New album Foregone out February 2023

[ThePhobiac]

Black clouds embraces your soul
Slowly passing through
Repeating lacunas of anguish
Another excuse, another lie
Faith alone won't sustain
Our dying Jester Race.............................................

 

[Xpyro125]

Mudvayne nostalgia triggered.

Fucking love Mudvayne, man. It's been a while since I've listened to anything past their third album, admittedly, but they're fantastic.

View attachment 31890

(I know it's not - but it *is* a lot of fun).

Checks out.

 

[ciko_gfb]

Ah, I stand corrected. Apparently the official listing is:

1. The Beginning Of All Things That Will End
2. State of Slow Decay
3. Meet Your Maker
4. Bleeding Out
5. Foregone Pt. 1
6. Foregone Pt. 2
7. Pure Light of Mind
8. The Great Deceiver
9. In the Dark
10. A Dialogue in B Flat Minor
11. Cynosure
12. End the Transmission

Cool track names, I really liked it. Seems like this is really a serious album. I hope "A Dialogue in B Flat Minor" won't be the same as on Clayman Rerecord.

And I just pre-ordered the new album, super excited about it!

 

[TheJestersDoor]

I reckon A Dialogue in B minor is the acoustic intro they've been playing live recently.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Some educated guesses about the album:

The Beginning Of All Things That Will End is going to be a minute-long instrumental intro. Possibly will have some spoken-word.

Meet Your Maker will have an autotuned clean chorus that people are going to either like or hate.

Bleeding Out will quite literally be a pure TJR song, as in a complete 100% return-to-form that everyone's been waiting for, an instant classic, but in an ironic twist of fate it will be panned by everyone as deathcore pandering.

Foregone Pt. 2 will be an acoustic song in the vein of Stay With Me.

Everyone is going to hate Pure Light of Mind, including me. It will be the In This Life of this album and will have at least ten people in the songwriting credits.

A Dialogue in B Flat Minor will be very similar to Jester's Door, albeit with strings. I am almost certain it will have spoken-word from Anders.

Cynosure will be at least seven minutes long.

Whatever the worst song on the album will be, it will be the song that defines the album in most people's eyes the way House does for I, the Mask.

I will declare this to be the best In Flames album since Siren Charms and people will agree with me, but not for reasons I will like.

 

[DE4life]

Bleeding Out will quite literally be a pure TJR song, as in a complete 100% return-to-form that everyone's been waiting for, an instant classic, but in an ironic twist of fate it will be panned by everyone as deathcore pandering.

I genuinely don't think this is possible without Jesper. Bjorn and Chris don't have the background or the same playing style that Jesper and Glen had back then. At best you may get another song similar to Come Clarity, but I personally think that's Bjorn's limit creatively.

Foregone Pt. 2 will be an acoustic song in the vein of Stay With Me.

If it is acoustic then it will be very funny for obvious reasons, especially if there's female vocals.

Everyone is going to hate Pure Light of Mind, including me. It will be the In This Life of this album and will have at least ten people in the songwriting credits.

I don't think there's ever been a time when we've all hated something and you've agreed with us so more likely we'll all hate one of the songs and you'll be like "actually I dig it, might be my favourite". Ciko will back you up, but as he will rate every song 10/10 it will be difficult to take that too seriously.

 

[eochaid]

My guess is that, this time, the singles are a good representation as to what to expect from the album. They're too similar in tone to expect something really different. Maybe there will be a couple of songs that deviate from this but that's just it.

From the titles, my guess is that the closing track is going to be something like an outro.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Give me a little credit, @DE4life, I'm fully on board the hatewagon for Here Until Forever and In This Life.

 

[DE4life]

My guess is that, this time, the singles are a good representation as to what to expect from the album. They're too similar in tone to expect something really different. Maybe there will be a couple of songs that deviate from this but that's just it.

From the titles, my guess is that the closing track is going to be something like an outro.

I tend to agree, on past albums there has always been a weird single showcasing the "variety" - Through Oblivion from SC, The Truth from Battles, House from ITM. No such single this time around, so it suggests IF are ditching the nonsense for this album at least and just going with straight up metal. In a way I'm going to miss having at least one song to absolutely despise

Give me a little credit, @DE4life, I'm fully on board the hatewagon for Here Until Forever and In This Life.

Good, but were you at the time? I can't remember.

