Incubus

Incubus started as a jam hard rock sort of band and as they became more popular gravitated toward a more pop rock sort of sound.  A good song to hear Incubus' jam sound is Idiot Box from an earlier album Science.  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lZmt5pJegcU As Incubus progressed releasing Make Yourself and A Crow Left of the Murder Make Yourself showed us some of the pop rock examples with Pardon Me and Wish you Were Here. A Crow Left of the Murder went back to Incubus' jam style in this song Angoraphobia.  Here you'll notice no scratching discs and a different guitar sound.  A change of bassist came with this album as well giving it a different approach.  More backup vocals in this song than previous Incubus tracks.  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LgaG1x--Ua0

Tool time

The band Tool has made many changes throughout their career.  The first example here is from their first  album Opiate.  Sweat has a much rawer guitar and laid back bass and drum parts than the next examples.  youtube.com/watch?v=9izLcXH0Hu8. After three more albums a bassist change Tool released their latest album 10000 Days.  This album overall showed a huge change for Tool switching to a progressive rock style from their earlier hard rock metal style.  The song Jambi shows how during this album they used rhythm to drive many songs.  Another interesting thing in Jambi is the talk box solo near the later half of the song.http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Noz6-KaT4fA

The Used

Similar to Avenged Sevenfold The Used started as a pretty standard sounding band in the "screamo" genre with one of their first popular songs A Box Full of Sharp Objects.  This song has the screaming heavy distorted guitar and effect drivin arpegiated melodies that became recognized for this genre. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhww-odwLLM.  Compared to that song The Bird and the Worm has  a feel that honestly gave me the picture of Coheed and Cambria mixed with 80's metal.  The classical slowed down texture of this song seats you in a very different place than A Box of Sharp Objects.http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv9zDC5HaKs

Avenged Sevenfold

The nu metal band Avenged Sevenfold from Hunington beach California started out living up to the nu metal sub genre with their quick guitar riffs and heavy rhythm breakdowns.  The song that gives a good example of this is Unholy Confessions from Waking the Falling.  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I-QaFWURsMU.  Next the song Seize the Day from almost five years later.  In this song we aren't hearing the chugging guitar and quick scale runs, here we have gone to a pretty standard pop rock sound.  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wheJrsRiuCM. I feel with this kind of change you are taking a big risk of loosing your fan base.

Stone Temple Pilots

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2_dGkqYu6MThe Stone Temple Pilots changed in their career in these examples, the first being Plush from their first album Core.  This song has a much more typical rock style compared to the second example Art Song Girl that mixes a sort of twangy guitar sound with ridiculously distored guitar and repeated lyrics. 
This change in style wasn't as immediate as some other bands I've noticed changing.  Stone Temple Pilots stuck to rock style in their second album Purple with only a hint of diverting to the sound that Art Song Girl has.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbXlJDxVQZg

Comments are appreciated! 

System of a Down changing systems

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX2RWSzBKio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oLfM30A7Ko
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oLfM30A7Ko

System of a Down is a artistic group that almost always has changed voices throughout their career.  By this I mean having the two different writers in the group that turned out some pretty different styles from time to time.  The first example I'd like to play for you is from System of a Down's first album titled Sugar.  Here System plays a pretty straight forward metal song.  The next comparison is She's like Herion from a much later album Hypnotize that brings a odd sorta metal sorta industrial sound forward with Serge and Daron doing harmonies almost the entire album unlike previous sing scream sing scream.

Heres an example of how I changed voices using MIDI composition that I don't normally work with

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Blink 182 growing up changing voices

  Blink 182 started out as a young what everyone called punk band in their early days.  As they became popular they got a new drummer and grew out of their teen years and the music became more technical and geared more towards the overall rock genre than just the three chord progression of their punk rock background.  The first song is Carousel from their first album Cheshire Cat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvx7RIK99AQ

The next song to hear the difference in Blink's sound is Adam's Song from the album Enema of the State where the band became very popular and their new drummer Travis Barker joined.  You can also hear a wildly different production quality when comparing this song to Carousel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_--UbeMzfU

Lastly I have an example from the groups last album together titled simply Blink 182.  This song is titled Violence.  This song has another style change where you can sense the band wants to get away from just doing the punk rock songs they were known for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cklXT0XL-cM

Smashing Pumpkins changed voices

    For this post I would like you to compare the rock band Smashing Pumpkins over three consecutive albums.  One aspect I personally have always liked about the Smashing Pumpkins is how diverse their sound is, but most bands you would not see quiet the drastic change one album to the next as the three examples I'd like to compare.  The first song is one from their Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album Bullet with Butterfly Wings.  Around this time alternative rock and grunge were still popular.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oGDTbONRtc

The next song is Ava Adore from the Smashing Pumpkins following album Adore.  The big change here that sticks out to me is the use of electronic drums due to the dismissal of Jimmy Chamberlin during the Mellon Collie tour.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uWwvQKGjLI

Last I'd like you to hear the song Everlasting Gaze from the album Machina where the Smashing Pumpkins brought Jimmy back into the band and went back closer to their earlier sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ2VrPbS-g0

Metallica's changed voice

    Metallica has portrait an dominant  voice In the music industry for the past few decades.  While they have always been considered a "metal" band their overall sound has not maintained a consistent style. I would like to show an example of how a band that has existed for so long  can change their style and maintain dedicated fan base.   The first example I would like to show is an early Metallica song from the album Master of Puppets called Battery available at the link below.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m99ybtk4QNs


The next Metallica song to compare Battery to is off the Load album and called Until it Sleeps.  The drastic tempo change and overall sound comparison is pretty drastic compared to their sound ten years earlier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbKM_VAbd5o

Finally a more recent Metallica song from their St. Anger album called Frantic.  Here it seems that they tried to call back to the thrash metal style of their earlier albums mixed with some slower breakdowns we heard around the Load period.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I6y5-GuLPM

This is an example of how drastically a band can change their sound after releasing 17 albums over three decades.