New album Foregone out February 2023

[DE4life]

Maybe Drained was about me all along.

I think Anders would agree that regardless of the original intention, it is now.

 

[Jester Slave]

You made jest of Anders' personal lyrics, but Battles is about to hit you a whole lot different now.

 

[DE4life]

You made jest of Anders' personal lyrics, but Battles is about to hit you a whole lot different now.

I think I finally understand that album. Whoa.

 

[ciko_gfb]

Anders doing track by track interview:

 

[Xpyro125]

I've been gone for what feels like a while, so I'm just gonna machine gun a bunch of responses. Fuck 60 hour work weeks, so glad I'm off tomorrow.

Idk about music or movies, but here in UK at least our game magazines could be quite brutal in the 90s if a game was shit they'd usually say so with like, 20% score or something, even if it was quite well known developer. Then again pretty much all of those magazines went out of business, so...

Man, shoegaze got fucking annihilated by UK reporters back in the day. Shit, the subgenre got its name from one using that as an insult for it. I don't remember too many other specific slings at it aside from it being called 'the scene that celebrates itself', but it was probably hated by UK reporters as much as disco was in America in the 80s.

« Do they actually think this sounds good? Does he feel okay knowing he won't be able to sing any of this live without lip syncing tracks? Wasn't the entire reason they stopped doing so many guitar harmonies because they couldn't replicate it live? So why is it okay to do the exact same thing with vocals? »

This dude from reddit about Anders’ vocals gets a point.

This man is probably the smartest person in existence.

100%. The whole thing doesn't make sense. It doesn't appear to be consistent with how they promoted the album. It isn't consistent with their song choices and performances live.
Anders seems to be having the time of his life up there, actually able to hold his own next to gifted musicians on stage and putting out genuinely impressive performances. So who the hell convinced him to autotune the shit out of 80% of the album's choruses and do this weird scream shit like someone is grabbing his dick in the middle of singing a word?
At this point I don't see them ever doing 5 layers of guitar melodies again. But I thought they might be onto something with the Anders 3.0, heavy groovy live angle. The guy growled his way through songs like I hadn't heard before, which brought a whole new dimension to them imo. Then they go and release this nonsense, it sounds like shit and they can't even perform it!

Seeing IF live was fantastic, especially since they had an incredible setlist then. The only song I remember not being fantastic was Graveland. Not sure why that's the pick from TJR, but eh, I'm still glad we got a TJR song in the setlist.

Yeah, we've been highlighting the vocal/guitar live layering hypocrisy for like a decade on here old debate that ultimately can only be concluded by accepting the band are just making excuses to not play the older material.

Honestly I wish they'd never released anything after SOAPF. Setlist was already too difficult to cram songs into, and all they're doing is ensuring top tier songs will be pushed out in favour of completely inferior tracks that nobody really cares about.

I don't actually remember why I quoted this last night, but I do know that at the very least, the setlist has gotten a lot better in the past few years.

Sonata Arctica sounded decent to me when i saw them live back in 2009 which was... 15 years ago. I'm not a big fan of a band, but I don't remember singing being bad back then.

I enjoyed Moment a lot and had it in a steady rotation for about a month when it came out. I wouldn't say I got bored of it because I still think there are at least 4 or 5 really strong songs on it, but there is a very distinct atmosphere that is present throughout the entire album and its indeed very similar to Atoma's vibe and I'm just not in the mood for that often. When I am, it sounds great. Same goes for Katatonia's music for an instance, that's the best parallel I can make. It affects my mood and I can't listen to it randomly like that. I did enjoy Moment a lot more than Atoma which I found quite disjointed.
That being said I do wish DT would bring back some ferociousness and fierceness on the next album. Their keyboardist and drummer writing most of the material explains that, hopefully they will give the "new" guys some free reign next time because they are more than qualified.

Unrelated but this is what I've been jamming to this evening, what a fun 2000s modern mdm record with catchy choruses everywhere.

I'm so glad somebody else here also loves Disarmonia Mundi. I'd say none of it aside from Nebularium (Probably my favorite album of all time right above Above the Weeping World and Letters to Myself) is high art, but it's just a wonderful time. High octane, high aggression. Doesn't need to be too much more than that to be fucking awesome.

Iridium and Her Silent Language are the only two songs I find passable from WATV. I have a pretty strong dislike for that album, although I find the title to be very apt.

Dream Oblivion and The Fatalist are pretty good too. That being said, yeah, Iridium is absolutely phenomenal, but that's to be expected from something that barely missed being on Fiction.

