New album Foregone out February 2023

Well not really, since we can say anything meaningless to IF, I though we could say it about THE too. Copying? Are you guys even serious at this point? :D

If you can't hear the blatant similarities between SoSD and BFF then there are only three possibilities:

1) You genuinely have difficulties hearing - go and see a doctor

2) You've never listened to Blinded By Fear before. Possible

3) You know full well that there are huge similarities, but are pretending otherwise because you can't bear to accept the truth. Most likely option

THE sounds nothing like 2002 DT. That was Damage Done era, which is one of my favourite albums of all time. Days of the Lost sounds nothing like that. If you'd said 2005-2007 era DT then it would make more sense, as there are certainly Character and Fiction vibes throughout the album. It'd still be completely wrong to suggest copying, unless you can point to a specific song and be clear on which parts you think have been copied. Feel free to let us know so that we can see for ourselves.
 
If this is the case, I can say the same thing about THE. They TRIED to copy 2002 era DT. What would you say about that?

I really don't hear that, but I haven't listened to too much of Damage Done yet. Even if they did though, I could at least be moderately okay with it because Stanne's in both bands and (seemingly) has a hand in the writing process. Same with the OFTW melody in "A Truth Worth Lying For" and the "Closure" melody in "Gateways". Jesper was in IF and he's currently in Cyhra.

Honestly, I don't care about the ripping off of "Blinded By Fear" nearly as much as I should, but that might just be because SoSD is fucking awesome in spite of that clear plagiarism. I should care about it more, seeing as how none of the IF members were in AtG/wrote that song, but... Eh. I've more or less gotten over it.

Saw that STYE was ranked #1 in that poll and was kind of surprised. Made me listen to it again.

Unpopular opinion, STYE is trash.

Vocals are weird and not human sounding, in a bad way. The guitars are weak. The production is blown out, though not as bad as CC.

I think the production and sound as a whole is stylized for a submarine sort of sound ("Discover Me Like Emptiness"'s synths really give me that feel)/nu metal sound, and I think that much works. That being said, yeah, the guitars are muddy as fuck, which is only compounded by the lack of any sort of technicality in the compositions. I still think around half of the songs are fucking awesome, but the other half are such throwaways that it hurts. I have no desire to listen to "Bottled" ever again, and even less desire to listen to "Superhero of the Computer Rage". I genuinely forgot that "Dial 595-Escape" existed, but the chorus is alright. I think CC has the musicianship and aggression to back up such a compression-ridden, in your face production. STYE's production works for what it's trying to do, but I think it's some of the songs that fail it in that respect.
 
Most of the songs on STYE are good to decent. The only bad song, for me, is Bottled. The rest are solid enough, just nerfed by the album's shitty production.

With that said, it's the first album where the IF magic from the past goes missing. They've still written a bunch of good metal songs, but they're songs any half decent band could have penned. Melody wise it's fucking slim pickings, which is sad for an In Flames album.
 
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Most of the songs on STYE are good to decent. The only bad song, for me, is Bottled. The rest are solid enough, just nerfed by the album's shitty production.

With that said, it's the first album where the IF magic from the past goes missing. They've still written a bunch of good metal songs, but they're songs any half decent band could have penned. Melody wise it's fucking slim pickings, which is sad for an In Flames album.

Yeah, I completely agree there, save the listing of the bad song(s).
 
Yeah, I completely agree there, save the listing of the bad song(s).

I take it you've seen the Used and Abused STYE performance? Worth checking out if not, it's on YouTube. Really helps make sense of what they were trying to do.
 
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Most of the songs on STYE are good to decent. The only bad song, for me, is Bottled. The rest are solid enough, just nerfed by the album's shitty production.

With that said, it's the first album where the IF magic from the past goes missing. They've still written a bunch of good metal songs, but they're songs any half decent band could have penned. Melody wise it's fucking slim pickings, which is sad for an In Flames album.

But Bottled is so great! /s

I don't love STYE but there are some pretty decent songs on it. I mostly like the songs that never got a ton of attention. Borders and Shading, Superhero, Dead Alone. Those aren't fantastic songs by any means, but I do enjoy them from time to time.
 
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I take it you've seen the Used and Abused STYE performance? Worth checking out if not, it's on YouTube. Really helps make sense of what they were trying to do.

Shit, I pirated it onto my iTunes back in 2017 before it officially released on there because I just wanted to listen to it without needing internet.
 
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But Bottled is so great! /s

I don't love STYE but there are some pretty decent songs on it. I mostly like the songs that never got a ton of attention. Borders and Shading, Superhero, Dead Alone. Those aren't fantastic songs by any means, but I do enjoy them from time to time.

