New album Foregone out February 2023

[DE4life]

ck when I saw them live, the rest of the audience was kinda confused when Anders said they’d be going back to the beginning for one song, with a couple people thinking it was going to be Behind Space. I don’t entirely blame them though, especially since Subterranean is technically an EP even though we see it as a bit of an honorary album here.

It got some cheers from the audience when I went, more than during other performances, but the reception definitely paled in comparison to the rest of the setlist.

There will always be people like us there who appreciate various parts of their discography - from the oldest to the more recent stuff (although for me mainly up to 2011, and ITM to a degree) - but even with the crappier new songs, I know most of them at the very least and can tolerate some of them live. I think we're a dying breed though as far as the IF fanbase is concerned. For most people it's "the hits" and then a specific part of their career - whether it's the earlier days (few people like this would bother attending though, as IF play so few older tracks), the early-2000s era, the mid-late 2000s era or some oddities who actually like SC and/or Battles.

Honestly, I think that at this point, that much is just their lazy attempts to hype up new music. I do think that they feel limited by their older music— And that’s genuinely understandable, it seems like they want to just make whatever these days and let it be. I’m down to stand by that method so long the result is good.

Shame the results haven’t been good most of the time this past decade.

I've been fine with them promoting and doing whatever they want, generally, I just wish they'd stop putting down the older material. They're far from the only band to do it, but it's annoying nonetheless. Also I really disapprove of the whole Benson connection. Even with Siren Charms, at least it was their glorious failure. They wrote and directed it, no matter how shitty the end result. Everything that came afterwards is so influenced by Benson and co that it doesn't feel remotely authentic anymore, and that more than anything is why I struggle to stay interested in their newer stuff. I'd have more respect if it was just them, regardless of the end result. The worst thing is, all they had to do was let Engelin or even Tanner have greater influence on the music, rather than rigidly stick to the Anders/Bjorn/Benson formula.

That reminds me of how so many people went into Letters by Cyhra expecting the next old IF-styled melodeath album… When Jake E was the vocalist. I genuinely think that save for not getting some really cool progressive songwriting, we got as close as we’d get to that with songs like Karma. Sure, THE exists, but I think they’re far more 2000s-2010s melodeath than classic, and that isn’t me complaining.

LTM had a lot of unrealistic expectations, but understandable considering Jesper and Peter were both involved. It was never going to be classic IF 2.0 - as you say, the vocalist alone makes that an impossibility. Even if the music was technically all Clayman era excellence, clean vocals totally changes the dynamic. As it turned out it was melodic and eclectic, but in a more melodic/alt/gothic metal kind of way. I've got all of the time in the world for Letters as an album, I think it's a great creative effort, but I didn't go into it assuming it was going to be a classic IF rebirth.

Colony and Clayman (Colony specifically) was full of wonderfully progressive songwriting, particularly in terms of structures and solos, and I just really like that. For that, I think Colony actually does work as a natural transition from Whoracle to Clayman since Whoracle had some progressivisms of its own too.

I agree Colony definitely acts well as a bridge. It sheds the folky elements entirely (Pallars Anders Visa aside), but retains the heaviness of Whoracle. Clayman then loses some of the heaviness in favour of an incredible amount of melodic guitar work. It's like they took the praise for the melodic elements of previous albums and said "we're turning that up to 11 and the whole album is basically going to be this". I love it and it remains my favourite IF album, but I can also see why it burned Jesper and Bjorn out. I can also see why it frustrated Anders, as he basically became a sideshow to the guitar work. Unfortunately they severely shifted way too far in the other direction to compensate, only briefly getting the balance right on Come Clarity (insofar as balancing the guitar melodies with the vocals).

Come Clarity, especially after having dug into so much 2000s metalcore, is nothing short of quintessential melodic metalcore. I genuinely have no idea how they went from STYE (Which I do still like as an unfortunate nu metal fan) to it, then to ASOP. Peak songwriting, peak lyrics, genuinely fantastic vocals from Anders, and perfect production for the compositions we ended up with. It’s crazy that they ended up making the perfect album for its time at that time specifically, but I really do think it threads that needle between screamo hardcore but heavier/more metal and more mainstream, post-hardcore stylizing but with great riffs and real metal songwriting. Weirdly enough, when I think of the kind of music I’d envision bands who were inspired by TJR and Clayman making, this is it.

What's funnier is that Come Clarity was the band as its most divided. Anders recording his vocals totally separate from everyone else and basically having zero input into the instrumental creative process. As it turned out, that was probably the best way to do things for them. ASOP was the opposite, according to the band anyway, and look at the end result. Neutered.

And having dug into a lot of 2000s metalcore and post-hardcore, that much just makes it so much clearer how ASOP failed. Weirdly, the pre-release EP is full of absolutely worthy CC successors, combining CC’s sound with a bit more of that post-hardcore-inspired MySpace metalcore sound. Pretty sure Abnegation actually had a demo put onto MySpace too.

