Extreme Makeover: BAND EDITION

[Nice Guy Eddie]

Pantera's extreme makeover:

"Metal Magic" from their 1983 debut, Metal Magic

1990's "Cowboys from Hell"

 

Edited May 25, 2019 by Nice Guy Eddie

[Casey]

I think Nine Inch Nails fits this topic pretty well, yeah? Pretty Hate Machine (especially some of the demos for that album) to the Broken EP and The Downward Spiral are drastic changes. Then you go to The Fragile, and it's not like those two albums AT ALL. Then With Teeth is basically rock music for the radio, just real easy to digest. Year Zero is more electronic than anything they've ever done. The Slip is like With Teeth, but way better. I hated Hesitation Marks, so I'll skip that one since I don't have a lot of experience with it. Then the three "albums" (actually EPs) that came out in the last few years - Not The Actual Events, Add Violence & Bad Witch - are a weird mash-up of everything that's come before it, and trying new things out as well.

Meanwhile, during all of this, you get things like the Ghosts project, a 4 disc instrumental album that's under the Creative Commons license (Old Town Road by Lil Nas X samples one of the Ghosts songs). The Ghosts album leads into Trent Reznor filling up more of his time scoring films.

He's definitely had more longevity than someone like Marilyn Manson, put out more music than contemporaries like Tool, and has stayed relevant unlike people/bands in the past who have ragged on him because he's "not really industrial" (Ministry and Skinny Puppy, I'm looking at you).

[Nice Guy Eddie]

4 hours ago, Casey said:

I think Nine Inch Nails fits this topic pretty well, yeah? Pretty Hate Machine (especially some of the demos for that album) to the Broken EP and The Downward Spiral are drastic changes. Then you go to The Fragile, and it's not like those two albums AT ALL. Then With Teeth is basically rock music for the radio, just real easy to digest. Year Zero is more electronic than anything they've ever done. The Slip is like With Teeth, but way better. I hated Hesitation Marks, so I'll skip that one since I don't have a lot of experience with it. Then the three "albums" (actually EPs) that came out in the last few years - Not The Actual Events, Add Violence & Bad Witch - are a weird mash-up of everything that's come before it, and trying new things out as well.

Meanwhile, during all of this, you get things like the Ghosts project, a 4 disc instrumental album that's under the Creative Commons license (Old Town Road by Lil Nas X samples one of the Ghosts songs). The Ghosts album leads into Trent Reznor filling up more of his time scoring films.

He's definitely had more longevity than someone like Marilyn Manson, put out more music than contemporaries like Tool, and has stayed relevant unlike people/bands in the past who have ragged on him because he's "not really industrial" (Ministry and Skinny Puppy, I'm looking at you).

Yeah, I'll buy it. I like Hesitation Marks, but it's not in my top tier of NIN work. Those spots are reserved for The Downward Spiral, Broken, and Pretty Hate Machine.

Edited May 25, 2019 by Nice Guy Eddie

[Curt McGirt]

16 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I try to forget about Into the Unknown ever happening. "How Can Hell Be Any Worse?" was an awesome debut album and Bad Religion made the right call going back to punk with the "Back to the Known" ep.

This right here. A ton of bands made a bad mistake in the '80s trying to play different, and there's only one that I can think of that went back and got better, and that's Bad Religion. 

EDIT: Okay, I will accept Celtic Frost. Maybe not got better, but still. 

Edited May 25, 2019 by Curt McGirt

[AxB]

I would bring up Discharge's Grave New World album, but luckily that didn't actually happen in this reality.

[Curt McGirt]

That's right it fucking didn't. All that exists (along with three other EPs, an MLP and an LP) is this. 

EDIT: Well, there are these guys

https://thisclose86.bandcamp.com/

and everything else that sounds like Fight Back even remotely, I've got a record collection full of recommendations for you haha

Edited May 26, 2019 by Curt McGirt

[SorceressKnight]

On 5/23/2019 at 7:25 PM, John E. Dynamite said:

RHCP going from sock punks to mustache dads is a perfectly straight, 45-degree line who's exact midpoint is the "I know I know for sure / Ding dang dong dong ding dang dong dong ding dang" verse.

This would be a related good thread: What moment in an artist/band's career was it obvious it was over? (This can be multiple things- a terrible song, a terrible verse, etc.) 

[Brian Fowler]

1 hour ago, SorceressKnight said:

This would be a related good thread: What moment in an artist/band's career was it obvious it was over? (This can be multiple things- a terrible song, a terrible verse, etc.) 

If there was any justice in the world, "I don't Wanna Miss a Thing" would be the ur example for that.

[John E. Dynamite]

On 5/26/2019 at 7:03 PM, Brian Fowler said:

If there was any justice in the world, "I don't Wanna Miss a Thing" would be the ur example for that.

Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there / And made myself a motley to the view / Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear.

Selling out is an old, old concept.

[Brian Fowler]

2 minutes ago, John E. Dynamite said:

Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there / And made myself a motley to the view / Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear.

Selling out is an old, old concept.

I don't care if they sell out. I care if the song is fucking terrible.

And that song is fucking terrible.

[John E. Dynamite]

1 minute ago, Brian Fowler said:

I don't care if they sell out. I care if the song is fucking terrible.

And that song is fucking terrible.

Do you believe that was the first moment where Aerosmith performed, recorded and marketed a terrible song?

