New album Foregone out February 2023

[drawntoblack]

There's an upscaled version on youtube but the dude who upscaled it decided it would be a grand idea to crop the 4:3 footage to 16:9, which looks terrible.
Anyway I doubt they will ever reissue it, given how people appearing on that dvd largely aren't in the band anymore and dividing the royalties wouldn't make a whole lot of sense when they could film a new dvd instead.

As for Nordstrom, I always found it peculiar how he looks very reserved when talking about the 90s melodeath bands. He doesn't look visibly proud about the results, almost as if he is tip-topeing around not saying anything bad. Given his pedigree you would think he would gladly embrace what made him who he is yet its not the case. And I got that same vibe from him in other interviews over the years too.

Edit: Stumbled upon a really cool piano arrangement of Zombie Inc, in case it wasn't posted in the past few weeks. Same channel also has equally awesome renditions of Heartwork and Slaughter of the Soul.

 

[DE4life]

As for Nordstrom, I always found it peculiar how he looks very reserved when talking about the 90s melodeath bands. He doesn't look visibly proud about the results, almost as if he is tip-topeing around not saying anything bad. Given his pedigree you would think he would gladly embrace what made him who he is yet its not the case. And I got that same vibe from him in other interviews over the years too.

To be honest people in that part of the world are just that way. My girlfriend is Finnish and to them, taking pride in something is basically the equivilent of bragging about it, which is considered rude. They're basically low-key about everything and I think Swedes are really similar in this regard. You hear it from the bands of that scene as well - none of them really express great joy or pride in it, they all pretty much just say "we were a bunch of people doing the same music and certain people happened to like it."

Also worth noting that in that interview Nordstrom said he didn't really understand what these bands were doing, and was confused when other bands from around the world were calling and asking him to produce their work as well. He was essentially suggesting that he was kind of winging it (albeit working so hard that he put himself in hospital) and everything happened to turn out really well. From that perspective he may also feel like there's nothing to necessarily be proud of. I'd disagree, but there might be a bit of imposter syndrome going on in regards to how he views his earlier work.

 

[DE4life]

As an aside I also ripped DT's "Live Damage" DVD and... oof, I'd forgotten how much Stanne's vocals had deteriorated during this time period. It's weird how nobody really mentions it or seems to have a blind spot because it's Mikael, but fuck me he sounds rough. He literally can't do any higher register screams and his growls are more like metalcore-ish yells. It's very similar to his vocal performance on DD, but without production to smooth out the edges it just sounds painful to me.

Also, the crowd are shit and the audio and video are regularly out of sync, which is weird. I know it's not the rip either, as I looked on YouTube and saw the exact same thing.

 

[The Grayfox]

As much as I like DT, Live Damage is one of the worst live album/DVDs I've ever heard. It's poorly mixed and Mikael sounds terrible. Great setlist though.

 

[drawntoblack]

DT themselves stated on numerous occasions how dissatisfied they are with Live Damage. It's an interesting time capsule at very least, I liked that line up.

 

[DE4life]

Good setlist and lineup for sure... just a shame about everything else. They were just unfortunate to record at a time when Mikael's vocals were shot. In contrast, In Flames were lucky to record at a time in 2005 when Anders was sounding pretty solid vocally. If the DVD had been recorded in 2002/2003 it would have been a different story, even with overdubbing, as Anders sounds terrible on almost all boots I've heard from that period. He had a bit of a resurgence between 2004-2007 until the Come Clarity tour seemed to wreck his voice for good. I don't think he's ever returned to that kind of sustained screaming, nowadays opting mostly for lower growls.

The weird thing about Live Damage is that, if you look at reviews online, literally nobody seems to mention that Stanne's voice is messed up. All you see is "amazing performance, incredible show" - even on fan submitted reviews. Leaves me wondering if I'm hearing something totally different to everybody else, but glad to know I'm not the only one!

 

[ThePhobiac]

This is going to sound conspiratorial, but I've long had a suspicion that Mikael simply gets a pass that Tomas Lindberg and Anders don't, and it's almost entirely because of his stage presence and enthusiasm. It's hard not to like the guy.

That's in regards to his poor-ish vocal performance in the early 2000s, of course. On average the guy is rock solid and the praise for his vocals is overall well-deserved.