I just don't know what they were thinking, honestly. The Mirror's Truth EP was pretty cool in terms of the songs - but there was signs of things to come as far as the production is concerned. Eraser has this bizarrely chunky sound which sounds like nothing on Come Clarity, even though the song is really cool. The Abnegation demo was better than the one that ended up on the EP - again, production got worse somehow, more compressed and took away some of the song's power. They just seemed obsessed with compressing the sound and removing all bite from the guitars, which bled into ASOP as an album and made it sound much worse than it actually was. ASOP songs live sound really good for the most part - Mirror's Truth has much more crunch. I will never understand how they heard the final mix of that album and thought "yes, that's it". On the other hand, I could say the same for Reroute and STYE, so, I think they just suck at judging the sound of their own music. Probably why all of their albums have such wildly different sonic representations.

Lyrically and vocally, yeah, total disaster and little that can save those elements on ASOP. You hear Anders on the studio diary episodes and it all makes sense though. He has zero technique. The vocal producer must have been thinking "what the fuck". On the other hand, others seem to think it's transcendental beauty, so maybe it's just me.

 

[Xpyro125]

I think the people that go actually want "the hits" so when the band pulls out something super rare, like December Flower, they don't know how to react because they're there for whatever video they saw on YouTube. I'm sure there are some diehards there too, but even them, the majority still prefer their 2000's-present stuff. And that's fine. I mean, that's what the band has cultivated. but they're trying to go on this nostalgia trip except they alienated the base that would be interested in that a long, long time ago. There's a reason that bands CAN do that stuff. Dark Tranquillity, for example, who was just doing a tour in support of both Character and The Gallery -- they never made their old fans feel like they were idiots for liking those albums, or even preferring them to their newer stuff. How many bands are playing "Album A, B or C" in it's entirety for their fans? A shit ton. And they're usually old albums. And they can do it because, again, they didn't push their fan base away.

If In Flames did decide to do some tour where they played TJR or Whoracle or Colony in full, I would go. But how many other fans from back then would? I don't know any personally. So you'd end up with a club full of people who either didn't know that was the point of the tour or thought "oh, I'll go check it out anyway", not realizing that those songs are nothing like what they're used to. And then what do you get? A room full of people sitting on their hands not reacting, which is where that glorious sound byte of Anders saying "nobody cares when we play those songs" came from. Yeah, because YOU made them stop caring.

Fucking guy.

I think for a band with an especially storied history, it’s bound to eventually become just playing the hits. It’s the singles that people end up remembering the most, be it because of how often they’re performed, the fact that they were released before their albums, the music videos, or something else entirely. While I get how Anders and Björn felt limited by the older music and might even resent it at times, I think what Stanne and Dark Tranquillity have done particularly well is point out how their older catalogue’s strengths when reminiscing or doing interviews. Anders never talks about what makes any of the old albums special or distinct, and Björn doesn’t talk much about music in general from what I’ve seen. Clayman 2020 was an especially horrific misfire since the possibility of having actually good rerecordings to have old songs be known better for live play’s sake is off the table now. Should they have cared enough, Lunar Strain 2024 could’ve been a cool thing. Imagine Johannes Bergion conducting the string solo for In Flames, the intro to Starforsaken, or the entirety of Hårgalåten. I get why they didn’t want to do Clayman 2020 and why they didn’t put any love into it, but I wish they did. I think if they had been more welcoming and receptive to their older music and their older base, the older fans would be a lot more likely to come back around. Foregone was the perfect opportunity to really start that, especially with the band playing a ton of older songs in its tour cycle. Shame it’s a bunch of empty platitudes in the end.

Thinking about it, I genuinely believe doing a 30th anniversary tour of Whoracle should the band still perform live in 2027 would be really cool. Doing any older, less iconic album (Like how DT did with Character) could provide a ton of intrigue for newer fans who haven’t delved that far back. I think Whoracle would be a genuinely fantastic candidate for where Anders is vocally and for having Foregone be what it is stylistically. Show the people, you know, an actually fantastic, dynamic melodic death metal album. Give us Jotun, Food For the Gods, Morphing Into Primal, and Episode 666 live again, man. The Hive is a great song, but I’d love to hear it being performed alongside other songs from the album.

I think another part of the problem is how eclectic the band's output is within the metal genre. Lunar Strain is somewhat primitive MDM. Subterranean is more like gothic MDM. TJR & Whoracle what you'd probably consider classic MDM from Gothenburg around that time period, with a distinctly Swedish folky touch on TJR especially.

Easy to forget that even Colony and Clayman divided the fanbase way back in the day. This was a transition into what would be considered melodic metal with harsh vocals. Still technically MDM by virtue of the structures, but it's hard to compare to TJR and Whoracle and say it's a similar sound. TJR and Colony are audibly very different albums, and Clayman is even further away from the TJR/Whoracle sound. Up until that point though, still top-tier music if you enjoy melody and lyrical depth.