Reddit is just an other side of the same dice this board is on. Reddit, by nature is an echo-chamber, so you don't even need plants to sway the discussions, especially not on a subreddit with only 3000 members. It's understandable that such a minor userbase would mostly consist of people who likes the band, and not of people filled with rage and nostalgia. But reddit is not at its worst when we observe such a happy, though somewhat delusional subreddit; no, the worst is when it is run by the most bitter people on earth. Reading sth like "Foregone is the best IF record" makes you roll your eyes and indeed think of karmawhorers, but seeing people complain and circlejerk about the same shit for years is so much worse. Just check out any political subreddit: those people are dying for bad news.

Anyway, you guys can be just as melodramatic as that poster you quoted. You bitch about Anders' cleans, how is he going to recreate them live and how THIS is the nail in the coffin. He is going to recreate them the same way he did Battles, Burn, Call My Name, Stay With me, All The Pain or Follow Me: he won't. Alternatively, he is going to recreate them the same way he did with Vacuum: he won't. I'm sure we could go even further back to find this same exact pattern.

"b-b-b-b-b-but they said no to twin guitars, yet they do this?????" is reddit argument 101. An average redditor knows no nuance, everything is black and white. If you are caught with an inconsistenciy or a white lie by a redditor, then you are done. Judged, juried, executed. All right, it was possibly an excuse. So what? You're gonna circlejerk yourself for this great find? You're gonna mention it every time IF does some studio magic which is hard or impossible to translate live? Not to mention that they've been playing a bunch of older songs for a while now, so I don't even get the bitching.

I've checked out a Fear is the Weakness performance on youtube, he can't sing those cleans either, and SOAPF is filled with choruses like that. We know he can't sing SC because that acoustic radio performance was terrible. During ASOP he could barely sing on the record to begin with, but good luck finding clips of Anders ever reproducing the cleans on Crawl Through Knives, Leeches or Vacuum. Yes, the Battles era cleans are faker, but at the end of the day I am not sure why would you be so upset about the difference, when he can't do any of these to begin with. At least he worked on his growls, so even if many of the choruses has been stuck at Battles' level, he can do much more interesting verses, bridges, plus do more justice to some older songs.

To me, Foregone is more interesting musically, than ITM. ITM has some of the worst songs in the entire catalogue of the band with House, In This Life and We Will Remember, while on Foregone the worst moments (bonus track not included) are Bleeding Out and Foregone pt. 2, songs which have some pretty cool ideas, but in the end they feel like they have been haphazardly thrown together. ITM also has 3 identical songs, and instead of discarding the 2 worse ones, they just threw them all on the record. Follow Me is not bad, but All The Pain is Better, while Stay With Me is the ultimate form of that track. Sure, if you like those songs then you are in for a treat, but by that logic if you like catchy choruses then Pure Light, In the Dark and Cynosure are treats for you - and at least those songs have some interesting instrumentation going for them aside from the poppy chorus, while that ITM trio is pretty minimalistic.

I understand why someone would prefer ITM over Foregone, but stop pretending Foregone is a step back, when at worst it is a step sideways.

I also forget why I just quoted this, but yeah, I agree with this pretty much. That being said, Foregone has strangely been making me listen to and appreciate ITM a lot more lately. I think I'm back to liking it almost as much as I did when it first came out.

My girlfriend actually liked Fellowship but yeah in general I don't really have anyone else to chat about metal with. Reddit is just bleurgh for the most part, although I did meet @Xpyro125 on there, who's a good bro. This place is just comfortable and generally has good humour and debate.

Oh, hey, that's me! In all seriousness, I forget what the first post we conversed on was, but I know the album ranking vote post was the one where we talked more and you convinced me to join the forum. After listening to the classic albums again, I'd definitely shift my votes around. I genuinely have no idea how Colony and Clayman beat out Whoracle for me, and although Graveland and Dead God in Me are weaker songs on TJR, I'll take them over House and In This Life any day. Foregone definitely still rates lower than ITM for me since its highs just don't reach ITM's highs, save for Pure Light of Mind. I know it's alt rock, I know it's everything I typically hate, and I know that it just isn't In Flames vocally, but... Something about it just clicks for me, I dunno.

Edit: I also only have two people I can really talk about IF with, but one absolutely fucking hates the band's discography past the classic albums and only finds the classic albums plus LS and Subterranean to be a 6/10, and I'm gonna quote this because it's fair enough: "They have always embodied the "is this just power/trad with harsh vox" side of gothenburg.", and my other friend who actually does like them doesn't really go too far into any sort of discussion of their sound, their melodies, etc. To be fair, he loves deathcore, so I have no expectations of that kind of discussion.

