When Bands go "Cold Lake"...

Would you believe these guys once released "To Mega Therion"?

It's inevitable that almost every band will have a subpar effort in their catalog of albums. That many bands will take a swing and miss on a stylistic shift is a given and perhaps even a necessity. Not every artist is destined to be Motorhead or Cannibal Corpse and can regurgitate the same album over and over without diminished returns. Some bands need to take a left turn and explore a little uncharted territory before returning to what made them good. Paradise Lost is a wonderful example of that. Sometimes a band needs a lineup shift to rekindle their inspiration and get back on track with that they do best with a renewed energy. Amorphis is a great example of this. And sometimes bands just make inexplicably crap records that otherwise interrupt careers of strong output. Rotting Christ and My Dying Bride have both done this.

Even a band as badass as fucking Vader has occasionally released a forgettable album. See also: "The Beast".

And sometimes bands just go completely off the deep end and make enormous career shifts and decide to release awful records.

I'm inspired to rant about this because right now I'm listening to the new Machine Head album Catharsis, which sees the band abandoning a string of solid, groovy thrash records to revisit their unfortunate adventures in nu-metal. With online media blogs deciding that nu-metal's revival is now imminent I guess Robb Flynn decided to take one more stab at the "moronic-extra-chromosome-carrying-previously-disowned-yet-for-a-brief-time-commercially-viable" relative to proper metal. What is awful is new again, right? (For example, supposedly JNCOs are "back".) Not that it should surprise you, but yes, Catharsis sucks. It's muddy downtuned "grooves" and infantile lyricism is a sharp departure from the epic, intricate nature of The Blackening or even the classic metal influences that crept up since. 

I can't believe Robb Flynn thought revisiting THIS was a good idea.

One often wonders what leads to the decision making for an otherwise established band that seemingly has found its niche to make an abrupt shift in style. Clearly fan perception about whether such a shift has even taken place is one thing to consider. For example, how far a shift was Cryptopsy really making with The Unspoken King? While clearly globbing onto the deathcore wave of the late 2000's, it at least remained an "extreme" metal album, if only relative to what mainstream music happens to be. Fan outrage, as well as my own critique, was that Cryptopsy was an established institution that transcended trends in the metal underground and did not need to cater to the aesthetics of a passing moment. Nobody listens to Cryptopsy to hear clean vocals, excessive keyboards, or grooves. They want speed, hyperblasting drums, and acrobatically extreme vocals. The overwhelmingly negative backlash obviously didn't go unnoticed and after several lineup changes, Cryptopsy seemed to right the ship with their eponymous effort and the followup Book of Tomes EP.

In a sense, that's what Celtic Frost did in following up the colossally massive failure of Cold Lake. This was the bad record by which all other bad records are defined. Ironically, it was from one of the genre's most forward thinking and progressive bands during the 1980s, yet upon achieving wider success on their own terms, the band seemingly sabotaged themselves by releasing an utterly unlistenable glam rock album, complete with hairspray. Tom G. Warrior would later call it his biggest mistake ever, and attribute it to a combination of a happy love life and letting a new lineup determine the creative direction. Still, the band would "right" things by responding with the oft-ignored Vanity/Nemesis before returning from hiatus many years later, existing as though Cold Lake never happened.

Happy people make shitty music. Its just a fact.

Then there's the bands that spend years and several albums cultivating fanbases, just to make an abrupt shift and never turn back. Opeth is a great example of this. Always heavily inspired by 70's prog rock, Opeth delivered 9 albums of varying brilliance, seemlessly interweaving said prog with thunderous death metal to create somber, compelling music. Thriving off the support of a death metal scene all too willing to hype Opeth to non-metal peers as proof of metal's ability to be more than mindless noise, Opeth grew from a little band from Stockholm, Sweden into one of metal's most universally beloved darlings, seemingly incapable of doing wrong. Then they released Heritage, an album devoid of any of its metal trappings in favor of pure 70's prog-nerd worship. The album was completely polarizing (the music media loved it while older fans hated it), and objectively not as "good" as their previously death metal inspired albums. The response of the band has essentially been confusing; follow up releases The Pale Communion and Sorceress basically doubled down on the pedestrian sounding non-metal. Yet the band still includes songs from their previous back catalog in their live set, and have left open the possibility of returning to a heavier sound in the future. Essentially Opeth has made it clear they don't want to play death metal anymore, yet they want to lead fans on so they will continue to attend shows and buy each new record with a hope that just maybe the the glory days of the band will return.