Then you've got Reroute which is still the Clayman formula in many respects but majorly simplified. There's so much melody packed into Clayman, and Reroute tones that down a lot - or buries cool leads into the mix where they can barely be heard, unlike Clayman where every lead and melody is at the forefront of the mix. It's a conscious shift to allow the vocals to carry more of the melodic weight, which... well, your mileage may vary - and for many it did, back then. I like Reroute and always have, but nostalgia may play a big part in that. If I'd been an In Flames fan from '96 or something it might have hit me in a much more negative way.

As time’s gone on, I’ve realizing just how great of a divide there is between Colony and Clayman musically. Clayman not only isn’t a part of the lyrical/thematic trilogy of the past three albums, instead having far more in common with the subsequent albums, but it’s pretty much as classic and as iconic of melodeath as it is because of Fredrik Nordstrom himself. Yeah, he strongarmed the band into using harmonized leads on Colony too, but Clayman has so many stylistic similarities to Reroute that I just didn’t realize due to the production, more prevalent harmonized leads, and better compositions in general. Without Nordstrom, we would’ve gotten Reroute-styled Clayman then, and had they stuck with him going forward, the gradual transition to their newer style would’ve kept quite a few more fans around. Yeah, he was a hardass, and yeah, they wanted to enjoy making their art. They’re in the right as musicians to not like working with him. However, I think in regards to their art, he was insanely in-tune with how they should’ve been, and he has my respect for it. It’s pure laziness that dictated them not having harmonized leads on Reroute, not live play. After all, Trigger was a single and a big song live, and it had harmonized leads. Cloud Connected had harmonized leads in the solo too.

I’m rambling. It’s a shame that Reroute’s production generally sucks— I’d say it’s macerated by compression, but every IF album is. Difference is, albums like Clayman and Come Clarity had better did so without too many similar frequencies muddling the mix, with CC particularly still having as much compression as Reroute, and had better guitar tones to boot. It has a lot of the same problems as ASOP musically, funnily enough, but I’ll take Reroute’s production over ASOP’s and ASOP’s mixing over Reroute’s easily.

I used to love Reroute, even if it was lower on my list than the rest of the albums, but now it’s just an album I like. There’s a lot to love about it, but it could’ve been leagues better than it was. And unlike STYE, which fully embraced a distinct sort of atmosphere and sonic style, Reroute is just alt metal-y metalcore. I don’t think it’s bad for that, but I think STYE embracing it’s flaws to turn them into stylistic benefits worked out weirdly well for it.

STYE is a full descent into American-style metal. Melodies and songs in general greatly simplified to their absolutely basic elements. Again, I don't hate the album nowadays. I appreciate it for what it's trying to do, but my goodness, what a departure from the likes of Clayman - which, let's be clear, had the exact same band members and had only been released four years prior. It's little wonder many fans at that time were utterly crushed upon hearing it.

I don’t think I can ever quite imagine what it’s like to be an old In Flames fan going into STYE… Save for sort of speedrunning that with Cyhra and modern metalcore bands. Small aside, but as someone who never listened to Devil Wears Prada before, listen to Plagues, then listen to So Low from their new album. Fun fact: Their guitarist didn’t even get to write for their new album. It’s been a while since I’ve felt visceral hatred towards a medium of art, but I felt it again there.

Compositionally, while STYE is a bit less technical than Reroute and contains fewer instances of the classic In Flames melodies (Egonomic’s riff, for instance) that kept Reroute sort of feeling anything similar to their older works, I don’t think it’s actually a big departure from Reroute. I think the production does so much of the heavy lifting with making STYE what it is, and thank God for that, because it would’ve been a Siren Charms-tier dogshit album if it had Reroute’s production. I love the atmospheric, spacious, echoey, submarine-sounding stylization STYE has so much, it’s so distinct even among other nu metal albums. I should hate the guitar tone, I should hate the kit’s sound (Particularly the snare), but everything works so well together. I just wish the bass was a bit higher in the mix.

It’s weird because STYE simultaneously represents old-new In Flames perfectly and in the absolutely worst way. Musically, I think the best way to describe this album is as a phenomenon, and at least it’s anything but boring. It’s genuinely a shame that songs like F(r)iend, The Quiet Place, Touch of Red, and Borders and Shading have been dropped from live play because they’re such interesting songs. Hell, they didn’t even play My Sweet Shadow or any STYE song when I saw them live, and that’s fucked. Maybe they would’ve bored Chris too much, who knows. F(r)iend in particular would fit the Foregone era perfectly though.

SOAPF is quite unique, almost an AOR vibe mixed with a distinctly Bjorn-flavour of In Flames - which makes sense as he wrote all the music, with Jesper having departed. Very different again, but better production and the music was distinctive if a little repetitive at times in terms of riffs and structures. A sign of things to come as far as Bjorn was concerned.