Maybe you are having an opposite day, but exactly. Messing with the final chorus is not exactly rocket science, it may be even considered cheesy, but it just works if done right, and these are definitely examples for the latter. I like evolving choruses (Leeches, Crawl Through Knives) but I think what they did with Reflect The Storm or Our Infinite Struggle is also cool. If anything, Foregone is actually missing this treatment on Cynosure but especially on Dialogue.

Now I'm not saying it's bad if someone doesn't like these, but listing them as cons after all the complaints from the same people for being boring just spins my head.

You said you write. I don't understand then why don't you find the very simple storytelling of the protagonist either being fucking desperate by the end, or in another interpretation, the protagonist actually turning out to be not the one you should stay with, because they are already too far gone.

Whatever one's interpretation is, it's simple, it's self-contained, it's human.

I'm gonna take a middle ground on the Stay With Me argument (Disregard the fact that I'm late to it)— I absolutely love Stay With Me, but the screams at the end take an already phenomenal song and elevate it just that little bit more for me. The screams, as Slave put, sound desperate, and given whatever interpretation of the song's meaning you might have, I think it works wonderfully. They feel like one last fleeting attempt to keep the subject of the song close, and I really like it. The song surrounding it didn't need them, and I think it'd still be a gorgeous (Albeit still slightly repetitive) song all around without them, but it's a nice capstone to the song.

Pure Light of Mind is garbage. I still like it though. It's some good trash.

Am I the only one here who doesn't think it's objectively bad whether we like it or not? I dunno, it may not really feel like Anders vocally, but the instrumentals, the lyrics, and the feeling all click wonderfully. It's the most sugary, saccharine song IF's ever put out, but... It actually works, somehow. I think a few of the vocal melodies should've been tweaked a bit, since some lines just lack a bit of power due to the downward delivery (Sonically speaking), but otherwise, it might just be my favorite song off the album. It's certainly the one I've replayed the most, maybe save for Foregone Pt. 1.

 

[The Grayfox]

I just think the lyrics are kind of bad and appear to be written by someone other than Anders (gee, I wonder who). In fact, I think the song is sung by someone who isn't Anders also. And his name is Mr. A. Utotune

 

[drawntoblack]

I'm so glad somebody else here also loves Disarmonia Mundi. I'd say none of it aside from Nebularium (Probably my favorite album of all time right above Above the Weeping World and Letters to Myself) is high art, but it's just a wonderful time. High octane, high aggression. Doesn't need to be too much more than that to be fucking awesome.

Agreed about DM. Yeah you put it very well, it's not high art but it's fun and catchy in a way 2000s Soilwork is, it doesn't take itself too seriously and understands its margins and limitations and just goes strong and fast with what it actually does.

I admit seeing ATWW equated with Letters feels very weird to me since ATWW is hands down my favorite album of all time (see username) and Cyhra does absolutely nothing for me. And trust me it annoys me because I remember reading a few years back when the Cyhra thread was active and how everyone here was enjoying it a lot so I feel like I'm missing out but whenever I try listening to that band I just draw a blank page in my mind.

But hey I appreciate anyone who appreciates ATWW, I will never ever get bored of that album and I consider it to be very high art, as pretentious as that is when people talk about metal.

 

[DE4life]

To be fair Xpyro wasn't necessarily equating LtM and ATWW, just saying they both occupy places amongst his favourite albums. I'd have power metal albums mixed in with my all time favourite MDM stuff, but it wouldn't mean there's significant similarities between them. I just happen to love both genres.

 

[galvanized]

Am I the only one here who doesn't think it's objectively bad whether we like it or not? I dunno, it may not really feel like Anders vocally, but the instrumentals, the lyrics, and the feeling all click wonderfully. It's the most sugary, saccharine song IF's ever put out, but... It actually works, somehow. I think a few of the vocal melodies should've been tweaked a bit, since some lines just lack a bit of power due to the downward delivery (Sonically speaking), but otherwise, it might just be my favorite song off the album. It's certainly the one I've replayed the most, maybe save for Foregone Pt. 1.

I like the high pitched vocals, the verse and main melody, but lately I’ve been thinking overall the song is pretty generic and the chorus guitars are very weak. Without those high pitched vocals the song would be nothing special. I’ve been thinking about removing it from my current 8-track Foregone playlist.

 

[J_msh84]

Nice to meet you, from Sushiland.
When I was a teenage boy, my world changed completely when I heard Whoracle.
Jesper was a mister and a god to me.
And since 2004, for almost 20 years I have been drowning in a sea of disappointment
I'd like to discuss things with you guys, can I stay here for a while?

