New album Foregone out February 2023

[eochaid]

I would rather commit suicide than listening to Battles again.

 

[Xpyro125]

For me, I think Bottled is the worst IF song pre-ASOP, but they definitely released some worse shit from 2008-onwards. Delight and Angers and Sober and Irrelevant both spring to mind immediately as songs I want to listen to less than Bottled, and those are still before Jesper left. Then you have shit like, let’s say Underneath My Skin. While I’m under the belief that honestly, Anders did need a little autotune at that point, that shit went so far overboard it’s ridiculous. House is House, the Clayman re-recordings would’ve sounded better with FL studio presets (and without autotune)— Those are personally my picks for the worst IF songs. Then you have MYM, Bleeding Out, and End the Transmission. I know a lot of people seemingly like MYM, including here, but I don’t get the appeal whatsoever. It sucks as much as everything else I’ve listed aside from House and C2020, I don’t care who disagrees with me.

I’m glad we got so many more OFTWs than Bottleds, at least in terms of quality, but is Bottled the worst? No, not quite, and it certainly doesn’t stand alone as being one of their worst— It’s just their worst in the period while the band was still not only good, but the band we knew and loved. If nothing else, it has far more interesting lyrics than MYM, so cheers to that.

Edit: I forgot to put Black and White on my list, but honestly, I do think it is a slight step above everything else there. I just think it’s bad and boring by Reroute’s standards, which are admittedly a lot higher than it imo.

 

[eochaid]

Inhad totally forgotten about House and now I want to remove that part of the rain where it's stored. If any song has to be defined as the worse and most insulting IF song then House is the top by far.

 

[Xpyro125]

I’m sorry for reminding you of it, I’ve done a truly horrible thing today.

 

[DE4life]

It's like arguing whether vomit or shit is better. It's disgusting regardless.

Bottled was the worst IF song once upon a time. An innocent time. It's been surpassed by far worse tracks since. In This Life makes me wish I was born without ears. House is a disgrace to the concept of music. The Clayman 2020 remakes are a desecration of something sacred. Significant portions of Foregone are so boring that it should be studied as a cure for insomnia.

Would I listen to Bottled now? No. It still sucks a big one. Do I consider it the worst ever? Not anymore. Cheers Anders, Bjorn and Howard. If nothing else you made Bottled look marginally better.

 

[eochaid]

Tell your self from 20 years ago this was going to be a thing and he wouldn't believe you.

 

[DE4life]

Well, 20 years ago CC hadn't quite been released, and I hated STYE, so to be honest I may have believed things would keep getting worse.

I couldn't imagine the depths they would sink to, though. If I received copy of Clayman 2020 remake back then I genuinely would have been shocked at the decline in standards.

 

[eochaid]

To be fair, I do not find it to be specially offensive or bad. The only song that I skip from the album is ISFI. Though, I must admit that time, ror me, has not made it, the album, any good. I used to like it more than I do now.

 

[DE4life]

I hated STYE back then because it was so far away from the IF sound that I loved. My feelings at that time were more a reaction to the pivot to an American-style sound than objectively analysing whether the album was good or bad.

Nowadays it still ranks at the bottom of all albums released between 1996 - 2006 for me, but it's above most of the post-2006 catalogue. It's fine as an album but some way below what the band were capable of. Also the production really weakens the end result, although nowhere near as bad as Reroute or ASOP.

Time hasn't necessarily made STYE any better for me, it's just that IF have made much shittier music which changes how I perceive STYE as a whole within their discography.

 

[eochaid]

From ASOP onwards, I feel like SOAPF is an exception. And even SOAPF is a lesser album than anything before ASOP. It was their peak in the post Jesper era and that was almost 20 years ago.

 

[The Grayfox]

I didn't realize Foregone had been out for over 2 years now. So what does everyone think? Are they working on another record or will it be another 2 years before they put one out?

Side note, they're promoting a playlist for the tour they start next week and Ordinary Story and Jotun are both on it. Any chance they make it on to the set?

This would be the setlist if it's any indication:

Meet Your Maker
Only for the Weak
Scorn
Take This Life
Cloud Connected
Bullet Ride
Ordinary Story
The Great Deceiver
Voices
I Am Above
Tilt
Jotun
Crawl Through Knives


I've seen it go both ways: bands advertise a Spotify playlist and that's the tour setlist and then I've seen bands advertise a playlist and it isn't even close. If this were the set for the tour, I'd say it's a damn good one for a support set. The length would be right. It would obviously be shuffled around. I just don't see them playing so much pre-RTR in a shorter set.

 

[DE4life]

Until they remove themselves from Benson's embrace I have zero interest in anything they do, honestly. Couldn't care less at this point if they announced their retirement tomorrow. Nothing of value would be lost. HB's IF has almost entirely been an insult to the legacy of the band.

Would be cool if they played CTK as it's been a really long time. 7 years, and that was just a couple of one off shows. Hasn't been in any kind of regular set since 2015, a decade ago. Guess it was worth it to release all of this shitty new music to infest the setlist instead, plus playing classics like Delight & Angers and Everything's Gone on loop for eternity.