Aside from The Puzzle and Enter Tragedy having far too similar of opening riffs, I never really felt like anything on SoaPF blended in together or was too indistinct. Fear is the Weakness and Dead Ships feel like sibling songs to me, if you will, but that’s an association I just enjoy making on albums.

In any case, as much as people love Pinball Map, and as much as I love his contributions to CC, this was peak Björn. Hell, it was peak Anders vocally (Aside from CC) in the new era too. Shame it was Björn’s swan song more or less— It feels like every time these musicians, be it him, Anders, Jake E., etc. have something to prove, they prove it on the first album they feel the need to do it on then just carelessly drop off afterwards.

SC, a total clusterfuck of an attempt at an album. I don't need to say anymore. Almost universally despised on release, even by nu In Flames fans. Terrible decision making all around, and seems to have destroyed Anders & Bjorn's confidence in themselves as from that point onwards we've had Howard Benson's In Flames. It's hard to even classify Battles as an In Flames album with its California pop-metal vibe and wafer-thin production. Unforigveable that significant amounts of the tracks were penned by Benson and his cronies. To the bin with this garbage.

I’ve seriously come to terms with Siren Charms recently by seeing it as both just an alt rock album and by being grateful for it being a pre-Benson IF album. It’s not the In Flames I know and love, but it’s at least the In Flames I know. I think its reputation as an album is completely warranted, as it’s a genuinely horrific In Flames album, and it’s a horrific metal album if you consider it metal, but I don’t. Maybe it could be considered alt metal, but there are so many hard rock sensibilities to it that it’s just 50/50 to me at most.

Either way… Perfectly hated yet seriously underappreciated at the same time. Hell, even if it was to get appreciated more as time goes on, I think the warranted hate should remain. It’s sloppy, it’s bad, and I enjoy it a ton unironically. It’s not even a guilty pleasure. I think the In Flames of old and new were both completely dead by this point, but it’s still the first iteration of modern In Flames to me, and I wish it kept going in the direction Siren Charms spearheaded.

Battles, meanwhile. I’m sorry, it’s just the true end to In Flames to me. It just is. I say that with The Truth having gotten me into the band back in 2016. I’m sure Howard Benson’s a decent guy, but I hate how he killed the band artistically. I really, truly hate what he did to them. The genuineness and integrity of In Flames as artists specifically died when they picked him up, and I blame all three of the guys for that. I think the modern fanbase, the ones who constantly clamor that they’ve returned to Clayman (when 9/10 of them have probably never even listened to Clayman in its entirety) with every fucking lead single, are truly symptoms of his infection, and these are the goddamn people who won’t recognize any regular song pre-ITM.

There will always be people like us there who appreciate various parts of their discography - from the oldest to the more recent stuff (although for me mainly up to 2011, and ITM to a degree) - but even with the crappier new songs, I know most of them at the very least and can tolerate some of them live. I think we're a dying breed though as far as the IF fanbase is concerned. For most people it's "the hits" and then a specific part of their career - whether it's the earlier days (few people like this would bother attending though, as IF play so few older tracks), the early-2000s era, the mid-late 2000s era or some oddities who actually like SC and/or Battles.

Yeah, I’d have to agree. Granted, I think that ends up being the trajectory for most bands (Or even series of media), save for if there’s some sort of channel that deep dives every last thing they’ve made and every little detail about them. I’m pretty sure In Flames doesn’t have any sort of Tiktok fanbase (Thank Christ) or YouTube video essayer, so yeah. No seeing people jumping up to Free Fall or Vacuum anytime soon.

I've been fine with them promoting and doing whatever they want, generally, I just wish they'd stop putting down the older material. They're far from the only band to do it, but it's annoying nonetheless. Also I really disapprove of the whole Benson connection. Even with Siren Charms, at least it was their glorious failure. They wrote and directed it, no matter how shitty the end result. Everything that came afterwards is so influenced by Benson and co that it doesn't feel remotely authentic anymore, and that more than anything is why I struggle to stay interested in their newer stuff. I'd have more respect if it was just them, regardless of the end result. The worst thing is, all they had to do was let Engelin or even Tanner have greater influence on the music, rather than rigidly stick to the Anders/Bjorn/Benson formula.

Yeah, pretty much. Even then, Battles was at least melodic and interesting with its trashy pop metal flair, and ITM is better than it has any right to be, even if it hasn’t really aged too gracefully for me. Funnily enough, things like Wallflower and IAA’s riff (Which I will always make sure to remind people is ripped from a Gardenian song), as well as the guitar solos on Foregone and Cynosure’s drum solo, have so much character and life to me. Aside from his work on SoaPF, which was peak Björn, he’s absolutely at his best when collaborating with another guitarist, and I think the band is entirely at its best when everyone has input and their own spin to put on things. Fact of the matter is that we’re used to what Anders and Björn do, with Anders sounding more stale with his changeups (To me, at least, the general public seems to love it) and Björn straight up admitting to not listening to new music and having that show, and if they aren’t willing to grow as artists specifically… That’s that. And that’s before even factoring in Benson.

