I ike it a lot. I don't understand how that song had more negative reactions than, for example, Reflect the Storm. If I was once granted a wish, I wish that Anders could sing that song (RTS) live at least once.
Easily my favourite IF album.
IN FLAMES new album being released by the end of 2016
- Thread starter PlainVanilla
- Start date
Easily my favourite IF album.
It got negative reactions because it was "popular". I mean, fuck, even my friends who had never given a shit about metal before were listening to TTL and liked the Come Clarity album. It really was In Flames' peak and the closest they ever got to proper mainstream acceptance. They came damn close but fucked it up with ASOP.
It's hard for me to rank In Flames albums 1, 2, 3, etc... because I love a lot of them for totally different reasons. I tend to put them in tiers instead.
- TJR/Whoracle/Clayman/Colony - the big four, will never be bested
- Reroute, Come Clarity, SOAPF - the most solid post-2000 albums. All very good in their own right.
- STYE, ASOP - some decent songs but overall disappointing
- SC/Battles - fucking terrible
I tend to discount Lunar/Sub because most of the regular band members weren't present for these recordings. These are more like demos. For me TJR is the first proper IF album.
Jester Slave
Narcissist
For sure Skydancer has some kind of charm to it. I think with semi-decent production it could have been on pair with TJR or maybe even better. But I am extremely allergic to quality. No, I don't recognize half the shit SC production is bashed for, but when songs are quiet or sound like it was recorded in a garage, or in case of Skydancer, both... well, that irks me. The only reason I still listen to it because there is no frickin' other version of it!!!
But each song is a joruney, each song is like 2 or more songs combined together and in the end it's very likeable. It's not exactly a masterpiece, but for some reason I like it. Some reason does not include Anders, however, because he sounds embarrassingly bad. Or rather, amateurish.
But I like him very much on Ceremonial Oath's The Day I Buried and I think that song is better than anything off of TJR, except maybe Dead Eternity. But once again, I was pretty disappointed when the actual record was horsheshit.
Now that I thought about it, I probably like DE more, but mainly because that is like the only song on TJR where I think he sings (or whatever the fuck he does) good. It's like a very early version of what he was going to opt later on in his career, where the instrumental part supports the way he sings.You know what I'm talking about, when he is leading the song.
Yeah, I stopped reading that thread the moment your avatar popped up after someone necroed it. I was like "welp, the fun is over!Some of the older threads on here are goldI didn't start posting until around 2008 and sometimes cringe a bit at some of the stuff I wrote back then. If only I'd known how bad it was going to get.
Better than F(r)iend for sure.
". Also, I don't want to read your older posts right now, as I have a sense I'd have a hard time taking you, aka Linguistic God seriously anymore. Ahh, when I used to re-read my forum posts from my elementary school days.... "WILL GTA SAN ANDREAS RUN ON MY COMPUTER??? GUYS??!!!!"It did btw, I just couldn't access Options, because the game crashed then.
I only listen to the first half of F(r)iend, I think it is very good. I love the way he delivers the verses and the music is the good kind of heavy, not that EG-stuff. Then they forgot to wrote more verses so they just kept repeating that godawful chorus which is a no-no for me. Maybe that's why they punished me with Battles. "You want a good chorus? You REALLY want a good chorus???"
No no no, I like Leeches very much. In fact, the first IF songs I was introduced to were OFTW, Leeches and Reflect the storm. Which is funny, because I was convinced that Reflect the storm was this huge hit single and like everyone knows it, the One Step Closer for In Flames, etc. Then I registred here, got into the setlist stuff and bammm.Leeches is a very good song. Just listen to those ryhtms. They are amazing. The same for the rest of the songs. The only one that I'm not interested in listening that much is Scream. It's not that I don't like it, but I find it a little boring.
Ah, I don't see how leeches is a disco tune but, your opinion my opinion.
Anyway, whatever you want to discuss about that album, do it, and alway feel free to recognize the greatness of that piece of art.
Should have known this place sucks.
Anyway, I love Leeches, but what the hell is that synthif not a disco tune? Take away everything else and I can just imagine all the cocaine-fueled people dancing to it furiously while being naked. Even with the instruments, it sounds like industrial metal.
For sure Skydancer has some kind of charm to it. I think with semi-decent production it could have been on pair with TJR or maybe even better. But I am extremely allergic to quality. No, I don't recognize half the shit SC production is bashed for, but when songs are quiet or sound like it was recorded in a garage, or in case of Skydancer, both... well, that irks me. The only reason I still listen to it because there is no frickin' other version of it!!!
