So what lineup change killed your interest in a band, either because you liked the departed member, hated the replacement, or both?

1) Lombardo outta Slayer. Sorry but Bostaph doesn't do it for me.

2) Clive Burr leaves Maiden. Clive was great and Nicko was NOT a good replacement. Quite frankly I think he's the original Janick.

3) Rami leaves Aldious. Re:No was a terrible replacement.

Blaze Bayley became Iron Maiden vocalist.

I couldn't stand 'The X-Factor' at first. Didn't get the album. But: When 'Virtual XI' was released, I got it on its release day. Later got the 1st BB album, too. For years now, 'The X-Factor' has been one of my favourite IM platters.

Dark Moor - Elisa Martín to Alfred Romero

Elisa was top-notch. Maybe, just maybe, I should listen to more Romero stuff since he's still their vocalist. There's bound to be something good. But nah, Elisa was sublime. I heard some Romero stuff and it didn't do it for me. When she was a member it made that band, and when she left that signature style left with her. The band itself wasn't interesting enough to keep up with.

Opeth - Peter Lindgren retiring

When Peter left, my interest more or less left. I remember buying Watershed when it came out and really disliking it. I sold it and never cared for Opeth since. Well, I do care, but never cared to check out the stuff they released after. I just lost interest in keeping up with any of their albums. I just stick with Orchid through Ghost Reveries and call it good.

Those are the only two that come to mind at the moment.

Sunn O))) albums without Attila are usually pretty boring.

Clive was indeed a fantastic drummer. The thing about Nicko is that he was awesome on 'Piece of Mind', but has never matched that brilliance ever since. I do like him though.

Tomas Asklund joining any band. Ever.

Spot on i don't even dislike his drumming, but everytime he joins a band everything goes to shit for some mystical reason

Even if wasn't involved almost anymore Shinichi getting out of Sigh lowered my interest by a lot. The last two albums were good, but i'm not anticipating their new works like Christmas anymore

It's because he takes over the production and it becomes "Ikea-flat-pack-extreme-metal".

Ross the Boss
Although there was a significant drop in quality after SotH, the following albums are still really good. After that my interest is and was exactly 0.

Portnoy out of Dream Theater.

Here's a mega obvious one: Matt McGachy in Cryptopsy. Talk about a freakin' misfire! The stuff since Unspoken King is rumored to be better, but I haven't investigated.

When Edu left Angra - all of their later stuff I've heard just hasn't grabbed me.

Michele Luppi leaving Vision Divine. They were still good but there was something missing.

Roy Khan from Kamelot. Silverthorn was good, but everything else has been weak at best and actively lame at worst.

To this day I haven't heard a full Cradle album without Nick Barker.

And I never listened to Impaled Nazarene's Nihil.

When John corabi joined motley crue. Ironically, they were much better with him.

There seems to be a pattern where a band replacing a female singer with a male one leads to a huge drop in interest. Dark Moor is a great example and it reminded me of Helion Prime. HP was never really a great band but they had some songs I liked a lot, and both Heather Smith and Kayla Dixon were excellent. Once they got Sozos I just completely lost interest. And hell, look at Cerebral Bore, the entire scene basically dropped them completely once Som left, and that's even sadder because it showed that most people just saw them as a gimmick and were surprised to hear a teenage girl growl like that, and once she was replaced by a typical death metal guy everybody kinda collectively realized they were never all that good in the first place.

In terms of vocalists, I also have a hard time sticking around when I feel like the band kicks out a perfectly serviceable one to appease some nebulous internet opinion that they're the thing holding them back. 3 Inches of Blood booted out Jamie Hooper and replaced him with somebody who did basically the same thing but worse and it utterly destroyed their momentum. They let Justin Hagberg take over, who had way less charisma but at least looked the part so internet metalloids would be nice to them finally. Hooper leaving was the death knell for that band. Similar thing happened to Diamond Plate, who has a lot of building hype with the caveat that Jon Macak wasn't a very good vocalist, so they unceremoniously booted him from a band he helped start to get some faceless nobody who was significantly worse at screaming and was a completely mediocre singer. Pulse was an excessively lame album with a confused identity and the momentum completely petered out. Jon is in a pretty high profile cover band in the area nowadays and sings a handful of songs with them, and let me just say that if the other two guys would've just stuck it out and given him time to develop his voice, they'd probably still be going today, because he absolutely learned how to sing in the intervening years.

When Steve Tucker was no longer in Nader Sadek. Then again, all that Nader Sadek album was, was like an alternate universe version of Morbid Angel's followup to Heretic. Although I'd still sooner listen to that Nader Sadek album over almost everything Morbid Angel have done after Gateways.


Same. I remember Secret Garden sounding pretty stripped down and not all that interesting, and Fabio's vocals did absolutely nothing for me.

