New album Foregone out February 2023

[ThePhobiac]

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.

I remember reading that when the album was new. I think it was more just the poster appreciating what the band was doing on the album rather than a guide to enjoying it, lol. I thought it was a cool read that highlighted some interesting things the band was doing on a technical level.

That album was basically a transition between their modern melodic death phase in the 00s and their more stripped back and atmospheric sound of the '10s, and it kind of suffers for it. I happen to enjoy it well enough, but it's definitely a step down from DD, Character, and Fiction, if we want to group them all together.

 

[Xpyro125]

That album was basically a transition between their modern melodic death phase in the 00s and their more stripped back and atmospheric sound of the '10s, and it kind of suffers for it (I happen to enjoy it well enough, but it's definitely a step down from DD, Character, and Fiction, if we want to group them all together).

I absolutely agree there. I can’t really say anything for or against Character in that regard, but Damage Done and Fiction easily have their strongest songwriting out of any of their albums that I’ve listened to so far, and WATV just comes off as a pale imitation of those albums’ sounds.

 

[DE4life]

Can’t believe you prophesied their spiral down to Siren Charms, I’ll never forgive you.

In all seriousness, it is pretty funny to see reference to them going soft and having hard rock moments in regards to their older material. I can kind of see that when trying to think of what it was like when their releases only lead up to Reroute, but man, hindsight with everything that’s come out since makes all of that sound fucking crazy. I can’t help but love that.

It's tough to get back into the headspace from back then, as things were so different. STYE hadn't even come out when I wrote all of that. It's possible Anders didn't even have the dreads at that point, I can't remember exactly when he changed to that hairstyle. A very different time regardless, just as many of the pioneering MDM bands were shifting towards a more commercial sound.

I remember reading that when the album was new. I think it was more just the poster appreciating what the band was doing on the album rather than a guide to enjoying it, lol. I thought it was a cool read that highlighted some interesting things the band was doing on a technical level.

That album was basically a transition between their modern melodic death phase in the 00s and their more stripped back and atmospheric sound of the '10s, and it kind of suffers for it. I happen to enjoy it well enough, but it's definitely a step down from DD, Character, and Fiction, if we want to group them all together.

No, let's not do that. We'll group WATV all on its own in the AMSR category.

 

[Xpyro125]

It's tough to get back into the headspace from back then, as things were so different. STYE hadn't even come out when I wrote all of that. It's possible Anders didn't even have the dreads at that point, I can't remember exactly when he changed to that hairstyle. A very different time regardless, just as many of the pioneering MDM bands were shifting towards a more commercial sound.

Oh fuck, that’s right, Anders didn’t have his dreads yet in the Cloud Connected video. I know he did in the Trigger/Rejection Role videos though.

 

[drawntoblack]

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.

It's not exactly a guide for liking or appreciating the music. They had a few posters who would break down albums in terms of scales and modulations, as well as time signatures. It will make you appreciate the band for going through the effort of putting in small largely unimportant solutions for arrangements that will go over most people's heads for sure. But if you are someone who notices the little things, it will make you appreciate things on your 100th listen for sure.

Obviously there is no musical theory committee in this world that can convince you that a 10 minute song with every single theoretical switch-up is gonna be objectively better or more fun to listen to than a 4/4 AC DC song in A Major. But you can appreciate a band going out of their way to have a variety of different keys on an album so that songs don't start with the same note and other common pitfalls that make it a fatiguing experience to go through an entire album in a single listening.

Now mind you, there's a fine line between that and overbearing arrangement arrogance like let's say Wintersun. No, I don't need to be listening to the same 3 second melody for 5 minutes straight as the composer goes down a pre-flight checklist of making sure he utilized absolutely every single little variation there possibly can be. If I had to make a poor analogy, think of importance of skillful arrangements as long-term strategy instead of micro-tactics as most people see them. It can help make your album be a tremendously more engaging and ultimately more worthwhile experience by making sure there is certain variety and elegance in not repeating the same solutions. And if it's done well, the casual listener won't even notice it, that's the whole point.

 

[DE4life]

As I said, I appreciate it's all different perspectives and some people find that stuff awesome, so that's cool. But I already didn't like the album, so if I was going to need to read a technical guide to try and appreciate it then it just wasn't for me. I didn't word it in the best way, granted.

 

[drawntoblack]

Construct is definitely an unusual album. I like it more than WaTV and Atoma, it's more coherent and I can listen to it in entirety. Moment's highs are definitely better than anything on Construct, but Moment is also an album where I like only half of songs on it.
That being said, I very rarely revisit any of these post-Fiction albums. Moment is still relatively fresh and it was in heavy rotation for me over the few months after its release so I'm still taking a sort of break from it.

Construct also gives me a lot of modern Katatonia vibes, probaby due to the production style and melodies. I really need to be in the mood for music like that.

 

[DE4life]

I don't spin very much post-Fiction stuff either. I actually really liked Atoma when it came out, and as an album I still think it's a solid 7/10 with some good tracks on it. Encircled, Faithless by Default, our Proof of Life and Clearing Skies are songs I come back to somewhat regularly. The rest of the album not so much, but there's nothing bad on there. Moment was good, too. I enjoyed both albums a lot more than I did WATV/Construct.

Ultimately though if I'm listening to DT it's likely to be something from their 1993 - 2007 period. To use a Gen Z phrase, those albums just hit different for me. To be fair, I wouldn't say DT have ever released a bad album in the same way In Flames have released shit like SC or Battles. I may not like WATV or Construct much, but that's a personal preference. The music itself is not bad, it just isn't to my taste. For people who do prefer that style it's still great music.

