New album Foregone out February 2023

[Jester Slave]

It is evident, that in a hundred years SC will be mentioned alongside of such records as Master of Puppets and The Dark Side of The Moon, however, it doesn't really have any bangers. I don't think it's a problem, because after so many records and prominent songs, a band should be okay to release odd albums. SC stands on its own legs perfectly, as a moodier little brother of SOAPF.

I still think SC is much more interesting than any of the three records which came after it.

 

[DE4life]

Not sure how interesting an album with zero bangers on it can be tbh. I kind of get what you're saying though. It's like, a horribly designed game with a hundred glitches and bizarre choices is more interesting than a decent but unoriginal game.

Hi Guys, i had some big family emergency due to that i was not able to check the forum.

I will upload the audio of the interview within this week. Hearing the solo of December Flower was an amazing surprise.

Hope all is well with your family now dude. I was only kidding around, but it would be cool to hear the full interviews for sure.

 

[Jester Slave]

Something like that. It encompasses something. It fills a niche role and you remember it much more than random shooter #52.

You are a literature guy, so maybe you've read Froth on the Daydream or whatever English title it currently has. Some of its chapters are hella boring, and I hate authors who spend more than one sentence on describing someone's look, but overall the book touches on something really special.

I'm not saying SC is in those heights, but it's definitely more memorable to me, even though objectively speaking I'd put ITM on the top from the Foregone-ITM-Battles-SC quartet.

 

[DE4life]

Well, if we're talking the last four albums for me it'd probably be

ITM
Foregone
SC
Battles

I thought ITM did a good job of capturing the IF style, albeit through the irritating lens of Benson. It still had the annoying, excessing autotuning and weak production, but the songs were unique and had a familiar feel to them. It was a big step up from Battles.

Foregone is a competent metal album for the most part, albeit personally quite boring for me. Some of these songs I will be okay listening to if they come on my random song playlist. I don't think I'll ever listen to one of the songs on this album on purpose again though.

SC just doesn't have enough energy for me. It's barely a metal album, which in of itself isn't a dealbreaker for me, but what is there isn't to my taste. It's hard for me to forgive the haphazard production, bizarre song structures and horrible vocals. There are a couple of decent tracks in there, but by and large it's not my kind of music.

Battles is just an empty joke of an album, for the most part. The End is alright. Wallflower is a better structured TCP. The rest sounds mostly like IF covering some shitty pop-punk band, and I don't like that so much was written by people outside of the band. Anders and Bjorn have basically commented the same thing, so I get the feeling they aren't hugely fond of the album either.

Ultimately the last four albums all come below the albums that came before them, but ITM was a solid enough effort. The rest I have hardly any interest in.

 

[ThePhobiac]

I want an acoustic In Flames album with this degree of skill. Put Anders on If Anything, Suspicious duty.



I feel bad for Bjorn. Dude must be feeling the pressure to impress Chris-chan.

I do find it amusing that In Flames and Dark Tranquillity both have a guitarist who can faceroll Bach (holy fuck at 0:35 lmao):

 

[eochaid]

SC just doesn't have enough energy for me.

I put SC above foregone.it doesn't have any energy but, at least, it doesn't sound as if it was made by an AI.

 

[Jester Slave]

Holy shit, I've never seen this before.

 

[DE4life]

I find both albums quite boring to listen to, but I rate Foregone above SC for a few reasons:

1) How I felt when I heard the album: SC pissed me off when it came out. I was angry that they had dropped all of the energy from SOAPF, which I really liked, and instead put out an insomnia-aid as its follow-up. Whilst I was annoyed with the blatant rip off in regards to SSoD verses and BBF, overall I can't say Foregone pissed me off, it just bored me. Granted that may be because I have way lower expectations for IF now than I did in 2014, but it is what it is.

2) Production: I don't understand what was going on with the production on SC, but it's mostly shit. It works for a couple of songs but it's really inconsistent between tracks and to my ears isn't pleasant to listen to. Foregone production is solid enough.

3) Composition: Yes, Foregone tracks are formulaic as fuck and have little creativity, but at least they are competently composed. At times SC tracks sound like they were composed by musicians who had never written proper music before. SC doesn't even sound finished in some areas, whereas Foregone tracks all sound complete, regardless of their quality.