Speaking of Fabio, the entire saga of Rhapsody and the hundred offshoots completely killed my interest in the band, and it wasn't even necessarily Fabio's departure that did it. It was Luca leaving, and even then I'm by no means a Luca fanboy and found his version of the band to be a step down as well. There's a review here somewhere that mentions something along the lines of "Staropoli is a classical guy who wants to be a metal guy and Luca is a metal guy who wants to be a classical guy", and the friction between those two huge egos with such opposite viewpoints is part of what made Rhapsody so special in their prime. Once one of the guys fully gets his way, all of the magic fell apart.

1. When Rick Rubin and Danzig's band left Danzig after Danzig IV. That was completely unfathomable to me when that happened. Talk about leaving money on the table. That band was just starting to really catch on and who knows what could have been. Inexplicable.

2. Lombardo leaving Slayer. I bought Divine Intervention the day it was released and I remember being really disappointed with it. It just didn't have the pulsating rhythm of the previous albums, and Araya sounded scratchy and terrible on many of the tracks. I also really didn't like the serial killer focus that had completely taken over by this point. Not really Bostaph's fault on that account, but the band were never able to even come close to previous glories again.

3. David Vincent leaving Morbid Angel was a huge blow to me when I picked up Formulas. It was not a bad album I guess, but it was not a true Morbid Angel album to me. It had many of the same qualities as previous Morbid Angel on paper, but there was a devilish guile that David brought to the table that was just missing. Just not the same band anymore at all.

4. Max leaving Sepultura. Roots kind of sucked overall, but it did have some really cool Sepultura moments that have stuck with me all these years and still sound fresh today. When I picked up Against, holy shit was that bad. I think I traded it in the very next day. I haven't listened to a thing they have made since.


There is a lot more that I could mention, but these are the ones who really dealt blows to me when they happened.

Rolf turning Running Wild into a solo studio thing with hideous programmed drums full time. Rogues en Vogue was such a letdown after The Brotherhood (which is saying something, as I'd rate that one a little above adequate at best) that I actually welcomed the original breakup. Then came the about face and the bed was monumentally shat again with Shadowmaker.

Peter Lindgren leaving Opeth is a similar one for me, although it didn't kill my interest instantly - I kept following them (although not nearly as closely as before), but it's been one hell of a rough ride since then, with far more downs than ups. Lindgren may not have been as prolific in his latter days, but it's obvious he still contributed to the arrangements and imposed some quality control; since his departure, it's been The Mikael Show (And Some Other Dudes in The Background), and he's about as good as Rolf at self-editing without external input.

It was the mid-2000s and I was a huge Decapitated fan. Winds of Creation was (and possibly still is) one of my top death metal albums. Ever since Sauron (the vocalist) left in 2005, the band has veered into more groovy territory and lost that brutal element in their sound. True, the band has gone through several unfortunate line changes, but I lost interest in the band when Organic Hallucinosis came out. It just didn't do anything for me. Sauron on the other hand, continued to make pummelling death metal with another band called Masachist.

I really like Autumnal and Ancestral Romance, but every other Alfred album has major issues. One of them having many more issues than the others.

A lineup change will rarely kill my interest in a band altogether. Sometimes, it's not quite the same, such as when Bonded By Blood's singer left (their new guy gets the job done and I like The Aftermath, but it's just not the same), and other times it works out super well, like for Dragonforce.



I agree with your premise on Helion Prime, but the real issues were that Sozos is a bad singer who hit a lot of awkward notes on the second album and that the songwriting just wasn't as strong as the debut.



Diamond Plate is a tough one because I think both albums had good moments but they failed to put it together. I got the impression that they didn't want to play full-fledged thrash for 40 minutes. Just thinking of how much worse the album version of At The Mountains of Madness was felt like the nail in the coffin.

I didn't really get into Dark Moor until long after this happened, but man their current output makes me want to cry because it's such a downgrade from the Elisa era.


Sympuls-e's lineup has deteriorated a bit at a time with each album until now where the only original member is the guitarist. While I do think he is the most important member of the band I think the rest of the original lineup took all of the charm with them.

In a similar situation is Alterbeast who just lost their entire lineup except for the lesser of the two original guitarists for like the second or third time.

When Mathias left Falconer, I completely stopped paying attention. I've actually just recently gone back and listened to the records he made with them from 2006-present, because I didn't even know he was back in the band.

Yeah you could drive a truck through the gap in quality between the two albums. However, they just dropped Sozos and replaced him with Marry Zimmer from Luna Mortis and are supposedly going to put out something with her this year. Four singer in four years, though... they must be a nightmare to work with.

I thought Organic Hallucinosis was pretty decent, as were Covan's vocals. Not keen on the current bloke though and I haven't really enjoyed their post-reunion albums. However, I reckon it was Vogg pushing them in this direction and the albums since 2005 would have been pretty similar regardless of the vocalist. People may disagree but I think Spheres of Madness would sound more at how me on OH than it would on Winds of Creation.

His vocals are truly horrendous but I think the departure of Jon Levasseur was just as big a problem for them.

The stuff since Unspoken King is not worth checking out.

Lineup changes can often kill a band for me. I think that initial chemistry can be really hard to replace, for various reasons. Even if a band's sound doesn't overly chang, you can often tell that something just isn't right or the same anymore.