 

[DE4life]

I think this is the place for you, my friend. Just remember that even though Slave may come across as an unhinged lunatic at times, he's actually a good guy underneath it all.

The same can't be said for Eochaid and A88 though. Those dudes have souls that are blacker than the blackest black metal.

 

[galvanized]

Nice to meet you, from Sushiland.
When I was a teenage boy, my world changed completely when I heard Whoracle.
Jesper was a mister and a god to me.
And since 2004, for almost 20 years I have been drowning in a sea of disappointment
I'd like to discuss things with you guys, can I stay here for a while?

Let me ask you a question. Have you heard Foregone? Are you still disappointed?

 

[J_msh84]

I think this is the place for you, my friend. Just remember that even though Slave may come across as an unhinged lunatic at times, he's actually a good guy underneath it all.

The same can't be said for Eochaid and A88 though. Those dudes have souls that are blacker than the blackest black metal.

Thanks for the heads up, dude.
I carefully read several threads before my first post
Well, apparently I have the same black soul as them...

 

[drawntoblack]

Nice to meet you, from Sushiland.
When I was a teenage boy, my world changed completely when I heard Whoracle.
Jesper was a mister and a god to me.
And since 2004, for almost 20 years I have been drowning in a sea of disappointment
I'd like to discuss things with you guys, can I stay here for a while?

Welcome to the support group, coffee is on the table in the back.

 

[DE4life]

Man, shoegaze got fucking annihilated by UK reporters back in the day. Shit, the subgenre got its name from one using that as an insult for it. I don't remember too many other specific slings at it aside from it being called 'the scene that celebrates itself', but it was probably hated by UK reporters as much as disco was in America in the 80s.

I had no idea tbh I didn't and still don't really follow UK music critics. EVen nowadays when I'm checking reviews online I rarely know where the website is based, although sometimes it'll be obvious.

I also forget why I just quoted this, but yeah, I agree with this pretty much. That being said, Foregone has strangely been making me listen to and appreciate ITM a lot more lately. I think I'm back to liking it almost as much as I did when it first came out.

ITM is still in the 7/10 range for me, with Foregone being closer to 5.5 or 6. So from my personal perspective it's a slight step down, although I appreciate I will probably be in the minority on that.

Am I the only one here who doesn't think it's objectively bad whether we like it or not? I dunno, it may not really feel like Anders vocally, but the instrumentals, the lyrics, and the feeling all click wonderfully. It's the most sugary, saccharine song IF's ever put out, but... It actually works, somehow. I think a few of the vocal melodies should've been tweaked a bit, since some lines just lack a bit of power due to the downward delivery (Sonically speaking), but otherwise, it might just be my favorite song off the album. It's certainly the one I've replayed the most, maybe save for Foregone Pt. 1.

It's the closest we have to a Liberation, WEWO, Stay With Me type track on Foregone. It's below all of those in my estimation, simply because it sounds a bit too manufactured. It does work on some levels though. It reminds me a bit of The Truth - it'd be fine if it wasn't In Flames.

 

[DE4life]

Thanks for the heads up, dude.
I carefully read several threads before my first post
Well, apparently I have the same black soul as them...

Don't worry, so do I

 

[DE4life]

I don't actually remember why I quoted this last night, but I do know that at the very least, the setlist has gotten a lot better in the past few years.

Yes, it definitely has. I remember around 2012 they were just playing "da heavy metal hits" and literally playing zero songs from anything pre-2000. This was the height of the excuses for not playing older songs ("too many guitar layers", "people don't move", etc), and was really aggravating. Thankfully they've improved a little in this regard since then.

 

[J_msh84]

Let me ask you a question. Have you heard Foregone? Are you still disappointed?

The answer, unfortunately, yes.
Not to mention the riffs stolen from ATG, but the overall autotune riddled vocals were enough to let me down.
There were signs here and there on the album that they were struggling to be metal. However, all of them seem to be fake. They seem to have lost all sense of who they are in the pursuit of fashion.

I'll write a detailed review when I have more time, but I want to leave you one Japanese proverb

Making a Buddha statue and put no soul in it.

They embody just that.

 

[eochaid]

This forum looks more and more like a therapy group for people dissapointed with this new album . Myself included.

 

[DE4life]

Fellowship seems to be the drug we're using to heal ourselves from the disappointment of Foregone inject that flower power metal into muh veins.

Although, if we're talking Japan, Serpent - nowadays reborn as Veiled in Scarlet - are an excellent medicine as well