New album Foregone out February 2023
- Thread starter TheJestersDoor
- Start date
@ASOP
I actually think this is the most IF-sounding album post-Clayman...in theory.
Some seriously good material on the album and the EP. Riffing is good, melodies present in every song, solos still not boring wah-fest, drumming is really interesting etc.
But alas, sound is shit and Anders fails on almost every song. And that put every song through boring&plastic filter.
If you could take those 15 songs, choose to rerecord 12, get a proper melodeath vocalist to sing over it, I guarantee that would produce 5th best album in the whole IF discography.
I actually think this is the most IF-sounding album post-Clayman...in theory.
Some seriously good material on the album and the EP. Riffing is good, melodies present in every song, solos still not boring wah-fest, drumming is really interesting etc.
But alas, sound is shit and Anders fails on almost every song. And that put every song through boring&plastic filter.
If you could take those 15 songs, choose to rerecord 12, get a proper melodeath vocalist to sing over it, I guarantee that would produce 5th best album in the whole IF discography.
Anders is definitely the biggest problem on ASOP, by a long way. His performance is fucking atrocious, but I do wonder if the production plays a factor in it. It's not like it's that different from SOAPF, he does that half-yell thing on there too, but it sounds a lot better. I think his voice is too high in the mix, it doesn't blend well wth the instruments.
I think part of the reason the ASOP songs sound so weird to me, other than Anders' vocals legitimately being poor on a lot of the songs, is that around 2008 was when I was doing a lot of growling/screaming covers. ASOP had just come out and Schehf on YouTube did instrumental covers of a lot of the tracks, which I used as a base to practice my own vocals, basic mixing, etc. Unlike Anders I was using harsh vocals throughout most of the songs, and I spent so much time on those that I remember my vocals on those tracks more than I do Anders - particularly on stuff like Move Through Me and Sober & Irrelevent. I think at some point in my mind I conflated my vocals with Anders' and assumed he did a lot more growls on the album than he actually did.
With that said, I couldn't make anything decent with the songs that had clean-sung choruses. Much like Anders I couldn't (and still can't) sing to save my life, and whilst I was able to mix harsh vocals OK (as much as one can just layering vocals over the top of an existing track) the cleans always sounded wrong. I remember one of my friends remarking that my singing sounded like Mr Burns on the episode of the Simpsons where he was high on radiation
the sad part is that she was right.
With that said, I couldn't make anything decent with the songs that had clean-sung choruses. Much like Anders I couldn't (and still can't) sing to save my life, and whilst I was able to mix harsh vocals OK (as much as one can just layering vocals over the top of an existing track) the cleans always sounded wrong. I remember one of my friends remarking that my singing sounded like Mr Burns on the episode of the Simpsons where he was high on radiation
the sad part is that she was right.Dafuq? I must have been on drugs or drunk when I wrote this. WTF.
I was basically the Ciko of my day, defending my heroes In Flames and Anders against those barbarian 'old school' fans. I guess The Dark Knight was right. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain
- Jul 25, 2016
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Schehf my god that's bringing back so many memories. He has the guitar they signed in the ASOP documentary. I learned to play a good number of IF songs from watching his covers. I was so sad when he stopped doing full albums worth of covers for In Flames songs, but then again, I don't blame him.....
Pallbearer
Passive Member
I wish In Flames had used Tonteknik Recordings for ASOP, too. Out of the post-Fredman albums Come Clarity has the best production IMO. The aggressive, in-your-face tone suits the music well. I remember Björn talking about how they wanted to try a different approach, trust someone else's vision and give the production team a chance to do their job in peace without the band nervously watching over them. So they sent the tapes up north to Umeå (over 900 km from Gothenburg) and when the finished product arrived they all were very impressed about it. But for some reason they still wanted to change producers for the next album.
On a completely unrelated note, I accidentally found a Cloud Connected cover I hadn't previously heard.
On a completely unrelated note, I accidentally found a Cloud Connected cover I hadn't previously heard.
Pallbearer
Passive Member
I don't think that there's an answer to that
I remember someone commenting "[based on the front cover] they could've called it 'The Quest for Pussy'" when the album first came out.
Interesting take on the song. Cycles through a few genres in a span of a few minutes. Say what you will about Cloud Connected as a song, but those riffs and keys are instantly recognisable.
Lol, yeah, ironic as the songs and lyrics themselves are pretty much the opposite.
I remember he started his own band and they were... pretty average. Metalcore sounding with a really boring vocalist.
Starts off great, then the rest of the track kind of takes a dive. Vocals just kill it for me. Anyway, I think they released an album independently in 2013 and that was it.
He actually released an Amon Amarth cover a couple of months ago:
Last IF cover he did was Crawl Through Knives in 2018:
He commented on a few of the vocal cover videos I uploaded back in the day (I obv credited his music & linked in the description, because I have manners), so that was cool. He certainly didn't have to as it's not like my videos were insanely popular or anything
Satellites & Astronauts and Minus cracked 1k views but that was my ceiling. RIP to my YouTube career.From memory Crawl Through Knives was one of the first songs that leaked from Come Clarity. It was also going to be the title of the album before they decided to change it to CC. Anyway, I recall being absolutely floored by it. Considering we'd just come from STYE, CTK was like waking up from a nightmare. The guitar melodies were back in full force, Anders' screaming was on point, and even his cleans sounded good. I'm really surprised it never became a staple of their live set. I was fortunate enough to hear them play it in London in 2006, but it's only been played live 125 times according to setlist.fm. By comparison All For Me has been played 293 times, and even House is at 93
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