Almost surprised nobody's mentioned this yet, but Electric Wizard's a pretty obvious one for me. Granted, I still like Witchcult Today and I still really enjoyed the performance I caught in 2012, but when that initial trio was dissolved, leaving only Justin on guitar/vocals from the original lineup, the band just lost much of what made it great. Their new albums are theoretically something I would like, but they're all nothing compared with those albums up to and including Let us Pray, which was the last time it felt like they were doing something really interesting. Thankfuly we have Tim Bagshaw's awesome With the Dead now, which is something different but really just as good in its own way as the early EW records were.

My interest in Iron Maiden had slowly been fading but Dickenson leaving sealed it for me. Same with Sepultura and Max Cavalera- the founding member of the band- leaving. Actually, once Igor and Max left, Sepultura joined Napalm Death on the list of bands that went total Menudo- i.e. no original founding members left.

In the case of Sepultura, I really don't know -- max seems to have been one of the big instigators of their "nu metal" sound and I kind of feel they needed to be rid of him to even start becoming good again, which they have been lately (yes, i've been very surprised, too). I recently listened to that Dante album and one of their other fairlyr ecent ones and I find I rather like them ... certainly moreso than Roots or any SOulfly I have heard, which is admittedly only the first album and maybe a couple of other tunes back in the day. The departure of Igor would seem to be a bigger blow to them actually, but I guess they are doing alright without him.

it is strange however to have a band operating without any original members at all.

1/ Kai Hansen leaving Helloween (I can't believe I'm the first one to mention that one!). The supporting cast "continuing" without the main driving force (despite keeping some of his songs as their concert staples) seemed surreal at the time, and still does. For years I essentially considered Gamma Ray as the proper continuation of Helloween with a name change, and the official Helloween as some kind of weird tribute band (even if there were a few great songs on 'Pink Bubbles'). It started to change when Deris and Kusch joined in, although 'Master of the Rings' was only half-great and half-terrible, but 'Time of the Oath' and 'Better Than Raw', and a few songs here and there on later albums are really awesome. It really feels like a similar but quite different band, though. In contrast, the first 6 Gamma Ray albums, especially the latter 3, are awesome and sound much closer to classic Helloween than anything the official band did without Hansen.

2/ Exciter without Dan Beehler. Pretty similar case, really. I was more than fine with Exciter without John Ricci, because it still had Dan Beehler and Allan Johnson, and Brian McPhee took them to new heights and they made their best album ('Unveiling the Wicked') with him, and a pretty decent follow-up with him and a Beehler clone taking over lead vocals for some reason, while Dan only stayed as the drummer (I guess he had issues with his voice at that point, I never found out). I was fine with Exciter without Allan Johnson, because it had Dan Beehler and John Ricci, and 'Kill After Kill' was another pretty good album. But John Ricci and guests? Nah, that was never Exciter in my book. I know Dan and Allan came back a few years ago; I should give their new stuff a try (the short-lived Beëhler project was very good).

There were plenty of similar cases, but these are the two that immediately came to mind reading this.


That's a really odd one for me. Of all the line-up changes that Maiden had over the years, this must be by far the least impactful or even noticeable I can think of. They went from having a really good and interesting drummer (who doesn't contribute to songwriting or musical direction) to... a different really good and interesting drummer (who doesn't contribute to songwriting or musical direction). Clive had a slightly more personal style, I'd say, while Nicko was a bit more technical, but they were both great.

Yeah, I get that. The same thing happened to me. I was already losing interest because of how Mirai was now treating the band as the project of his girlfriend and him, shoving her in the middle of every promotion picture and giving her the role of growled vocals (even if she can't growl for shit and almost ruined all the albums she took part in). But the way Shinichi was fired was absolutely baffling. Mirai made all these disrespectful statements against him, calling him sloppy and saying he was useless in the band. You can't shit on a guy who's been in the band for more than 20 years publicly like that, that's just disgraceful.

I know what you mean, but the guy delivers on all the material released before TUK, and yes the new material is pretty good. Not to mention that the guy had basically zero say on the direction Cryptopsy took for TUK. He just happened to join at that moment.

not sure im arsed about Children of Bodom now tbh

I already wasn't. But three of the founding members leaving at the same time. That's gotta mean something about how things were going for the band behind closed doors.

the weird thing is for CoB is as far as I understand they had the band set up as an LLC. And those three members have a majority stake so they can do what they want with the name and Laiho is bound to whatever they decide

Uffe, and Peter leaving Entombed was pretty much the last nail in the coffin for me. I always loved that line up, pretty much the only stable line up they ever had, and when Jörgen left as well is was definitely over and now the whole "Entombed A.D." thing is just laughable.

This had not occurred to me but is easily the best example I can think of. I've hardly even listened to any of the stuff after Let Us Prey, and I've always thought Jus should've just straight up retired the name, because as far as I'm concerned EW is dead. I'll have to check out With the Dead, I've generally liked the bands that came out of EW, especially Ramesses, better than the continuation of EW.

Came here to say this. Khan is what made band special.

The songwriting was stellar for a long time too, but that took a huge nosedive in the last few albums.