IN FLAMES new album being released on 1st March, 2019

[ThePhobiac]

Yeah, to me it's like

LS — Sterile, lack of atmosphere, sort of like the cover art, which is the moon, so I guess that actually makes sense
TJR — Crunchy, has body, absolutely amazing lead guitar sound and good drum production. Vocals too quiet and guitars a little jagged.
Whoracle — Guitars are too punchy/noisy, kind of painful to listen to. mid-90's melodic death had this problem. Everything else is good.
Colony — Great atmosphere, fills the room. But guitars and drums are overpowering. Everything is bombastic and a bit messy.
Clayman — Colony but scaled back, so a bit better. Drums are so punchy I can feel them in my throat. Very clean production, but not my favorite.
R2R — Shit drums that overpower a good, hefty guitar sound. Great keyboard integration. Leads too quiet in the mix. Good production on Anders.
STYE — Same problem as Whoracle.
CC — Drum cymbals drown everything out. Otherwise, probably my favorite IF album production-wise. Maximal but not overpowering.
ASOP — This album is made of cardboard. It drips with melody — Jesper's right that it's underrated in that sense — but the production is stale as fuck. The lead guitar production is so good, though. Makes me want to eat fruit.
SOAPF — Modern, okay, but the dull cardboard snare sound drags it all down. Try making out the main verse riff in "A New Dawn" with those drums taking up all the space. Unless I'm wearing headphones, I can't.
SC — Clean and sleek guitars! Amazing lead sound! Audible bass! Great keys! But FUCK that snare. It's as bad as R2R's. And the album sounds almost too clean. I had to add slight reverb on my copy to give it the body I felt it needed.
Battles — Sounds clean, but there is just no weight to anything. The production on "Through My Eyes" is unacceptable for the kind of song it's trying to be.

Basically, fuck the drums.

 

[Vermyn]

"Condemned" was my favorite off of ASOP back when it first released. Nowadays I dig "Disconnected", "Alias" and "Drenched in Fear" the most. Say what you will about Anders and his performance/lyrics on these songs — the instrumentation on each of them is fucking awesome, imo.

My favorites on ASOP are definitely condemned, march to the shore, drenched in fear, and sober and irrelevant. In no particular order of course. Depends on my mood really.....

 

[Sister Of Destruction]

This one is Great too
,,You're waiting for a re-run
But yesterday won't come
Want to relive the moment
But yesterday is gone!''

 

[galvanized]

My favorites on ASOP are definitely condemned, march to the shore, drenched in fear, and sober and irrelevant. In no particular order of course. Depends on my mood really.....

Been a while since I spun this album.

Sober and Irrelevant is \m/. So many good riffs and leads. And Anders does the most savage death growl he’s ever done at 2:05. Too short but so brutal. With better production I agree this album would have been top notch.

 

[Sister Of Destruction]

Been a while since I spun this album.

Sober and Irrelevant is \m/. So many good riffs and leads. And Anders does the most savage death growl he’s ever done at 2:05. Too short but so brutal. With better production I agree this album would have been top notch.

Yep this ,, ughhh" is fuc☆☆☆ amazing

 

[ThePhobiac]

It's pretty cool. "Sober and Irrelevant" is a good one for sure. That solo after the first chorus is pretty great, and that rhythm section underneath it is vintage In Flames.

The most savage Anders death growl has got to be during the performance of "F(r)iend" from Used and Abused in 2004 (01:58). I'm pretty sure it's overdubbed, but fuck it, it sounds cool, and that's what I signed up for.

 

[DE4life]

Also yeah, "Like You Better Dead" is great for sure. Grew on me substantially over the years. I think every single song on STYE is quality. Anders near his modern peak, some of my favorite IF lyrics ("Testing higher mentality / I conquer myself through this / A furious path to walk / New space exists beyond / In silence I dwell displeased /Remain with the seed of unfulfillment"), great variety of songs, good atmosphere, and catchy as fuck. Album is fun. Nothing else in IF's catalog sounds like it.

