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

[Jester Slave]

It's historic and sentimental. You will always smile when you think back about your first kiss as well. Sentimental value.

 

[DE4life]

No shit. He still clearly doesn't share the opinion you tried to ascribe to him regarding the album though.

 

[Jester Slave]

Mate, you seem to communicate more with him, than me. Ask him if he thinks that Lunar Strain is a good album or not. If he says yes, I give you 5 euro via paypal. No fucking way he thinks that mess is anything more than ambitious beginnings. Are there promising stuff there? Of course. But it's not the horrendous voice of Stanne, nor the shitty production, nor the half-assed songs and unnecessarily weird song structures.

And let's differentiate between two things once more: I don't mind someone liking LS. Why would I? My problem is with people, who act like LS was the real shit. It's completely fine to like it for what it was, but only elitists act like it was some groundbreaking and severely underrated music, that still holds up to this day.

 

[DE4life]

Mate, you seem to communicate more with him, than me. Ask him if he thinks that Lunar Strain is a good album or not. If he says yes, I give you 5 euro via paypal. No fucking way he thinks that mess is anything more than ambitious beginnings. Are there promising stuff there? Of course. But it's not the horrendous voice of Stanne, nor the shitty production, nor the half-assed songs and unnecessarily weird song structures.

And let's differentiate between two things once more: I don't mind someone liking LS. Why would I? My problem is with people, who act like LS was the real shit. It's completely fine to like it for what it was, but only elitists act like it was some groundbreaking and severely underrated music, that still holds up to this day.

You're moving the goalposts now, because originally you said "You buy it in your shame and try your best to convince yourself that it's actually good. It's not."

So now I agree with you, anybody calling it a masterpiece or some kind of MDM gem is obviously exaggerating its qualities. I haven't seen much of that in recent years though. As you say, nothing wrong with people liking it if it floats their boat. Saying that I personally think LS is a good album which I enjoy is not the same as me saying "LS, best album of all time, will never be beaten". TJR and Whoracle are far superior for a start. So is The Gallery, and Carcass's Heartwork. And that's just albums from the same time period. LS was a glorified demo, but one that I get some enjoyment out of, anyway.

 

[Jester Slave]

You're moving the goalposts now, because originally you said "You buy it in your shame and try your best to convince yourself that it's actually good. It's not."

Context maybe??!

I was talking about TJR and LS. If you have money, you buy TJR, if you are piss poor, you buy the shitty, Tesco version of TJR, which is LS, and you convince yourself that it will do too, but in reality, your heart is aching for the real stuff, which is TJR.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Lunar Strain is probably the worst IF album — it's between that and Battles — but it's by no means bad. Bjorn once described it as a proof of concept or something similar, and I largely agree with that. It's an obvious prototype, and it sounds like it. A pretty good one, obviously, but every album after that has a lot more dynamics and energy put into it, including the unpopular ones. I like it for the novelty factor, and some songs — the first four, "In Flames", and "Everlost Pt. 2" — are pretty great.

Also, as great as Stanne is, his performance on LS is pretty flat. Again, by no means bad, and his lyrics are quality.

The Subterranean EP blows LS out of the water.

 

[Sister Of Destruction]

Lunar is not that bad, my fav track

 

[Clay-Man]

Lunar Strain is definitely my least listened to album. The reworks on Colony is what makes the songs powerful, because before then, it was pretty bland. Sounds like garage metal. I feel like Subterranean was more or less the sound Lunar Strain has if it was focused and written better.

 

[ciko_gfb]

Mikael Stanne sucks ass.

Partially agreed. LS is my least favorite album because of the shitty vocals. They have good sound on the album even though it was their first album but the vocals too bad I cant even stand the songs. Behind Space is one of the songs that I love from IF, but I cant stand LS version, Colony version is way superior than first version. Of course better production is important but vocals more important for me.

Actually I'm not really into Dark Tranquility even though they have pretty good tracks because of the vocals. Not saying anything about cleans cause they're good, might be better than IF's.

You're confusing objective reasoning ("moon is made of cheese" - obviously false and scientifically proven to be nonsense) with subjective reasoning ("I like [insert band/artwork/writing] because it sounds/looks/reads good to me").

Well as far as I know, there's no right or wrong on the subjective reasoning but I cant understand why you always "attack" people when they talked about their opinion.

 

[DE4life]

Well as far as I know, there's no right or wrong on the subjective reasoning but I cant understand why you always "attack" people when they talked about their opinion.

Because it's fun.

 

[Pallbearer]

I've been told most of LS was written in one day and listening to the album I can believe that. You guys have probably heard the story about In Flames lying to the representative of Wrong Again Records and telling him/her they had an album's worth of material ready, when in reality only 2-3 songs were finished. (Or something like that.)

I like BS, CiS and UaOT, but the rest is, for the most part anyway, pretty forgettable to me. "In Flames" has some neat riffage though, and Hårgalåten is nice but that's not written by IF of course, being some traditional Swedish song. Stanne's vocals are ok, but I prefer Anders on the remakes.

 

[eochaid]

I rather like subterranean. It's more "in flames" and the songs are great.

 

[DE4life]

I've been told most of LS was written in one day and listening to the album I can believe that. You guys have probably heard the story about In Flames lying to the representative of Wrong Again Records and telling him/her they had an album's worth of material ready, when in reality only 2-3 songs were finished. (Or something like that.)

I like BS, CiS and UaOT, but the rest is, for the most part anyway, pretty forgettable to me. "In Flames" has some neat riffage though, and Hårgalåten is nice but that's not written by IF of course, being some traditional Swedish song. Stanne's vocals are ok, but I prefer Anders on the remakes.

