Bands Who Changed Their Sound ... and Pulled It Off
There will always be an inherent risk of not pleasing people when creating music. There will be people who understand and enjoy what you’re doing, while others won’t get it at all. When a band changes their sound, there is a risk of alienating fans that have been with them from the beginning; a common complaint being “it just doesn’t sound like them.” Yet, in other cases, a sonic switch is exactly what a band needs to push their career forward and reinvigorate their fanbase. Here is our list of scene bands who changed their sound and managed to pull it off.
Bring Me The Horizon
Bring Me The Horizon have gone through several “eras” in their career. Originating as a deathcore act, the British band pulled influence from nu-metal and hardcore on their early releases Suicide Season and There Is A Hell Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is A Heaven Let’s Keep It A Secret.
Electronic and symphonic elements became more prominent on the band’s following releases, Sempiternal and That’s the Spirit, with the band even collaborating with an orchestra for a performance at Royal Albert Hall. In 2020, it’s hard to tell which direction the band will go next. With 2019’s Amo and their surprise experimental release Music to listen to~ heavily embracing electronic music, Bring Me The Horizon is a band that has truly always done whatever they wanted and pulled it off.
Avenged Sevenfold
Many know the California band for songs like “Nightmare” and “Bat Country,” but Avenged Sevenfold didn’t always deliver those spidery riffs and vocalist M. Shadows’ famous wail. The band’s debut Sounding the Seventh Trumpet is a metalcore-punk hybrid, featuring harsh unclean vocals from Shadows and breakdowns aplenty. With guitarist Synyster Gates joining the band for their next release Waking the Fallen, the band added twin guitar harmonies to their mix, fully realizing their signature sound on the following album City of Evil. With lengthy, epic songs, Shadows’ improved clean singing, complex drum rhythms, and classic heavy metal riffs, City of Evil marked a turning point for Avenged Sevenfold’s career, securing them performances on Warped Tour and MTV.
Paramore
One of the biggest pop punk bands of the 2000’s, Paramore found a way to stay at the forefront of the scene throughout five albums and 12 years. Hayley Williams’ siren cry and the band’s angsty lyrics connected with thousands of kids. The band embraced their pop side on their self-titled fourth album, shooting the record to No. 1 on the U.S charts. Bouncy “Ain’t It Fun” became a radio smash and won Paramore their first (and so far, only) Grammy. After Laughter took their pop experimentation even further, as the band brought in new wave elements to create a cheery-sounding album about depression and exhaustion. The band’s emotion hasn’t gone anywhere; they’re just expressing it in a different form.
Ice Nine Kills
Ice Nine Kills enjoyed a successful career in metal for quite a few years, but grew into a monster once they embraced their theatrical side. The Predator Becomes the Prey proved a solid metalcore record, but the band stepped up their songwriting and incorporated symphonic elements on the following album Every Trick in the Book. The band took inspiration from literature, writing lyrics from the perspective of characters from The Exorcist and Dracula, to name a few. With the release of horror-inspired The Silver Scream, Ice Nine Kills earned their highest-charting album to date and earned themselves a cult following for their elaborate live shows and music videos.
Whitechapel
Whitechapel proved themselves among deathcore’s most brutal bands album after album. With the release of their seventh album, The Valley, the band decided to take things a little slower. While deathcore elements are still very much present, clean guitars, singing and other melodic metal elements were pulled in. Whitechapel’s sonic change is most apparent on “Hickory Creek.” The song’s lyrics deal with loss and read like a catharsis for vocalist Phil Bozeman, who sings about his upbringing with a great deal of emotion. The Valley was met with several positive reviews, suggesting Whitechapel still has a lot to say and are finding new ways to say it with each album.
Panic! at the Disco
The Brendon Urie-fronted band has explored different sounds across their career. Their breakthrough debut A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out fused emo and cabaret and would shoot the band to MTV fame. The band took completely different influences for their sophomore record, Pretty. Odd., adding folk and psychedelic rock to their sound. Yet again, the band took things in a different direction for Vices and Virtues, embracing dance-pop, xylophones, synths, and Urie’s powerhouse vocals. Synth-pop ruled as the band recorded Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die!, but switched their sound up once again on the following album Death of a Bachelor. Due to an ever-shifting lineup, Urie wrote and recorded this album with a team of writers, giving him more creative control than ever. Urie puts forth a Sinatra-meets-arena-rock performance, showing he’s able to pull influence from all over.