 

[The Grayfox]

Oh fuck, that’s right, Anders didn’t have his dreads yet in the Cloud Connected video. I know he did in the Trigger/Rejection Role videos though.

I was at the show where he debuted the dreads in San Francisco. Supposedly he got them done in Berkeley, California that day, which was the first show of the RTR headline tour in 2002. When he came out, we were just kind of staring and saying "what the fuck is going on? Is somebody filling in? No... that's Anders. That's weird.... and gay."

I was a younger man then and I am guilty of saying stupid shit like "that's gay" in the year 2002.

That was a fun show. Dark Tranquillity opened (for some reason). Sentenced probably should have. Even though Sentenced is one of my favorite bands of all time, they were very out of place on this tour and 95% of the crowd just wasn't into it. Killswitch Engage, who was relatively unknown at the time, was direct support. This may have been Howard Jones' first tour with the band. This was one of the first shows I was ever at where it was a mix of metalheads and hardcore kids and there was a lot of hardcore dancing which, again, as a much younger human, colorful language was used to describe. "That's fucking gay. And stupid."


DT's set:

The Wonders at Your Feet
The Treason Wall
Haven
White Noise/Black Silence
The Sun Fired Blanks
Monochromatic Stains
Zodijackyl Light
Damage Done
Final Resistance


Nothing gay and stupid about that setlist. For an opening set, it's pretty damn good. Back when Zodijackyl Light was a staple in their setlists.


IF's set:

Bullet Ride
Embody the Invisible
Behind Space
Cloud Connected
Clay Man
Clad in Shadows
Trigger
Gyroscope
Drifter
Episode 666
Only for the Weak
Pinball Map
System
Ordinary Story
Black & White
Colony


I saw them open for Iced Earth earlier that year and unfortunately this was the exact same setlist minus Artifacts but with RTR songs added in. Still, it was a good show that I watched from the balcony. Still have the stub from this one around somewhere too.

 

[DE4life]

A fair few of IF's 2002 shows are on YouTube - I wonder if the one you went to is on there? There's one from April 2002 in Montreal which has, I believe, the live debut of System a few months before Reroute was released. The verses are a bit different (probably just a fuck up on Anders part) but it's interesting nonetheless.

I saw DT in 2007 when they were touring with Soilwork and Sonic Syndicate. Was disappointing to see them below SS on the bill. Their set was only 8 songs but had Treason Wall, Misery's Crown, Punish My Heaven and The New Build which were all awesome to see live. Soilwork's set isn't on setlist.fm and I can't really remember much about what they played, but I can recall Chainheart Machine being incredible.

 

[The Grayfox]

There's definitely shows I went to in 2006-2009 that are on there but I don't think any from 2002 are on there. At least not that I know of. I believe I have an audio recording of the show from '02 when they opened for Iced Earth somewhere though. In fact, I think I still have a pretty damn big collection of In Flames bootlegs on a hard drive.

 

[DE4life]

Yeah I've got a collection of boots that I downloaded many years ago, and I've physically stored a bunch of videos from YouTube of random shows mostly from the 2000s. I've paused my data hoarding though as I wait for a second 8TB HDD to arrive. The one I currently have isn't full, but I recently learned that Seagate pretty much sucks and my drive could die at any time. So... backup of the backup, then resume.

 

[DE4life]

So I was going through an old hard drive that I imaged a while back, originally from mid-2000s. I was checking through the old chrome cache and found some frozen in time Everdying forum stuff.



I'd genuinely forgotten what the forum looked like.

 

[The Grayfox]

I have some screenshots of the Everdying forum but they’re a little earlier than this. A couple of different forum designs. I wasn’t as active there in ‘06. This is when Archy started really going off the deep end and becoming a dictator.

 

[The Grayfox]

I've posted this one before. Some very familiar stuff going on here for me. Apparently I was very interested in comparing In Flames to Children of Bodom? I don't know what the hell that is all about. Somberlain, Javi, Gothenburg31, Erik Erna, AnEpicDefiance, Bob Goran -- I wish some of those dudes were still around. Jabi is... er, sorry, Pallbearer.



Here's an older design for the forum:



And an old banner:




Ahh, I miss those days.

 

[ThePhobiac]

That's pretty neat. I'd like to say some things about the website si vous avez des propositions ou des remarques.

 

[drawntoblack]

I miss old internet.

 

[DE4life]

I've posted this one before. Some very familiar stuff going on here for me. Apparently I was very interested in comparing In Flames to Children of Bodom? I don't know what the hell that is all about. Somberlain, Javi, Gothenburg31, Erik Erna, AnEpicDefiance, Bob Goran -- I wish some of those dudes were still around. Jabi is... er, sorry, Pallbearer.

View attachment 35343

Here's an older design for the forum:

View attachment 35344

And an old banner:

View attachment 35345


Ahh, I miss those days.

The older design is the one I mainly remember, not sure when they switched to the newer design from my 2005/2006 pages,

 

[The Grayfox]

I'm going to have to check some old drives for the Everdying Tribute to In Flames. A bunch of people from the boards collaborated and made a couple of cover albums. As I recall, somebody actually handed them off to the band too. Everdying was a really cool place to post back in the day. We need to send out the search and rescue team to track down those assholes.

 

[GraemeSinclair]

Call me a big old fanboy, but fucking hell... Food For the Gods gave me goosebumps. Anders sounded like he did in 1997.