Maybe this nerd is just as confused about Opeth's direction as the rest of us.

Meanwhile, there's In Flames. In the year 2000, In Flames was at their peak. Their catchy formula of melodic death metal, extra heavy on syrupy sweet melodic guitar harmonies, was at once tremendously enjoyable and it seemed palatable enough for mainstream ears for In Flames to be the underground metal band that was going "make the leap." They so thoroughly outdrew Earth Crisis on a co-headlining tour that Earth Crisis actually broke up midtour. I personally witnessed an incredible performance on a tour they headlined with Nevermore and Shadow's Fall in a sold out club. It seemed like bigger venues and Ozzfests were in their future. And in some respects it was, just not how long time fans had envisioned. See, In Flames had dropped hints all along; expressing fandom for artists like Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit. And sure enough, just as their light was shining at its brightest, the band abandoned its Gothenburg-style roots for downtuned nu-metal, emo lyricism, and borderline whiny vocals on 2002's Reroute To Remain. And for the period of the last days of nu-metal's viability, In Flames was able to reach Ozzfest, and get picked up on bigger package tours. Yet it really seems like they basically swapped one fan base for another, and with the passing of nu-metal's wave, they just release albums in their adopted style every few years to a chorus of metal fans who remind them of how much better they used to be.  

Basically how In Flames feels about their old fans. But hey, matching jumpsuits.

I guess bands could reach the point of releasing a Cold Lake in a variety of ways. Desire for commercial success. Boredom with a style they've played for multiple albums. Internal discord within the band. Using Metallica's post-black album career as an example, perhaps a paranoid desire to stay relevant. How bands respond to it seems to vary as well. Some rebound, some double down, some hedge their bets on their new sound, and some, like Metallica, swing wildly for the fences again and again, hoping to stumble on the right formula; in their case it seems to be to settle down into a mediocre, watered down version of their past glory with Hardwired To Self Destruct.

Boredom can be dangerous.

So how does a fan "cope" with this? As a long time metalhead who has seen this play out multiple times, I've learned to not take it personally as 16 year old kid the first time their favorite band "sells out." I think it involves understanding that bands are made up of human beings, who evolve and change over time. Who develop new interests and become bored of old ones. I think more than anything, a band should always make "honest art", which is to say that they should follow whatever is in their collective heart in a creative sense. If you make a shitty record for the right reason, who cares? Hell, if you make it for the wrong reason, is it really that big a deal? Those old Opeth and In Flames records haven't gone anywhere. I can still listen to My Arms Your Hearse or Whoracle and those records are just as amazing today as they were when they were originally released. The fact that both bands made abrupt decisions to turn to shit doesn't change that. The fact that Machine Head has just released an absolute turd sandwich of an album and are whiny bitches about the fact most of their fans hate it doesn't make Burn My Eyes or The More Things Change... less crushing.

Still one of metal's greatest albums.

As a younger fan, I probably would develop some sort of irrational animosity towards a band and its entire catalog because of a Cold Lake-moment. But in 2018, with so many streaming services and torrents of so many other bands it just seems silly. I'm not suggesting bands should get a pass for releasing a bad record. I still haven't "forgiven" Hypocrisy for releasing Catch 22 and attempting to cash in on ripping off Slipknot. But I am thankful I haven't disregarded the band since; albums like End of Disclosure and A Taste of Extreme Divinity are worthy additions to the band's legacy and have deserved their repeated listens.

I guess the overarching theme of what I'm getting at is that the longer a band exists, the more likely they're gonna do a shitty record. And the more likely they're gonna shift styles at some point. The confluence of diminished inspiration and style shift is what creates a Cold Lake. It's bound to happen yet rather than spending a ton of time upset about it, just remember that we live in a time when there's constantly more new records coming out that are going to be up your alley if you just take the time to look.