Artists with variety in their catalogue

[Chisel Chin]

Usually you get bands who stick to a particular style or tried and tested formula, such as AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Black Crowes... they are dependable and you know what you're going to get from them.

But then you get those who have tried different styles over their career, some more (or less) successful than others, for example:

Kiss

Glam Rock, Heavy Rock, a few Disco songs, that Music From The Elder abomination, their attempt to fit in with the Grunge crowd with Carnival Of Souls, then back to their well-known hard rock style.

Metallica

First album thrasy, then slightly less thrashy and more heavy metal, then more mainstream metal with the Black album and Load/Reload, the S&M orchestral crossover, then St. Anger with that new drumming sound, back to a heavy thrashy album, and then Lou Reed(!!)

Alternatively, you could have gradual evolutionary changes over time, such as Anathema who went from death metal to lighter prog rock, or more abrupt changes in direction like Dare who started with AOR then harder rock before settling on their mellow Celtic sound.

Which artists/bands do you like who have offered up different styles over the years, and what are your opinions of what they did?

[DaHun72]

All those bands chasing the mighty $ and to stay relevant post smells like teen spirit. Too sad and too many to mention.

[Glen]

Jeff Scott Soto is true varied artist.

 

Talisman - melodic hard rock

Solo - pure melodic rock bordering on aor

Solo - beautiful Mess - more modern

approach expertly done

WET - mix melodic rock/aor

Queen tribute stuff

Trans Siberian orchestra stuff

Pop crossover covers

And most recently dipped into metal with his new band Soto

 

About as varied as it gets without selling out.

[Geoff]

I find the Harem Scarem discography to be quite varied. On one hand, the delivery of their hooks from album to album follows a pretty solid formula, but the actual style of album varies a lot. There's AOR, melodic hard rock, grungy rubbish, modern rock (some pop, some quite dark) etc. Yeah, there's no two albums in their entire discography which really sounds like the one before.

[Gibbo]

 

Usually you get bands who stick to a particular style or tried and tested formula, such as AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Black Crowes... they are dependable and you know what you're going to get from them.

But then you get those who have tried different styles over their career, some more (or less) successful than others, for example:

Kiss

Glam Rock, Heavy Rock, a few Disco songs, that Music From The Elder abomination, their attempt to fit in with the Grunge crowd with Carnival Of Souls, then back to their well-known hard rock style.

Metallica

First album thrasy, then slightly less thrashy and more heavy metal, then more mainstream metal with the Black album and Load/Reload, the S&M orchestral crossover, then St. Anger with that new drumming sound, back to a heavy thrashy album, and then Lou Reed(!!)

Alternatively, you could have gradual evolutionary changes over time, such as Anathema who went from death metal to lighter prog rock, or more abrupt changes in direction like Dare who started with AOR then harder rock before settling on their mellow Celtic sound.

Which artists/bands do you like who have offered up different styles over the years, and what are your opinions of what they did?

 

 

I much prefer Anathema now ... I never really liked their doomier/death sound.

 

Paradise Lost went from the death metal of their debut through to the electronic/gothier sound of 'One Second' and 'Host' (via the metallic 'Draconian Times'), before heading back into more doom/death metal territory with their last couple of releases. To be honest, I like pretty much everything they've done - you can hear how they've developed as a band, and taken elements from each release into what came afterwards. A recent review went as far as to say that they couldn't have recorded their latest album if they hadn't released 'One Second'

[Gibbo]

 

Metallica

First album thrasy, then slightly less thrashy and more heavy metal, then more mainstream metal with the Black album and Load/Reload, the S&M orchestral crossover, then St. Anger with that new drumming sound, back to a heavy thrashy album, and then Lou Reed(!!)

 

Did you mean to say that Metallica went from being one of the best bands around (up to 'Metallica'/'The Black Album') to being utter shite? That's a fairly major change of style

[Nightrain]

I think EUROPE is one of them. They started the first two albums with traditional heavy metal and then move slightly to hard rock / melodic rock before turning into AOR, and then started their downtuned modern hard rock era until today and probably the last album is a bit 'going back' to the 70s so probably classic rock meets modern era, a lot of variety going down there

 

Another one is MEGADETH, they're still thrash but lots of different styles throughout the years

HELLOWEEN and EDGUY is also quite varied but not too much