New album Foregone out February 2023

[The Grayfox]

I think The Hive and Graveland get chosen as the token 'old songs' because Anders likes them. It was a long time ago, but I remember an interview where he specifically mentioned those two songs as some of his favorite In Flames songs. That second night at Dalhalla is rough. The first night is far superior, not even just because of December Flower.

 

[eochaid]

I would have been greatly disappointed if they hadn't.

I've lost so much interest in the band that I'm not even interested in listening to this just to shit on Anders' vocal abilities.

 

[DE4life]

How could you have lost interest after the tr00 back to da roots metal tornado that was Foregone?

 

[eochaid]

Maybe I'm not suited for melodeath anymore...

 

[DE4life]

Two things about the Summer Breeze set:

1) Anders' voice sounds okay on this show. Growls at least are on point, as per the most recent album.
2) Whilst I am not a big fan of Foregone, if those songs are pushing SC and Battles songs out of the set then that's quite fine. Only 1 song from SC (Everything's Gone) and absolutely nothing from Battles. Good.

 

[ThePhobiac]

I'll stan for Siren Charms any day but why they prop up Rusted Nail and Everything's Gone mystifies me. They're the two weakest songs on that record.

Anders shared on his instagram a picture of a cassette he received in '95 containing Dead Eternity and The Inborn Lifeless. Those were his "audition songs", I suppose.

 

[DE4life]

I guess they don't think many SC songs, beyond Everything's Gone and Rusted Fail, really fit into their overall set or have the required energy. I'd tend to agree. Most SC songs would stick out like a sore thumb these days, whereas Everything's Gone fits in fairly seamlessly. So whilst I'd rather they just didn't play anything from SC at all, I get why they go with EG mainly. I get the feeling Battles will go the way of STYE with very little live exposure going forward. Anders and Bjorn don't seem to care much for the album, as per their interviews.

I don't mind so much if they are releasing newer stuff to get rid of songs from recent albums which don't really land well live. It'd be more annoying if the setlist was filling up with newer stuff whilst older stuff vanished. However, for now at least, they're giving more coverage to their older songs than they did ten years ago... so I can't complain too much.

 

[Jester Slave]

Rusted Nail is such a weird song. That breakdown/bridge/whatever before the first chorus is so cool, then they never repeat it again and the song becomes a bore.

They should play In Plain View, Through Oblivion or WEWO. The latter could've been a staple: a very good song, encapsulates SC, and generally one of their better slower songs.

 

[DE4life]

Rusted Nail has the ingredients of a good IF song, it just felt like it needed more time to develop. There are some great elements in there, but it seems half-finished, and the mixing on the album for that song was atrocious. Amateurish.

In Plain View is a lot better live than on CD, but there isn't much going on in the verses. WEWO is a solid enough IF ballad, but Anders ain't pulling off those vocals live. Not that he can pull off Come Clarity or Stay With Me either, but it's still probably better left on CD. I'd take Through Oblivion ahead of TCP, but the rest of the band might as well head off stage and give the spotlight to Anders.

According to setlist.fm IPV and WEWO haven't been played since 2015, and Through Oblivion's last outing was 2018... so evidently the band don't consider them good live songs.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Agreed that SC songs probably don't fit into the setlist all that well these days. I'm probably the only person on Earth who would compare the two albums, but it feels like the same reason why DT doesn't play a whole lot from Construct these days. Maybe if they release another mellow album in the future they'll incorporate more into the setlist.

And yeah, Rusted Nail feels half-baked, and I think Anders' approach on it was not the right one. Seems like he wasn't sure what to do. The chorus is good, though. It has that 2000s In Flames vibe. Everything's Gone is a bit too basic and I'm not sure what Bjorn was thinking with that bridge. It feels like a less-interesting Enter Tragedy.

Big fan of the verses in In Plain View, personally. I always get big The Great Cold Distance-era Katatonia vibes from them.

 

[Jester Slave]

Through Oblivion sounded much more interesting live and I remember really liking the drums.

I just think it's lame that they make a mellow record and two of the most played tracks from it are generic IF songs (EG, Paralyzed) of which they have done much better songs before or since. You won't satisfy any SC lovers by putting those songs in the set, while simultaneously disappointing those who don't like that record. I get the appeal of EG, but after Foregone, there is 0 reason to play it, when the Foregone singles are much better and pretty much fill the same role in the set.