But each song is a joruney, each song is like 2 or more songs combined together and in the end it's very likeable. It's not exactly a masterpiece, but for some reason I like it. Some reason does not include Anders, however, because he sounds embarrassingly bad. Or rather, amateurish.
But I like him very much on Ceremonial Oath's The Day I Buried and I think that song is better than anything off of TJR, except maybe Dead Eternity. But once again, I was pretty disappointed when the actual record was horsheshit.
Now that I thought about it, I probably like DE more, but mainly because that is like the only song on TJR where I think he sings (or whatever the fuck he does) good. It's like a very early version of what he was going to opt later on in his career, where the instrumental part supports the way he sings.You know what I'm talking about, when he is leading the song.
Yeah, I stopped reading that thread the moment your avatar popped up after someone necroed it. I was like "welp, the fun is over!Some of the older threads on here are gold
Better than F(r)iend for sure.
". Also, I don't want to read your older posts right now, as I have a sense I'd have a hard time taking you, aka Linguistic God seriously anymore. Ahh, when I used to re-read my forum posts from my elementary school days.... "WILL GTA SAN ANDREAS RUN ON MY COMPUTER??? GUYS??!!!!"It did btw, I just couldn't access Options, because the game crashed then.
I only listen to the first half of F(r)iend, I think it is very good. I love the way he delivers the verses and the music is the good kind of heavy, not that EG-stuff. Then they forgot to wrote more verses so they just kept repeating that godawful chorus which is a no-no for me. Maybe that's why they punished me with Battles. "You want a good chorus? You REALLY want a good chorus???"
I rank them depending on my mood. But CC has something special. All those riffs... I love them.
I can't objectively say Anders sounds good on Skydancer, but for whatever reason I just think his vocals work in that album. They sound so desperate... it's hard to describe why I like them, I just do. Best songs are the ones with female vocals - Through Ebony Archways and Bolt of Blazing Gold. Shadow Duet is awesome too, the only time Anders and Mikael ever shared vocals in the same song, I think?
Either way, I really appreciate what they tried to accomplish with Skydancer. It's far from perfect but in a way the shitty production just adds to its charm. I'll take Skydancer over WATV or Construct any day.
Yeah, I stopped reading that thread the moment your avatar popped up after someone necroed it. I was like "welp, the fun is over!
Well, for what it's worth my writing skills were still fine
just some of my opinions were ridiculous. I'm pretty sure after ASOP came out I said something like it was the best thing they'd done since Clayman. Lolz. Maybe I'll try and find the thread later.F(r)iend actually would have sounded a lot better with cleaner production. I dunno if you've ever listened to Schehf's covers on YouTube, but he did an (instrumental) cover of F(r)iend which sounds way better than the original. One thing I noticed on F(r)iend is that the vocal melodies are really, really weird. Like, very difficult to replicate. It's not just F(r)iend either, Like You Better Dead's chorus vocal melodies are hard to replicate too. Almost impossible live.
I thought you'd written a lot more but no, you just copied your post twice for some reason
Speaking of clean production improving a song, check out this cover of Minus:
I always thought this sounded awesome and showed how much better Minus would have sounded if it wasn't for that shitty R2R mix.
I always thought this sounded awesome and showed how much better Minus would have sounded if it wasn't for that shitty R2R mix.
Jester Slave
Narcissist
All the editing got to me. Plus I wanted some cool reaction gif to all 4 of your album rankings, but did not find good ones.
I hate covers. I watch some with chicks in it because I like chicks, but that's it. Talking about amateur covers here.
ASOP took back a lot of craziness that was happening from R2R to CC. That record did not really want to be anything groundbreaking or adapting any new style. No wonder even Jesper expressed his sadness with how that record was and is treated - which actually made me happy, because for the longest time I assumed he hated making that record.
I was absolutely in love with it, the whole art style and the theme. I mean, a sense of purpose is an actual deep topic which I think interests many of us. Yes yes, live life to the fullest, enjoy yourself, but at some nights you are bound to think about the fact that you are going under the ground eventually and time is against you. I just love the whole topic of this and ASOP is just the right amount of depression injected through my ears.
