Anders' horrible performance on ASOP is too bad for me to ignore, considering his vocals are all over most of the tracks. Production isn't great but it's mainly the guitar sound for me that needs changing. It's too chunky and unpleasant to my ears. The difference between ASOP and something like SC or Battles is that ASOP is redeemable. Amend the production, rerecord the vocals and you have yourself a decent album. No amount of tweaking the production or rerecording vocals could save SC or Battles. You basically need to rewrite everything and start again with both.
Lyrically ASOP isn't really that bad. A couple of hilariously bad tracks in that regard, but overall it's not significantly worse than most of what came before it, and better than a lot of what came after it.
Oh, also the artwork for ASOP is hands down the worst out of all IF albums. Not even close for me.
Insofar as Jesper's comments are concerned, he's pretty much said all this before. Say that Anders was the problem without saying it. Kind of ironic for him to be talking negatively about a band shifting towards a radio-friendly sound when discussing Cyhra though, isn't it?
The guitar tone is easily the worst part of it for me. I can't fucking stand it, and the amateur production does absolutely no favors for it. It's baffling how the band listened to how tight and simply good Come Clarity sounded tonally and production-wise and threw that out the window for ASoP.
I hate ASoP's lyrics- Nothing
objectively bad, but it's so disingenuously emo (Save for something like "Disconnected", which I'd actually argue is the most genuine fucking thing on the album) that it (Along with the other issues) completely turns me off from some of the more redeemable songs. The vocals are definitely both an issue and an acquired taste, but there are absolutely bright spots which don't get mentioned much.
The artwork fucking sucks because it's
almost really fucking cool. I love all the different vibrant colors on it, particularly since that isn't usually a thing for IF's album covers, and the blue for the central color is what I've come to identify most with ASoP even over actual musical qualities. The design of the tendril things are also really nice here, even if they do dumb it down in the Delights and Angers cover. That being said, it's just fucking stupid. I don't know too many people who like the owl-man thing, and I wish that they didn't just do a half measure with its design. The unrecognizability and change is only really a thing on The Mirror's Truth's cover (It wasn't great there, but it made sense), and the fact that they didn't take it any further aside from giving the bastard a broken spine is disappointing. That, and the whole gate at the end is dumb, the ridiculously low walls are dumb, and the Nightmare on Elm Street reference, while nice, is just fucking goofy.
I feel like Jesper's taking just as much of a shot at Bjorn here, if not more of one. Anders undoubtedly had a say in the matter, but Bjorn and Jesper were the two who ultimately made the final decision on both the songwriting and direction. There's a lot of talk here about how In Flames changed because of how Bjorn operated, rather than Anders, though the 'certain individual
s' definitely implies that it's also partially Anders.
Jesper is probably the least important member of Cyhra and that band was meant to sound like shit from its inception. And while on topic of Cyhra, I never liked anything from them and after listening to the interview I posted, I find the Jake dude extremely annoying. Always interjecting and cutting Jesper off.
I agree about ASOP's cover, and its not just the cover but the whole artstyle aesthetic they were going for with that era, it looks like a hipster coloring book. ASOP era is just one bad choice after another: shitty new producer, new dude mixing the record, shitty visual representation, shitty production choices in the studio, everything. What a wasted potential. I've listened to that record so much when it came out that its sort of permanently engraved in my mind but nowadays I can't get more than 3 songs in, the guitar and vocal sound is too grating and fatigue-inducing.
I actually don't think it was meant to from the beginning. They were definitely going for melodic metal, but it was absolutely something with soul at first, and it was something that was more of a meeting of the minds between all members involved (I guess Peter was there too) and a sound that you could hear everyone's influence on (Hi, Peter, you were there too). Letters was a completely different Cyhra- One that gave a fuck about giving fans a piece of everyone involved, one that crafted actual quality melodies, and one that actually showed the friendship between the people involved rather than something transactional. It's felt like a fucking ego trip for Jake since, with the only thing mattering now being making generic arena metal hits that'll vaguely get a crowd jumping up, moshing, and poorly reciting the tagline of a chorus. Alex seems checked out, with his playing kinda just being there these days (His drumming was fantastic on Letters), and Euge seems like he's being held at gunpoint to do everything (Which even then, Jake wants his ideas to go through, 21:00-21:35 of the video really does say that) except make content for the community and actually talk to them, which he seems to genuinely really enjoy doing. I got involved in the community after Letters came out (Up until No Halos came out), and I got to interact with everyone
but Jake. Everyone seemed really proud of the record, and I even got to understand little things about Letters and about the band from everyone- Euge especially. Aside from his little livestream interviews, Jake doesn't interact with the community whatsoever, which is fucking baffling to me after hearing about how there was in-fighting in Amaranthe because certain members (Likely Elize and Olof) wanted to charge for meet and greets while he refused to. Unless if that was a complete and utter lie, it's just strange to me that Jake really doesn't involve himself with Cyhra's fans all that much.
After Letters, yeah, Cyhra decided to "go heavier to make more suitable songs for live performances" (Which is a decision I wouldn't entirely disagree with on its own) by sacrificing any sort of soul, melodies, sensible lyrics, and actual quality musicianship. That mantra became all that mattered when it came to the music going forward- And they got successful from doing it. I know Jesper's finally back as some sort of big part of the band, at least on the surface, but I still have absolutely no hope for them. There isn't the issue of needing his name to have his fans anymore- They already have their own army. They just want to have their cake and eat it too.
Too bad Jake started to be fed up with the In Flames related questions 32:14 "we don't have much time left, let's see if we have anything more with the album".
That's all I was actually interested in.
Another aggravating thing is that not even a minute later, he pretty much goes on to more or less explain "Yeah, we don't want to experiment with anything, we just want to be the band you can sing along with and enjoy live, and just naturally evolve the core sound"
My brother in Christ, if you don't fucking experiment, then your albums are going to get homogenous and boring, same as how you felt all of Iron Maiden's albums sounded the same.
The fascinating thing is that the guy said in the comments that he wanted to get a one-on-one interview with Jesper, but that Jesper doesn't really do those. While I like the interplay between him and others (Some interviews with Bjorn or Jake), it's just clear that Jake only gives a fuck about his own stuff here. The interview wasn't supposed to be about him or his opinions, he was brought along by Jesper so that he'd feel comfortable enough to do the interview. Why the fuck does he have to make it all about himself?
21:00-21:35 is absolutely beautiful though, I wish those moments happened more often during the writing process.
