Metal Fans Name Huge Bands Who Changed for the Worse

Metal fans have named the huge bands they love that changed their style for the worse.

It's natural for bands to evolve their sound overtime, but some fans don't always like the change in direction. We should preface that the contents of this post aren't our opinions or thoughts, but rather a collection of metal fans on Reddit.

On the In Metal We Trust Reddit page, someone wrote a post titled, "What band had a change in direction that you didn't care for?" In the description, they admitted that Slipknot are that band for them, and the last album the group put out that they really loved all the way through was .5: The Gray Chapter in 2014.

"Slipknot nowadays feels overly artsy, and it's to the point where it no longer feels like music created by angry dudes who wear creepy masks and hate life, but instead feels like music created by guys heavily inspired by musical theater," the person who wrote the post elaborated.

"Obviously, the theatrics have always been there, but musically, at times it does sound like a metal musical, especially on We Are Not Your Kind, and the problem with that is that I can't stand musicals."

The first comment on the post names In Flames, and the individual explained, "The Jester Race and Whoracle are the pinnacle of a specific type of melodic death metal. I can't put it to words how much those two records mean to me. All previous material, as well as both Colony and Clayman also scratch the itch, but to lesser degrees."

"After Clayman... look, I can enjoy some of the stuff they put out. But my heart longs more than anything for that old sound's return. And no... I'm sorry, but their new album doesn't count and neither does that other side project with the Dark Tranquility frontman. There are a couple random albums here and there from other bands that do come close, but it just never reaches the peaks of those two records."

Quite a few other people concurred with this individual's post, also citing Opeth as another example, calling their discography from 1995's Orchid through 2008's Watershed "a pretty amazing run."

The next comment, which also received a high number of upvotes, named Metallica, though they acknowledged that it's alright if they aren't part of the band's target audience anymore.

"I really liked Death Magnetic, sounded a lot like ...And Justice For All to me. But yes, once Metallica started to back away from pure thrash and move into the hard rock space, they sort of lost their original 'it' factor," another user responded. "The Black Album is a masterpiece, no matter what douchey gatekeeping metal fans say, and Load and Reload were criminally underrated rock records, but they were not thrash."

Some other groups mentioned throughout the discussion were Gojira, Sepultura, Mastodon, Sacred Reich, Lamb of God, Whitechapel, Bring Me the Horizon and even Iron Maiden, among a few others.

Check out the Reddit post here to read the rest.