Again, I was stunned to find out people hated it.

2004-2007 was definitely Anders modern peak, might be his overall peak as well tbh. I prefer his vocals on Colony but he was only able to sustain them for one album - he's much weaker on Clayman. He managed to do well on album and live during the 04-07 period.

It's hard to overstate how reviled STYE was when it first came out. The reaction to R2R was bad, but STYE was far more vicious. In that period admitting you liked a song off STYE was like being asked to be punched in the balls. You just didn't do it. At that time it was only 4 years since the release of Clayman, so going from that to STYE in such a short space of time was really hard for a lot of people to take.

I think if people had known how Come Clarity would sound then STYE might have been despised a little less. People thought that STYE was going to be the In Flames sound for the future. Looking back it's OK for one album but you wouldn't have wanted them sticking to that sound for too long. That was the fear back then and why the backlash was so strong. If you were part of the IF community online it was practically impossible to like STYE - publicly anyway.

Obviously we can look back now and see that, in hindsight, STYE was an interesting little detour the band took. Albums like SC & Battles undoubtedly help the album to look better in retrospect. The initial reaction is where a lot of the hatred for the album comes from. A lot of fans probably never went back and revisited it, or just stopped listening to In Flames entirely.

 

[DE4life]

Also I think that Schehf band recording actually shows that being a good vocalist is harder than just holding down some growls. We give Anders a lot of shit but he does have the performer mentality.

Indeed. I'm fairly specific about the type of growls I like - I fucking hate metalcore sounding vocals, like This Cold Life has. Basically stopped me from ever listening to their stuff, even if the instrumental side is good. In terms of extreme vocals I only really like bands with vocalists like Anders, Stanne, Speed, Lindberg, etc. I think it's why I have very little interest in traditional death metal, vocals are usually too low and boring. Half the time they sound like a toilet flushing.

Anders is a good frontman. No doubt about that. He really grew into that role, especially if you like at his more awkward performances in the 90s. It's a real shame imo he didn't go to a vocal coach much earlier in his career. He added singing in properly on R2R, which was 16 years ago. The fact he only just got around to seeing a vocal coach for Battles is unfortunate to say the least.

 

[Jester Slave]

I had to add slight reverb on my copy to give it the body I felt it needed.

Can you upload a few reverbed tracks somewhere? I'm curious. I won't stick to it, it's almost 99.9%, because if I can help it, I always want the original iteration from everything, but I'm still curious.

 

[DE4life]

It's pretty cool. "Sober and Irrelevant" is a good one for sure. That solo after the first chorus is pretty great, and that rhythm section underneath it is vintage In Flames.

The most savage Anders death growl has got to be during the performance of "F(r)iend" from Used and Abused in 2004 (01:58). I'm pretty sure it's overdubbed, but fuck it, it sounds cool, and that's what I signed up for.

Literally every STYE sounds much better on Used & Abused. Just proves how badly the production held back a lot of those songs.



Dead Alone is the definition of filler on the album, but it sounds so much more powerful live. It's almost like an entirely different song.

 

[Pallbearer]

that sounds like the IF family I know and love. But yeah, if you can't handle being told to fuck off, you aren't going to last long around here.

Everdying seems like a lifetime ago now. That community was so active. This place was too, for a while, pretty much until the SOAPF party ended. For whatever reason it's never been the same after that.

Everdying was fun while it lasted. I remember having been very disappointed for a while when the forum came to an abrupt end. Apparently one reason was ArchY had been threatened with legal action by the record label because some people had repeatedly posted illegal download links to copyrighted material.

Then there was JesterAss, plintus's response to JesterHead, where he got banned from.

 

[DE4life]

Everdying was fun while it lasted. I remember having been very disappointed for a while when the forum came to an abrupt end. Apparently one reason was ArchY had been threatened with legal action by the record label because some people had repeatedly posted illegal download links to copyrighted material.

