In your opinion, what musicians have had a sudden decline in quality?

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Zipa

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Muse in recent years, they seem to be trying harder and harder with each album to become Queen. I get that muse are influenced by them but they seem to be taking that a bit too far.
 

TheRightToArmBears

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someonehairy-ish said:
No mentions of MUSE? They've been a bit shit on the last two or three albums, depending who you ask. Everything is still composed well, but the overall albums are tonally and musically all over the place, and the lyrics are getting worse, and there's no heavier edge at all.

Also I thought the last lamb of god album was a bit duller than their usual output. Not a massive decline, but it's certainly there. They sound like they're just coasting along without really doing anything new with the music.
Definitely agree with you on Muse, I can't say I've enjoyed anything since Absolution.

On the other hand, I actually thought the last Lamb of God album was the best one they've done. Randy's voice sounds perfect, and I think it's a pretty good mix of the sounds from each previous album. Perhaps you're right that it wasn't too adventurous (although I'd say Cheated is pretty different to most LoG stuff, with a different vocalist and production then it could basically be a hardcore punk song), but it was perfecting the formula.
 

Biggyzoom

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I have the mindset where I just accept that bands/musicians change their styles over time. In my opinion music is a lot more subjective than say film or literature because it just seems that very little of it released to the masses has anything actually fundamentally wrong with it, at least with regards to quality. I think music has the most diverse and varying opinions on any of it's releases.

That said, I always thought Michael Jackson got very much worse after Bad. Bad was good but couldn't hold a candle to Thriller in terms of quality, not blaming the transition from Disco/Funk to Pop at all. Apart from some select songs the rest of his stuff was just meh. Invincible was just horrible.

Robert Plant, he had some great material with Led Zepplin, later released some lovely work with Alison Krauss but somewhere in the middle he released the album 'Manic Nirvana', one of the worst things I have ever heard in my life.

Not exactly recent I know but it was the only contribution I could think of.
 

II2

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While I've never really been a fan of his music, Trent Reznor / NIN pretty much blew his creative load by the Fragile. Everything subsequently has been... glehhh... His original soundtrack work is top notch, though.

I was pretty let down by SPK going from gold like "Auto-Da-Fé", "Information Overload Unit" and "Leichenschrei" to their attempt at electro dance rock with "Machine Age Voodoo" in 1984, but it's a bit late to complain about that.
 

Kenbo Slice

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Memphis May Fire. On their first ep and album they played a blend of southern rock and metalcore. But then they released their second album and sounded like every other metalcore band.

How do you go from this?:


To this:
 

mrblakemiller

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I'll tell a little story...

I know they get a lot of hate, but the first band I ever loved (they came out when I was ten) was Matchbox Twenty. Yourself or Someone Like You is incredible; not a bad song on that album (listen to "Busted"). Four years went by before they released Mad Season. It didn't have as much of the hard rock elements, but it was still great and showcased their now-typical amazing musical diversity (listen to "You Won't Be Mine"). It was about three years until More Than You Think You Are. This one had their first bad song, "Cold", which I can't listen to because it somehow reminds me of Hoobastank. Ugh. But still, great album (listen to "Downfall"). I used to think it better than their second, but I'll go back to the tracks on no. 2 more quickly. It's kinda like they went too far from the arena rock of the first album to land well on their trip back.

Then Rob Thomas decided to do some solo stuff and released Something To Be, which is good and has a lot of his trademark variety, but has less of a "play the whole record at once" quality to it. Then MB20 released a pseudo-greatest hits collection with six new songs called Exile on Mainstream. I think part of the problem for me was that they'd been too long gone. I'd gotten into and out of Avenged Sevenfold, become a big fan of Dave Matthews Band's early stuff, and gone in a bunch of other directions. The new songs were just too pop for my tastes. Then Rob came out with Cradlesong, his second solo effort, and it's pretty boring. Mostly all relationship songs, mostly slow stuff, mostly boring. "Wonderful" is really good, but "Hard On You" sounds like background music to a soap opera. Rather disappointing.