 

[eochaid]

Well, SOSD is a solid candidate due to it's, ahem, lack of originality.

 

[DE4life]

Well, SOSD is a solid candidate due to it's, ahem, lack of originality.

Well, yeah, they might as well have just released a cover of Blinded By Fear... nonetheless it isn't objectively a bad song like the other stupid singles from the past, just very unoriginal.

 

[eochaid]

Also, just came to mind, if the album follows that path, I expect that there will be, at least, a fully acoustic song (apart from that B minor thing). And I expect it because it makes sense.

What I don't expect is a House.

I also expect that this closes the discussion about Benson being the evil mastermind behind the previous albums. At this point, the three of them are way too different as to not think that it's their own doing.

 

[eochaid]

Well, yeah, they might as well have just released a cover of Blinded By Fear... nonetheless it isn't objectively a bad song like the other stupid singles from the past, just very unoriginal.

Yes. None of the songs are bad. They're just forgettable. Nothing special and not the IF that I like to listen at. In that regard, I prefer I the Mask to the new songs.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Good, but were you at the time? I can't remember.

Digging up some old quotes...

The rest of the album, with one exception, is some the most mediocre material In Flames has ever put out. I would even say that "Here Until Forever", "Save Me" and maybe "Underneath My Skin" rank as some of the weakest In Flames songs to date, not only because they bear no resemblance to In Flames (which isn't bad to me in and of itself), they're forgettable and actually sound like filler. This is the first and only In Flames album that I could actually cut in two and not mourn the loss of the second half.

7. We Will Remember

If you don't got something nice to say, don't say it at all.

So I won't.

8. In This Life

No.

"We Will Remember" and "In This Life" are such huge negatives for me that it's kind of affecting my judgment. It's better than Battles for sure, but suffers from the same problem: it has a handful of songs that are so bad that they're hard to ignore. That usually doesn't happen with an In Flames album for me.

Listened to I, the Mask again.

I think the massive dip in quality starting from "(This is Our) House" up through "Deep Inside" puts this album on the same level as Battles for me. It's just too hard to reconcile it with the actual good songs on the album. So right now I'd say this is probably the second-worst In Flames album. Or third-worst. Lunar Strain isn't my favorite IF album by any stretch but it has more good songs than I, the Mask does.

I also compared "Here Until Forever" and "We Will Remember" back to back and "Remember" is actually worse. I'm still stunned that IF would put out a song that bad. Holy shit.

Christ. The good songs are fucking stellar but I can't give a pass to an album where nearly half of the songs are bad. That shouldn't be the case with this band.

I tried to convince myself later that In This Life wasn't actually that bad, but my efforts didn't last long.

 

[DE4life]

Alright, I give you a pass on this one. I do remember you saying you liked half of Battles, though, so....

 

[eochaid]

Liking even half of Battles should lead to capital punishment.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Have mercy, Judge.

 

[eochaid]

No. There's no excuse for your behaviour.

 

[DE4life]

It's kind of funny that the pandemic actually seems to have forced Anders to grow up somewhat, lyrically. From the mostly juvenile lyrics of the past few albums to stuff that's more in-line with the outward-looking lyrics of the early days. About fucking time.

And yes, I generally find the songs from ITM more interesting than what I've heard so far from Foregone. Although that's not to say those songs are necessarily better, if that makes sense... they just gave me more to talk about when listening to them. I don't feel like I have much to say about the first three singles here. "Yes, decent, solid heavy MDM... um..."

 

[The Grayfox]

Great artwork. I normally do enjoy dissecting song titles and making guesses but with In Flames I don’t think song titles mean much these days. There have been plenty of times over the last 20 years that I saw a song title and thought “oh that’s going to be good”, only to be completely disappointed.

I’ve gotta say it’s pretty lame that the release date is in February when clearly the album is done. Three singles out five months in advance? Come on. I guess this is the main inspiration they took from THE. I really don’t like this new trend. It might be acceptable if it was a double album and there were 20 songs on it.

Machine Head did this recently. Their new album has 13 songs on it. Four of them were from a previously released EP. They dropped three new singles before album release. That brings you down to six songs to check out. Except that three of those are minute long interlude tracks. So you get an album with 13 tracks, and basically have three new songs to listen to at release. It’s ridiculous.

Hopefully In Flames slows down on releasing singles. Three singles in three months from an album that comes out next year is a bit much.