Of the songs on LS, the only ones I dislike are Lunar Strain (extremely boring), Dreamscape (also boring) and Everlost Part I (just bad songwriting). I can see those three being rushed for sure. None of them are remotely interesting.

The rest is pretty good though and if most of them were written in a day that says more about the incredible creative talent of the people involved (mostly Jesper) than the quality of the album. You can hear with the rerelease of BS and CiS on Colony that with better production those songs are absolutely awesome. Kind of a shame they didn't do a remake of LS as a whole in '99. Maybe an EP with just the better songs rerecorded - Behind Space, Starforsaken, In Flames, Upon an Oaken Throne, Clad in Shadows. Would have been an absolutely incredible EP if all of the rerecordings were the same quality as the originals.

Other than "Stand Ablaze" I really don't see what's so great about Subterranean. Some cool riffs but it's more like melodic gothic metal than melodic death metal. Lyrics are pretty embarrassing, like something out of an erotic vampire novel. If that's your thing then more power to you, but Stand Ablaze is the only song off Sub I listen to with any regularity, and even then I tend to listen to the live version from '99 rather than the album version.

 

[Jester Slave]

Other than "Stand Ablaze" I really don't see what's so great about Subterranean. Some cool riffs but it's more like melodic gothic metal than melodic death metal. Lyrics are pretty embarrassing, like something out of an erotic vampire novel. If that's your thing then more power to you, but Stand Ablaze is the only song off Sub I listen to with any regularity, and even then I tend to listen to the live version from '99 rather than the album version.

Whoa whoa whoa!!

Subterranean is fucking amazing, what are you on about? Even before I revisited the older records again and again because of you guys (since I rarely listened to them otherwise), I liked Subterranean a lot. In many ways, it's even more listener-friendly, since it's less aggressive than TJR. The production is absolutely decent for that time, it doesn't hurt my ears. The vocals are great, even better than Anders on TJR (there are exceptions of course; I really like him on Dead Eternity for example). I think there's an English word for the kind of voice on Subt. It's rasp--- or rasb... something.

Speaking of Dead Eternity, I just realized it's on this deluxe edition of Subt. WHAT THE FUCK. I have never listened to it until right now. Wow. Yeah, Anders is most definitely better on this, but this isn't bad either. Now imagine this song with Stanne... but man, they recorded my favorite TJR tracks during Subt.-era. What's not to like??

To me, Subt. is the real first record of In Flames in terms of musical style. It's a shame that the go-to song from this era was Behind Space and not Stand Ablaze. Fuck, they could even play that today.

 

[DE4life]

In fairness I'm not surprised you like it. I can imagine you being into those types of lyrics and the softer overall style and cleaner presentation. Production on Sub is fine but it's nothing special. Vocals fit the atmosphere of the album fine but I wouldn't want to hear Forss on TJR or Whoracle, so, it is what it is. The right man for that type of album.

For the record I don't dislike Subterranean. It's alright. Quite ironic that you'd get so worked up over LS getting over the top praise, then slobber over Subterranean, which is over-hyped far more by the tr00 fans. I've never been into gothic metal so maybe that's why I'm pretty 'meh' over it. I do love some of the riffs on Sub though. Biosphere's opening is awesome. All of Stand Ablaze is killer. Everdying, the title track and Timeless are hardly groundbreaking songs though, are they? Nothing wrong with them but I don't see why they'd be considered better than Behind Space, Clad in Shadows or Upon an Oaken Throne.

I do wish In Flames had rerecorded Stand Ablaze instead of Clad in Shadows in '99 though.

 

[Jester Slave]

Not groundbreaking, but decent. I don't think anyone expects to be blown away by all the tracks, even in an EP. Yeah, ASOP B-sides may beg to differ, but they didn't formed a coherent unit. It was more of a collection of great songs, rather than something with a beginning and an end.

I have no idea what the lyrics are on Subterranean. I can make out words, sentences, but I never bothered myself with getting to the bottom of it. "It used to be, ????? eternety" - to quote from Stand Ablaze.

I'm also not sure if it's gothic metal or what. It sounds pretty close to what TJR ended up with, except TJR is... warmer, if it makes sense. Subterranean sounds colder, more bare-boned, but it's almost the same music.

 

[Sister Of Destruction]

Stand Ablaze is probably about the Guy who committed suicide, he realise that this world is not for people like him, he jumps into flames and disappear

 

[DE4life]

You can tell they're getting closer to the TJR sound with Subterranean for sure. LS is closer to straight death metal in a lot of respects, where Sub takes a softer, more melodic approach. Don't worry about looking up Sub's lyrics, they're just a collection of emo-goth cliches. I can see why Forss allegedly buried the lyrics in a wall after the album was done - I wouldn't want official proof I'd written that stuff either

Speaking of Forss, I just listened to a few of the tracks of Sub again and the vocals are actually worse than I remember. Dude sounds like an animal being raped at some points. That ain't what I want in my music. He also adds "yuh" at the end of a bunch of words, particularly eternity (eternahteyuhhhh), which is really annoying. He's a bit like a budget Tomas Lindberg. Tesco version, as Slave might say. Riffs and instrumentals are better than I remember, some really nice stuff in there, but I really dislike this vocal style. He sounds passable in Stand Ablaze but sorry to say it makes some of the other tracks difficult to listen to. I guess I feel the same way about Forss on this album as you do about Stanne on LS, Slave.

 

[DE4life]

Stand Ablaze is probably about the Guy who committed suicide, he realise that this world is not for people like him, he jumps into flames and disappear

Yeah, but amusingly on live performances Anders changes the lyrics to remove all references to suicide.

 

[Pallbearer]

The unofficial lyrics are at http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/inflames/subterranean.html#1 if someone's interested.

But yeah, I don't think they're very good.