LTM had a lot of unrealistic expectations, but understandable considering Jesper and Peter were both involved. It was never going to be classic IF 2.0 - as you say, the vocalist alone makes that an impossibility. Even if the music was technically all Clayman era excellence, clean vocals totally changes the dynamic. As it turned out it was melodic and eclectic, but in a more melodic/alt/gothic metal kind of way. I've got all of the time in the world for Letters as an album, I think it's a great creative effort, but I didn't go into it assuming it was going to be a classic IF rebirth.

And honestly, I think every IF and Amaranthe fan who tempered their expectation were the exact people who should fall in love with and have fallen in love with Letters. I think hating Letters because it’s not IF 2.0 is fruitless and reductive; everyone who dislikes it because it’s just not something they enjoy are valid to me though.

I agree Colony definitely acts well as a bridge. It sheds the folky elements entirely (Pallars Anders Visa aside), but retains the heaviness of Whoracle. Clayman then loses some of the heaviness in favour of an incredible amount of melodic guitar work. It's like they took the praise for the melodic elements of previous albums and said "we're turning that up to 11 and the whole album is basically going to be this". I love it and it remains my favourite IF album, but I can also see why it burned Jesper and Bjorn out. I can also see why it frustrated Anders, as he basically became a sideshow to the guitar work. Unfortunately they severely shifted way too far in the other direction to compensate, only briefly getting the balance right on Come Clarity (insofar as balancing the guitar melodies with the vocals).

Maybe it’s just me having a different perception of Anders than everyone else, but even though he was certainly frustrated with it, I never really saw him as being to blame for how things ended up until Siren Charms. Admittedly, it’s been years since I’ve watched the behind the scenes stuff for ASOP, so maybe he was the band leader at the time, maybe there was none, but I always saw that album as a bitter compromise between him, Björn, and Jesper that nobody won out with. To me, I never saw In Flames radically shifting because Anders wanted it to become a vocal-centric band, I saw it as radical shifting because Björn and Jesper were lazy drunks (And I’m not judging them personally, I used to be a bitter alcoholic myself, but I will judge them as musicians) even back during Whoracle’s making, who were whipped into shape by Nordstrom while they were with him up until they made the absolutely elite Come Clarity. I can get them being burned out, yeah, but I also just got the impression that they just didn’t want it enough as artists. Instead, they only wanted it enough as band members who would make stuff they’d enjoy performing live, and I do think there’s a big difference there. I get it on an empathetic level, but I do wish they made Reroute and STYE as incredible as they could’ve and should’ve ended up as.

What's funnier is that Come Clarity was the band as its most divided. Anders recording his vocals totally separate from everyone else and basically having zero input into the instrumental creative process. As it turned out, that was probably the best way to do things for them. ASOP was the opposite, according to the band anyway, and look at the end result. Neutered.

100%.

I just don't know what they were thinking, honestly. The Mirror's Truth EP was pretty cool in terms of the songs - but there was signs of things to come as far as the production is concerned. Eraser has this bizarrely chunky sound which sounds like nothing on Come Clarity, even though the song is really cool. The Abnegation demo was better than the one that ended up on the EP - again, production got worse somehow, more compressed and took away some of the song's power. They just seemed obsessed with compressing the sound and removing all bite from the guitars, which bled into ASOP as an album and made it sound much worse than it actually was.

That might actually be it. There’s a massive punch to all of the EP songs that’s missing from most of the tracks on ASOP, and there’s such a thin, scratchy tone to its guitars. I think I’ve honed in on the scratchy, muddied sound, but not so much just how thin the guitars really are. The EP just doesn’t suffer from that. The lyrics are also just leagues better on the EP too. It’s weird that the EP’s songs feel like they have more similar lyrics to Come Clarity in their sort of judgment, while ASOP just ends up being more whiny than anything. Disconnected does all of ASOP’s poor parts genuinely well, while Move Through Me feels like it could be a song from the EP. Weird.
Speaking of demos, even though I prefer Abnegation’s final version to the demo, it’s pretty cool that Bam Margera of all people put its demo on one of his compilation albums. Don’t really know him, but it’s cool. Additionally, I just found a demo for Scorn of all songs, and holy shit, its verses are so fucking cool, I wish they made the album version like it. They’re super industrial, and they have some pure screaming from Anders that feels like CC, I love them so much. Genuinely wish that industrial sound bled more into the song like how it kinda does on Colony’s title track. Hearing Scorn live made me enjoy the track, but the demo’s made me positively love it.