I think ASOP is the easiest record to be invested emotionally while still enjoying some decent, modern mdm music. With every pre-Clayman song, the emotional parts come through the music. Look at Zombie Inc or Jester Script Transfigured. Just by listening to Anders you'd have no idea what the fuck to think, but then you might as well tear up during those solos, because they are very beautiful. Just randomly played Coerced Coexistence now, I did not even know which song is it, I can barely tell them apart on Colony as it's my least played IF record - for no good reason, really. Surprise, surprise, the same thing. Anders is blabbering about something, I'd lie if I said I understood it, but the guitar melody was great.
Clayman is so-so in this regard. ASOP is like the MDM version of STYE - a lot of old sounds compared to STYE's almost alien sound, while still trying to push through the personal, emotional stuff, unlike CC where it mostly just ripped your head off and only let you breath during some choruses. The most ASOP song on CC if probably Reflect The Storm.
I think both SC and ASOP are casualties of vast exaggerations imposed on them for not meeting a certain standard they probably never intended to in the first place. If people were to judge these by some of the selected comments, they would be really surprised when they actually gave those records a chance. The easiest example is The Chosen Pessimist. Too long, boring, bad singing, why does it exist, why do they play it live, no one cares, even more boring live. Well, some people really enjoy it, or even get succumbed by it.
The biggest issue with ASOP imo is that it's probably not enough for either camp. It's more mdm than its predecessors, but it can't (and doesn't even want to) compete with the pre-2000 stuff, but with the exception of Alias and Delight and Angers, it's not nearly as commercial friendly as the first half of CC or STYE. I mean, who do you sell The Mirror's Truth exactly? It doesn't have those flashy guitar tunes of STYE and CC, that chorus is not nearly as catchy as The Quiet Place or Take This Life, but you have no chance of impressing any older, TJR-Clayman fans with those vocals, and they would give you shit for the music too, because it's not enough of a step-back.
I always roll my eyes when SOAPF is being praised as THE modern IF record where they actually tried, when the biggest quality of that record is that it sounds very clean and crisp. I absolutely love some of the songs from it, but ASOP was the last truly interesting IF record for me.
I hate covers. I watch some with chicks in it because I like chicks, but that's it. Talking about amateur covers here.
ASOP took back a lot of craziness that was happening from R2R to CC. That record did not really want to be anything groundbreaking or adapting any new style. No wonder even Jesper expressed his sadness with how that record was and is treated - which actually made me happy, because for the longest time I assumed he hated making that record.
I was absolutely in love with it, the whole art style and the theme. I mean, a sense of purpose is an actual deep topic which I think interests many of us. Yes yes, live life to the fullest, enjoy yourself, but at some nights you are bound to think about the fact that you are going under the ground eventually and time is against you. I just love the whole topic of this and ASOP is just the right amount of depression injected through my ears.
I think ASOP is the easiest record to be invested emotionally while still enjoying some decent, modern mdm music. With every pre-Clayman song, the emotional parts come through the music. Look at Zombie Inc or Jester Script Transfigured. Just by listening to Anders you'd have no idea what the fuck to think, but then you might as well tear up during those solos, because they are very beautiful. Just randomly played Coerced Coexistence now, I did not even know which song is it, I can barely tell them apart on Colony as it's my least played IF record - for no good reason, really. Surprise, surprise, the same thing. Anders is blabbering about something, I'd lie if I said I understood it, but the guitar melody was great.
Clayman is so-so in this regard. ASOP is like the MDM version of STYE - a lot of old sounds compared to STYE's almost alien sound, while still trying to push through the personal, emotional stuff, unlike CC where it mostly just ripped your head off and only let you breath during some choruses. The most ASOP song on CC if probably Reflect The Storm.
I think both SC and ASOP are casualties of vast exaggerations imposed on them for not meeting a certain standard they probably never intended to in the first place. If people were to judge these by some of the selected comments, they would be really surprised when they actually gave those records a chance. The easiest example is The Chosen Pessimist. Too long, boring, bad singing, why does it exist, why do they play it live, no one cares, even more boring live. Well, some people really enjoy it, or even get succumbed by it.
The biggest issue with ASOP imo is that it's probably not enough for either camp. It's more mdm than its predecessors, but it can't (and doesn't even want to) compete with the pre-2000 stuff, but with the exception of Alias and Delight and Angers, it's not nearly as commercial friendly as the first half of CC or STYE. I mean, who do you sell The Mirror's Truth exactly? It doesn't have those flashy guitar tunes of STYE and CC, that chorus is not nearly as catchy as The Quiet Place or Take This Life, but you have no chance of impressing any older, TJR-Clayman fans with those vocals, and they would give you shit for the music too, because it's not enough of a step-back.
