My list stays quite static at this point to be honest. Reroute moved to top tier recently, but it probably should always have been there. I didn't realise how much love I had for that album until I really thought about it. Nothing much changes with the rest. SOAPF and CC just below the classics. Pretty much every new album, ITM aside, goes to the bottom. ASOP always remains low because the vocals and production will always be a disgrace, but it does have the last, dying remnants of that Jesper magic in the background, so it drags itself just above almost all the Benson era albums. STYE and Lunar/Sub in the middle - I'm OK with them, but they have significant flaws.
It’s funny because I’ve been listening to STYE again recently, and it’s just clicking again. I don’t know that it’s because I’ve grown to reappreciate simple, not so technical music since I did so a whole back and still wasn’t huge on STYE. Nonetheless, it’s just been hitting right recently, and I’d move it to A tier if I was to rerank everything again.
I do love the melodies on ASoP when it isn’t being overly boring or overly emo. I still hate the production and guitar tone, and the vocals are definitely a seriously weak performance from Anders even if I do still kind of like them. They carry the emotion well, which is crippled by the lyrics being not great. The chorus of Disconnected has such an incredible guitar melody, and while I do actually love the song completely in spite of how prick your finger edgy it is, I wish that more people heard and appreciated the guitarwork there.
For me the big dropoff comes after SOAPF. I love Reroute from start to finish. Come Clarity has Scream and the title track which I skip (the latter due to Anders' vocals, which, I'm sorry, are HORRIBLE) but otherwise another album I enjoy. ASOP can take a long fall into a deep abyss, fuck that album. SOAPF just works for me. Not sure if nostalgia plays a part, but listening to almost anything from that album instantly gives me a good feeling. Even All For Me, just because it has the SOAPF sound. I still think the song sucks, but nonetheless.
Hard disagree on Anders’ vocals— They aren’t objectively good, but they feel authentic and emotional in the right way, and they’re hardly unlistenable for me at least. I’ll agree that Scream is far and away the weakest track on CC, but I rarely skip it, feel it’s a B tier song, and believe that if they actually played it live it could’ve genuinely stuck. It was built for live play, and it’s a goddamn shame it didn’t get that. I’m not saying it’d make the album version better, but I think it’d have a reputation that would be on par with the rest of the album.
All For Me is great with exception to Anders’ horrible vocals in the bridge. I refuse to believe they weren’t a first take that
somehow got overlooked. I don’t mind everything starting with the “chains are breaking” part of the bridge, but the part before it is genuinely one of the worst vocal sections I’ve ever heard from any vocalist. He could’ve done it better, he could’ve done it right. I don’t think it was a matter of incapability, but it’s a smudge on an otherwise 9-10/10 song, and it’s genuinely the only part of the album I dislike. It wouldn’t beat out CC if he did it right, but it’d be close. It certainly would cement Whoracle as third at that point.
After SOAPF though, massive downturn. SC - shit. Battles - shit. ITM - passable, STYE level. Elevated by good memories from the time and watching a good IF show live just after the album came out. Foregone - shit and, even worse, boring. First IF album where I've had no interest in listening to any of the songs again. Even Battles tracks got some rotation.
So, yeah, it's been 13 years and I have no doubt SOAPF is where IF ends for me as a band I truly enjoy. It was a good run though.
Yeah, my hype for the band is at an all-time low. Granted, I haven’t exactly been an In Flames fan for a super long time— Eight or so years is nothing compared to how long you guys have been in the fanbase— but I just don’t see much hope in where they go next.
I much prefer ITM to Foregone. It isn't even a contest. ITM might have some seriously dodgy moments, but at least it's interesting and pretty unique sounding. Actually reminds me of In Flames, for the most part. We know House was a Battles leftover, and I think ITL may also have been a leftover. Why they felt the need to put Battles leftovers on the album is beyond me, unless they really didn't have enough creativity for two more songs, but it is what it is.
