re: Why do most bands start off strong and then fade?

1. Their first album contains the best of everything they've written up to that point. There could be many years worth of great material on it.

2. Each subsequent album has music written pretty much just between the last album and when this one was recorded.

3. Record labels have more influence on the sound of the album after the first one. This causes the band to slowly conform to the record company's sound.

4. Once achieving financial success, bands and record companies tend to tailor their sound to what made them successful. If they have a hit, they write songs similar to that hit. In the end, this causes a lot of their stuff to sound the same.