IN FLAMES Clayman Re-recorded 2020

[eochaid]

I just lost interest after listening to the latest single. Stanne vocals are boring and repetitive. His cleans aren't anything special and his growls are just meh. He's really killing, for me, any appeal of the music.

So I don't think that's I'll be listening d to the full album.

The comparisons with other albums are interesting since he said that it was closer to Projector than any other album. But projector sounded fresh. This doesn't.

 

[DE4life]

I don't find any part of the album offensive or bad, but at some point, I'm not really sure what song am I listening to.

This is for sure one of the album's issues. Too many mid-tempo songs that begin blending together. There's nothing technically wrong with any of them, but it's too much of the same thing. DT have struggled since DD to make their albums feel consistently fresh throughout, and unfortunately it's still the case here.

Oh, and Stanne has to be using some DT random song name generator. Unknown, ego, divide, deception, none, time, silence, truth, force...

The Silence of None, Truth in Force, Ego Unknown, Deception of Time.... There you go, some ideas for the next album.

Still better than using the 13 year old emo girl title/lyrics generator that Anders uses, to be fair

The "boom-boom-boom" drumming is easily my least favorite thing about modern DT. What a boring playing style. No offense to Jivarp, who I admire greatly.

We know Jivarp can be a great drummer, which makes his performance on Moment all the more disappointing. Not dynamic at all, just by the books and with the 'boom-boom-boom' stuff bordering on irritating.

Is it just me or have Stanne's lyrics just been rote for the past couple of albums? No pointing to Anders Friden for comparison! There's just a lack of, well, lyricism here. It's just kinda dull. Like he's offering his thoughts on a podcast.

His lyrics have been this way for a while. Functional - which to be fair fits his voice nowadays. Even if he did write some cool emotional lyrics it's not like he could do justice to them with his growls, and his cleans always have the same melancholic tone.

I just lost interest after listening to the latest single. Stanne vocals are boring and repetitive. His cleans aren't anything special and his growls are just meh. He's really killing, for me, any appeal of the music.

He just sounds like a slightly less powerful version of himself from a decade ago. I mean, if you haven't enjoyed his vocals post-2002 then sure, nothing changes here. But other than losing some power he doesn't sound that different from Character/Fiction.

The comparisons with other albums are interesting since he said that it was closer to Projector than any other album. But projector sounded fresh. This doesn't.

I don't get any Projector vibes from this album at all. It's a continuation of their past couple of albums with some Character/Fiction influence thrown in on occasion.

 

[eochaid]

That's why I wrote that's interesting. I wonder where this (Stanne's comparison) is coming from. I also don't sense any Projector vibe on the songs that I've heard.

 

[DE4life]

I'm not sure. I guess artists aren't always the best judges of how their music sounds to others.

 

[ThePhobiac]

A big part of the identity of Projector is the melodies, which were very much in keeping with their 90's sound. You can hear a bit of The Mind's I on that album, whereas with Haven onward they shifted more toward their modern sound. Nothing from Haven onwards sounds anything like what they did in the 90's, imo (except "Apathetic" on Construct, which sounds like a Mind's I track). I'll have to do some digging into whether they changed tuning or chord progressions or whatever.

Another big part of Projector is the production. It sounds like they're playing in a huge, dark concert hall, whereas later albums have super clean and tight production. The heavy reverb on Stanne's voice and the drums kinda make the album for me. Albums like Construct and Moment might be Projector-like in their liberal use of clean vocals and tendency to mostly avoid the kind of riff-based music that melodic death is known for, but aside from that, they're very much different beasts.

 

[drawntoblack]

Projector is entirely in C#, a tuning they stuck with since that album until today with occasional song per album going into Drop B (basically same tuning, just lowering the lowest string down a full step). It's been a long while since I played to DT, I remember that half of Fiction is in Drop B, quite a lot of songs, not sure about newer albums.

 

[ThePhobiac]

That makes sense, yeah. I believe The Gallery and Haven are both tuned to E-flat, now that I think of it.

I think the only DT album I've ever committed to learning how to play is The Mind's I. Not sure why, but it's just a lot of fun, especially those shorter tracks like "Scythe, Rage and Roses" and "Dreamlore Degenerate."

 

[eochaid]

DARK TRANQUILLITY long ago entered the realm of legacy bands whose newest record will always be, at the very least, pretty good. As some of their other contemporaries from the '90s Swedish melodic death scene faded into complete irrelevance, diminishing returns, or disastrous experimentation, the group has weathered the trends to remain a solid act that generates plenty of material worth revisiting upon every album release.

From DT's new album review on blabbermouth. I wonder which bands is he talking about.

 

[DE4life]

None of the bigger bands who I'd consider DT's comtemporaries fall exclusively under any of those categories. I'd argue almost all of them (Arch Enemy, IF, Soilwork, CoB, Opeth, At the Gates) became better known than DT and also had/have more interesting trajectories as bands.

