For me, a band would be Cardiacs, never got into any of the most famous albums from them, A Little Man and a House... was the first album that i've heard from the band, never clicked on me and i found it really boring, even trying to listen to it multiple times, then i tried Sing to God, after some grinding on listening to this albums i've found SOME musics that i've liked really much(Eden on the Air, Dog-Like Sparky, Fairy Mary Mag, Diry Boy are some of them), but it was a really forced process, it never clicked on me spontaneously. But then, i come to give this band another chance, and that time i choose On Land And In The Sea, and man, the first time i heard that album, almost all songs clicked in the same instant, soo much that i prefer to listen to the album in it's whole, every song is really good to my ears,  and even made my like Sing to God even more, but not their 1988 album, i think i'm never gonna like it tho, but On Land And In The Sea and some part of Sing to God is excellent music.

So have you had any experience like that? 

- Big Big Train - The Underfall Yard: the band made a quantum leap with this album, with the addition of David Longdon, Dave Gregory and Nick D'Virgilio full time, they produced their first masterpiece.

- Not Prog, but Extreme - III Sides to Every Story: from being just a metal band with a stellar guitarist, they managed to make a very mature album with quite sophisticated songs, vocal harmonies, orchestrations, heavily influenced by Queen and with a 3rd Side which is undeniably a Prog suite of 21 minutes split in 3 movements. 

More will surely come to mind.

Tull - A

Yes - 90125

Genesis - Genesis

Gentle Giant - The Missing Piece

Crimson - Discipline

The 2nd group are albums where the band changed direction (either consciously or through replacing key band members) to something I no longer was into.

ELP - Works (With 4 years since the last studio album, I was expecting something even greater than BSS.  Works actually disappointed me more than Love Beach because my expectations had been drastically reduced)

Camel - Rain Dances (Doug Ferguson replaced with Richard Sinclair took the band in a much more jazz/canterbury oriented direction which was ok, but not nearly as cool as the 1st albums)

Eno - Music for Films (signalled the end of his quirky prog song albums)

PG -So (after 3 mind bending albums, this one seemed so ordinary)

Gong - You (hard to explain, but just seems more serious and less whimsical than their previous albums...it never fits musically in the radio gnome trilogy for me)

Marillion - Season's End (no longer Fishy)

Queen - News of the World (the transition from eclectic quirkiness to stadium rock)

REM - Green (Michael no longer mumbling ruined the mystery of the lyrics)

Rush - Grace Under Pressure (1st Rush album I disliked more songs than I liked)

Twelfth Night - Art & Illusion (no Geoff Mann)

Ange - Vu D'un Chien (new guitar and bass player brought a huge drop in quality and style they've never recovered from to me)

Black Sabbath - Sabotage (even Tony's most evil riff ever - Symptom of the Universe - wasn't enough to keep one of my first favorite bands from slipping away)

I got into Incubus with Science and loved that record. Then came Make Yourself which still has some elements of the previous album but the mellow started to creep in. When Morning View was released the writing was on the wall for me. Gone was most of the energy and chaos of Science, replaced by mellower, more accessible tunes. I was done.

Kashmir - The Good Life (1999)

Kashmir is a Danish band formed around 1991 (taking the name from the Led Zeppelin song). They originally played a sort of mix between grunge and funk. They were hugely popular at my boarding school in 1998-99, and their albums were played to the point of nausea. I couldn't quite relate to it back then, and I probably partly didn't like them because everyone else seemed to praise them rather critiquelessly.

But they changed direction in 1999 with The Good Life, moving towards a more emotional and layered rock form with clear inspiration from f.e. Pink Floyd, U2, Jeff Buckley and Radiohead. Listening to the album was quite a revelation for me personally, and it remained one of my favourite albums for many years. I later learned to like their earlier stuff too, especially after getting past the bording school.

