New album Foregone out February 2023

[The Grayfox]

Yeah, like you said, most of the songs on that album haven't stood the test of time in IF's setlists so it's easy to assume they're not super fond of a lot of those songs. Then again, they are fond of some of the absolute worst ones on there... in my opinion. Not only has The Chosen Pessimist stuck around, they've fucking OPENED shows with it. Part of me understands that they just look at the metrics and see what songs get a lot of play from fans and include those in the sets. You want to please the majority of your fanbase at shows, totally understand it. It just sucks that my personal taste doesn't align with 99% of their fanbase

I think what it boils down to is that I hate that they just can't escape the "hits." There are so many bands who have hits that don't insist on making sure they cram in as many as possible into every single setlist. If Metallica only played songs that got radio play or they made a video for, their setlist would never change. But here they are, still playing sets that, sometimes, consist mainly of material from their first 4 albums. I like the way Maiden does it. They have a few hits that they rotate in and out, but they don't try to cram every single one into every single set. They rotate songs a LOT. Sure, it's for a whole tour, but just because they didn't play Rime of the Ancient Mariner on tour A, doesn't mean they won't play it on tour B. With In Flames, I think we can be fairly sure on their next European tour that Condemned won't magically be pulled out of a hat. If that ever happens, it'll be at Dalhalla and that's it. Their setlist variation is terrible.

 

[DE4life]

They're just fucking lazy, honestly. They make the effort at Dalhalla and phone it in everywhere else as far as the songs they choose to play. They had a period in the mid-2000s where they were playing some really interesting and varied setlists, albeit far too light on the older stuff, but they even briefly busted out stuff like WWTM and TJR (in a medley, but still). Nowadays they can't even be bothered to play songs from their brand new album. Now admittedly most of them suck, and all of their new stuff sucks compared to pre-2014 output, but nonetheless... the lack of effort is sad. Just give it up already if you can't be bothered.

 

[DE4life]

Happy Christmas all. Have fun, eat a lot and drink responsibly.

 

[eochaid]

Happy Christmas.

 

[GraemeSinclair]

Nollaig Chridheil dhuibh uile/Feliz Navidad a todos/Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all had a great one!

 

[Xpyro125]

STYE:

Evil in a Closet
The Quiet Place
Touch of Red
Borders and Shading
Like You Better Dead
Dead Alone
Superhero of the Computer Rage
Discover Me Like Emptiness
In Search For I
Dial-595 Escape
My Sweet Shadow
F(r)iend
Bottled

I've italicised six of the songs because I basically rank all of those in the same place, they're all 7/10 tracks for me. A better way of grouping for my selections would be by ratings:

9/10 - Evil in a Closet
8.5/10 - The Quiet Place
7.5/10 - Touch of Red, Borders and Shading, Like You Better Dead
7/10 - Dead Alone, Superhero of the Computer Rage, Discover Me Like Emptiness, In Search For I, Dial-595 Escape, My Sweet Shadow
5/10 - F(r)iend
1/10 - Bottled

As far as ASOP is concerned...

Eraser
Abnegation
Condemned
Tilt
Sleepless Again
The Mirror's Truth
Disconnected
Alias
Sober and Irrelevant
I'm the Highway
Drenched in Fear
Move Through Me
March to the Shore
Delight and Angers
The Chosen Pessimist

Again, a lot of songs basically in the same or similar brackets:

8/10 - Eraser, Abnegation, Condemned
7.5/10 - Tilt, Sleepless Again
7/10 - The Mirror's Truth, Disconnected, Alias
6.5/10 - Sober and Irrelevant, I'm the Highway, Drenched in Fear, Move Through Me, March to the Shore
3/10 - Delight and Angers
2/10 - TCP

Production and vocals on this album drag everything down, though, and make even the good songs tough to listen to. Most of them sound a lot better live. TMT live is awesome, but on album it's quite average.

Although I'm not really sure about the number gradings, STYE goes like this for me-

Borders and Shading [10/10]
Discover Me Like Emptiness [10/10]
Touch of Red [9.5/10]
The Quiet Place [9.5/10]
F(r)iend [8.5/10]
My Sweet Shadow [8.5/10]
Dead Alone [8.5/10]- Criminally underrated imo
Like You Better Dead [8.5/10]
In Search For I [7.5/10]- I like the vocals, the lyrics don't really take me out of the moment, but it's probably the one song that doesn't work with STYE's production
Dial 595-Escape [7.5/10]
My Sweet Shadow (Remix) [7.5/10]- I quite like it for the most part, but I hate that one really loud electronic noise in the second verse
Varmlandsvisan [7.5/10]- I always forget about this one, but it's good
Evil in a Closet [6/10]- Don't care for the latter half of the song
Superhero of the Computer Rage [2/10]- The melodic lead is cool, that's it
Bottled [0/10]
Average- 7.5/10

It's always strange and surprising to me just how much Superhero resonates with everyone else except me. Sure, the lead is absolutely classic In Flames, but that's pretty much the only really enjoyable part of the song for me. I'm not exactly sure what I'm just not hearing, but yeah, I wish it was better. I don't necessarily think it should've been left off the album though- That honor is reserved for Bottled exclusively.

