New album Foregone out February 2023

"Super-mysterious chaos"?

It certainly sounds like it from the vocal stem.

Also, was not prepared for how much Come Clarity's chorus, instrumentally, sounds like something from STYE. Very similar riffing & synths.
 


Skip the actual MYM video, they are just banging heads. They do talk about the entire album however, calling it "the best IF record in 20 years". It obviously won't be, but it actually peaked my interest, cuz you should look reviews within their context. And to me the context is that this guy wasn't floored with the previous X IF records, so him being this excited is actually curious. Based from the 5 tracks, I also predicted that if the other half of the record can hold up in quality, this will be a very fondly remembered record years down the road.
 
I've been watching their In Flames videos lately, and usually I can't stand reaction videos. I wish the dad would give his son more time to talk, lol. But yeah, they're saying that the singles represent the album, while we had a review a few pages back that said the opposite -- I guess we'll have to see. I'm going to remain optimistic.
 
This is apparently my list... there might have been a few times in the 706 choices where I misclicked and chose one song over another without having seen what I picked (that's my only explanation for Zombie Inc being so low), but it looks generally okay...

This definitely happened to me. It’s a pretty tedious process. I went on autopilot at some point and made a few mistakes.
 
I did another one with only songs from 2002-present


01. Borders and Shading
02. Superhero of the Computer Rage
03. My Sweet Shadow
04. Eraser
05. Dead Alone
06. Fear is the Weakness
07. Come Clarity
08. A New Dawn
09. Sounds of a Playground Fading
10. Free Fall

Lot more STYE in there than I would expect. My top 3 "modern" songs are from the same album, which is kind of weird because I would say as a whole, SOAPF is my favorite album of the modern stuff.
 
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I’m surprised and disappointed you put Before I Fall last. I was just skimming through Battles earlier and decided that was the best song from the album, no joke.
My Battles rankings:
1. Before I Fall
2. In My Room
3. The Truth

To be completely honest, I hadn't really listened to Battles more than a handful of times since it came out, so I was trying to remember details of songs I hadn't heard in years when doing the selection. Before I Fall wasn't last because I have a particular burning hatred for it, it was just on an album where I found most of the songs equally unenjoyable and it was the one I could remember the least about. I actually re-listened through Battles for the first time probably this decade after reading your post, but I did it in the order of lowest-to-highest ranked on this list to see if I agreed with where I'd ended up placing them based on vague recollections.

I think they could mostly be in any order, really. They all suffer from a lot of the same problems, and I don't think any of them stood out as being unfairly maligned. The guitar leads in Before I Fall are nicer than some of the other instrumentals on there, though. I still think Drained is the best song on the album, but that might just be because it was the first one I heard, and I was like "oh, In Flames are trying something a bit different", before a few songs later I was like "Oh, is the whole album gonna be like this?". This Is Our House deserves to be below any of them, though. Maybe I'll redo it and try to ensure that comes last!

One thing I will say is that even down at around 90-100 on that list, those songs are still amazing. I think that's a glowing testament to In Flames, it's only once you get to about 105 that the quality drops to "good", maybe about 120 that it drops to "meh", and only really the bottom 20 or so that are in the "not great" bracket.

It's also heartening that I feel like all the material I've heard off their new album belongs in the middle of that stellar top 100. It definitely made re-listening to Battles easier, knowing that it wasn't the way things ended up permanently.
 
House was technically a Battles reject so I'm happy to rank it on there and take it off ITM.

Before I Fall was originally my favourite off Battles, nowadays I don't really like it though. Production is so weak, and those autotuned chorus vocals, lmao. Sounds worse every time I hear them. As @GraemeSinclair says though, basically the same issue across all Battles tracks.

Us Against the World is a guilty pleasure of mine from that album though. If you imagine it as a cover of some unknown Californian pop punk band it's not so bad.
 


Skip the actual MYM video, they are just banging heads. They do talk about the entire album however, calling it "the best IF record in 20 years". It obviously won't be, but it actually peaked my interest, cuz you should look reviews within their context. And to me the context is that this guy wasn't floored with the previous X IF records, so him being this excited is actually curious. Based from the 5 tracks, I also predicted that if the other half of the record can hold up in quality, this will be a very fondly remembered record years down the road.


Dude... For sure... Now, search for a video of them talking bad about IF in the past 10 or 20 years.

These guys want to be on good terms with the bands. They want to interview the bands in their channels. So, please, no. Just wait until you listen to the album and find your own reaction.