Then the band came back together to release North. The first single was "She's So Mean," which sounded stupid the first time I heard it, but it gets better with every listen until I think it's great. Lot of other great songs on the album, like "Parade," "Sleeping at The Wheel," and "Our Song". They aren't doing as well as those first two albums, but all of these last songs are on my iPod, and only a few from Cradlesong are.

Also...

Paramore's third album was crap, but this new one that jsut came out is pretty good (haven't gotten around to listening to all of it, since in this post-iPod age it seems weird to listen to one band for fifteen songs in a row.

Also, the joke I tell about Dave Matthews Band is that they could have been struck by lightning at the end of their Central Park Concert and we would have lost maybe four good songs from their last four albums.
 

Dr. Doomsduck

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sanquin said:
Delain, I'd say. It's maybe not a well known band though. It's a metal band from the Netherlands. (though they sing in English.) Their style went from symphonic rock/symphonic metal to...I don't know, a softer kind of metal/rock that...just doesn't sound as good as their first two ablums to me. More commercialized I guess? It's like they suddenly changed their music style for the worse with their third.
You're right, they have become more pop-escue. While I do think that Wessel's voice has gotten better over time, April Rain is still their best album by a mile.
 

DrunkOnEstus

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War Penguin said:
Weezer. That's not to say that their music was all that good until they went to complete crap [small](Make Believe, anybody?)[/small], but they still were able to crank out a few good songs now and then. Then Raditude happened. Just... the hell, guys... The hell...
According to Rivers Cuomo, the idea completely was to sell out. He lost all of the angst and...je ne sais quoi that started with Pinkerton and decided to make the band a money making venture. If I find the interview I'll post it. Definitely a good example here, though.
 

War Penguin

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DrunkOnEstus said:
War Penguin said:
Weezer. That's not to say that their music was all that good until they went to complete crap [small](Make Believe, anybody?)[/small], but they still were able to crank out a few good songs now and then. Then Raditude happened. Just... the hell, guys... The hell...
According to Rivers Cuomo, the idea completely was to sell out. He lost all of the angst and...je ne sais quoi that started with Pinkerton and decided to make the band a money making venture. If I find the interview I'll post it. Definitely a good example here, though.
I knew something felt off after the Pinkerton! No, Rivers! Noooooo! D:
 

knight steel

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Justin Bieber he just hasn't been the same since he reached puberty......whatever happened to you my sweet little angel you were once the top of your field matching the beatles in skill/talent and now you're just another one direction ohh how the mighty have fallen -_-.
 

sXeth

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Weezer's been pretty spotty ever since Rivers ran out of stuff to write about (Circa the Green Album or so), it seems like they're struggling to put out quality albums (also possibly because of a rapid release schedule), though they get an occasional decent song through.

Alice Cooper's solo career hit a rough nosedive after Welcome to my Nightmare, though he eventually got better (and sober), with some of his post-2000 being among his best solo work.

Pearl Jam's never come near Ten again, for my two cents worth.

The Killer's just seem like an okayish Springsteen tribute band nowadays.
 

Total LOLige

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Seth Carter said:
Pearl Jam's never come near Ten again, for my two cents worth.
I don't know dude, Backspacer was a pretty awesome album. I'd say both Backspacer and Vs. were better than Ten but ya know differnt Strokes for differnt folks.

The Enemy. Their first album is, to quote Penny from Happy Endings "Amarzing", but the last two have been abit shit.
 

kanyewhite

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Seth Carter said:
Weezer's been pretty spotty ever since Rivers ran out of stuff to write about (Circa the Green Album or so), it seems like they're struggling to put out quality albums (also possibly because of a rapid release schedule), though they get an occasional decent song through.

Alice Cooper's solo career hit a rough nosedive after Welcome to my Nightmare, though he eventually got better (and sober), with some of his post-2000 being among his best solo work.

Pearl Jam's never come near Ten again, for my two cents worth.

The Killer's just seem like an okayish Springsteen tribute band nowadays.