Then there was JesterAss, plintus's response to JesterHead, where he got banned from.

Didn't the forum shut down really soon after Come Clairty was leaked? I think it was something like three months early and the links were all over Everdying. At the same time ArchY was given the option to become a mod at JesterHead so I guess it was a combination of those factors. It was a huge shame as I spent a lot of time on those forums - then they were suddenly gone.

I was on the ground floor for JesterAss, that was pretty funny although it died off almost as quickly as it was conceived. From what I heard the JesterHead forums died a slower death too. Considering that place was by all accounts the North Korea of the internet I'm not surprised. All hail Supreme Leader Anders.

Plintus pops up on my facebook every so often, still a madlad

 

[ciko_gfb]

This one is Great too
,,You're waiting for a re-run
But yesterday won't come
Want to relive the moment
But yesterday is gone!''

This song is one of my top 10 IF songs. That riff from 2:22 to 2:43 might be best IF riff for me. Amazing song.

 

[only4theweak187]

Anders screams in the rock am ring 2006 videos are by far the best quality screams he's done in my opinion. Perfect consistent raspy frys.

Growls are still on point tho as evident by that live Colony performance I posted a couple pages back

 

[ThePhobiac]

Can you upload a few reverbed tracks somewhere? I'm curious. I won't stick to it, it's almost 99.9%, because if I can help it, I always want the original iteration from everything, but I'm still curious.

Sure thing, I'll send you a handful of tracks.

 

[krofius]

Everdying was fun while it lasted. I remember having been very disappointed for a while when the forum came to an abrupt end. Apparently one reason was ArchY had been threatened with legal action by the record label because some people had repeatedly posted illegal download links to copyrighted material.

Then there was JesterAss, plintus's response to JesterHead, where he got banned from.

Haha I remember that plintus dude back from JesterHead forums back in 2007/2008, he also posted here a bit back in 2008/2009 or something, don't really know why he was a part of Jesterhead cause he didn't seem to have any positive to say whatsoever about the band as far as I can remember. Jesterhead was actually a super cool place when it was at it's peak, there's was so many cool short behind-the-scenes videos and interviews and bonus stuff, like Jesper playing Moonshield or Dead God In Me on drums (can't remember which one but it wasn't pretty playing lol) and different jams backstage with the band. Also some vid with Björn doing I think Dead God In Me and he still had the skills. The band had a couple AMA's on the forums too.

I know ArchY was also a member and moderator on the Jesterhead forums, and he also posted here a bit around the ASOP album cycle, a lot of people from Jesterhead fanclub actually posted here around that time.

Found an old trailer/info about the site and you can see a very brief clip of Björn playing Dead God In Me on drums at 1:15

 

[ThePhobiac]

I remember a video of Bjorn playing "Dead Eternity" on drums for sure. It sounded great, but you could tell he was rusty going by his facial expressions. Those kick drums in the bridge had him grimacing in pain, haha.

There was another short one of them playing "Blinded by Fear," too.

 

[DE4life]

I think Plintus said he got banned from JesterHead for insulting fat people or something

Had no idea JesterHead still existed. Looks pretty dead though. Last news update two years ago and last forum post 1 year 10 months ago. RIP.

 

[ciko_gfb]

Had no idea JesterHead still existed. Looks pretty dead though. Last news update two years ago and last forum post 1 year 10 months ago. RIP.

I think I was there when it got launched again for a time, but it wasn't that active even then.

 

[krofius]

I remember a video of Bjorn playing "Dead Eternity" on drums for sure. It sounded great, but you could tell he was rusty going by his facial expressions. Those kick drums in the bridge had him grimacing in pain, haha.

There was another short one of them playing "Blinded by Fear," too.

Hmm I don't remember him playing Dead Eternity, I only remember him playing Dead God In Me and him having difficulties but still managing some kickdrum rhythm mid-song or something.