I wish those dudes could restart their career without the makeup and shit. While I don’t dig everything they’ve done, only about 50%-70% of it, I respect the shit out of them for only doing what they want instead of writing the song hit single over and over again. Their last 2 albums are straight prog albums, to the point their losing OG fans along the way because they won’t keep recycling their material.
And the last two albums, not a single sample on them. Not the drums, not the orchestra shit, it’s all a human hitting a drum or people playing instruments. They were one of the first bigger bands to say “Fuck this brickwalling shit, we don’t put time into our albums just to destroy them”
And they don’t do anything they can’t pull off live without tracks, outside of the orchestra/synth parts. My biggest gripe with them is guitar and vocal tones, both can be quite thin sounding. Singer doesn’t like double tracking in the studio and he really lays into the nasal sound a lot, but the dude is stupidly consistent live and I’d hate to sing one of his sets.
They also put out these making-of type vids breaking down the songs more than I’ve ever seen a band give access to. It’s in vids like this you realize these guys don’t take themselves as serious as they do their music, but they’re all-in on this stuff, nothing they do is by-chance or the will of someone funding them-