I Do not understand why I still like Weezer for the life of me. I listen to their new stuff and while I enjoy, I feel like it's just Stockholm syndrome at this point.
 

dfphetteplace

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Seth Carter said:
Alice Cooper's solo career hit a rough nosedive after Welcome to my Nightmare, though he eventually got better (and sober), with some of his post-2000 being among his best solo work.
You know I was never a big fan of Cooper. I always had respect for what he did and everything, but I just didn't care for it, as I liked stuff more metal than his style of rock. That is, until I saw him open for Iron Maiden last summer. It was a great show, heavy as hell, and really enjoyable.
 

piinyouri

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All That Remains was a pretty decent metalcore band (more metal than most metalcore outfits) on Fall of Ideals and everything before, but Overcome and beyond has just become really really dull. Also Phil Labonte seems to have forgotten he has a higher register and instead wants to emulate Rob Dukes ALL THE TIME.

3 Inches of Blood's album Here Waits Thy Doom pretty much signaled the end of me enjoying them. I only dug two tracks from that album and none from the new one.

Aggression's debut album was a writhing slab of frenetic thrash metal rivaling Vio-lence's raw energy as well as thier crazed vocal style, but Viocracy was a much tamer and boring excursion. The production job hurt it immensely.

Amon Amarth after Twilight of the Thundergod. I realize the band has never had much in the way of variety, but they do what they do very well. Surtur Rising was the first time were I felt this was just no longer enough. They are almost plagiarizing themselves at this point. The new song is really quite dull too, with not even the usually fantastic Fredrik Andersson doing anything interesting.

Beyond Twilight had a stellar first offering, then descended into crazyland were artistic statements are worth more than good, well written compelling music. For The Love of Art and the Making is truly awful.
 

Launcelot111

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MichiganMuscle77 said:
Then you have Foo Fighters who seem to get BETTER with each album.
I have to disagree with this- their first two albums are miles above anything else they've made, though they definitely haven't had any big dropoff. One By One was pretty bad, but the rest of their albums have been remarkably consistent in their solidness.

OT: Weezer was never the same after Pinkerton. Also the Replacements after Pleased to Meet Me and the Pogues after If I Should Fall From Grace With God.

For more recent examples, I dunno. Phoenix's new single was really really terrible, especially in light of how awesome Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix was, so I'm really nervous for when I actually get around to hearing their new album.
 

bug_of_war

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I Stomp on Kittens said:
Well, not really sudden but the quality of Metallica's music has changed over the course of their long career. You can notice a slip with 'Load' and then two albums later 'St Anger' is stinking up the music store. After that is 'Death Magnetic' which isn't too bad but it still has nothing on their first few.

Sometimes it's just better to stop then to ram the quality into the ground.
They seem to be focusing too much on the articulation of their songs, if that makes sense. Like, back with their older albums the guitar riffs were fast and energetic to the point of almost bordering on speed metal. It also sounded rougher than their recent albums. I wouldn't say their quality has dropped, they're still excellent musicians, but their style has definitely changed.
 

I Stomp on Kittens

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bug_of_war said:
I Stomp on Kittens said:
Well, not really sudden but the quality of Metallica's music has changed over the course of their long career. You can notice a slip with 'Load' and then two albums later 'St Anger' is stinking up the music store. After that is 'Death Magnetic' which isn't too bad but it still has nothing on their first few.

Sometimes it's just better to stop then to ram the quality into the ground.
They seem to be focusing too much on the articulation of their songs, if that makes sense. Like, back with their older albums the guitar riffs were fast and energetic to the point of almost bordering on speed metal. It also sounded rougher than their recent albums. I wouldn't say their quality has dropped, they're still excellent musicians, but their style has definitely changed.
I get what you're saying completely. You're totally right on it sounding rougher and that they are excellent musicians, but to me a lot of the later stuff feels uninspired and just a bore. They had tons of slower riffage on Master of Puppets and the self-titled and it was great.

I don't mean to sound like a Metallica hater, I actually love them. I have tons of respect for those guys and understand their impact, and I understand that change was bound to come after being around as long as they have. Shit, my favorite band has changed genres twice and have released very different albums every time.