Damn, completely missed the new leaks from a couple of days ago. My first reaction was typing "In Flames House" into google... well, not sure what the fuck did I expect the results would be haha.
Anyway, listened to it now a few times, and started reading through the reactions, but stopped around page 73, because you guys are cancerous. First of all, I envy all of you whose biggest issue are the song titles and them being generic. That's some grade A nitpicking, but oh well.
As for the song, it's like 4 different ideas in one. Some good, some... not so much.
- The intro and outro are weird. Weird, because Battles did choirs pretty well. I loved The Truth and the choir ending of Here Until Forever, so I don't understand how or why they messed them up here. I guess the outro is so-so, as it's still a more creative ending than just fading out, and it will be cool in the concerts.
- The voice changes every 3 seconds make this song really hard to listen to. Again, I'm really glad that Anders is also a fan of Trent Reznor, and adores him for successfully combining the weirdest shits in his songs, but for the love of god, leave it to him. The whole pre-chorus part of this song is what I expect many bands do in various forms as demos, move on to other songs, revisit it a few weeks later and click
delete track. Celldweller had an amazing voice commentary series about how he made his songs, dating back from the very first demos up until the (almost - am I using parentheses right?) final version and it was really educational, even if I'm never going to make any music. So, I totally get how you can find this crammed up first 50 seconds cool and groundbreaking, I would never fault any artist for that - but keeping it this way is just a mistake. Imagine a "normal" In Flames song, which we all consider at least decent, and add the robot voice here and there. Boom, some will like it more, some will hate it. That's how you do it. That's how you did it with The Truth. Most people here seem to hate it, but I thinkas time passes, it's the best song from Battles alongside IMR.
- The guitar work is nice. I don't like the drums. The "na na naaa" melody the guitar makes during the chorus is great. I also dig the basic riffing, much stronger than on Battles, and it's not Björn's fault that Anders is not supporting it. Well, I take that back: it's everyone's fault for matching that riff with that vocal. Fucking cut one of them and take it into a different song. You literally pay people to understand the basics of making a record. There are always a bunch of riffs and choruseslaying around, switching dongs day to day.
- If my review were to end here, I wouldn't be disappointed. Battles had songs like Underneath my skin or what the fuck. Do any of you remember it? I know I stopped listening to that piece of uninspiring shit after my second whole listen of the record. You keep throwing around the title of the "worst IF song", but the truth is, it belongs to such songs which you don't even remember because it's not even B-side material.
Anyway, the actual sad thing is that the fucking chorus (or at least the "This is the time..." part) is 10/10 in my book. It gives me Trigger-like chills, and it must be pretty fucking cool to singalong live. But the rest... again, you PAY people to see this.
At least this will be decent live, but we are definitely kept in the dark about how the record will sound. It can go either way boyz (and scene girl).
Oh, and the album artwork is cool. I guess my only complaint about the titles is that there is no new Jester song. How can you put a guy with a Jester mask on the cover and do a Jester song? Hello?!
Holy shit, I actually hate this ending. I was about to press Post Reply when it come to that again. It reminded me from WTWE, which is the worst song off SC. Man, I fucking HATE that song.
slave has a new favorite video lol