To illustrate the contrast: Here is a song from their previous album, Cruzential: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=comU5XMNicE" rel="nofollow - www.youtube.com/watch?v=comU5XMNicE

And here is The Good Life in its entirety: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNa_tYYnUzE&index=1&list=OLAK5uy_nQzPHZf82lPePZb-iTp_ptmhdfayM9NRU" rel="nofollow - www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNa_tYYnUzE&index=1&list=OLAK5uy_nQzPHZf82lPePZb-iTp_ptmhdfayM9NRU (a CD, or Spotify, is more useful though, as many of the songs are crossfading)

Some trivia: The Good Life was mixed, and partly produced, by James Guthrie. A couple of years later, the guitarist, lead singer and songwriter Kasper Eistrup was considered a possible lead guitarist for a Roger Waters tour.

David Bowie sings the second verse of their 2005 single "The Cynic". The album on which it appears, No Balance Palace, is produced by Toni Visconti. Lou Reed also appears on the album, reciting a text on one of the tracks.

I didn't know a whole lot about them when I first heard it but it really took me by surprise. I never heard anything like it before that and I'm not sure I have heard anything like it since. Another one by Yes would be The Ladder. Not that it's the only unique album in their catalog but like relayer I don't think there aren't many(if any) albums like it in their catalog. It showed a more mature and world music influenced side to the band. I don't mind their poppier albums either because they also showed a different side to the band. I think like Rush this was a band who did what they wanted to do and in some ways maybe even more so than Rush especially later on.

The only ones that jump out as moving in a positive direction were because of major personnel changes.  Like the Moody Blues picking up Justin Hayward.  I might say the same thing about Iron Maiden, but even that didn't completely change my opinion as while I much prefer Dickinson, the first incarnation was also quite good.  I know I'm in the minority on this one, but I had much greater appreciation for Van Hagar than Van Roth. 

I guess I could also say that I thought Soundgarden was just pretty noisy based on their first two albums, but they became truly musical without losing their edge on Badmotorfinger.  I might even say something similar with Death Angel on their third album, Act III.  

From synth-pop, or mainstream sound, to post-rock.

And a similar passage was made by Blur with 13, 

Anyway, both brave, if only because it means selling less records and losing part of your audience.

Perhaps having an understanding that creativity is a very finite element and 99.9 of most bands will change styles and sounds as they go can keep one from thinking about how single albums might change an opinion of a band. It really is silly if one things about it to base an opinion, much less change one based on a single album.  It is whole of their output which should be the basis of one's opinion of a band.

 

In the beginning I could take or leave King Crimson.  Then 'Larks` Tongues In Aspic' came out.  I was hooked for life.

Thank you ... I'm not the only one.

Because I DO NOT listen to any music as songs, by ANYONE or ANY BAND, I do not have this issue at all ... for me, the music itself may have CHANGED MY LIFE VIEW, but my view of the band did not change, and neither did the appreciation, although I did not follow bands like YES after RELAYER and Jethro Tull after MINSTREL IN THE GALLERY, because I really thought that the value of the content and music, was dropped for something less important. But I had been with them for so long already, that it was not surprising, when the EUROPEAN scene took over for me ... they made a lot more sense than an English band just writing songs, which got really tiresome for me, and BORING. This, even happened to AD2, after the song APOCALYPTIC BORE, which basically said ... goodbye to meaningful music, and even though they did it with a full blast, it was like ... oh well ... ciao baby ... nice fun lay ... time for another joint somewhere else.

It is, very weird for me, that we would "change" so simply about something as easy as stuff like this, just by snapping your fingers ... I find that we must be really empty inside for that to happen, specially when you are thinking that what the band has to offer is more important THAN WHAT YOU OFFER.

That is just plain weird and bizarre, specially when so much of the music out there is fluff and not really worth its weight in cotton, or gold.

Swans - The Seer hit me really really hard. I had heard the odd song of them before and none had made an impression on me, but The Seer is such a monster, I realised from the first minute I heard anything of it (which wasn't the beginning). I love everything that came later to pieces and I'm exploring what came earlier (with some but not that much success).

And then, some may find it hard to believe, for me Bowie was a few hits and many many misses up to Blackstar, but when that came out it left a big mark and I really started to get what the man was about.

The only one I can think of is the album "Avalon" by Roxy Music.  I didn't much care for the band before "Avalon" was released.