Ask Lemmy

Wait. Judas Priest for sure has at least Raford

I don't know about other bands but the bit about iron maiden is really stretched.

I guess if you consider the first lineup to be the one for their first concert in a bar's basement, alright. But if you take the first album, Dave Murray was already in the band and still is.

Some of these are real stretches involving band names getting swapped around.

The original band called "Judas Priest" broke up entirely. KK Downing, and Ian Hill were in a band called Freight together. Al Atkins of the now-defunct Judas Priest joined Freight, and they decided the now-available name of Judas Priest was cooler. It was not the same band. Furthermore, before their first album was recorded Atkins was replaced with Halford, and Tipton also joined. So I would count Ian Hill, Rob Halford, and Glenn Tipton all as founding members.

Opeth is similar. The first Opeth before Ackerfeldt broke up without recording any albums.

Oh, man. I've totally heard of over half of these bands.

Jinjer is still awesome!

Is this AI slop? Because it's certainly wrong.

Judas Priest: No original members are in the current touring lineup.

Rob Halfords left in the late 90s but returned in the 00s and is still the frontman.

Yes: Features no original members.

This is technically true, but Yes does still have Steve Howe who was the guitarist on their first hit album ("The Yes Album" in 1971).

Opeth is a strange one and I don't think it really counts. The band was still forming when the current leader of the band joined. Yeah if you're super technical then the band that formed didn't include him, but it seems like the "original" group hadn't even played any showed before Akerfelt joined.

In a bio that Akerfelt wrote he says that basically the band died the day he showed up to a rehearsal and later he and the original founder "reformed" Opeth, so it's debatable if it's a ship of thesius situation or a new ship with the same name.

Napalm Death was what popped up first in my mind. I remember it being a bit weird at the time with a band that swapped every single member.

Napalm Death were formed in 1981, and were still developing their proper sound when drummer Mick Harris joined in late '85 and pushed their limits into what is now known as grindcore. That lineup recorded what became the side A of the first album, ‘Scum’. The last remaining original member, vocalist Nic Bullen, left after that, and the band cycled through several more changes, such that Harris is the only one present on the sides A and B of the album.

Harris was in the band for two more albums, leaving in '91 to form jazzcore band Painkiller with John Zorn and Bill Laswell. Napalm Death's lineup stabilized by that time and continues with the new drummer Danny Herrera to this day, with the exception of ditching the second guitarist and then adding another one.

Funny enough, Harris started a side-project Scorn with Nic Bullen right after leaving Napalm Death, and they originally played sort of industrial metal. Bullen again bailed in '95, whereupon Harris changed to industrial illbient, before releasing ‘Greetings from Birmingham’ in 2000, the sound of which might be familiar to everyone here. Except Londoners somehow reinvented basically the same sound a bit later, turning it into a genre of its own.

The same year '91, Harris was also a touring drummer for Godflesh, a project of Justin Broadrick who was the guitarist on the side A of ‘Scum’.

Of the bands listed I've only ever listened to In Flames, and it makes a lot of sense. I liked Come Clarity and A Sense of Purpose, but the newer stuff is just mediocre.