ASOP songs live sound really good for the most part - Mirror's Truth has much more crunch. I will never understand how they heard the final mix of that album and thought "yes, that's it". On the other hand, I could say the same for Reroute and STYE, so, I think they just suck at judging the sound of their own music. Probably why all of their albums have such wildly different sonic representations.

Lyrically and vocally, yeah, total disaster and little that can save those elements on ASOP. You hear Anders on the studio diary episodes and it all makes sense though. He has zero technique. The vocal producer must have been thinking "what the fuck". On the other hand, others seem to think it's transcendental beauty, so maybe it's just me.

Well, we’re in this together then. I don’t like ASOP’s vocals much either, and I fucking hate the guitar tone, production, mixing too. Cheers.

I do love how STYE’s sound turned out though, I’ll always defend it. But fuck ASOP.

 

[The Grayfox]

Yeah, good point about Anders and Bjorn never really lifting up the old albums. The most I've ever heard them say is "I love those old albums." They never go into why they supposedly love them. It's always just a quick snippet.

ASOP is a really weird one. It also kind of fits in with what In Flames does: they release an album that people seem to like and then they fuck it up with the next one. When Come Clarity came out, the fan base was actually pretty good with it. I remember hearing Crawl Through Knives the first time and thinking "ok, this is actually really cool." They kind of brought back that balance of aggression and melody. I think most people assumed they'd continue in that direction. But they didn't. It's the same sort of thing that happened with SOAPF and Siren Charms afterwards. Honestly, it'll probably happen yet again with Foregone. Not that I like Foregone all that much, because I don't, but it seems to be looked at by a large portion of the fan base as a "return to form" (it isn't). I would bet that the next album is going to go in a different direction. The reason Foregone feels so phony is largely because it is. I will die on that hill too. I'm not at all convinced that they like the album, in the same way as Battles. They were on tours supporting Foregone and sometimes only playing 2 songs from it. It wasn't promoted well at all. When you've made something you're proud of, something you're excited to take on the road, you don't half-ass it.

 

[Xpyro125]

Yeah, good point about Anders and Bjorn never really lifting up the old albums. The most I've ever heard them say is "I love those old albums." They never go into why they supposedly love them. It's always just a quick snippet.

I think I only touched on it a little bit, but it’s probably caused a lot of newer fans to look at the classic albums and just see a blob of the same sort of stuff over and over when all four of them are actually surprisingly distinct from one another. I think to older fans, IF doing something different with each album kills the ability to get invested into them, but for me it’s really cool, especially since I’m able to sort of group each album into twos (If we’re counting Subterranean, anyways). When I really got into the band, I got into the newer and older stuff at the same time— Hell, CC, Colony, and Clayman got me into death metal, black metal, and anything generally heavy to begin with. Only thing I’d say was really heavy that I listened to beforehand was Blood Mountain by Mastodon, and even then it was a bit much back in the day.

Sometimes I wonder if for many newer fans, they feel a similar sort of way as I do or as I did when first getting into the band.

ASOP is a really weird one. It also kind of fits in with what In Flames does: they release an album that people seem to like and then they fuck it up with the next one. When Come Clarity came out, the fan base was actually pretty good with it. I remember hearing Crawl Through Knives the first time and thinking "ok, this is actually really cool." They kind of brought back that balance of aggression and melody. I think most people assumed they'd continue in that direction. But they didn't.

It’s kinda frustrating, but back when I first got into the band I saw quite a lot of people love ASOP and think CC was either mid or dogshit. Yeah, it was nearly a decade ago, and those were generally people who didn’t love a lot of IF’s works, but it stuck with me for a while. I don’t really know how the fanbase felt about everything upon release, but I assumed the common opinion was split sort of down the middle until joining this forum.

It's the same sort of thing that happened with SOAPF and Siren Charms afterwards. Honestly, it'll probably happen yet again with Foregone. Not that I like Foregone all that much, because I don't, but it seems to be looked at by a large portion of the fan base as a "return to form" (it isn't). I would bet that the next album is going to go in a different direction. The reason Foregone feels so phony is largely because it is. I will die on that hill too. I'm not at all convinced that they like the album, in the same way as Battles. They were on tours supporting Foregone and sometimes only playing 2 songs from it. It wasn't promoted well at all. When you've made something you're proud of, something you're excited to take on the road, you don't half-ass it.

Honestly, I hope they don’t stick with the direction they’ve established with Foregone, but I get the feeling they will for one more album, just a little more or less alt metal-ly. To me it isn’t just phony, it’s largely uninteresting. The ‘death metal’ stylistics are done boringly, and few bits of alt metal you can tell they wanted to do are fewer and further between than before.

While I think the timing of THE and Foregone are just a happy accident, I’m not 100% sure when it comes to the timing of them actually going back to their roots a little for their setlists. Sure, Tanner was the one who wanted Stand Ablaze, but bringing back songs like Episode 666, December Flower, and Leeches (I got to hear Leeches live, it was incredible)? I dunno, man.