ITM still feels like In Flames to me. It’s very much still Howard Benson’s In Flames, but there’s still something there, particularly the nature of the melodies. I just don’t get that with Foregone with either the vocals or guitarwork. The vocals are objectively better, but they carry absolutely no emotion, save for a few moments in a few songs, and save for Pure Light of Mind, which doesn’t feel like something in Anders’ range. I won’t say it’s fake, I don’t think it’s fake, but if a credible source said it was it would make sense since it kinda sounds fake. The guitars are primarily downtuned modern metalcore dogshit that I fucking hate hearing from mainstream Americanized bands. I know it’s still Drop A# or whatever it’s been since Reroute/a couple songs on Clayman, but Whoracle proves that they could’ve been as heavy as they are here while being melodic, while being actual MDM, and while sounding Swedish. Foregone is objectively good and is well-performed, I’ll be perfectly real about that, and I was only ever bored with Meet Your Maker, Bleeding Out, and End the Transmission. That’s one more song than I thought, but fuck it, whatever. It’s just that Foregone also isn’t In Flames to me— It’s my ‘Reroute to Remain’ album. Unlike with that album though, there’s just
nothing here that is recognizably In Flames to me. I can enjoy it when I’m listening to it in the car with my dad, sure, but that’s because I forget I’m listening to In Flames and am instead just listening to music with my dad. When I listen to it as an In Flames album, it just isn’t, and it’s not my favorite band’s music to me. That’s my biggest issue with it, and it fucking sucks to feel that way. ITM, despite having poppy alt metal sensibilities more in the forefront, still has IF melodies and compositional sensibilities there. I only get fleeting moments of that on Foregone.
Also, fuck House, worst song, and ITL is a 4/10 on a good day.
We Will Remember is hardly embarrassingly bad in the same vein, it's just average.
I am the only We Will Remember fan
Genuinely love the song, I don’t care how corny it is, though it’s primarily for the guitarwork.
I don't rate ITM as a great IF album or anything like that, but I do find it interesting. Foregone is just boring af. Even the supposedly "better" songs that give the album its supposed "edge" are just rehashes of stuff they've done in the past - TGD is a shitty CC tribute. SoSD is like if AI mashed up ATG with Benson's IF. Foregone Part 2 is what Whoracle would have sounded like if Benson was producing it. rest of the album is just a snoozefest to me. Nothing new or interesting. Nothing other bands aren't doing far better. If the album didn't have "In Flames" as the artist, nobody would give a shit about it. Same as almost everything they've released post-2011.
Honestly, I’ve come around a ton on TGD. I remember seriously disliking it when it came out, but it’s honestly one of the only glimmers of my favorite band on the album. Tribute to CC or not, I’ll be happy with it.
Hear me out, I actually think Battles could’ve fared better if it wasn’t an In Flames album. If it was just some pop metal band, I don’t think it’d have nearly the stigma it does, and I don’t think I’d have to feel
nearly as guilty about it being a guilty pleasure. It’s still F tier to me, but I do wonder if it’d actually rise to something like C tier if it was the debut album or sophomore album of a pop metal band in the vein of Amaranthe. I don’t think SC or ITM would’ve gotten traction.
Foregone would only have half a million views on YouTube instead of 1.5, and the comments half as much as they are. I think the critical reception would’ve stayed about the same, and I think r/metalcore or whatever the fuck would still cream over it. If anything, it’s another one that would’ve fared slightly better if it wasn’t In Flames— but it also would’ve fared slightly worse as it wouldn’t be seen as a “redemption arc” for the band. It’d be a 6-7/10 debut album from some new Australian metalcore band that would probably blow up around their fourth album in when they go with way more alt metal sensibilities and two super heavy songs. It just seems to happen that way when bands start heavy, with the inverse happening to bands that grow heavier. That’s the reason this shit succeeded, and it worries me as an In Flames fan— I have a horrible feeling that we’re in for another non-In Flames album in 2025-2026 that’ll be just as much of a distillation of their discography as Foregone, and I’m just not looking forward to it. If they released some shoegaze, jazz, pop, EDM, whatever bullshit next, I think I’d be much happier than if they released Foregone 2, featuring Foregone Pt. 3, not to be confused with the renamed Pt. 3 that is now Pt. 1.
Yes, I have an incredible spite for modern metalcore, how could you tell.
I'm not even going to comment on your bizarre love for Save Me, wtf. Song is shit.
Shit chorus, but genuinely 8/10 song otherwise. I quite like it. I’m not sure if he meant that or Stay With Me since he was talking about ITM, but Stay With Me’s a good 9-10/10, at least in the vacuum of ITM.
