Never listened to more than one or two songs of them, so I can't really comment on this, but a guitarist's departure doesn't often change the style of a band.
It doesn't often, but he wrote the majority of the music unfortunately. Not all, but most. But if you listen to the band from early albums to latter albums (they have 9) there is a huge difference. Thier 8th album, Come Clarity, scared me in the direction they were taking. Then their 9th album came out and redeemed themselves. I just hope this next album is a good approach for them. It is too bad you don't like Melodeath much though. It's an awesome genre of music, but I know Harsh vocals aren't your thing.
It's not that I don't like harsh vocals, it's just that I hate it when it doesn't have a purpose - like in Ayreon's Human Equation, where it represented emotions.
I get what you are saying man. By the way I played the Human Equation to my wife this weekend and she didn't like it. She thought a lot of it was a pink floyd ripoff LMAO. She liked StarOne though, after she got passed the vocals. She is not much into metal that has the majority of clean vocals. She's not much of a prog-metal woman though either. I wonder what my son is going to be into?
Hm, it wouldn't be nice to say bad things about your wife, would it?: D What kind of music does she like btw?
hahahaaha no, I would be forced to travel abroad and beat you She is like me, she likes a lot of stuff but mainly Death Metal, Melodeath, Hardcore Punk, Indie and anything you can dance to (she loves to dance). I on the other hand, hate to dance. Like a lot. It gives me panic attacks. lol. She just tells me that when it comes to metal, it should be hard, heavy, fast and harsh vocals. I can name off metal bands she likes with clean vocals (or clean and harsh) on one hand. The rest are all straight up death metal with harsh vocals. That's why she makes fun of me for listening to Opeth. She thinks if you are going to have music as heavy as they have, no clean vocals allowed. I love my wife ^.^
You'd think, but she hates Devin Townsend. lol I have Alien and The New Black and she doesn't dig it. Yeah she's a rare breed of flower. Theres some stuff that she likes a lot that I just can't get into at all, and vice versa. But it's a great thing. We have our many bands that we listen to together, and we have our bands that we listen to alone ^.^