ITM seems like the exact kind of album they’re really passionate about doing, that’s where the balance lies for them. The Benson trilogy aren’t really stylistically different, and like with the rest of IF’s discography, the production’s been carrying the sound for those albums. As I’ve listened to more and more music recently, that’s the realization I’ve made, so I get the feeling we won’t get anything actually adventurous or stylistically different with the next album. No SoaPF 2-type sound, no shoegaze, no industrial verses like Scorn, nothing that would really be a creative risk for them to genuinely try to actually pull off. I don’t blame Anders for that at all, he’s put in a ton of effort to be able to growl objectively well again, even if I don’t feel like his vocals carry emotion well since then. I blame Björn more than anything. He doesn’t listen to new music, I doubt he ever feels inspired to do anything new or different, and it’s all just pretty similar stuff now. Just give him a wah pedal, and he’ll be happy, that’s all he wants.

 

[DE4life]

I think for a band with an especially storied history, it’s bound to eventually become just playing the hits. It’s the singles that people end up remembering the most, be it because of how often they’re performed, the fact that they were released before their albums, the music videos, or something else entirely. While I get how Anders and Björn felt limited by the older music and might even resent it at times, I think what Stanne and Dark Tranquillity have done particularly well is point out how their older catalogue’s strengths when reminiscing or doing interviews. Anders never talks about what makes any of the old albums special or distinct, and Björn doesn’t talk much about music in general from what I’ve seen.

Yeah and I get that, although I also wish they hadn't produced so many fucking albums, honestly. It just meant that great songs were retired for mediocre crap simply because the mediocre songs were new. It's nice that IF have a lot of songs, but a lot of them don't necessarily need to exist. It kind of forces them to just take the hits from each album live, because they have so many. It doesn't give them much room to devote any significant time on any tour to some of the underrated stuff in their discography like Minus, As the Future Repeats Today, Dead Eternity, etc.

Should they have cared enough, Lunar Strain 2024 could’ve been a cool thing. Imagine Johannes Bergion conducting the string solo for In Flames, the intro to Starforsaken, or the entirety of Hårgalåten.

Honestly I don't want Anders and Bjorn anywhere near Lunar Strain. Lord only knows how they would butcher it. Also, frankly, that album has nothing to do with them. They weren't members of the band at that time and have zero to do with anything on it. If they want to bust out Behind Space or Clad in Shadows in a live setting, fine, at least those were remade on Colony. Actually rerecording that album, though - no. Not now. The time has passed for them to do the old albums any justice, and I would only have accepted it whilst Jesper was still in the band, as he actually had a huge part in creating Lunar (and Sub).

If anyone was going to remake or pay tribute to Lunar, I'd want it to be THE. For a start, you have two people in that band who were actually on the record in Mikael and Jesper. Most importantly, they'd treat it with respect rather than trying to Bensonise the original music.

Thinking about it, I genuinely believe doing a 30th anniversary tour of Whoracle should the band still perform live in 2027 would be really cool. Doing any older, less iconic album (Like how DT did with Character) could provide a ton of intrigue for newer fans who haven’t delved that far back. I think Whoracle would be a genuinely fantastic candidate for where Anders is vocally and for having Foregone be what it is stylistically. Show the people, you know, an actually fantastic, dynamic melodic death metal album. Give us Jotun, Food For the Gods, Morphing Into Primal, and Episode 666 live again, man. The Hive is a great song, but I’d love to hear it being performed alongside other songs from the album.

The thing with Whoracle is that a significant amount of it was written by Jesper and Glenn - again, two people who are no longer with the band. I'm not as against it as with Lunar - as at least Anders and Bjorn did contribute to Whoracle - but it'd still feel a bit hollow to me with the current lineup. Pretty much any tour doing one of the classic albums would, unfortunately. I'd be down for them doing a 15th anniversary tour of SOAPF though. Nowhere near enough of the songs on there got the love they deserved in a live environment - mainly just Fear is the Weakness, WTDSD, Deliver Us and All For Me. That album is very much Bjorn's baby, so no issues with the current lineup celebrating it.

As time’s gone on, I’ve realizing just how great of a divide there is between Colony and Clayman musically. Clayman not only isn’t a part of the lyrical/thematic trilogy of the past three albums, instead having far more in common with the subsequent albums, but it’s pretty much as classic and as iconic of melodeath as it is because of Fredrik Nordstrom himself. Yeah, he strongarmed the band into using harmonized leads on Colony too, but Clayman has so many stylistic similarities to Reroute that I just didn’t realize due to the production, more prevalent harmonized leads, and better compositions in general. Without Nordstrom, we would’ve gotten Reroute-styled Clayman then, and had they stuck with him going forward, the gradual transition to their newer style would’ve kept quite a few more fans around. Yeah, he was a hardass, and yeah, they wanted to enjoy making their art. They’re in the right as musicians to not like working with him. However, I think in regards to their art, he was insanely in-tune with how they should’ve been, and he has my respect for it. It’s pure laziness that dictated them not having harmonized leads on Reroute, not live play. After all, Trigger was a single and a big song live, and it had harmonized leads. Cloud Connected had harmonized leads in the solo too.