Oh man, I am definitely at the opposite end of a lot of this.
I love the title track to Reroute. I think it's a massively underrated song in their discography. Those keys in the intro and then the guitar riffs just get my head nodding immediately. I love when at 0:33 it breaks into those nice melodies for about ten seconds. The proceeding verse is a bit basic, granted, but at the same time with better production this would have been so much better. Imagine "destroy the pattern" with much more crunch in the guitars and much less compression on Anders' voice. Would be absolutely sick. The chorus is actually really clever if you really listen to the vocal melodies - there's some unusual stuff going on there that isn't easy to replicate, and it sounds good. I think a lot of effort went into those chorus vocal melodies and I appreciate it. I really like the lyrics on this song too. 'Design new latitudes, find ways to channel bliss. Us defined, it's too fragile to neglect. Reroute to remain, reroute to remain'. How did we go from this to 'You ripped da heart out, you ripped da heart ouuuuttt'? Sigh.
When I’m in the mood for the title track, I feel this completely. Problem is that I’m usually not, though either way I always know it’s a massive step down from every opener prior. There’s no way you can tell me it’s a better opener than Bullet Ride or Moonshield. Maybe Stand Ablaze, sure, I could see the argument, but that’s about it.
System I've always loved, from the beginning. One of my favourite IF tracks.
It’s objectively fucking horrible, but it somehow loops back around to being actually pretty good. If nothing else, it’s undeniably super interesting, and I think it showcases what Reroute to Remain is all about more than any other song on the album.
I'll admit I don't listen to Dawn of a New Day too often. I like it, but I rarely have the need to listen to it.
It’s the same here. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the mood for it, I think at least a good three years, and I do feel kind of sad about that since I absolutely loved it when I was.
Egonomic, I just love the intensity. Absolutely zero wasted energy, the song is racing at 100 miles an hour. The second verse is like, 11 seconds long or something, haha. Another one that would be incredible with different production. The chorus is a bit like a nursery rhyme admittedly, lmao, but I'm fine with it. Maybe just because I've heard it so many times. That section after the second chorus where Anders screams 'we are getting weaker!' and the guitars take over is just incredibly awesome.
The intro riff is genuinely classic, but the whole song kinda just nosedives after that. I do also agree that the guitarwork after the second chorus has a nice Stabbing the Drama kind of groove to it that I quite like, but it just doesn’t last. I know I said that it would benefit greatly from CC’s production, but I even think something like the production on Transparent would’ve boosted it a bit.
I love the groove of Black and White. I love the spacey, out there verse vocals. I love the lyrics. 'You say that you have no regrets, but I know that you do!' - nothing massively original, but just the way he screams this line is perfect. Also 'You claim that you are innocent, but tell me who ain't. You think that you're gonna be saved? There's no such thing as a saint'. Again, just love the delivery and the lyrics. The chorus is one of my favourite IF choruses. I really like how at the end the chorus switches up completely. Again, you can tell a lot of thought went into the vocal compositions.
Honestly, the verses feels like a discount Mind Tricks track lyrically, and I think something more interesting could’ve been put there— Especially with a few peoples’ interpretations of this song and Metaphor to be about Borderline Personality Disorder, which I think could genuinely have some credence given Reroute’s subtitle. It’s something I’ve looked into a lot over the past couple years, and there’s a lot of opportunity to paint many different pictures with its behaviors lyrically. Metaphor does that really well, but I think Black and White is rather surface level with it— At least if we’re going with that interpretation. If we aren’t, then it’s even more surface level.
It’s interesting vocally, sure, but outside of the little guitar scratch at the beginning (Which is way more satisfying than it should be), I just don’t care for the song whatsoever. I’ve found myself restarting the song at the scratch way more times than I could keep count of because it genuinely just peaks there. And as a closing track? It’s fucking abysmal in that regard. I’m not going to sit here and say that In Flames has always been good about them, but it just fucking sucks at its job there. If it was switched with Metaphor, that would’ve done a lot for the album, but many bands tend to try to go out with a bang instead of a softer, more poignant note. The bang was here miniature if you ask me.
