In Flames New Album being released in Q2 of 2014 thread

[krofius]

Does anyone have the "Live from Popstaad 2001" show from the IF Live Collection Torrent?

Yeah. Nothing special, but the audio is pretty good indeed.

 

[DE4life]

You mind if I upload the Worlds Within The Margin one? And do you know where it is? Must be USA right?

Go ahead, I don't own the file, just sharing it I'm pretty sure it's from their US tour in early 2006, there are a few setlists on setlist.fm which have WWTM in there. They dropped it when they moved onto the Unholy Alliance tour midway through the year and when they embarked on their December North American tour WWTM is still absent.

 

[DE4life]

Does anyone have the "Live from Popstaad 2001" show from the IF Live Collection Torrent?

I have it but as Krofius says, audio aside it isn't really anything special. Fairly basic setlist:

01 - Bullet Ride
02 - Embody The Invisible
03 - Food For The Gods
04 - Clayman
05 - Clad In Shadows
06 - Scorn
07 - Only For The Weak
08 - Behind Space
09 - Square Nothing
10 - Swim
11 - Coerced Coexistence
12 - Episode 666
13 - Pinball Map
14 - Colony

My favourite In Flames bootleg is probably the 1999 one from Sweden. Really nice audio, incredible performance, great setlist too. I watched one from 2002 in Seoul the other day and it was quite painful, Anders looked ill. He was clearly struggling.

 

[only4theweak187]

I really liked how Colony sounded on the Popstaad show.

That 2002 Seoul show is very interesting to watch, that crowd was insane the whole time. Great setlist too (Moonshield, Gyroscope, Ordinary Story etc. etc.)

Even though Anders was very raspy. He was definitely fucked up on something or just hammered that night too

 

[DE4life]

Towards the end he looks like he's about to pass out. His hand keeps going to his throat, it's actually a little disconcerting. You have to wonder whether around this time he began to wonder whether it was time to move away from screams/growls and begin to go in another direction before his voicebox totally blew out. I believe around the same time Mikael Stanne had to have a year or so off to recover from throat issues as well. Probably not a coincidence that both were struggling at the same time.

 

[only4theweak187]

^Especially when headbanging to Colony while holding the mic stand at the end you can see him grabbing his throat a lot.


Could've been a fluke night but thinking back to shows I've seen up until 2006 he was still using very "abrasive" (it sounds like at least) technique to scream.

Example of how that very artificial and damaging way to scream obviously would take it's toll when touring:




Then after watching that Rock Am Ring 2006 show on Youtube he improved his screams to more traditional fry (I believe) screams which still were pretty damn good.



^Uploaded few months ago just found it. It's audio from the IF Live Collection torrent from the "Live in Gothenburg 2002" I believe. I think I remember a radio broadcast of people speaking in Swedish in between every few songs. This vid is also another example of his poor technique of screaming that he improved after Come Clarity came out, live at least.


I'm such a fucking nerd.

 

[DE4life]

It's amazing he didn't seriously damage his voice, to be honest. Between 1993 - 2002 his technique was very dangerous. You can hear on the Koln 96 vid how strained his chords are. He sounded reasonably strong on Colony and the 1999 shows in general, but then starts struggling again around 2000-2002 before seeming to change technique a little, and has been fairly good since then.

 

[DE4life]

http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/64149/In-Flames-Siren-Charms/ - another grim SC review, echoing a lot of the critcisms many of us on here have brought up:

It isn’t a heavy album, despite what the abrasive riffing of “Everything's Gone” appears on the surface to be, but it also isn’t as dynamic as the soaring female vocals in “When the World Explodes” would lead you to believe. Siren Charms rather chooses to use these attributes as a veil to hide that fact that In Flames simply do not have anything left in the tanks to drive an entire song from start to finish. It’s all a garnish that attempts to mask charred, lifeless songwriting and a very acute awareness that In Flames are so far past their prime it is becoming more worrisome than humorous.

the simple fact is that there is nothing to lift up the dreary verses of Siren Charms save half-hearted melodies and solos that are both scattered and short, fleeting attempts to inject life in a sound that flatlined years ago.

These oversights show that In Flames are simply becoming lazy, because despite their ability to craft many brief but powerful melodies they somehow refuse to address errors that are repeated throughout the record.

Amidst all of this creatively barren wasteland is Anders Fridén, who once again sets the low watermark as quite simply a completely inept vocalist in all aspects, retaining a flat, wailing scream and equally screeching cleans. More often than not during Siren Charms’ many soaring choruses, Fridén forms vocal melodies that differ noticeably from what the rest of the band is doing, creating a feeling of vocal-driven music in a genre that should not be structured that way.

Rather than taking the evolution shown within “With Eyes Wide Open” and realizing that a formula that reinvents itself on the back of shifting, evocative guitar riffs is the best way to approach this “radio metal” style, they instead opt for the simpler path of tossing around chords and hoping they fall into some sort of intelligible order

Comparing to what the band has done in recent years though, Siren Charms is still an unforgivable misstep containing oversights in both songwriting and execution that such a veteran band should be able to spot and correct. They’ve had some truly excellent songs come together on their past few albums, but Siren Charms contains no such diamonds in the rough. Instead, we are aptly left with what amounts to a true siren song: a strangely appealing piece of simplistic, melodic metal that may be hard for fans to resist, but if they take the bait and dive in head first, Siren Charms will lead to nothing but savage, bitter disappointment.

Pretty much all the comments in agreement Krofius/PlainVanilla/JesterSlave need to get in there and crack some skulls.

Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off

kinda catchy and well-written...
Through Oblivion is so beautiful that I cried the first time I heard it....
Anders' performance is very unique, it's a good thing that he isn't emulating anyone, he's doing his own
style....
Even though they're goin for a softer sound you can hear melodeath riffs and they're kinda good, sometimes
they're too low in the mix (e.g Through Oblivion) but other than this is a very good record.

 

[A88]

"Well-written..."

Oh, as this is out general purpose thread I just need to share the awesomeness of Insomnium + Stanne.



Damn, that crowd ain't moving. They're waiting for catchy emo chorus to come along...

 

[A88]

Another negative review. 68/100



"listenable", "dull", "lazy"...

 

[Jester Slave]

The angry metal guy review is a jest, but that's the style of that review site, which I throughly enjoy, because if you take away the credibility, you get really funny articles. Best part is when he said he doesn't even like when Chester Bennington goes full Chester Bennington, haha! But SC got 1.5 from them while SOAPF got 2.0, so according to them there is an 0.5 difference compared to an album most of the SC haters like or enjoy. Ok.

As for sputnik music.... watch my hands, I'm cheating!

In Flames continue their evolution from Melodic Death Metal to generic radio Metal with their most watered down release to date. http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/26221/In-Flames-A-Sense-of-Purpose/
The legendary Swedes' ninth studio album is a slower, softer affair with a few irritating qualities; however, stellar instrumentation and admirable chance-taking make 'A Sense of Purpose' a refreshing listen. http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/15625/In-Flames-A-Sense-of-Purpose/

To be honest I only care about the popular and all-around review sites, because a 10/10 rating by inflamesisthebest.com or a 2/10 rating from hardcoremetalnobullshit.com just make me roll my eyes. Not to mention the popular review sites will get to much more people so whether they give a better or worse review that is how people unsure to buy the album will decide and those are the sites the record label will pay attention to, unless the album will sell good, because they won't give a shit then anyway.

Was this interview linked somewhere? : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqcahN5U77E

 

[Jester Slave]

Another negative review. 68/100



"listenable", "dull", "lazy"...

68/100 is fine, especially after he was ranting for long minutes how he did not enjoy the album at all. All in all I agree with the guy about In Flames, and I like how he smashes cavemen to either accept it or stop crying, and how he emphasize new fans are MUCH more in numbers. Some much needed reality-check. Of course, our opinions on the album differ, but it's not even arguable: he felt like 2 minutes into a song he did not ever want to listen it again, I still keep coming back to almost every song, so yeah. That's him, that's me.

At least he didn't do a fake-freakout about Anders' voice when he sings like this since ASOP (and did it earlier as well), he did not pretend Through Oblivion is so not In Flames-like (Metaphor says hello from 12 years ago) and he did not expect any hardcore MDM album, he just wanted a good album which he - in his opinion - did not get.

 

[eochaid]

68/100 is fine, especially after he was ranting for long minutes how he did not enjoy the album at all. All in all I agree with the guy about In Flames, and I like how he smashes cavemen to either accept it or stop crying, and how he emphasize new fans are MUCH more in numbers. Some much needed reality-check. Of course, our opinions on the album differ, but it's not even arguable: he felt like 2 minutes into a song he did not ever want to listen it again, I still keep coming back to almost every song, so yeah. That's him, that's me.

At least he didn't do a fake-freakout about Anders' voice when he sings like this since ASOP (and did it earlier as well), he did not pretend Through Oblivion is so not In Flames-like (Metaphor says hello from 12 years ago) and he did not expect any hardcore MDM album, he just wanted a good album which he - in his opinion - did not get.

Metaphor and Through Oblivion have nothing in common. Metaphor is a classic acoustic piece (In FLames use to have in the old days) to wich Anders came with the lyrics, and the result was much like the 70s acoustic hard rock pieces with this folk feeling. Through Oblivion is a much lesser piece with a pop chorus.

 

[Jester Slave]

It was the first really slow track from them (Dawn Of A New Day was more extreme, but it's "whiny" just like TO), then Evil In A Closet was maybe a step forward in terms of heaviness but then came Come Clarity to ruin hopes of IF never releasing such a song. There's really nothing special about TO.

 

[eochaid]

It was the first really slow track from them (Dawn Of A New Day was more extreme, but it's "whiny" just like TO), then Evil In A Closet was maybe a step forward in terms of heaviness but then came Come Clarity to ruin hopes of IF never releasing such a song. There's really nothing special about TO.

Nope. It was their first slow acoustic song in wich they added Anders voice (it was going to be an instrumental piece). But this is not something new in metal, so there's nothing really new about the song nor nothing breaking if we talk about music genres.

 

[DE4life]

Dawn Of A New Day was more extreme

it's about as extreme as the Backstreet Boys.

But yeah, other than both being "slow songs" Metaphor and Through Oblivion have very little in common. One is a cool little acoustic piece with questionable vocals on top of it, the other is a modern commercial rock track with questionable vocals providing the melody.

 

[eochaid]

it's about as extreme as the Backstreet Boys.

But yeah, other than both being "slow songs" Metaphor and Through Oblivion have very little in common. One is a cool little acoustic piece with questionable vocals on top of it, the other is a modern commercial rock track with questionable vocals providing the melody.

 

[Jester Slave]

Compared it to Metaphor. TO is still CC part 2. Hell, it's less whiny in terms of singing.

 

[eochaid]

Compared it to Metaphor. TO is still CC part 2. Hell, it's less whiny in terms of singing.

Again nothing in common. CC classic heavy ballad. Through Oblivion Pop with distorted guitars.

 

[Jester Slave]

I see, so we need 6 years to not to be pretentious about TO. "Classic heavy ballad" - I bet that was everyone's first reaction to CC when it came out