4) Vocals: Anders' vocals on SC suck. They just suck. The occasional growls he does are okay, but the cleans are generally poor, and a lot of his vocals - growled or otherwise - don't even match up with the instruments. On Foregone there are more growls and they sound decent. Cleans are autotuned into oblivion but they don't sound embarrassing, just fake. Also the vocals mix correctly with the instruments, which means the songs actually sound professional and like they were written with Anders and Bjorn in sync, compared to SC where it sounds like Anders did vocals separately, Bjorn did (the bare minimum) of the instruments separately and they just mashed those together to produce something vaguely resembling music.

Foregone is fake and boring at times, but SC is often downright incompetent and shockingly put together for musicians with over two decades of experience. So, Foregone pulls ahead despite not being anything special.

 

[galvanized]

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.

He should’ve deleted the song. It’s not even a song. It’s like 3-4 clips pasted together.

 

[eochaid]

I find both albums quite boring to listen to, but I rate Foregone above SC for a few reasons:

Having in mind that Foregone is the album that has made me lose interest in the band, there's no way that I can rate it over SC that is just a poorly made album.

 

[DE4life]

Context is somewhat important with that distinction though. When SC came out IF last four albums were STYE, CC, ASOP and SOAPF. There's at least two great albums in there, and opinions vary on STYE and ASOP. From memory you like ASOP, so that would be at least 3/4 albums you liked before SC came out. So, it could be seen as a blip rather than the norm. There wasn't any reason to abandon IF at that point as the potential was still there for something good. Also Peter and Daniel were still around, albeit not for long in Daniel's case, so it still felt like IF.

IF of present day has released two awful albums in the past decade, and one passable effort in ITM. It's now Howard Benson's In Flames and only Anders and Bjorn remain of the lineup we all knew. I'd say Foregone would be more of a tipping point than a direct reason as to why you'd feel done with the band. At some point you just lose trust in the current incarnation of the band to ever produce a genuinely good album again.

 

[eochaid]

I'm not sure if that's the case. It's like... Foregone... It's a discouraging album. I cannot even be mad about it. It's just... No.

 

[Jester Slave]

Do you at least like the title track? I think it's a really good song and it could even compete with some of the pre-SOAPF classics, although I Am Above is still much better in my books. Anyhow, Forgeone pt. 1 sounds like an actual song, and not just a catchy chorus or one good riff. If the whole record had that kind of songmaking I think it could've been really good, but instead most of the tracks lack imagination.

And say what you will about SC but those were at least properly done songs from start to finish. Maybe you guys don't like the mixing of it, or more understandably, the complete lack of urgency in the tracks, but at least most of them are complete songs, and not "that chorus" or "that riff".

 

[DE4life]

I'm not sure if that's the case. It's like... Foregone... It's a discouraging album. I cannot even be mad about it. It's just... No.

I agree but at the same time, it's not worse than SC + Battles combined, and you were still on board after both of those... so I think it's more fatigue over so many poor albums being released in the last decade as opposed to Foregone itself being the sole reason.

And say what you will about SC but those were at least properly done songs from start to finish. Maybe you guys don't like the mixing of it, or more understandably, the complete lack of urgency in the tracks, but at least most of them are complete songs, and not "that chorus" or "that riff".

Well, I have the exact opposite opinion. I don't think SC as an album feels finished, and most of the songs reflect that. The only exceptions for me would be Through Oblivion, WEWO and maybe Monsters in the Ballroom and Filtered Truth. The rest needed a lot more time and effort put into them. In the majority of the songs the verses are practically nothing, just Anders "singing" in bad rhythm. Instrumentally it feels like Bjorn and Daniel especially were barely even trying. Then there's the way the songs were pieced together which is equally problematic. Too many of them have jarring sections which sound like they were literally spliced in with no thought put into how the song flows or how the vocal rhythm is being applied. Putting a bunch of random electronic sounds in verses is not enough.

