New album Foregone out February 2023

Star wars in flames? :D Pretty cool video starting from 0:50 to 2:10. Heavy touch to Iron Man was so cool though, would make an awesome cover.
 
My copy of An Odd Story turned up today! Copy 201/1000. Only read bits so far but it's interesting.

The 2 things of note so far are

1: when discussing Daniels early bands before In Flames, when they mentioned Septic Broiler it described Anders as a "future acquaintance"

2: Daniel told the band he was leaving just after Siren Charms released, but said he'd stay on until the end of the tour cycle. He says his reason to leave was purely family (it goes into more detail) whereas Peter describes there as being a change in dynamic in the band that was also a reason for him leaving.
 
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My copy of An Odd Story turned up today! Copy 201/1000. Only read bits so far but it's interesting.

The 2 things of note so far are

1: when discussing Daniels early bands before In Flames, when they mentioned Septic Broiler it described Anders as a "future acquaintance"

2: Daniel told the band he was leaving just after Siren Charms released, but said he'd stay on until the end of the tour cycle. He says his reason to leave was purely family (it goes into more detail) whereas Peter describes there as being a change in dynamic in the band that was also a reason for him leaving.

It would be very cool if u can share some Anders stories from the book, I'm very curious about it. :D
Also it might be my bad English but cant quite understand the first line, future acquaintance? :D
 
It would be very cool if u can share some Anders stories from the book, I'm very curious about it. :D
Also it might be my bad English but cant quite understand the first line, future acquaintance? :D

If there are any I come across I'll put them here!

Acquaintance is an English for for someone you know but not quite a friend, like, a friend of a friend or a work mate. The way it was used could also not mean anything by it, but it's a very specific choice of words.
 
We tend to think that being in a band and touring together means that the different members are friends. But that is not necessarily true. Remember that it's a job. Not like any other but almost. And we aren't friends with all of our acquaintances in our daily jobs. That doesn't mean that we don't have a good relationship with them.
 
The general feeling I get is that these guys were all friends early on, but when in Flames became more of a business it caused some divides on a personal level. Certainly with Anders and Jesper, but maybe also eventually with Anders and Daniel/Peter/Niclas. People change when they get older, priorities shift and they can grow apart over time. We know from interviews with the band themselves that they were in a bad place around the time of the Come Clarity recordings, and although they seemed to patch things up for ASOP it seems like those lingering issues crept back after a while.

It's possible Anders and Daniel never considered each other friends, but I would guess at least from 1999-2004 they would have. After that who knows. The phrasing being used could also just be weird. People from that area of the world do sometimes use words that seem a little cold to a natural English speaker, and it isn't necessarily meant that way. Judging by Anders' public comments about THE and the general lack of interaction between him and his former band mates I think acquaintance would probably be an accurate description of those relationships now, unfortunately. I thought it was quite telling that Anders and Bjorn basically barely spoke to each other (according to Anders himself) during the entire COVID period. That's not really usual behaviour for people who are supposed to be friends, so it might be that even for Anders and Bjorn it's more of a business relationship than a friendship nowadays.
 
It would be very cool if u can share some Anders stories from the book, I'm very curious about it. :D
Also it might be my bad English but cant quite understand the first line, future acquaintance? :D

Another guy with bad English here, haha. :D

"He says his reason to leave was purely family (it goes into more detail) whereas Peter describes there as being a change in dynamic in the band that was also a reason for him leaving."

Is the pronoun "him" referencing to Peter himself or Daniel? I think Peter, but it could also be interpreted as Peter adding to Daniel's story(?)
 
Another guy with bad English here, haha. :D

"He says his reason to leave was purely family (it goes into more detail) whereas Peter describes there as being a change in dynamic in the band that was also a reason for him leaving."

Is the pronoun "him" referencing to Peter himself or Daniel? I think Peter, but it could also be interpreted as Peter adding to Daniel's story(?)

That's referring to Peter.