ASoP-

Disconnected [10/10]
Move Through Me [10/10]
Eraser [10/10]
The Mirror's Truth [9/10]- Ranked higher than some with better scores because I love the composition and hate some production choices that aren't just the guitar tone
Tilt [9.5/10]
Drenched In Fear [9.5/10]- Also underrated as fuck
Abnegation [9/10]
Sleepless Again [8/10]
Alias [8/10]
The Chosen Pessimist [7.5/10]- Would rate this a lot higher if they just cut out a minute of the buildup because it just doesn't quite justify its length in the same way as other long songs or even Wallflower
I'm the Highway [6.5/10]
Condemned [6/10]
March to the Shore [6/10]
Delights and Angers/Sober and Irrelevant [0/10]- Both should've been left off the album
Average- 7.5/10

I've always tended to believe that I like ASoP more when I'm more depressed, and these scores are genuinely startling to me because of that. I don't know if it's actually grown on me or if I'm in a worse headspace than I realize- Though then again, I work retail and have been forced to listen to Christmas music nonstop since November started, so maybe anything's honey for the wound.

Also, I swear that that tie wasn't intentional, I generally find STYE to be way more enjoyable than ASoP.

 

[The Grayfox]

Superhero of the Computer Rage [2/10]- The melodic lead is cool, that's it

It's always strange and surprising to me just how much Superhero resonates with everyone else except me. Sure, the lead is absolutely classic In Flames, but that's pretty much the only really enjoyable part of the song for me. I'm not exactly sure what I'm just not hearing, but yeah, I wish it was better. I don't necessarily think it should've been left off the album though- That honor is reserved for Bottled exclusively.

Boo this man!

For me, I think it's a pacing thing. I love the pace of the song and I like the overlaid vocals in the chorus quite a bit. I wouldn't put it up against anything from Clayman, for instance, but on a pretty subpar album like STYE, it sticks out to me as being quite enjoyable. And then in comparison to anything from Siren Charms or Battles, I'd say it's a masterpiece.

 

[A88]

Ah, STYE. Fucking hate that album and its sound. Dead Alone and MSS are good songs I guess.

In retrospect, and as I had the chance to hear masterpieces like Siren Charms, Battles and the last album, STYE isn't so bad, especially the used and abused version.

On the other hand, ASOP is a great album buried somwhere in the mass grave filled with bad production, awful artwork style, filler songs, Anders' "singing", lyrics and ideas.

 

[drawntoblack]

I could swear we've had this conversation at least 5 times over the years.

Nowadays I enjoy STYE/R2R for the timestamps that they are, of that era and of where I was and the things I did while listening to them throughout 2000s. That's probably better even if less fair compared to extremely unbiased and impassive rating of newer albums. I'm probably also a bit nostalgic for that whole era of post-nu metal alternative metal of 2000s, there's no music like it anymore.

Also, hope you all had a nice Christmas and new years eve.

 

[ThePhobiac]

It makes sense that topics would repeat, tbh. Everything about the band has been discussed to death already. We are cursed to be here and rank In Flames albums and songs until forever.

 

[Xpyro125]

In fairness, it is generally interesting to see how people’s opinions have changed or stayed the same over time

I haven’t been here too long anyways, so I’m pretty sure this is my first time ranking those albums’ tracks on the forum.

Also, Foregone just isn’t interesting to think about or talk about. I could go on about how I finally listened to it with my father and he loved it, but honestly? I’m not really sure how much more than I need to say other than how he enjoys modern metalcore and thinks Chris’ solos are incredible, which help to make sense as to why he enjoyed it a lot more than I did. Sure, A Dialogue sounds a hell of a lot like Voices, but nothing on here really hits as hard or feels as good as THE or their older stuff, and considering how much of a clusterfuck Cyhra is, that also makes for a more fruitful conversation. Sorry if I’m coming off hostile, I don’t mean to be.

I guess I could say that Down, Wicked, and No Good was interesting sonically and is something I would like to see more of, but there’s no way in hell that’s happening.

 

[Xpyro125]

I'm probably also a bit nostalgic for that whole era of post-nu metal alternative metal of 2000s, there's no music like it anymore.

