Progression

I was wondering what everyone's thoughts are on a bands musical progression.
What I mean is

• do you want a band or a musician to reinvent or change their style to add something new to their next cd?

• Want them to stay the same, almost same cd with new lyrics?

• Want them to add something new, but keep their overall style intact?

You see a lot of bands like one of my favs in blink-182 changing their style so they can be more serious (emo), but they built their style on fun pop-punk style that isn't present in later works. I love when a band adds something new and think cd to cd they need to. You can never stay the same, but to change your style for the whole cd isn't my cup of tea I suppose.

To some extent i think band should (well not maybe should) but would be nice if they stayd true to their style and at the same time change just a little bit or bring in new styles with every new cd. I think bands that have the same style for every cd, but just change the lyrics get boring really fast. A band that can 'evolve' through time is my favorite almost every time (<- thats a rap). Not only does this make financial sense imo, i think it proves bands 'skill' and worth, if they can stay true to their own style and also change it just enough to make every cd truly unique and to reflect it to the time it was made.

Generally speaking, adding new elements to or changing a little something about your style is the best course of action. That's what most bands I listen to do. Taking Finntroll as an example, the music in Jaktens Tid is very different to Blodsvept, but both are very recognizably the same band.

However, some people are capable of pulling off complete changes in style very well. Vintersorgs went from entirely Swedish folk metal with black metal influences in his first 2 albums to mostly English progressive metal with a heavy lyrical focus on science (and pseudoscience) in the 4th and 5th. Were it not for his very distinctive voice, I wouldn't be able to tell it was the same guy.

And the same goes for bands that don't really change their musical style much. Sabaton manage to keep their music good without changing much at all. Sure I could pick out differences between individual songs, but not for albums. I think part of that comes from the fact that most of their songs are on based on real events, so each has it's own story, whilst being told in the same style. Like the Harry Potter books, except better.

I think a band should make the music they truly want to make, the music that lies within their hearts(sorry for being so philosophical). I think if they do that then it will give the best results, maybe the fans wont like it, but the ones who make it will.

I really don't care if someone keeps the same style or changes their style, as long as it sounds good to me, I like a lot of genres so I'm open for the change in style.