Daniel left pretty much purely for family reasons
Peter left for a combination of family reasons and feeling a change in the band that he didn't like
 
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Quite a good interview by Anders' standards. He went as far as to Name drop Battles as something that didn't work for the band and that writing with people outside the band didn't pay off, but that it was what management wanted.
The interviewer spent a good portion just fanboying about the band but that aside it was one of the more constructive interviews this year that didn't just repeat the same generic platitudes
 
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I'm baffled when I see retrospective takes talking about Battles being underrated. It just proves to me that there will always be a portion of a fanbase that believes even the biggest pile of trash is "underrated" just because they have the bad taste to actually like it. And for the record there's nothing wrong with that, I'm sure there's plenty of things I enjoy that are in reality total shit. I like listening to some Steps songs, for example, but I'm not about to announce "brooo, Deeper Shade of Blue is sooo underrated" just because I happen to like listening to it. Truth is it's just a generic pop song, and the truth is Battles is just a generic, soulless pop-metal record. If you like it then okay, you do you, but don't say it's underrated. It's deservedly considered to be a trash album because it is a trash album.
 
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I like things that are trash. I know that they are trash and I don't pretend them to be anything else than trash. That doesn't stop me from enjoying them.
 
Absolutely, but you wouldn't call them underrated. You accept that they're trash but we like what we like. What annoys me is when people try to make out these things are just misunderstood and there's a deeper level the average listener just doesn't get. There was a lot of that with Siren Charms, admittedly not so much with Battles but you do see it occasionally.
 
Yes. That's the point. We all have the right to like the crap. Just doj't pretend that it's the ultimate expression of music or whatever.
 
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Yes. That's the point. We all have the right to like the crap. Just doj't pretend that it's the ultimate expression of music or whatever.

Like me with Siren Charms. Album is like 25% what it could have been if given time to flesh the songs out and mix it properly.

But idk I still vibe with it every now and then.

Battles however is just a synthetic mess
 
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Like me with Siren Charms. Album is like 25% what it could have been if given time to flesh the songs out and mix it properly.

But idk I still vibe with it every now and then.

Battles however is just a synthetic mess

I can get people liking some parts of Siren Charms. Hell, it's not like I hate everything on there. Through Oblivion would be fine if it was under an Anders' electro-pop side project. With Eyes Wide Open is a decent enough ballad, probably best overall production on SC. The chorus on When the World Explodes is okay, just sounds like it was spliced in from some random goth metal track. The melodic section of Dead Eyes is really nice (and very briefly sampled in one of THE songs, I forget which one). Siren Charms as an album isn't a complete dumpster fire, as you say it's just not been fleshed out enough and needed more time and thought put into it - as well as a professional production and mixing job. That album was a real mess when it comes to those aspects. Each songs sounds like it was mixed by a completely different person, and only adds to how disjointed the end result is.

Some of the Battles stuff sounded okay initially, but there's very little long-term redeeming values from anything on that album. The End is a passable modern IF track. In My Room has a rare good solo from Bjorn. Wallflower is a more mature version of TCP. Here Until Forever is up there with the classics, dat emotion just gets me every time. When I look at you, I see me... wow.

The biggest problem with Battles is that most of the songs sound like they were written for a completely different band. It's not that they're even bad songs as such, they just aren't In Flames songs. On stuff like Before I Fall, Battles, Greatest Greed and Us Against the World it's like In Flames covering some unknown pop-punk band. Production and mixing is far more stable on Battles, but is plastic as fuck and the guitars are robbed of all power. I think Anders even admitted that much before ITM came out.
 
Wallflower is rather good live I must say having seen it last month, and The Truth is an alright pop metal song for what it is, but beyond that there's not much I care for on the album. The odd riff here and there but that's only because I enjoy playing them, none of the other songs are things I'd sit down and listen to. Even I, The Mask with time has really dropped in my estimation I won't lie, it's more hit and miss than I remember it being on release.

The new singles have been consistently decent IMO so I have genuine hope for the new album.
 
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