SOAPF didn't have this problem, but we know Bjorn basically wrote everything for that album and so it has a clear and cohesive structure. It seems that when Anders took greater control during SC it just didn't work. Anders alluded to there being issues in the band at that time in terms of communication, and I think it shows. Also the fact the writing was rushed - I think the majority was written in six weeks? - and stuff would get changed by Anders and the producer without any of the other band members being aware until after the fact. Everything that's come out about the SC sessions makes it sound like a disjointed and unprofessional process and, in my view at least, the end results show that very clearly.

Whilst I have no love for Howard Benson's In Flames, they haven't had such an amateurish sound since then. The songs are correctly structured even if a lot of them are fake and boring. It's not necessarily any better, though. I rate Battles below SC, despite it technically being a structurally competent album. For all its flaws, SC is an In Flames album in the sense that it was the ideas of the band (mostly Anders) rather than a bunch of LA alt-rock gurus.

 

[ThePhobiac]

I like Foregone, but I can see it being like Sonata Arctica's "Pariah's Child." It was ostensibly a back to the roots album and most people were happy with it, but to me it just felt like a husk of what they used to be and didn't capture the magic of their old albums at all. Not to mention I was a fan of their experimental records (Unia, The Days of Grays, not so much Stones Grow), so I was a bit disappointed they moved away from that to make music that felt both less interesting and less genuine. It was the album that made me give up on the band.

 

[DE4life]

The thing is, the idea that IF went "back to da rootz" on Foregone is a fundamentally flawed perception as nothing on Foregone relates to their roots. It doesn't relate to any of their back catalogue because they didn't sound like that at any point in their career. At best you could say SSoD has some ATG influence, but that isn't In Flames, and Great Deceiver has some moments that would fit on Come Clarity, but not the song as a whole.

It's not a back to the roots album, it's just an album where some songs are a bit heavier than stuff they've been doing recently. They were never a heavy band to begin with - in the context of the metal sphere, anyway. They were always way more about beautiful melodies, and you hear that when any of their old stuff is played on piano, it sounds amazing. I doubt Cannibal Corpse would transfer in the same way.

Besides of which, outside of the singles the tracks are basically the same fake and boring shit they've been doing for a while now. The singles would have made for a somewhat worthwhile EP, but the rest of the songs don't add much. Pure Light of Mind is actually okay, sans the stupid autotuning on the vocals, but what part of that exactly is back to the roots?

In regards to Sonata Arctica, a couple of songs from the (original) Ecliptica album came on my playlist today and reminded me how good they were. Ecliptica was a ridiculously epic debut album. Blank File and Full Moon are still stone cold classics. Love how both just keep the intensity going from first to last. I was okay with them experimenting, but it sucked that they pretty much lost all their intensity, and by the time they decided they wanted to get it back it was too late. They didn't have that youthful energy anymore and it came off as contrived. You could tell they'd lost that sense of youthful exuberence when they botched the Ecliptica rerecording, almost as badly as Clayman 2020, but at least IF only rerecorded and ruined a handful of songs, not the entire fucking album.

But yeah, Ecliptica, masterpiece. Blank File, My Land, Replica, Kingdom for a Heart, Full Moon, Letter to Dana, Unopened... none of those ever get old to me. Kakko's vocals are far from refined, but he sounds earnest and I like that his style allows him the flexibility to inject emotional range into the words he's singing.

 

[eochaid]

It's a comeback to a more aggressive sound? For some songs that's true. It's a comeback to their old sound? Fuck no. And it's not just Anders. The vibes that the music transmit have nothing to do with old IF.

I also want to remember that after SC (or Battles, I cannot remember now) was released I said that this was going to happen. That after a few albums they would be pretending to do a comeback.

But it's too late. They forgot or simply are not able to do old (IF) school songs anymore.

 

[DE4life]

The problem with the idea of a "comeback to an aggressive sound" is that this isn't "back to the roots" because whilst they had some aggressive songs on previous albums - Morphing Into Primal, for example - by and large their music was far more geared towards melody than aggression. The closest they had to an aggressive sound was Come Clarity. Firstly, not back to da rootz as that was 2006, but secondly there's still plenty of melody there. It also has Jesper's touch which is simply impossible for them to replicate now.