Was the summer of "Jaded", Bon Jovi's "Have a Nice Day", and Santana + Rob Thomas not a mathematically set-in-stone Classic Rock Doomsday since at least 197X?

Edited May 27, 2019 by John E. Dynamite

[Brian Fowler]

1 minute ago, John E. Dynamite said:

Do you believe that was the first moment where Aerosmith performed, recorded and marketed a terrible song?

On any level close to that bad? Yes.

[John E. Dynamite]

8 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

On any level close to that bad? Yes.

You're Aerosmith. It's 1987. Your highest charting single in the US at this point is a 1976 re-issue of "Dream On". Your second highest charting single (that Run DMC didn't jump on) is the poetic masterwork of "Dude Looks Like A Lady". Maybe, just kinda maybe, this gives you a good vantage point of the commercial rock landscape. You break the top ten with a string of Nothin'-But-Power-Ballads (tm Time Life, 199something) - Angel hits #3, Love in an Elevator at #5, Janie's Got a Gun #4, What It Takes #9. Your next best charting song between then and the release of Armageddon is "Cryin'".

I don't even think "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" is an example of a band selling out. I think it's an example of a commercial rock band realizing what it always was.

Edited May 27, 2019 by John E. Dynamite

[Brian Fowler]

2 minutes ago, John E. Dynamite said:

You're Aerosmith. It's 1987. Your highest charting single in the US at this point is a 1976 re-issue of "Dream On". Your second highest charting single (that Run DMC didn't jump on) is the poetic masterwork of "Dude Looks Like A Lady". Maybe, just kinda maybe, this gives you a good vantage point of the commercial rock landscape. You break the top ten with a string of Nothin'-But-Power-Ballads (tm Time Life, 199something) - Angel hits #3, Love in an Elevator at #5, Janie's Got a Gun #4, What It Takes #9. Your next best charting song between then and the release of Armageddon is "Cryin'".

I don't even think "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" is an example of a band selling out. I think it's an example of a commercial rock band realizing what it always was.

Again, I said nothing about them selling out. I said it's a song so bad it should've ended their careers the moment it was released.

(Also, fwiw, I like every other song you mentioned in there except I don't think I've ever heard 199something)

[John E. Dynamite]

5 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

Again, I said nothing about them selling out. I said it's a song so bad it should've ended their careers the moment it was released.

(Also, fwiw, I like every other song you mentioned in there except I don't think I've ever heard 199something)

a made up term in which I am imagining a copyright date on a make-believe As Seen On TV rock 'n roll compilation. see also: MONSTER BALLADS 1 (1999), MONSTERS OF ROCK (1998), MONSTER BALLADS VOLUME 2 (2001), PURE MONSTER MOODS (199???).

Edited May 27, 2019 by John E. Dynamite

[Brian Fowler]

2 minutes ago, John E. Dynamite said:

a made up term in which I am imagining a copyright date on a make-believe As Seen On TV rock 'n roll compilation. see also: MONSTER BALLADS 1 (1999), MONSTERS OF ROCK (1998), MONSTER BALLADS VOLUME 2 (2001), PURE MONSTER MOODS (199?).

Ah, now it makes sense.

[AxB]

Monsters of Rock is what the Download Festival was called in the 80s.

[Brian Fowler]

57 minutes ago, AxB said:

Monsters of Rock is what the Download Festival was called in the 80s.

Castle Donnington. There's a great 1983 Dio concert from there (and a solid 1987 one) 

Oh and Rainbow from 1980 in what I think was both Graham Bonnet and Cozy Powell's last performance in the band.

Actually, Rainbow kinda fits the original topic, they changed a lot from kinda medieval metal to more of a pop hard rock band.

[Travis Sheldon]

Ministry started as a Joy Division-esque duo and morphed into whatever the hell Al morphed into.

[Brian Fowler]

1 hour ago, Travis Sheldon said:

Ministry started as a Joy Division-esque duo and morphed into whatever the hell Al morphed into.

Disco-Industrial-Metal?

[Nice Guy Eddie]

19 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

Disco-Industrial-Metal?

That's pretty much how Wayne Static described Static-X.

Back on to the topic of Extreme Makeovers, I think In Flames fits the bill.

1996's "The Jester Race"

2019's "Burn"

[OSJ]

I suppose the poster boy for this thread is one of my heroes, Roy Wood. Once he left the Move/ELO and no longer had Bev Bevan and Jeff Lynne to keep him in check he got as weird as he had always wanted and gave us Wizzard. When he tired of that, he put out one of the greatest throwback rock albums ever recorded, Eddie & the Falcons. Dude still has it 70-something and still playing "Brontosaurus" and "California Man". (BTW: I'm a big Cheap Trick fan, but their version of "California Man" can eat a dick).

Edited May 30, 2019 by OSJ

[Curt McGirt]

Sepultura is a big one. From this: 

 

to this: 

[/spoiler]

[/spoiler]

...to this. 

...while their old singer turned into this

[/spoiler]

Edited May 29, 2019 by Curt McGirt

[Curt McGirt]

Goddammit, somehow that won't edit. At all. Oh well, the point stands.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

7 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Sepultura is a big one. From this: 

  Hide contents

to this: 

[/spoiler]

[/spoiler]

...to this. 

...while their old singer turned into this

[/spoiler]

I don't know if I'd call Max a clown, but he is one bitter MF'er.

I don't even think there would be as much backlash against current Sepultura if they would have just changed the name of the band, especially after Igor left. The Cavalera's were Sepultura.