Though I do feel that shit completely

 

[eochaid]

I guess I could say that Down, Wicked, and No Good was interesting sonically and is something I would like to see more of, but there’s no way in hell that’s happening.

I would only say that as evidence to my family that I've been abducted.

 

[DE4life]

It makes sense that topics would repeat, tbh. Everything about the band has been discussed to death already. We are cursed to be here and rank In Flames albums and songs until forever.

Lol, yeah, I don't think there's anything new to talk about at this point - especially with Foregone giving us little to talk about and the band in general being pretty boring these days. My opinions have certainly changed over time, although that's at least partially due to newer albums making me realise the older albums weren't as bad as I thought. I can tolerate the likes of STYE a lot more now than I could back when the most recent album was Come Clarity or even SOAPF.

As far as ASOP is concerned, it'll always just be a case of wasted potential to me. Maybe the most frustrating album in the band's entire discography, because all of the ingredients are there for a solid followup to Come Clarity - it's just fucked over by the production and Anders' shitty vocals. Two things that I can't really overlook or ignore when I listen to the album. I simply can't stand Anders' vocals on ASOP. There's no technique or talent to anything he's doing, it's just annoying yelling, bad attempts at singing and a smattering of mostly weak growls. Some of this could be masked by decent production, as was the case with SOAPF, but the production just makes everything even worse.

 

[Xpyro125]

I would only say that as evidence to my family that I've been abducted.

Compared to Foregone, I’d happily take it. It’s pretty clear that the guys love 80s stuff, and while that much isn’t always my cup of tea, I think going in the direction of their cover of It’s No Good in particular would actually make for something pretty good. Maybe it’s just me being tired of downtuned metalcore/deathcore shit with little to no melody, maybe it’s me feeling that In Flames’ heavy these days isn’t very heavy, but I just want something I can feel. I probably should’ve clarified that I absolutely don’t want anything in the direction of their Wicked Game or Hurt covers. The former worked enough for what intended to do, though I don’t think they could meaningfully take it any further. The latter… No.

I simply can't stand Anders' vocals on ASOP. There's no technique or talent to anything he's doing, it's just annoying yelling, bad attempts at singing and a smattering of mostly weak growls. Some of this could be masked by decent production, as was the case with SOAPF, but the production just makes everything even worse.

I don’t think I quite agree with the take of SOAPF’s vocals being in the same territory as ASOP’s vocals, even if they also lacked defined technique. Even though there’s only a difference of three years between albums, I feel that there’s a far older and wiser sort of raspiness to his clean vocals in particular, which is far different sonically and just lyrically from ASOP. In fairness, ASOP’s a lot of whining, so I don’t think comparing the lyrics is entirely fair. I think the lower register that’s generally on display in SOAPF also helps with that. I’m not very educated on vocals nor on describing them, so I don’t really think I’m the one to make this argument, but I guess it’s a start.

 

[DE4life]

I don’t think I quite agree with the take of SOAPF’s vocals being in the same territory as ASOP’s vocals, even if they also lacked defined technique. Even though there’s only a difference of three years between albums, I feel that there’s a far older and wiser sort of raspiness to his clean vocals in particular, which is far different sonically and just lyrically from ASOP. In fairness, ASOP’s a lot of whining, so I don’t think comparing the lyrics is entirely fair. I think the lower register that’s generally on display in SOAPF also helps with that. I’m not very educated on vocals nor on describing them, so I don’t really think I’m the one to make this argument, but I guess it’s a start.

Before I isolated the vocal stems I would have said exactly the same thing, but once I heard the vocals removed from the music I realised that Anders himself is not doing anything significantly different on SOAPF. There are some changes but it's mostly the same - it's just that whoever produced the vocals and mixed it with the music did a much better job on SOAPF than on ASOP. I don't know if it was the same person/people or somebody different, but regardless. It could also be that the musical production on SOAPF - which is quite different to ASOP - lends itself better to those type of vocals too. I don't know.

Lyrically there is a bit of an improvement on SOAPF, but I wouldn't say it's a huge leap forward or anything. ASOP has some really shitty lines (the obvious one from Disconnected, some of Sleepless Again and a lot of Delight & Angers) but in total the lyrics aren't significantly worse than Come Clarity, which had such classics as "I cut myself to sleep" and "You should realise it hurts in me too". So much depends on vocal delivery and production, and ASOP fails massively in that department.

 

[ThePhobiac]

I always thought that Come Clarity was Anders' peak, in that his screams and clean signing with both mostly good, and distinct from one another. Before CC his clean vocals were always too weak to be featured prominently, but CC is where they started putting them front and center without detracting from the music (Crawl Through Knives, Leeches, Reflect the Storm).