I would have been fine with them sticking to and refining to the ITM sound, but when have they ever done that? Since they left Nordstrom they've always jumped to a new kind of sound every album, which makes it difficult to ever build up any expectations. How many other bands are so utterly schizophrenic in how they approach their music? It worked on some level before, as Jesper was able to tie it all together with his unique ability to compose in a certain way, but nowadays their change of sound just comes across as a band who have no idea who or what they want to be.

I don't want to give up on IF, but after 3 bad albums out of 4 (from a personal perspective), I've pretty much lost hope. As long as they are shacked up with Benson I don't think they'll record anything worthwhile, and even without him we may just get another dumpster fire like Siren Charms. The only way they record a solid new album (without returning to Nordstrom) is:

1) Dump Benson
2) Let a motivated Bjorn write everything again, like SOAPF. Broderick and Tanner could contribute, as I've heard enough to know they have good ideas

Sadly I don't foresee either of the above happening, so we're likely stuck with HB's In Flames until they finally decide to call it a day.

 

[GraemeSinclair]

For me, Foregone doesn't belong in the same conversation as Siren Charms and Battles in terms of a trend of deteriorating quality in the band's sound, or a loss of identity. Those albums really felt like IF had all but abandoned melodic death metal for something completely different.

Obviously Reroute was their breaking point with 'pure' MDM, but it generally felt like there was -something- of their signature sound in the albums that came after. The extent of that MDM influence varies, and it's not like a steady curve that took them further and further from their roots with each consecutive release; I'd argue that Come Clarity has a lot more MDM elements than Soundtrack to Your Escape, for example. Likewise, I think Sounds of a Playground Fading is a much more balanced blend of their classic sound and the alternative metal they've explored since 2000 than A Sense of Purpose was, although maybe it's just that the execution was lacking on ASOP in comparison to SOAPF.

Siren Charms, though, felt like the point to me where their sound became so distant from melodic death metal that there was almost nothing there that connected with me. It's an alt metal record, and Battles is a pop metal record. They were the ones that I found it hardest to put on after listening to something from Whoracle or Colony and telling myself 'this is the same band'. I find it hard to talk about I, the Mask as a whole, because half of it felt like the most MDM-influenced thing they'd done since Come Clarity and half of it felt like the worst parts of Battles.

I understand that claims that Foregone is an unadulterated return to their TJR-Clayman Studio Fredman sound are untrue and naive - it has too much of the Benson-era sound integrated, BUT, for my money, it also has the most melodic death metal of any of their post-2000 releases, and the longer I listen to it the less I find myself caring about the over-processed clean vocals and other flaws, and the more I'm just happy about the growls, the melodies, the riffs, the drums and the fact that the production absolutely pops. It's the first IF album since SOAPF that I'm happy to listen to front-to-back on a regular basis.

 

[The Grayfox]

Siren Charms is at the very bottom of my list of IF albums. Yes, even below Battles. It's not that it isn't a particularly heavy album. I listen to plenty of stuff outside of the MDM realm. Hell, I'm a big Beartooth fan and they're basically pop-metal at this point. But they know how to write a good, catchy tune. And that's the difference to me. I am probably biased because as DE said, we were coming off of STYE, CC, ASOP and SOAPF and SC was a real shock. I remember when they dropped Rusted Nail and thinking "what the hell is going on here?" I'll admit, I've never listened to SC all the way through, but not for lack of trying. I have tried to listen to it in it's entirety several times and I just can't get through it. I have heard every song on it, but I can't listen to it as a whole. So while I admit I am biased against it because of WHEN it came out, I also maintain that to my taste, it just isn't good.

I probably rate Battles higher because it followed SC and I was prepared for it. I knew going in what was going to happen. Also, Wallflower is better than anything on SC in my opinion. But if I'm being completely honest, if you asked me to name the tracklistings for SC and Battles, you would probably get two tracklistings with songs from both because some of those songs are so unmemorable that I can't remember which albums they're on. I won't rehash my feelings on Foregone, I do think it is better than SC and Battles but it's still near the bottom of the list. It has some shining moments and some not-so-great stuff.