I’m rambling. It’s a shame that Reroute’s production generally sucks— I’d say it’s macerated by compression, but every IF album is. Difference is, albums like Clayman and Come Clarity had better did so without too many similar frequencies muddling the mix, with CC particularly still having as much compression as Reroute, and had better guitar tones to boot. It has a lot of the same problems as ASOP musically, funnily enough, but I’ll take Reroute’s production over ASOP’s and ASOP’s mixing over Reroute’s easily.

I used to love Reroute, even if it was lower on my list than the rest of the albums, but now it’s just an album I like. There’s a lot to love about it, but it could’ve been leagues better than it was. And unlike STYE, which fully embraced a distinct sort of atmosphere and sonic style, Reroute is just alt metal-y metalcore. I don’t think it’s bad for that, but I think STYE embracing it’s flaws to turn them into stylistic benefits worked out weirdly well for it.

Colony and Clayman often get lumped together, but stylistically they are quite different albums. Colony retains the heaviness of Whoracle whilst bringing in a more traditional melodic metal sound. Clayman loses a lot of heaviness and massively ramps up the melodic guitar leads to almost insane levels. You do hear similarities at points on both albums, of course, but it's not like Clayman is Colony Part 2. Not even close. Thematically yes, totally different - Colony being the end of this trilogy of albums vaguely focusing on humankind becoming slaves to machines. Clayman marks the beginning of us being given a front row seat to Anders Friden's Life is Painful Show. This is when he did it well, though, with creative writing and thoughtful metaphors. Before it devolved to "ohhh I feel like shit, but at least I feel something".

Whilst the band are self-admittedly lazy, if they genuinely really didn't enjoy the Clayman sessions then I get why they wanted to try something different. Nordstrom pushed them to be their absolute best, but if working with him meant they grew to hate and dread coming to the studio then it's unlikely future output would have continued to be decent. It might not have continued at all. I understand why they went a different route - although I can't help but wonder if they could have reached a compromise with Nordstrom to make things less difficult. Unfortunately, Nordstrom had more respect for In Flames' art than the band themselves did, which has become evident with the way they speak about their past work.

Maybe it’s just me having a different perception of Anders than everyone else, but even though he was certainly frustrated with it, I never really saw him as being to blame for how things ended up until Siren Charms. Admittedly, it’s been years since I’ve watched the behind the scenes stuff for ASOP, so maybe he was the band leader at the time, maybe there was none, but I always saw that album as a bitter compromise between him, Björn, and Jesper that nobody won out with. To me, I never saw In Flames radically shifting because Anders wanted it to become a vocal-centric band, I saw it as radical shifting because Björn and Jesper were lazy drunks (And I’m not judging them personally, I used to be a bitter alcoholic myself, but I will judge them as musicians) even back during Whoracle’s making, who were whipped into shape by Nordstrom while they were with him up until they made the absolutely elite Come Clarity. I can get them being burned out, yeah, but I also just got the impression that they just didn’t want it enough as artists. Instead, they only wanted it enough as band members who would make stuff they’d enjoy performing live, and I do think there’s a big difference there. I get it on an empathetic level, but I do wish they made Reroute and STYE as incredible as they could’ve and should’ve ended up as.

Oh I 100% agree. Piecing together all of the interviews from then until now, it's clear that Jesper & Bjorn were the major forces behind the sound becoming less complex. I'm sure Anders was happy to fill the void as he clearly wanted to do more, but that was something that was simply a neccessity with the guitar work purposefully taking a backseat. The only album I blame Anders for is Siren Charms, as everything points to him being the mastermind behind that creation. Come Clarity was Jesper & Bjorn's last hurrah, to prove to the doubters (and maybe Anders too) that they still had it. Bjorn had his own individual last hurrah with SOAPF.

Hearing Scorn live made me enjoy the track, but the demo’s made me positively love it.

The Scorn demo is indeed very cool. I wish we had more stuff like this - I'm sure there must be other demos of songs that the band have locked away, that have never seen the light of day. Give us an album like that rather than some shitty covers album or Clayman 2020, if you want to release something without putting too much effort in. The only other one I can think of off the top of my head is 'The Inborn Lifeless' demo of what would become 'Dead God in Me', and the 'Episode 666' demo which is pretty sick - Episode 666 if it had been on TJR, essentially. You've got a couple of different Abnegation demos as well - a MySpace version (which I think @eochaid sent to me) and the one from Bam's compilation. Again, very cool, wish we had more stuff like that.