Yeah, STYE isn't really an album I purposefully go back to, but if one of the songs from that album comes on whilst I have my playlist on shuffle it's fine. I'll probably listen to it. TQP is genuinely one of my favourite IF tracks, and songs like Dead Alone and LYBD have grown on me a ton in recent years.

Songs I tend to skip would be F(r)iend, MSS (overplayed possibly, I just find it kind of boring, sorry Jester's Door :D), Dial-595 and obviously Bottled. Although I actually don't have that on my playlist to begin with, so not a problem.
 
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But Bottled is so great! /s

I don't love STYE but there are some pretty decent songs on it. I mostly like the songs that never got a ton of attention. Borders and Shading, Superhero, Dead Alone. Those aren't fantastic songs by any means, but I do enjoy them from time to time.

Yeah, STYE isn't really an album I purposefully go back to, but if one of the songs from that album comes on whilst I have my playlist on shuffle it's fine. I'll probably listen to it. TQP is genuinely one of my favourite IF tracks, and songs like Dead Alone and LYBD have grown on me a ton in recent years.

Songs I tend to skip would be F(r)iend, MSS (overplayed possibly, I just find it kind of boring, sorry Jester's Door :D), Dial-595 and obviously Bottled. Although I actually don't have that on my playlist to begin with, so not a problem.

I fucking love the first half of the album, though "Evil in a Closet" is such a half and half song for me that almost works until it really doesn't. "Borders and Shading" is fucking fantastic too, and "In Search For I" is a really fun sleeper pick to come back to here and there after I've nearly forgotten about it, even if it's pretty middling overall. "Discover Me Like Emptiness" is definitely my favorite STYE song at the moment though. I think out of the first half, "The Quiet Place" has fallen down for me the most. I dunno, it's good, but I'm just never in the mood for it anymore.
 
The solo in Evil in a Closet always gives me a Sega Genesis vibe for some reason. Reminds me of something that could have come from Streets of Rage or something. Just a random comment. Love that track overall though. Vocals are the weak point but not bad enough to drag it down massively. Just would have been better with a proper singer, the track is kind of built for it. Anders does a passable job though.
 
The solo in Evil in a Closet always gives me a Sega Genesis vibe for some reason. Reminds me of something that could have come from Streets of Rage or something. Just a random comment. Love that track overall though. Vocals are the weak point but not bad enough to drag it down massively. Just would have been better with a proper singer, the track is kind of built for it. Anders does a passable job though.

I think it's mainly the lyrics and transition into a 'slightly heavier but still a ballad' kind of song that weaken it for me. Anders' vocals do actually work for me though.
 
Well not really, since we can say anything meaningless to IF, I though we could say it about THE too. Copying? Are you guys even serious at this point? :D
I searched for cognitive dissonance in the Wikipedia and your picture was there.
 
I can vividly remember hearing The Quiet Place for the very first time and really disliking it. I think it was because I didn't really enjoy RTR and in my youthful ignorance, I had hoped it was an experimental album and that IF would return to a Clayman-like sound after it. The Quiet Place is not what you want to hear when you're in that moment. :D
 
I can vividly remember hearing The Quiet Place for the very first time and really disliking it. I think it was because I didn't really enjoy RTR and in my youthful ignorance, I had hoped it was an experimental album and that IF would return to a Clayman-like sound after it. The Quiet Place is not what you want to hear when you're in that moment. :D

That's completely fair, especially since STYE is their least technical album to date.
 
Haha, to my nu-metal loving ears that song was the coolest thing I'd ever heard. Systematically discarded all of my Korn, Disturbed, and Adema albums and a year later I was listening to The Gallery on my disc player in study hall. I like to think it helped get people like myself into melodic death metal.
 
I think if I had heard STYE back when it came out or a few years afterwards, it absolutely would've gotten me into IF. It's kinda weird to think about it like that.
 
I can't remember the first time I listened to TQP. If I had to guess I was probably irritated by it at first though. I wanted IF to go back to the Colony/Clayman sound, not go all in with the American alt metal stuff. Keep in mind this was 2004, so it wasn't an unreasonable expectation for me to have at the time.

I appreciate TQP as a whole much more nowadays though. I think it's got a really cool atmosphere and overall vibe to it.
 
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I like it more now than I liked it when I first heard it. It has a nice pacing and it's an intense song. The worst part, and that's an exception in this album, are the weak drums and Anders' singing. I think that this is his worst on the whole album.