I always roll my eyes when SOAPF is being praised as THE modern IF record where they actually tried, when the biggest quality of that record is that it sounds very clean and crisp. I absolutely love some of the songs from it, but ASOP was the last truly interesting IF record for me.
Wow, never realized how good this song was. The solo part is almost 30 seconds long and compares to the earlier classics.
Yeah, Minus sounds good on R2R but once it's cleaned up a bit you can really hear a lot of the older IF sound coming through. Makes me wonder how much better Reroute would have been received if the production wasn't so muddy.
Midas
Offended? Nobody cares.
- Jun 15, 2013
- 226
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"Yeah, Minus sounds good on R2R but once it's cleaned up a bit you can really hear a lot of the older IF sound coming through. Makes me wonder how much better Reroute would have been received if the production wasn't so muddy."
...What? I thought you DID know what it'd sound like. -COUGH READPMASSHOLE COUGH-
...What? I thought you DID know what it'd sound like. -COUGH READPMASSHOLE COUGH-
Clay-Man
Anders pre-2003
- May 18, 2008
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I thought Reroute To Remain ironically brought back a lot of melody/rhythm structure of The Jester Race in a lot of the intros/bridges, but that might of been because of Jesper doing a lot of leads, or that's what it sounds like to me. Obviously the rest of the songs doesn't sound like TJR, but it sounded like a pretty seamless blend.
Colony will always be my favorite album though. Second place is constantly changing,
Right now it's like
1) Colony
2) Come Clarity
3) SOAPF
Last month it was
1) Colony
2) TJR
3) Clayman
Colony will always be my favorite album though. Second place is constantly changing,
Right now it's like
1) Colony
2) Come Clarity
3) SOAPF
Last month it was
1) Colony
2) TJR
3) Clayman
Sorry bro, I did see it but I think I totally forgot to download it
do you still have it?Reroute was definitely underrated at the time it came out, although I think in hindsight a lot of people do give it credit. If the production hadn't been so shitty I'm sure it would have been received better. I also think Anders' cleans on this album are some of his best - it doesn't sound like he's trying to be a pop-metal/alt-metal singer, it just sounds like he's naturally trying to sing stuff. He doesn't sound great but his vocals aren't overproduced here like they would be in future albums. I guess it just sounds a lot more organic, and his vocals really work on songs like Dawn of a New Day and Metaphor, for example. Choruses of Cloud Connected and Trigger are decent too. There aren't any songs where his clean vocals ruin the songs like they do (for me, anyway) on ASOP, SC or Battles, which all sound like he's trying too hard to be something he isn't. Even in STYE he has this weird Jonathan Davis quality to his cleans which never really worked for me. Cleans on CC and SOAPF were fine, albeit in both cases ProTool'd to the extreme, meaning he couldn't really replicate those songs live. He actually could replicate the R2R cleans live which made them a little more authentic.
krofius
Active Member
- Mar 16, 2009
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Whoracle remains the best album. No songs can compare to Food For the Gods.
Clay-Man
Anders pre-2003
- May 18, 2008
- 1,099
- 53
- 48
It's really strange because Whoracle actually dropped really low on my list over the years. It just felt like a lesser Jester Race to me, but I've started listening to it again recently and I appreciate it more now. I think it's just that a lot of the songs on that album feel skippable, and that's what ruins it for me.
krofius
Active Member
- Mar 16, 2009
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It has a much rawer production for sure, most notably the snare sound. Only song I don't care for that much is Morphing Into Primal to be honest, everything else is great. Vocals are miles superior on Whoracle than TJR. Also first and only album Anders did the Engineering and Mixing with Fredrik Nordström, unsure of what way it impacted sound though but production wise if u compare it to TJR Colony and Clayman I think it has the most raw sounding production. Black-Ash Inheritence has pretty much the exact same production sound. Gyroscope was definitely just copied over, it's not re-recorded for Whoracle. Can't really hear any difference on Goliath at all.
Vocals are definitely improved on Whoracle. Lyrics fit in better with the music too. I dunno, I rank TJR and Whoracle pretty much the same. Two amazing albums back to back. In my view these two are the only proper MDM albums IF released. Colony is a totally different sound, as is Clayman.
I think that whoracle has better production, sound, than tjr. It was a big improvement. Maybe because of Anders? He was the producer, if I remember correctly of dimension zero's this is hell, and it was a good balanced work, as it was that of whoracle. If there's one song that seems to be out of place there is everything counts, and this because, although being a very good version, it doesn't really fit, to me, the general tone of the album.
