New album Foregone out February 2023

[drawntoblack]

What exactly is old school about "arrangements" here? The only thing this song does aking to Gyroscope is that it happens to be in the same 3/4 time signature, that's what gives it the waltz-ish rhythmic cadence. And the main riff has sort of folky vibe to it. But then the layered to hell autotuned vocals kick in.
My feelings about the song itself aside, I still don't like the plastic compressed production. And yeah, at this point it's practically confirmed by Anders that they consciously tried to emulate their older songs. I guess their recent output didn't sell that much after all.

The worst bit about this band is that a small part of me still believes they can release a half-decent record if they can force themselves out of their comfort zone that is Howard fucking Benson.

 

[DE4life]

If everyone was as reasonable, I'd absolutely agree, but I just know that's not the case.

In general yeah, agreed, but as this forum was specified I just wanted to highlight that even the most contentious posters on here (of which I'm probably one) are not going around demanding old school arrangements. If anything it's the opposite, we know current IF cannot produce something on the same level as 1996/1997 nor do we expect them to as the main songwriters for that era are long gone. It's for that reason that most of us are critical of them for attempting it. After all of the comments they made about not looking back and always looking ahead, evolution, all that nonsense... now they're doing a 180 in the same way they did with Clayman 2020 (literally a year prior they said they'd never do anything like that).

All any of us want is something authentic, and these new tracks just don't feel authentic to me. It's like the band are desperately trying to go back in time to reconnect with a crowd that they left for dead over a decade ago. The last truly authentic work they released, in my view, is Siren Charms. It was objectively a poor album but it was unique in that In Flames way. Everything since has felt very manufactured and calculated, even this new stuff which people say is "back to the roots" but actually isn't. At least, not the band's roots, and even then I would argue the 'roots' of the current incarnation of IF are SOAPF - as that's the post-Jesper point and things have been markedly different since then.

 

[Jester Slave]

I guess their recent output didn't sell that much after all.

That's silly. Album sales barely matter anymore, unless you are a pop star. It's about engagement, live shows and merch nowadays.

IF currently has amost 2 million listeners on Spotify. THE is 264, Soilwork 614, DT 261. ITM has at least two tracks breaking the 10 million listenings mark: I am Above 41 mil, Stay With Me 12 mil. They absolutely did not need to mine people's nostalgia, when they just released one of their most relevant records in recent times with ITM, which showed that their recipe work. They may did it to farm this market as well, but even at worst it's just greed and not desperation.

But I'm not too sure about the greed part either, because Foregone is much less approachable so far than ITM. This being a vanity project (whether in response to THE or not) is much more believable, because you don't just randomly throw away your money printing recipe to please some old-school fans.

 

[ThePhobiac]

Where have you been reading that?

Places like Metal Archives and Sputnikmusic, which, to be fair, are some of the more elitist places out there, lol.

 

[drawntoblack]

when they just released one of their most relevant records in recent times with ITM

My man, it's so relevant that I can't even name 3 songs off the top of my mind from it. And Spotify clicks don't make for a compelling monetary argument because spotify pays peanuts. That's why I said "output" as a whole, not just streams or just merch.
IF haven't been relevant for a long ass time and they don't make as much money as you think. And they especially don't make enough money to be able to say "fuck what the fans think" otherwise they would've continued to indulge Anders's boyband fantasies.

 

[Jester Slave]

My man, it's so relevant that I can't even name 3 songs off the top of my mind from it. And Spotify clicks don't make for a compelling monetary argument because spotify pays peanuts. That's why I said "output" as a whole, not just streams or just merch.
IF haven't been relevant for a long ass time and they don't make as much money as you think. And they especially don't make enough money to be able to say "fuck what the fans think" otherwise they would've continued to indulge Anders's boyband fantasies.

I can't name a single Taylor Swift song on her latest two records, but the last time I heard she's not struggling. It's irrelevant if you can name a single song from ITM or not, because we can see statistics that a lot of people can. If you don't pay for their stuff, those others will.

I didn't mean Spotify numbers to represent how much they earn from there. It represents the band's engagement with listeners. You can't seriously say that when a middle of a pack band like In Flames hits 40+ and 10+ million clicks on their songs from ITM then it's irrelevant. It shows the exact opposite. At the end of the day the fanbase we represent here is irrelevant - it's not true for every band of course. What we do here, dissecting everything, being very critical and whatnot is not what your average music listener does. They hear I Am Above on some BEAST METAL playlist and they dig it. Engagement fulfilled. If even a fraction of these people go on to buy some merch, go to some shows or at least just listen to more IF and share with their friends, it's a success. It doesn't matter what the ~12 of us think here.