I could go on, but fuck, I really do love Reroute, haha. More than I realised. I haven't even covered Trigger, Cloud Connected, Minus, Dark Signs or Metaphor, all of which are just stone cold classics.
I’ll agree there. Trigger, Cloud Connected, and Metaphor are all iconic for damn good reason, that’s undeniable. Dark Signs is pretty good, solid 7/10. I used to love it way more when I first discovered the band, but it’s still pretty good.
I've got a bad throat, then I came across this quote from A88 and laughed so hard I nearly died from the coughing fit that followed. Thanks bro. The Battles thread is a trip.
I realize it didn’t quote the quote I wanted inside of this quote, but I love Anders as a vocalist. I don’t care that he’s objectively pretty fucking bad, that he’s had maybe four albums of objectively good vocal performances out of like eleven or twelve that he’s actually been in (Not counting Subterranean, he was on one song, and that was a bonus track), I love the uniqueness of his vocals and how well he carried emotion in both his clean and harsh vocals. You can feel the fearful, madman rambling-esque quality of Jotun’s lyrics come out in his vocals in a way I don’t think would work if an objectively better vocalist like Mikael Stanne or Foregone Anders did it. Be it because if production and vocal layering as well, but there’s a sort of otherworldliness to his vocals in Colony’s title track that helps evoke the image of an entirely different, alien species speaking the lyrics. I think that came out even more on later albums where his vocals began to fall apart more, particularly on songs like Free Fall (Which in fairness has CC levels of quality vocally, so I guess this is cheating), Touch of Red, Disconnected, and Ropes, which are all seeping desperation and a level of hopelessness brought out by the vocals. Objectively bad, particularly in ASoP’s case? Oh yeah, but I can’t help but love the majority of his performances. ASoP, SC, and Battles are easily the weakest points for emotive Anders, but I love everything else— And that’s not even including his performances on an album like Come Clarity.
I’m glad he trained his vocals to be objectively good for live performances— Id argue he shines there compared to on Foregone. But on Foregone, while objectively good, his vocals are just so fucking lifeless. I fucking love Pt. 1, but it just feels like a standard, somewhat more standout than generic performance. In the Dark is another highlight overall, and it’s one of the few songs I go back to since it feels like an ITM track that didn’t exist back when they were making ITM. I think the lyrics of the album don’t really help in the case of bringing out emotion, if we’re honest, but Anders does well with what he has to work with (Which admittedly he wrote, lmao) on In the Dark. I mentioned PLoM already, so see above. A Dialogue actually has ‘relatable’ lyrics, and I don’t mind that for the final product, but given the absolutely phenomenal groove-driven hook, it feels fucking wasted that the song didn’t get a better chorus. I still have the preview of it on social media saved in my files because that, Beginning, and PLoM’s previews all made me genuinely hyped for the album, and I listened to that shit on repeat constantly until the album came out. Unfortunately, the chorus is ITM-tier (It feels genuine, just not well-written) with Battles-type autotuning, and that’s a fucking shame because the song could’ve been a highlight. Cynosure’s pretty cool, it feels like a Benson-era Passenger track, with the vocals reflecting that perfectly. The lyrics are absolutely nothing special, but I actually feel like Anders emits a form of human emotion here compared to just being
generic metalcore vocalist 352 a robot like on the rest of the album. It’s regrettable that the autotuned cleans are the most unique and emotive vocals he has on the album, since even they are nothing special nor anything we haven’t heard from the band before. Objectively good, fine, but I miss when
stupid people the usual metal-faring crowd was into actually interesting music. Instead, they worship shit like Eternal Blue and Erra’s self-titled, arguably the most generic releases from bands that were lightyears better on previous material. I know Sleep Token isn’t everyone’s thing, and I completely understand why, but at least they’re interesting. It gives me hope that maybe In Flames can put out something interesting again, even if Björn would never listen to them to get ideas since he doesn’t listen to new music.
At least Mastodon got inspired by Turnstiles to do something heavy and fast. No idea how it’ll turn out, but I think seeing what new bands do can light a fire in older musicians who might’ve had that flame burn out, which is really cool. I wish Björn would do the same. Listen to fucking RARE or something, I don’t know.
Edit- Holy fucking shit this is a lot.
