New album Foregone out February 2023

[DE4life]

The reason his vocals never sound quite right is because he really, really can't sing, and the vocals have to be processed to an ungodly level to get them sounding anything close to decent. It will always be difficult to get anything truly natural sounding out of that.

In terms of autotune, very bad on Follow Me. Less so on All The Pain, mainly on the pre-chorus and right at the beginning. Part of the issue is that there are so many layers and so much compression going on that it can often make the vocals sound autotuned even when they aren't, just because they still sound totally fake.

I miss the Reroute/Passenger era vocals. Amateurish, sure, but earnest and endearing in their own way.

 

[galvanized]

I like the high energy beginnings to
I the Mask
Call My Name
I Am Above

but EVERY TIME the chorus happens, song slows down, guitar work gets weak, and I get sad.

Sticking with Voices, All The Pain, Stay With Me.

All The Pain #1 baby

 

[Xpyro125]

I like the high energy beginnings to
I the Mask
Call My Name
I Am Above

but EVERY TIME the chorus happens, song slows down, guitar work gets weak, and I get sad.

Sticking with Voices, All The Pain, Stay With Me.

All The Pain #1 baby

Stay With Me's probably my favorite from ITM, even if it's a bit repetitive. I'm a sucker for IF's acoustics, and the payoff to the buildup is phenomenal too. I can absolutely agree with the slowdown issue too though.

Also, I'm guessing that we still don't have a leak of the new album yet. Try as I might, none of the sites that say they have a leak of it have worked.

 

[DE4life]

I like the high energy beginnings to
I the Mask
Call My Name
I Am Above

but EVERY TIME the chorus happens, song slows down, guitar work gets weak, and I get sad.

Sticking with Voices, All The Pain, Stay With Me.

All The Pain #1 baby

Title track chorus doesn't slow down tbf, keeps going at a good pace. But the other two, sure.

 

[eochaid]

Even though the beginning and the end are the better parts from the album, they feel, if we remove the middle section, like two different albums. I'm not sure how I'm going to explain this. Like, there's coherence on both sides but not when mixing them together. I mean, Voices, ITM, CMN and IAA match each others pretty well. DI, ATP and SWM match each others pretty well. But that's just it. It feels weird that both sides are part of the same album.

Also, for some reason DI remembers me to Iron Maiden's Brave New World album.

 

[galvanized]

Title track chorus doesn't slow down tbf, keeps going at a good pace. But the other two, sure.

Yeah, you are right. Maybe a drop in aggression then. ITM is the least frustrating/best of those 3 in my opinion, I guess that’s why.

 

[DE4life]

Yeah, you are right. Maybe a drop in aggression then. ITM is the least frustrating/best of those 3 in my opinion, I guess that’s why.

It gets a good balance in the chorus of the cleans mixing with some harsh vocals, so it retains a good flow with the rest of the song. The other tracks meanwhile go full on mega-processed cleans. With that said, none of them are as jarring as When My Butt Explodes - the transition from metalcore to Nightwish-lite is one of the most bizarre things on any IF track. Literally like they inserted a different song from a completely different band for the chorus.

 

[galvanized]

It gets a good balance in the chorus of the cleans mixing with some harsh vocals, so it retains a good flow with the rest of the song. The other tracks meanwhile go full on mega-processed cleans. With that said, none of them are as jarring as When My Butt Explodes - the transition from metalcore to Nightwish-lite is one of the most bizarre things on any IF track. Literally like they inserted a different song from a completely different band for the chorus.

I hate that song so much.

 

[A88]

If I'm being completely honest, I can't really hear the autotune on Anders' vocals, outside of some warbles like at the beginning of All The Pain.

Like...how?

Almost everything is autotuned, layered and processed into oblivion. That is the reason for the whole thing sounding fake, flat and lacking any character. Just like 99% popular music today.

All that combined with that awful whiny singing voice. Terrible.

It's like the whole band is really determined to make their weakest point the center piece of their music.

 

[DE4life]

I hate that song so much.

It's a shitheap of a track, no doubt about it. The main riff that repeats over and over again is so boring. Anders actually manages some genuinely good harsh vocals, but it doesn't matter because the song fucking sucks. It's like Dead End's mutated, deformed sibling.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Like...how?

Almost everything is autotuned, layered and processed into oblivion. That is the reason for the whole thing sounding fake, flat and lacking any character. Just like 99% popular music today.

All that combined with that awful whiny singing voice. Terrible.

It's like the whole band is really determined to make their weakest point the center piece of their music.

When I think autotune, I think of when the singer sounds like a robot, moving between notes mechanically in a way that sounds inhuman, or where you can hear the pitch correction in real-time (it's very obvious at the beginning of All The Pain). I think there's a lot more than autotune going on with Anders' vocals (layering, processing, compressing) and that's what bothers me more.

 

[The Grayfox]

It isn’t “auto tune” to the point of some joke video on YouTube but there is definitely a ton of pitch correction going on with Anders. Yes, most vocalists use some form of pitch correction in the studio, but In Flames uses way more than a metal band should have to imo. The dude can’t sing, I’m sorry. If people like what they hear, that’s cool, but it isn’t anything close to genuine.

