New album Foregone out February 2023

[eochaid]

Though it has some great songs, at first glance it looks like a whatever set list. Nothing really impressive.

 

[DE4life]

It's very, very similar to what they were playing 2 years ago, just before COVID shut everything down. Even the same three 'classic' songs in BS, Graveland and The Hive.

 

[galvanized]

I do like those classic songs. Graveland is solid. Seems relevant given its anti-war message.

The two opening songs I actually dislike.

Where the Dead Ships Dwell and All for Me are cool. They didn’t really choose any songs that I like from I The Mask, Battles, Siren Charms.

 

[DE4life]

They're all great classic songs, but they could try mixing it up just a little every so often. Clad in Shadows, The Jester Race & Food For The Gods, for example, would be hype as fuck.

Dead Ships is great on CD. Anders sounds awful when trying to reproduce it live though.

 

[eochaid]

Jotun... Moonshield... World's within the Margin... Lord Hypnos...

There are a lot to choose. But they're also missing good tracks from Colony.

WTF! They're missing good tracks from almost every album until Come Clarity.

 

[galvanized]

That’s what I’m saying. Missing the good tracks from the new albums as well (exception Dead Ships). It’s like a set of B-sides.

 

[eochaid]

The songs that I considere to be first level in the setlist are (no matter how many times they have been played):

Where the Dead Ships Dwell
[URL='https://www.setlist.fm/stats/songs/in-flames-43d6837f.html?songid=53d69769']Behind Space
[URL='https://www.setlist.fm/stats/songs/in-flames-43d6837f.html?songid=23d7a00f']The Hive
Colony
Take this Life

I could save Cloud Connected because it was a single and it's a really enjoyable song.

The rest of them are just meh. And, by meh, I mean as a part of their catalogue.[/URL][/URL]

 

[DE4life]

WTDSD is a top tier modern IF song. Not a top tier live song though. The power just isn't there and Anders cannot sing the chorus to save his life.

 

[eochaid]

Anders cannot sing shit. So I'm not judging the songs by his ability to put them live.

 

[DE4life]

I tend to judge the live sets based on how well the songs can be performed live as well as how they sound on CD. Dead Ships has a really powerful chorus on CD, and thanks to protools + vocal effects + production on SOAPF Dead Ships is great on the album. Live, however... it just doesn't pack that same punch. You hear how the chorus would sound if Anders didn't have any studio help and it just isn't the same.



WTDSD starts at about 05:45 in this vid I recorded from when I saw them in 2019 and... yeah. Anders sounds like shit in the verses, doesn't even sing the first chorus, then when he does try to 'sing' the chorus afterwards... ugh. It just sounds so bad.

I can give a pass to songs like Cloud Connected and TTL as it's not like Anders' cleans sounded amazing on CD to begin with, so there isn't that much of a disconnect between the live and studio versions. Dead Ships really does take a hit in quality though.

 

[eochaid]

Well, if I have to judge songs like Take This Life for how good his screams are live, then the song is shit.

 

[eochaid]

This is a fucking joke.



And this... Holy fuck! The screams are yet bad enough. He doesn't need to also destroy the chorus with that awful singing.

In a scale from 1 to 10, how difficult is TTL's chorus? Zero!

 

[galvanized]

This is a fucking joke.

Sounds fine to me. The growls are most important on this one and he did decent. Song still sounds powerful.

Agree on the Take This Life vocals though, a lot more noticeable.

 

[eochaid]

I really really think that the growls sound like shit. His voice is a mess. He's clearly suffering while growling. And, I don't think that they fit the song. Not at all. But that's my opinion.

 

[DE4life]

Anders vocals were just shit in general around the time the Gothenburg live album was recorded.



Sounds fine here to me, except chorus which is shit, but it's really not that good on the album either from a vocal perspective.

 

[DE4life]

If we're talking songs that really sound like total shit live, Burn is right up there



This is fucking tragic. Not like it's a top tier song to begin with, but this is just awful.

 

[eochaid]

Anders vocals were just shit in general around the time the Gothenburg live album was recorded.



Sounds fine here to me, except chorus which is shit, but it's really not that good on the album either from a vocal perspective.

At least, in the album, I can listen to it without wanting to hang myself.

 

[DE4life]

At least, in the album, I can listen to it without wanting to hang myself.

yeah, production and protocols just about makes the chorus passable on CD. No hiding place in a live environment though.

They'd be better off just swapping out the songs with clean choruses for songs that are 95% growls. Change TTL for something like Vanishing Light (which is fantastic and imo better than TTL anyway) and swap WTDSD for The Puzzle or New Dawn. Both just as solid and much more within the realm of what Anders can achieve live.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Yeah, Anders' live screams/growls were at their low point in the mid-10s. Although to be fair he was pretty awful in that Koln '96 performance, too. Much better these days.

I think he should honestly just scream/growl his way through clean choruses. The audience always seems content to sing it anyway and I personally can barely hear Anders whenever I see them live.

 

[DE4life]

Anders' live performance has gone up and down over the years. Early years up until around 1998 he was terrible. 1998 - 2000 or so he was on fire. He sounds incredible on some of the recordings from '99 especially - almost identical to how he sounded in studio on Colony.

2001 - 2003 he was back to being terrible. I have some bootlegs from around this time period and he gets progressively worse as time goes on.

2004 - 2007 or so another revival where he sounded good, seemed to finally have a solid grip on his voice and how to use it. However, from 2008 onwards he entered into a quite brutal decline which suggested this was more of a dead cat bounce. Wasn't until around 2019 when he started using the lower growl as his default that he finally started sounding decent again.

Obviously all of the above is talking about growls only. He's always been awful when it comes to cleans live.

I think he should honestly just scream/growl his way through clean choruses. The audience always seems content to sing it anyway and I personally can barely hear Anders whenever I see them live.

Tbf a lot of the time he does. You basically have dat backing track with the clean vocal and Anders doing a quiet growl/scream underneath it. Last time I saw TCP he basically growled the entire thing which made it 100x better. On those occasions when he does try to sing, though... whoops.