DT always releases technically solid music but they became the most boring band of the well-known 90s MDM/Scandinavian metal group, imo. I don't think there's been a single song they've released after the Fiction album where I've listened and been like 'wow, that's awesome'. Mostly 'Oops, did I fall asleep?' during WATV/Construct era, and then 'yeah, this is fine, good stuff' during Atoma/Moment.

 

[eochaid]

That was my thought. I cannot think of any band that fits the categories. And there aren't that many DT contemporary bands.

 

[DE4life]

The only ones I can think of are bands who aren't really DT's contemporaries (Carcass, Death, etc) or bands that were never on DT's level of relevence to begin with (Night In Gales, Skyfire, Eyetrap, etc). It's basically just a bullshit generalised statement that the reviewer probably couldn't back up if challenged.

 

[drawntoblack]

Skyfire was rated and respected quite highly back in the day (talking about mid 2000s) among melodeath fans. I'd even dare to say they were rated way higher than they deserved to given how their music was always produced poorly, guitar tone and guitarwork was subpar and they relied on catchy keyboard melodies too much.

DT lacked harshness and aggression to match the top dogs At The Gates. So did In Flames but they went the sellout route from day one. At The Gates were always the most respected band of that niche - half of which was deserved, the other half was thanks to the mystique that followed after they disbanded following SOTS.

 

[DE4life]

Skyfire were popular to some degree within the MDM niche but I don't think they were anywhere close to the DT/IF/Arch Enemy/Soilwork/CoB/ATG level. They weren't a band people who weren't really into that kind of metal were likely to know, whereas a more casual metalhead could definitely have heard of DT.

As far as their music is concerned I liked a couple of songs. Cursed By Belief is fantastic. A lot of their stuff sounded samey though, to the point where their albums as a whole never really interested me. I'd grab a couple of songs and leave the rest.

I'm still surprised I knew nothing about Night in Gales before this year. I have no idea how I completely avoided them all of these years. Honestly I don't remember hearing them talked about much - in the past or in recent times. They seem to have really gone under the radar despite having a pretty solid old school MDM sound. Not sure how they missed the boat so badly - I guess because they were German rather than from Sweden/Finland?

 

[drawntoblack]

Yeah, I obviously didn't mean to say Skyfire were ever in that top tier, but I vividly remember how then people would typically recommend you Norther and them (Skyfire) after you exhausted the top dogs of bands.

Anyway. Since I was binging Moment throughout the past week, today I went and listened to Character in its entirety. I sometimes forget how hard this album hits. All up-tempo, non-stop riff fest, grindy bass tone, catchy synth leads with unique sounds. Especially going to it after overdosing on Moment... Don't get me wrong, I still rate Moment highly, but the band was at the top of their game on Damage Done/Character. Character is probably their most riff-based album, guitar work is absolutely flawless. So much aggression in its attitude. DT are one of those bands where I binge random songs that I feel at the moment and very rarely do I go through entire albums (like I do with IF for an instance), so when I do I end up getting properly suprised even though I know their songs like the back of my hand.

Basically the older I get the more I appreciate this band even though I've been listening to them for as long as with IF.

 

[DE4life]

Yeah, I obviously didn't mean to say Skyfire were ever in that top tier, but I vividly remember how then people would typically recommend you Norther and them (Skyfire) after you exhausted the top dogs of bands.

Norther, lol. Now there's a band I had forgotten about. CoB-lite. I saw them live and they were so try hard it was actually embarrassing. With that said they were pretty huge in Finland.

the band was at the top of their game on Damage Done/Character. Character is probably their most riff-based album, guitar work is absolutely flawless. So much aggression in its attitude.

Damage Done/Character/Fiction are an excellent trilogy of albums. DD sounds very different to Chaarcter and Fiction, though - you can tell it's the tail end of their more experimental period with touches of Projector and Haven still apparent in the keys especially. Character and Fiction ditch the electronic obsession and shift back into pure aggressive metal.

Then WATV happened

 

[DE4life]

Guitar solo on Time in Relativity might be the best one on the album. The more I listen to this song the more I appreciate it.

 

[ThePhobiac]

I’ve never really understood WATV’s negative reputation tbh. It’s not one of my favorite DT records, but it’s hardly the disaster many claim it to be. IMO it was just the first glaring example of the band running out of ideas with the sound they’d established starting from DD.

At this point I would consider it to be the transition album between their 00’s sound and their ‘10’s sound.

 

[ciko_gfb]

I just lost interest after listening to the latest single. Stanne vocals are boring and repetitive. His cleans aren't anything special and his growls are just meh. He's really killing, for me, any appeal of the music.

So even if you don't like Anders, deep down you do like Anders. Cause I The Mask didn't have this kinda problems.

 

[eochaid]

I'm not rapping to any of them.

 

[ThePhobiac]

I just heard “Become the Sky” for the first time in ages. Fuckin love the groove in that song. Anders hitting those notes is weirdly satisfying, like breaking in an old trumpet.

To me, SOAPF and SC are the bittersweet sendoffs before the band got Benson’d.

Autotune Anders just doesn’t cut it smdh