 

[DE4life]

I tend to agree, in all of the live shows I've heard from 2000-2003-ish Stanne doesn't sound good live at all. I can remember reading that his throat was in pretty bad shape and he took time out to recover, and when you look at setlist.fm there are only 12 shows listed for DT in 2004. Although there are also only 13 listed for 2001 which seems on the low side as well, but regardless it's obvious that when Character dropped Mikael had changed his vocal technique and it's been pretty solid ever since. Not as expressive as his pre-2005 style, but I imagine much more manageable.

 

[Xpyro125]

I haven’t watched much live stuff from them, so I can’t really comment on that, but I’ve personally felt that Mikael’s vocals starting in Character/Fiction through Construct always felt far weaker to me than anything surrounding them. Maybe the production and his projection’s just gotten better since Atoma, but I’ve always felt a noticeable enough improvement since then.

Though I do think he was alright in the performance of Blind at Heart that I saw.

 

[DE4life]

His vocals post-Damage Done are definitely different. I think they sound fine on Character and Fiction, but not so great past that point. I wouldn't call them bad at any juncture on record, but there is a noticeable change. Seems to have kept his voicebox pretty healthy up to present day though, so if it works for him then that's great. DotL is probably the best he's been since the Character/Fiction era, to me at least. His DT stuff on Atoma and Moment is fine, too, but I feel like the production on DotL does a better job with his growls than the production for the DT records. With that said, I'd say his cleans sound better with DT, although again not bad on either.

His vocals on Damage Done are quite unique in general, as he's pretty much at breaking point vocally by then. Weirdly, much like Anders on Clayman, it actually works really well for that album and the music... but live during that era it's not so good.

 

[drawntoblack]

It's difficult to compare these nuances that are often very subjective too. If I was to be completely honest I would put it like this - Stanne's objective peak as in him sounding his best was very likely Character. The combination of him still pushing his voice hard + voice post-production still being fairly minimal compared to what was to come with Fiction and onward.
My personal favorite album in terms of how his voice sounds is easily Haven. It's raw and very charismatic. Interestingly enough I wouldn't exactly say either of these two albums are my favorite DT stuff. That would be Damage Done, as a whole.

After Fiction his growls got very standardized in terms of energy, aggression and loudness. He fully developed and grew into what works very well for him in terms of sounding pretty good yet not straining his voice. Downside is that you simply don't hear that aggression anymore. There are tricks to hide this, you layer vocals, add distortion and other bells and whistles effects. But admittedly it doesn't pack much of a punch anymore. If we are being honest, it's highly questionable even i he wanted to truly go all out with his voice, would it even fit with what DT have been doing for the past 15 years? Their music certainly got a lot more mellow, not even the guitar work is aggressive anymore. Add his age into the mix and you really can't fault a 50 year old death metal singer much.

Especially when you consider that he had maybe one phase of a few years where he was off. Compare that to Lindberg who sounded like shit throughout his career and Anders who was essentially a coin-flip on average.

 

[DE4life]

I think my personal favourite album for Stanne's DT vocals is probably The Gallery. He still has that raw edge which would slowly disappear as time went on. He's less controlled, but it's metal, totally controlled vocals aren't really a requirement - especially in a genre like MDM. It is incredible how much better he sounds on The Gallery compared to Lunar Strain, when you factor in those albums must have been recorded around or less than a year apart. I don't think Stanne has changed his technique on TG compared to Lunar, rather it's just proof of how crucial producing and mixing is. It goes without saying that production on TG is a million miles ahead of Lunar. It also shows how far Nordstrom had come as a producer for that style of music in a very short space of time, although I'm guessing he had a lot longer to produce TG.

 

[Xpyro125]

I think my favorite vocal performances from Stan’s so far are from Haven and Damage Done— Though admittedly, Damage Done is far and away my favorite DT album from what I’ve heard so far.

I haven’t listened to much of The Gallery, and Punish My Heaven’s the only track from it I listen to with the slightest bit of regularity, so I can’t really judge his vocals there yet. I think he did get a massive glow up from Lunar Strain to The Gallery, similarly to how Anders did going from Skydancer to TJR— Though maybe that’s me feeling that his vocals fit TJR so much better than Skydancer. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to Skydancer in full, so I can’t really judge that too much either.

 

[The Grayfox]

The Gallery is a classic. It has some really good songs on it. Punish my Heaven, Edenspring, Lethe, Of Melancholy Burning. Definitely worth listening to that one. My favorite DT album is a tough call. I like The Gallery a lot. I think it might be Projector though. Or the Mind's I. Or Fiction. I don't know. They're all pretty good up until We Are The Void.

 

[DE4life]

Lethe is an all-timer for DT, one of my absolute favourite tracks by them.