A&P reacts to:
WTWE (live): "amazing!"
I Am Above: "It's In Flames! Come on!"
Burn "I like the chorus but I like the verses better". "The overall song has a nice vibe to it. I like it":
I the Mask: "Holy shit".

Cyhra (Since you love them that much)

Out of My Life. A lame attempt to not say something negative about the song.
No Halos in Hell "Magnificient record".
(You're going to love this one): "That was good! That was amazing!"
Ready to Rumble: "I'm going to have the chorus in my mind for the rest of the week":
Dreams Gone Wrong "There's no bad song on this album".

What do I mean? Don't use online reviews to make a point.
 
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To be completely honest, I hadn't really listened to Battles more than a handful of times since it came out, so I was trying to remember details of songs I hadn't heard in years when doing the selection. Before I Fall wasn't last because I have a particular burning hatred for it, it was just on an album where I found most of the songs equally unenjoyable and it was the one I could remember the least about. I actually re-listened through Battles for the first time probably this decade after reading your post, but I did it in the order of lowest-to-highest ranked on this list to see if I agreed with where I'd ended up placing them based on vague recollections.

I think they could mostly be in any order, really. They all suffer from a lot of the same problems, and I don't think any of them stood out as being unfairly maligned. The guitar leads in Before I Fall are nicer than some of the other instrumentals on there, though. I still think Drained is the best song on the album, but that might just be because it was the first one I heard, and I was like "oh, In Flames are trying something a bit different", before a few songs later I was like "Oh, is the whole album gonna be like this?". This Is Our House deserves to be below any of them, though. Maybe I'll redo it and try to ensure that comes last!

One thing I will say is that even down at around 90-100 on that list, those songs are still amazing. I think that's a glowing testament to In Flames, it's only once you get to about 105 that the quality drops to "good", maybe about 120 that it drops to "meh", and only really the bottom 20 or so that are in the "not great" bracket.

It's also heartening that I feel like all the material I've heard off their new album belongs in the middle of that stellar top 100. It definitely made re-listening to Battles easier, knowing that it wasn't the way things ended up permanently.
Yeah, to me Battles is not good, however, some of the other songs on that album are even worse than Before I Fall to me. So, it’s my top song from the album, but definitely not in my top 2002-present.
 
Dude... For sure... Now, search for a video of them talking bad about IF in the past 10 or 20 years.

These guys want to be on good terms with the bands. They want to interview the bands in their channels. So, please, no. Just wait until you listen to the album and find your own reaction.

A&P reacts to:
WTWE (live): "amazing!"
I Am Above: "It's In Flames! Come on!"
Burn "I like the chorus but I like the verses better". "The overall song has a nice vibe to it. I like it":
I the Mask: "Holy shit".

Cyhra (Since you love them that much)

Out of My Life. A lame attempt to not say something negative about the song.
No Halos in Hell "Magnificient record".
(You're going to love this one): "That was good! That was amazing!"
Ready to Rumble: "I'm going to have the chorus in my mind for the rest of the week":
Dreams Gone Wrong "There's no bad song on this album".

What do I mean? Don't use online reviews to make a point.
I pretty much agreed with everything they said about those IF songs, except WTWE, which I hate. But those Cyhra reviews are indeed abyssmal. NHIH is barely passable, and Rumble is so bad and so 0 effort, that it is a waste of time talking about it.
 
It goes like this. They're, probably, making a living of this. So, do you think that they're going to give negative reviews when they depend on the bands and labels good will?
 
When I talked about context of music reviews, it also included the basic assumption that these guys for example do not want to alienate the bands. I would never expect anything harsh from them, but it felt a bit genuine to me, when the dad - who indeed barely lets his son talk - said it feels better than the previous record. You know, when the missus proposes an option to you, you don't want to be rude so you tell her it's good, then she proposes another option for you, one you actually like, then you can be more honest and say that it's a great idea, you like it more than the previous one - which of course was also good in its own right blahblahblah.

I was lazy to actually check their previous reviews of IF records to see if all of them were the best ever in 20 years or just basic shilling.

Sadly, the other end of the reviews suffer from similar problems. Those who hate IF since R2R or ASOP will just bring you your (usually) bi-yearly IF review of "this is still trash, TJR was the best", which is equally useless.
Ready to rumble is the only Cyhra song I enjoy, hate me
A grand opportunity to say "hit me" instead.
 
The only negative review that I've read so far explains the songs and what they don't like about them.

But I get what they do. I mean, if my lifestyle depended on that, I would put Anders in a 10 best metal vocalists from all time list.

I'm not interested in reviewers opinions but in their description of the songs.