I don't know how much money they have, but I'm pretty sure they don't need to release new albums for some time now. They could just keep touring and keep selling merch and they are set, especially if they were smart with their money when they raked in much, much more in their heyday.

 

[galvanized]

Is Benson an alcoholic and State of Slow Decay is what his ex-wife labeled his condition which he told Anders, who wrote a song about it? Is The Great Deceiver about the band themselves and how they deceived us into thinking Foregone pt1 and pt2 were just your regular concept songs, when in fact it was an embarassing cover up?

I haven’t analyzed Benson’s life yet so his influence is TBD. As for The Great Deceiver title, yes I believe it is about Anders or maybe about the band itself tricking the whole world into thinking they are playing and writing authentic music the last 6-7 years.

 

[Jester Slave]

I don't know if it's about being authentic or not. Especially with Battles or ITM where the former sounds like Anders' wet dream of becoming a pop-metal star and the latter actually makes it heavier.

I don't have a right or wrong answer or even approach in my mind, but I feel like some of the issues with older bands is the lack of motivation, a lack of bite. Whether you are over the moon for THE or not, it's still just nostalgia done half-decently, or if you actually think it's a 10/10 record then nostalgia done right. But it's never going to be as interesting, fun or classic as their older stuff, when they originally came up with this sound and it actually meant something. Same with IF who are just jamming around for a while now. You can call them a sellout for their R2R-ASOP era, but at least they tried and the material sounded fresh and new.

There are so many old bands or artists, where the announcement of a new album is just whatever. They either go the IF route and change some things up from record to record for better or worse, but still remain in their comfort zone, or they go the other route where they just release the same album every time. I pretty much just listen to these records so I can add that +1 or maybe +2 songs to my playlists which are nice, while the rest is utterly forgettable.

I get it: it's harsh to compare angsty teenagers to a family men in their 40s, and it's hard to be thirsty when you experienced some of the highest highs and you can just keep cruising on autopilot because you kinda earned that spot.

 

[eochaid]

People liking THE must have hurt you a lot .

 

[galvanized]

FUCK

Niclas is officially out of IF



https://www.reddit.com/r/InFlames/comments/yotwp4/interview_in_metal_hammer_uk_anders_says_niclas/

 

[The Grayfox]

People liking THE must have hurt you a lot .

Show me on the doll where The Halo Effect touched you.

FUCK

Niclas is officially out of IF

Did people think he was still actually in the band?

 

[ThePhobiac]

It was a foregone (ha) conclusion, but it's nice to have the official word. A Gothenburg original and I'm sad to see him leave. I wish he had been able to contribute more outside of Battles -- definitely a lot of wasted potential there. I'm glad I had a chance to meet him during the A Sense of Purpose tour and have him sign my Passenger album booklet.

 

[ThePhobiac]

"If you miss this tour, I don't know what's wrong with you."

I'm on a different continent!!! Come to me.

 

[eochaid]

FUCK

Niclas is officially out of IF



https://www.reddit.com/r/InFlames/comments/yotwp4/interview_in_metal_hammer_uk_anders_says_niclas/

"He's busy doing other stuff" doesn't sound as if they have really talked about it. More like it happened without them noticing.

 

[DE4life]

I love how THE is basically Anders' Voldemort - that-which-shall-not-be-named.

 

[Jester Slave]

People liking THE must have hurt you a lot .

No. It's just an apt example of nostalgia music.

 

[eochaid]

 

[DE4life]

Nah, nostalgia music is more like what In Flames did with State of Slow Decay, essentially sampling the melodies and style of an older track (in this case Blinded By Fear) to produce a similar vibe. It's going on a lot in pop music at the moment - David Guetta & Bebe Rexha have done something similar by directly sampling Eiffel 65's 'Blue' for their song 'I'm Good', and Anne-Marie's 'Psycho' takes some inspiration from Mambo No. 5 (shout out Phobiac) in the chorus.

Unless we are saying melodic death metal is nostalgia music, which I don't believe is appropriate as the genre is still going strong in various forms. There's no song on Days of the Lost, to me at least, that specifically evokes an MDM song from the past. Some of the tracks could for sure fit on Character or Fiction with tweaked production, but you can say that about all sorts of modern songs and older albums, and nobody would derisively label it as nostalgia music. For bands who never really change their sound their entire discography would essentially be nostalgia music, which makes little sense logically.

I'd actually say THE defied expectations in this regard. People were expecting a rehash of the classic IF sound but instead got something familiar but different.

 

[eochaid]

But they're not doing something new or groundbrekaing like a lot of bands have been doing since... Errr... Sometime... I think... Somewhere must have done something different in the past two decades. I guess... There must be some band that is constantly innovating a opening new grounds for music. Somewhere.

 

[DE4life]

Idk, probably Nine Inch Nails or Static X