This live version is absolutely incredible, but also showcases how much Stanne's vocals deteriorated in the years afterwards. His passion in this performance is genuinely captivating though, you can see the emotion pouring out of him in a way you rarely see in any metal performance. You can see from around 02:25 he's become completely engrossed in the track as a performer, and it's really awesome.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Hard to argue that Stanne isn't a top-tier frontman, and he clearly thinks of DT's music as more than just "metal". Lethe is a good track, especially the intro, whether it's the bass version they were doing in the 90s or the piano version they did afterward. Personally speaking, it's not my favorite off of The Gallery because I think Stanne overdoes it, but still solid.

I think my favorite vocal performances from Stan’s so far are from Haven and Damage Done— Though admittedly, Damage Done is far and away my favorite DT album from what I’ve heard so far.

I haven’t listened to much of The Gallery, and Punish My Heaven’s the only track from it I listen to with the slightest bit of regularity, so I can’t really judge his vocals there yet. I think he did get a massive glow up from Lunar Strain to The Gallery, similarly to how Anders did going from Skydancer to TJR— Though maybe that’s me feeling that his vocals fit TJR so much better than Skydancer. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to Skydancer in full, so I can’t really judge that too much either.

You need to listen to all of their albums with all due haste -- to quote Anders from Transparent: "Even if it's a struggle, make this your priority..."

 

[Xpyro125]

You need to listen to all of their albums with all due haste -- to quote Anders from Transparent: "Even if it's a struggle, make this your priority..."

I actually just finished listening to Construct in full three days ago, and despite it generally being lumped in with WATV as DT’s worst (Yeah, I’m with them on WATV, even if it’s not actually bad), I actually really liked it a lot. The only tracks I didn’t care for were the opener and closer, which are pretty egregious for me, but everything else was actually pretty good. Uniformity, The Silence in Between, What You Only Know, and Endtime Hearts have been nonstop listens for me since then.

The only ones I need to finish listening to are actually The Gallery, The Mind’s I, Projector, and Character (I stopped about halfway through because it just hasn’t been doing much for me). I don’t think the band’s works ever hit In Flames’ highs for me (Save for Damage Done, I fucking love that album so much), but they never come even close to sinking to IF’s lows, and I really appreciate that.

I’ll probably give a ranking of their albums once I’ve finished listening to them and refreshed my memory on the ones I haven’t listened to in a bit.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Construct seems to be a love it or hate it kind of thing. Glad you enjoyed it! Uniformity and The Silence in Between are definitely highlights. I also like For Broken Words and State of Trust.

Funny that you should mention stopping halfway through Character. That was my first DT album and it took me a long time to get into it. It just felt homogenous and one-note to me. I think it's great these days, though. Totally agreed re: Dark Tranquillity's consistency vs. In Flames' oscillation between amazing and terrible.

 

[Xpyro125]

Construct seems to be a love it or hate it kind of thing. Glad you enjoyed it! Uniformity and The Silence in Between are definitely highlights. I also like For Broken Words and State of Trust.

State of Trust is also pretty good, and Weight of the End does something for my inner nu metal fan that I don’t even know how to put into words— The riff genuinely feels like a nu metal version of In Broken Trust (Or rather IBT feels like the melodeath version), and I love that.

I don’t mind None Becoming on its own, but it’s horrible when listening to tue album in full, and I think it’s a really poor way to end the album.

Funny that you should mention stopping halfway through Character. That was my first DT album and it took me a long time to get into it. It just felt homogenous and one-note to me. I think it's great these days, though. Totally agreed re: Dark Tranquillity's consistency vs. In Flames' oscillation between amazing and terrible.

I really like Out of Nothing and The Endless Feed (TEF especially, holy fuck, it’s everything great about DT), but that’s it so far. I’m hoping to get into the rest of the album, but everything else I’ve listened to just feels like it was done better on Haven, Damage Done, and Fiction.

 

[DE4life]

I listened to Construct in full a while back to see if I'd been giving it too hard of a time, but I still didn't like it for the most part. I went through it song by song but from memory the ultimate takeaway was not enough melody or creativity. I get the vibe they were going for but it wasn't for me. I do really like Endtime Hearts though - that's a great little track.

WATV is by far the DT album I enjoy the least. I can remember someone on the DT UM forum creating a "technical guide" for the album - which is probably still on that forum - and I remember thinking if I need a fucking technical guide to appreciate the album then it definitely isn't for me. Obviously for others that might be awesome though.