Yeah I really did IPV's verses as well, and it has cool electronics too! They could do an intro for it like CC. It's not that big of a banger that it should be a mainstay on the setlist, but it's worth the rotation every few years, instead of being thrown out after the promo tour. Meanwhile, Monsters in the Ballroom.... I'll never understand the appeal of that song, especially live.

The real travesty, however, is that aside from the three first singles which we have for A YEAR, they only played one more song from Foregone, so far even that just sporadically. I've tried cutting all kinds of slack for them, because playing festivals, especially short sets really limits your set-possibilities, but you have back to back nights at your own festival, and you don't fucking play ANY new songs from that record??? I actually had someone link me Meet Your Maker when it came out as a single, because they really dug it and wasn't sure if I had heard it.

Granted, they still hadn't started their non-festival part of their tour.

 

[The Grayfox]

I really don't understand why they aren't playing more from Foregone. Not that I care to be honest. I'm perfectly fine without more songs from it on the set, but it is weird. I can only think of two other albums that didn't get promoted heavily like this, which are SC and Battles (which is the greatest travesty of all - the whole thing should be played at every show). My guess is they either haven't gotten around to rehearsing more new songs or they just don't care enough about those songs to play them live. I thought for sure that songs like Pure Light of Mind and In The Dark would become staples in their set.

Also, and I'm not trying to hammer on this some more, but I think Anders may be struggling vocally. Even on older songs that have clean vocals, he either screams the lyrics or lets the crowd sing them. Just in the Summer Breeze stream, you can hear it in Pinball Map, Leeches, Alias and others. I'm not throwing shade at him, but it could be why songs from SC aren't in the set. His screams and growls are sounding pretty good these days though.

 

[DE4life]

Anders has been doing that for a while tbf. Last time I saw them live in 2019 they played TCP and Anders basically growled all of it. This was fine, it sounded better that way, but yeah. Also when they played WTDSD he was letting the crowd sing the chorus. Don't think he sung any of them. Again, not complaining, but it's been going on at least since then. Either he does genuinely struggle with switching between screaming/growl and cleans nowadays (fair enough if so, it isn't easy) or he's lacking confidence in his singing voice (also fair enough, since he sucks at singing, being coached or not).

It is pretty weird how little they're playing from Foregone. Instead of debuting a song from the new album they play a song from TJR for the first time since 1996, lmao. I'm not mad, it's great, but it's the opposite of what we're used to from Anders and Bjorn over the past two decades. Typically they have buried the old albums in terms of live exposure in order to play the increasingly less interesting new stuff. Obviously for the likes of Slave, Krofius and Ciko it was all good with dem catchy choruses and singing with Anders in the California sunshine and waving your hands in the air and crying to how emotional Anders is and whatever... but for those of us who enjoy awesome music instead, it sucked. They seem to be going in reverse now, which is weird. I'm sure it's nothing to do with THE though.

 

[The Grayfox]

Speaking of THE, I skimmed around that In Flames documentary and saw there was a guy in line at one of their signings wearing a Halo Effect shirt. For some reason I imagine Anders seeing this guy and saying "I'm not signing anything for you. Get lost."

 

[DE4life]

Whoever edited the documentary is now fired.

 

[ThePhobiac]

My guess is that making Foregone gave them renewed appreciation for their old works -- as much as we might disagree about how well they captured the essence of old In Flames on Foregone, if they did at all -- hence why they're bringing back stuff like Stand Ablaze, December Flower, etc. They've dusted off some old tracks before (Resin on the Siren Charms tour, for one), but I think bringing back old songs on a tour for what they believe is a callback album makes sense.

 

[eochaid]

Or maybe THE and their album being a high success had something to do with this. But, we cannot know.

 

[Jester Slave]

It doesn't and shouldn't matter if we like the newest record or not, as it's pretty normal procedure to initially promote the newest songs.

And SC got a decent tour imo. It had like 7 SC songs in the set or something like that.

 

[DE4life]

Yeah they played a fair few SC songs in 2014/2015, then dropped 95% of those songs like a sack of shit, never to be played again.

 

[Jester Slave]

Isn't that the life-cycle of most new materials? If you want to see songs from the newest record of pretty much any band then your only option is to buy a ticket for the album's tour. As soon as it's done, most of those songs immediately turn into the deep cut category.

If you look up the statistics for the previous records, then you see very similar patterns. Somehow ITM looks the worse off actually, but it's most likely because of Covid. It's funny though that when they pick another song from that record to accompany IAA, they pick Call My Name and not the title track for example, which is actually really good, yet they've never played it. Maybe it'll debut on their own, 2-nights festival, right?!