I don't have an issue with Anders' 100% pure screams on ASOP or SOAPF, nor with his 100% purely clean singing (The Chosen Pessimist, the verses of Ropes, the chorus of Alias, Liberation, etc). The issue I have is that shitty hybrid scream-sing yelling he does throughout most of ASOP and too much of SOAPF. I get what he's going for -- kind of a Layne Staley delivery. He wanted to add some melody to his screams without actually singing his lines. But it just sounds bad to me. And sometimes he tries to make his clean singing too forceful and kind of "bakes" it, like in the chorus of Where the Dead Ships Dwell and almost all of Deliver Us, and that sounds awful to me, too. He can't do 50% sing, 50% scream. It has to be 100% one or the other for me.

Much to my satisfaction, he mostly* did away with this on Siren Charms, instead doing either 100% screaming or 100% singing like he did on Come Clarity, with little hybridization.

*It's still there in places like the choruses of In Plain View and Rusted Nail, but nowhere near as prominent.

 

[GraemeSinclair]

It's interesting to realise in retrospect that Anders' yell-singing was really just as prevalent on SOAPF as it was on ASOP, and yet it didn't seem to drag that album down anywhere near as much as its predecessor. I suppose maybe it is all in the production, or maybe better songwriting plays a role too. I also think (at least for me) that, at the time, A New Dawn did quite a lot of heavy lifting when comparing SOAPF as a new album to ASOP. There was nothing on ASOP that sounded as close to classic IF, and by extension, the guitar, synth and vocal work throughout the record just seemed stronger and more memorable.

My recent change of opinion has been an increased appreciation for Colony. I've never disliked it, and songs like Embody the Invisible and Zombie Inc have always been among my favourite IF tracks, but I'd say that it was always the album among the 'Big Four' that connected least with me. Scorn, Coerced Coexistence and Insipid 2000 especially just kind of washed over me, whereas now I recognise them all as fucking incredible. There was something that someone (@DE4life maybe?) mentioned a while ago about Anders' vocal tone on Colony that I think rings true. It's like a perfect balance between the unfiltered low, raw bellow he had on TJR/Whoracle (which has historically been my favourite sound of his) and the high scream he would adopt as his main vocal style from Clayman to Come Clarity. I think that might be peak Anders for me, it has everything simultaneously - earth-shaking low raw power and crackling high energy.

I will say that, in my opinion, the harsh vocals on Foregone are the closest he's come to that since...

 

[DE4life]

Yeah, I've always said that the Colony vocals are my favourite from the IF discography. For that year or so in late-98 to early-2000ish Anders was fantastic both in studio and live, as during that period he was able to pull off his Colony vocals almost flawlessly. He obviously suffered for it, as Clayman showed, although I still ultimately prefer Clayman to Colony just because it's a tad more melodic. Vocally though Anders was superior, to my ears anyway, on Colony. He had some powerful vocal performances afterwards - STYE and CC are strong from a harsh vocal perspective - but that mix of lower growl and higher scream was just about perfect for me on Colony and he never quite returned to that style again. Well, more accurately, he probably couldn't return to that style again.

Another thing that helps Colony slightly compared to TJR/Whoracle is that the lyrics fit in better with the music. It's a bit less verbose, so it doesn't feel like Anders is trying to rush through the words to fit them all in. This is more of an issue on TJR than Whoracle, but Colony is the first album where I feel like the lyrics allow for smooth rhythm throughout. Don't get me wrong, the lyrics on TJR and Whoracle are fantastic, but much like Sundin's earlier lyrics for DT, it often feels like the vocals are struggling to fit the amount of words ascribed. It also sometimes feels like they wrote a first draft of the lyrics, then went through a thesaurus and changed 50% of the words to more complicated ones just to make it sound more sophisticated. It's cool in a way, but sometimes it's a good idea to exercise restraint.

 

[The Grayfox]

Colony is definitely the bridge between TJR/Whoracle and Clayman -- both literally and figuratively. The elements from the older albums are definitely there, but there is a sense of moving forward and trying some new things, namely it's really the first time clean vocals are used, just small seeds planted that would grow even more on Clayman. My biggest problem with Colony though is that when compared to TJR, Whoracle and Clayman, it has the most filler tracks. The tracks that are strong are REALLY strong, but I can listen to TJR, Whoracle and Clayman all the way through no problem -- when it comes to Colony, the second half really starts to eat shit, in my opinion. While I do enjoy Coerced Coexistence, songs like Resin and The New Word just do nothing for me at all. And even though the re-recorded Behind Space is good, it's still a filler track to me and when I think about it, it's in a really weird spot on the album. Those kinds of tracks are almost always either bonus tracks or at least the closing track. It's strange to me that it's put in that spot almost like it's a new song.