When a successful group decides to replace the voice of their band, they're asking a hell of a lot of their audience. The frontman is almost always the most recognizable member of the group, the one who leads the pack in defining the band's attitude and fan base. Nobody can take the place of Queen's iconic wailer Freddie Mercury - Paul Rogers of Bad Company holds his own through the hits, but it's just not the same. JD Fortune stepping in for INXS Michael Hutchence was a nightmare, and even a pro like The Cult's Ian Astbury couldn't revive the spirit of Jim Morrison on a Doors reunion tour. Let's not even discuss the ill-advised Sublime reformation.

Some bands, however, strike gold twice. Whether by finding a new singer to sound dead-on like the one they hit stardom with or by branching out in a whole new direction, a handful of lucky ones have risen from their own ill fortune to reach new heights of success. Here's a list of the ones who made it work the second time around. 

Alice In Chains

It's been a long, hard road for Alice In Chains and their fans virtually since the beginning, with frontman Layne Staley's frequent drug problems keeping the grunge superstars from reaching even higher. The band who conquered the MTV generation alongside Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam watched it all disappear when Staley fatally overdosed in 2002, but reunited to put out a critically-acclaimed album of new matierial this year with new singer William DuVall. Even most skeptics agree that DuVall's a solid fit for the band, honoring Layne while adding his own flare. 

Black Flag

Founding singer (and future Circle Jerks nucleus) Keith Morris gave way to Ron Reyes, who gave way to Dez Cadena, who was summarily replaced by Henry Rollins, the D.C. deep thinker who shaved off the band's sense of humor and replaced it with a more serious punk-poet sensibility. It was with him that the band recorded their first album, but Black Flag had been notorious for their balls-out shows, especially in Los Angeles, long before Rollins joined the fray. Though their flame only burned for ten years, their legacy remains as strong as ever; at any punk or hardcore show these days you're bound to see at least 30 percent of the audience sporting the four black bars - Black Flag's official symbol - inked, stitched or screened somewhere on their bodies. 

Van Halen

In the mid-'80s, the Van Halen/Van Hagar debate became the new polarizing factor in rock music, picking up where the Beatles/Elvis debate left off, sadly enough. David Lee Roth quit Van Halen at the height of the band's stardom, leading the remaining three members to the questionable decision of hiring Sammy Hagar - a party-loving, tequila-pimping showman cut from another rock cloth entirely (let's just ignore the even more ill-fated decision to try out Extreme frontman Gary Cherone). Hagar sang differently than Roth and certainly looked nothing like him, but the biggest change was that Sammy helped turn the band from a sex-charged band of goofy misfits to a Crystal Pepsi-shilling cheese-rock outfit. Nevertheless, the band continued to be a crushing success until the gears of discontent started spinning again, which eventually brought about the horrible creation of Chickenfoot, as well as the celebrated return of Roth to the fold.