I was seriously hyped going into Cyhra 2 (Before No Halos In Hell had a name). and I so badly wanted to tell the band how much I loved their lead single after I listened to it. Then I listened to "Out of My Life", and after the first listen, I did a serious double take. It's just "Karma" if you completely homogenized it, and I was just completely baffled. Then we had "Battle From Within", and it was alright, the lyrics and story behind it were cool and deep enough to keep me a little bit optimistic. Considering that Letters is one of my favorite albums of all time and then considering the quality of No Halos... I've never been so disappointed in a band. I know I wasn't an In Flames fan before Siren Charms or Battles, but I feel like I would've been less disappointed going into Battles than I was when I finished No Halos. I'm not hyped for Cyhra 3 anymore, I'm not an active part of the fanbase anymore, and I haven't really spoken to any of the band members since "Out of My Life" released just because I had nothing nice to say about No Halos. I think it broke me in the sense that I'll never be a big part of an active fanbase nor extremely hyped about a release ever again.
Pretty much descibes how it went on here as well to be honest. Out of My Life... OK, it's the first single, they're playing it (very) safe, not too concerned yet. Shittier version of Karma isn't what we wanted, but fine. Battles From Within... this isn't promising. Then the album itself was just so disappointing. I remember I stopped listening to it the first time around about half way through because I legitimately got bored. Rarely had that happen before, especially for an album I was so excited to hear, but it was just obvious that this was garbage and wasn't going to get any better. I think we all got off the hype train at that point. What's sad is that I can remember Euge releasing snippets of riffs and solos from the album before it was released and it all sounded awesome... but man, wtf happened? Where did all that cool stuff actually go?