 

[A88]

Yeah well, there are various degrees. They are not using it like Cher or T-Pain.

Funny thing is, although I consider Anders to be one of the worst clean singers in history, he actually does have some character in his voice that works really well in some situations (as exampled by a number of weird tunes in the last 23 years).

Instead of using that fact (along with good growls/screams), he is pretending to be a regular singer and fucking up the whole band on this journey.

 

[ThePhobiac]

According to Bjorn in this interview, Foregone Pt 2 was originally going to be Pt 1, Foregone Pt 1 was originally going to be Pt 2, and The Beginning of All Things That Will End was going to be between them. I remember Anders saying a while back that there were going to be three parts to Foregone, so I guess TBoATTWE was going to be Foregone Pt 2 and Foregone Pt 1 was going to be Part 3.

 

[DE4life]

I consider Anders to be one of the worst clean singers in history

Brutal... but I like it

 

[galvanized]

Funny thing is, although I consider Anders to be one of the worst clean singers in history, he actually does have some character in his voice that works really well in some situations (as exampled by a number of weird tunes in the last 23 years).

Yeah. Metaphor is for real my favorite track from Reroute to Remain, actually the only one from that album I ever listen to. Good example of the character of his voice.

 

[TheJestersDoor]

Best answer (and actually best question) about IF and THE in this interview, at 18:50. Bjorn still doesn't go into too many specifics but he is nothing but positive about the members and the band

 

[The Grayfox]

Does he answer how the FUCK THIS ALBUM STILL HASN'T LEAKED?

 

[GraemeSinclair]

Without claiming to be any sort of expert, I've listened to my share of extreme metal vocalists over the years, and I recognise there are a lot of them who're probably technically better than Anders both at harsh and clean vocals, but personally, when he's at his best, no-one else comes close. I remember a review of Come Clarity that said something like "When Anders Fridén sings, you believe him", and I'd say I've felt that.

The guy gets a hard time on here, and I've been as guilty as any for criticising some of the post-Benson-era output and the use of studio techniques to try and turn his voice into something it isn't. I don't know if that Come Clarity review comment could really be applied to Here Until Forever or In This Life or any of the other recent songs where he's trying to use soaring melodic lines with sustained high notes. The simple authenticity of the verses of Bullet Ride or the melody of Metaphor that was comfortably within his range were more than good enough, and just as much part of the reason he's my favourite singer as his awesome (imo) growls. I wish he knew that and was content with playing to his strengths, but maybe he feels pressure from somewhere to try and write songs that push his voice to its limit.

To pay him a compliment, I think his harsh vocals on the Foregone singles are the best they've been on a studio recording since Clayman (the original, not the rerecording). That little passage of growling at about 0:50 on the In The Dark clip posted a few pages ago sounded to me like 1990s Anders, but I actually also really liked the clean vocals over the stripped back pre-chorus, the "the pain, the rage, our scars" line.

For me, as I've said before, a return to form isn't necessarily about getting rid of parts of the modern In Flames sound and returning to a "pure" effort to emulate TJR or Whoracle, it's about including elements of their sound that they had almost completely abandoned by the wilderness years of SC and Battles. Their best modern albums (Come Clarity and SOAPF) have been the ones where they put their sound of the moment in a blender with parts from their past. I feel like the harsh vocal tone from Foregone would improve both CC and SOAPF.

I'm trying to temper my expectations in case the rest of the tracks are like Battles or the mid part of I, The Mask, but based on everything I've heard so far, I am quite hyped...

 

[The Grayfox]

Just a guess, but I would think he probably feels pressure (whether from himself or someone else...) to make it sound commercial. I hate using terms like "sell-out", but the fact is, In Flames has wanted to be a mainstream metal band for over 20 years. Very, very, very few mainstream metal bands don't use clean vocals in some way. In fact, I don't know if I could think of a single one that didn't eventually add clean vocals into the mix. And I'm not talking about Amon Amarth levels. Yes, they're a big metal band. Certainly not mainstream. I can't fault Anders or anyone else for wanting their music to be heard, to sell, to make money off it. That's the goal. But if you go too far, you lose authenticity. Anders lost authenticity years and years ago in my opinion. Making their records sound commercial, or at least have moments of it, makes sense from a music selling perspective. Especially when you consider management, record labels, etc. There's a group of people who's sole purpose is to make money, not please fans on the internet.

I'm not speculating that Anders is just going through the motions and doing what he's told. There's a very good chance he wants to be a good singer and deliver amazing performances. More than a 'good' chance. My point is, you want to make money from your music? Putting out a shitty sounding black metal album that sounds like it was recorded in a basement on a 4-track isn't the path you take. You look at the path In Flames did take and you can easily see the forward momentum as they added more and more clean vocals, synth, etc.

There's nothing inherently wrong about any of that. I just have a hard time looking at it and not thinking "this sounds fake as shit."

To also pay the guy a compliment, Anders growls have indeed been better the last several years than in a very long time. I remember watching their Hellfest 2017 show and thinking "holy fuck, this sounds amazing" when they played Moonshield. I just think Anders needs to stop overextending and trying to do things he isn't good at. Find a balance. Not everything needs to be corrected and compressed so much that you lose any semblance of a vocal track being organic.