past 10 years i think the results speak for themselves. When they went back to playing their classic songs again, and suddenly they get praise again.

Of course this is not a universal solution =), some bands are really better off changing their sound a bit. And its quite natural for some bands to evolve like that. But i think that a change too radical from what the fans are used to and love can really hurt a bands popularity.

oh, so they may only release a album that is different if it's sure that it pleases their fans and sells a lot. No experiments allowed.

You sir sound like a pop manager.


Also I don't think I said that they should completely abandon their old stuff and never play it at liveshows again. What have the fans really "lost"? They may still listen to the old albums if the don't like the new one. They don't ave to buy the new album if they don't like it. And at live events they still play a lot of the old stuff.

In fact, the way you are describing fans sounds to me more like clingy mothers who don't want their son to move out. For better or worse.

OH FOR FUCKS SAKE MATE!? Do you even read the entire length of my posts?
In the end i wrote:

Of course this is not a universal solution =), some bands are really better off changing their sound a bit. And its quite natural for some bands to evolve like that. But i think that a change too radical from what the fans are used to and love can really hurt a bands popularity.

Do you know what phrase "CAN" means in the context of my last sentence? I'm not saying that it WILL hurt a bands popularity, im saying that it CAN. I've written that it CAN (just because it CAN, that doesn't mean that it will does it?).
Since you do not seem to understand what the word means in this context, I'm not sure we should keep discussing, after all it's like talking to a wall here.
But really, I cant even count the number of times we've seen a band (im a hard rock fan, so usually the examples I give are metal ones, but it goes for all genres I thinnk) in order to reach more popularity turn to the mainstream direction. They are of course free to do so if they think it benefits them, but they should expect that this CAN (to clarify this again for you then, CAN, in this case does not mean it MUST, or that it CERTAINLY WILL, it means that there is POSSIBILITY).

So to summarize for you, and i will try to avoid using the word CAN since that word confuses you.

Sometimes when a band changes their style/sound/music too much from the original sound they had (depending on how many albums and liveshows they've had earlier), some of their fans will think "WTF IS THIS SHIT? THIS SUCKS", I myself might think "hey this is kind of cool actually!", but I will definately have understanding for people not wanting to get the latest CD, or watch the next liveshow.

YES I READ IT and I think I can remember the meaning of CAN.

I am wondering, however, if you understand what I wrote.

I basically asked why the fuck they should care if their popularity is POSSIBLY hurt?

You see, people don't know in advance if their new different stuff will be liked by the fans or not.
They can only try and if it's a flop then it's bad luck.

But it always beats releasing the same thing over and over because trying something different CAN hurt your popularity.

And now calm down please.

Im not sure what kind of music, or scene you're into. But outside the pop-scene bands often want to keep in touch with their fanbase in the way that they feel they owe alot to the fans, and want to please their old fans as well as possible new fans. I think its a balance thing myself, trying to improve, and gain more fans and at the same time keep the old ones.

But my point is that sometimes a band or an artist changes so much ,and then whine because their old fans didnt like it. I definately think that a band/artist are encouraged to experiment, and try out different things. But sometimes, you see a band/artist change their style too much, and go crying because their old fans didnt like it. Which is ridiculous because I think Bands should earn their fans love, after all, fans the ones buying their albums or seeing their liveshows. Without having people listening to their music, bands are nothing. So I definately think a band should at least be PREPARED for fans not liking their latest album if its too different from what they usually do. Quite often they seem dumfounded though.

This time I can actually agree with most of what you say, except that I think pop musicians is the definition of never changing their style. Because their mangers and labels won't let them ;)

Yes, you are right artists should be prepared that their fan base or even people in genreal don't approve of what they do. In fact if that is not the case I wouldn't call them artists but rather workers...

For the rest I guess it's more a opinion thing.
You think bands owe their fans more. And I think they owe them only two things:
- The music on the album that the fan actually bought ( and not the ones after that.
- To play live frequently and play a wide selsction of their songs (all of them if possible :) )

Other than that I think the artists should stay true to themselves and not the way they are perveived by their fans. Which means if they want to try something they should. After all that is probably what made the become a successful band in the first place.

As for you first question: I actually listen to pop sometimes, for a more accurate picture: http://www.lastfm.de/user/BecksTheWombat/

You have a good point there. But if you look at The Chemical Brothers for ex., the music they are producing nowadays is extremely different from what they did in 94'. Nevertheless I still love them because it doesn't matter what kind of music they are producing, they have their own style I recognize instantly.

I do not know the Chemical brothers (even though i've heard the occasional song) all that much, but i definately agree with you. Some bands evolve/change dramatically, and benefit from that, but I think it really is different from band to band

I like a lot of their new stuff, but I suppose that when I was younger I listened to a lot more nu metal stuff. I like clear sounding production, I don't really like metal sounding like it's being played through slime. Although, listening to the newer stuff has got me listening to the older music, which I think can be a good thing too. I don't really like lunar strain but clayman > *

Clayman is different but it is still good imo.
After Clayman each album has just a few tolerable tracks though.

well yeah, clayman was quite good yep. but that only had few good songs... and those that wasnt good was utter shit :)

i like the mirrors truth but not the others very much, for me 'reroute to remain' is still their best work.

im looking forward to the song on their new album coming up (a sense of purpose) with some chip tunes in it. hopefully it'll be awesome.

Funny thing is, abnegation is just the bonus song they decided not to include in album, and they changed it alot aswell, ive heard different version before this single. So far, im not putting alot of hope on the new album :(

They've changed for the worse, bring back Lunar Strain and jester race \o/

Anything but rnb is good by nowadays standards in "music". Please somebody stop this fucking fad already, its EVERYWHERE.

I like Eraser :)

Gave all the songs a good listen, every one of them are so uninspiring and weak in terms of instrumental play.

:<

Radio friendly "death metal" :X

goes under melodic now i think? melodic metal?

That's what they call themselves

in flames' old lead-singer painted me a fox-painting for my b-day!

i really felt i needed to say that

carry on

:O

niceee, show us the pic? :>

asdf

Attached Image: 63518-tavla.jpg (323KB)

Fuck thats a pretty good drawing :O

This EP consists of throwaway tracks that aren't going to be on the album. The only song that is going to be on the album from this is The Mirror's Truth.

How do you know that?

I read it on a few sites.

Eraser for the win