 

[Xpyro125]

I didn't realize Foregone had been out for over 2 years now. So what does everyone think? Are they working on another record or will it be another 2 years before they put one out?

Until they remove themselves from Benson's embrace I have zero interest in anything they do, honestly. Couldn't care less at this point if they announced their retirement tomorrow. Nothing of value would be lost. HB's IF has almost entirely been an insult to the legacy of the band.

I think I can actually appreciate Foregone quite a bit— For boring me so much I turned to a variety of other rock, metal, electronic, pop, and hell, even rap music just to really feel invested in something. Alright, alright, I’ll be serious. I think Foregone is a decently fine, maybe even somewhat good modern metalcore album. I say that as someone who simply does not like most modern metalcore, so that’s not high praise, it really doesn’t take much. That being said, in complete seriousness, it’s helped me come around a bit more on Siren Charms and ASOP— Two albums I used to hate in the past… I still kind of hate ASOP, but not nearly as much as I used to, I do find quite a bit of enjoyable stuff on there, but Siren Charms is the album that’s really felt a lot better to listen to.

In a way, I’m not really sure what I want from the band at this point. Before I Am Above came out, I wanted them to go back to being heavy; now that they’re heavy, I want them to go back to being melodic again. I’m not sure if this is a matter of me not appreciating what I have until it gets worse or if this is me simply being unable to be happy with In Flames’ current direction. I think it is the former, since I did enjoy ITM at the time, but it has aged somewhat poorly.

I’m not going to say it’s solely because of Benson, but I also don’t have much care for whatever they do next. I mean, he’s a massive part of the problem, but the other 40% of that is Foregone being Foregone, its unfortunately fantastic reception with modern fans and IF haters, and Björn’s guitarwork just not being interesting anymore. Even if they ditched Howard, I’ll be real, I just don’t feel like Björn has much left in the tank, and that might honestly be a bigger problem for me than Howard after three albums of his involvement with the band. If this was post-Battles, Howard would be a scarier problem since the wound would be fresher, but he’s kinda just here to stay now, and I’ve accepted that. Björn’s degrading guitarwork since SC though, I think it’s really come to a head here— The loss of his own trademark melodies, falling further into modern metalcore tropes, ripping off and recycling riffs (Even from the last fucking album), being so incredibly outshined by Chris— It’s all too much for me to be invested in what they’ll do next unless they go in some sort of exciting, melodic direction.

It’s not a difficult ask, but this is the first album since I’ve been a fan (So three albums, rip me) where I was more hyped for a ton of other artists instead of relistening to the album: Negative Spaces, Tsunami Sea (Once the album came out and showed it was just the singles that sucked), HFTS, the Kendrick-Drake beef and GNX, Death of Slim Shady, the new Paleface Swiss stuff, the new clipping. album, the Disarmonia Mundi album I’ve yet to listen to, the new Grima album, MOTU, Sundiver and the newer stuff from Boston Manor in general, the new Sleep Token single that’s kinda just what I expected— And that’s only counting new stuff, that’s not even getting into stuff from my childhood that I’m revisiting, the likes of which I’d rather not get into due to being the electronic, pop, and nu metal in question. It’s not to say all of it is great or even good, I personally think Jordan Fish’s style of production is stale, and Negative Spaces ended up a bit safe for Poppy, but it’s still a lot of well-written stuff, not all of GNX is for me as someone who isn’t a huge rap fan, the less said about Ettore’s production the better, and Sleep Token played it safe aside from syncopated drums and a saxophone outro, but that’s all still rather adventurous.

I guess my point in all of that is to say… What’s there for me to really get invested in if Foregone feels so disingenuous and lacking in melody? Pure Light of Mind is one of three, four songs off the album that remotely feel like In Flames to me, and that’s not right. A song with clearly autotuned falsettos that Anders could never, ever pull off feeling more like the band I love than their failed attempted at melodic death metal? That’s just not right, but that’s the reality of it for me.

Howard Benson absolutely has been a cancer, I will never dispute that, but my lack of interest lies squarely on Björn. I can deal with Howard’s dumpster fire of a direction for the band, but I can’t stay happy with bog standard guitarwork.

Side note, they're promoting a playlist for the tour they start next week and Ordinary Story and Jotun are both on it. Any chance they make it on to the set?

This would be the setlist if it's any indication:

Meet Your Maker
Only for the Weak
Scorn
Take This Life
Cloud Connected
Bullet Ride
Ordinary Story
The Great Deceiver
Voices
I Am Above
Tilt
Jotun
Crawl Through Knives

Aside from MYM being fucking ass, this is one of the best setlists I could see them do in the modern day. They remembered Tilt? Holy fucking shit, I would pay the rest of the money in my savings to hear them perform that. I know Crawl Through Knives is the real hype song, but I’ve been absolutely loving the The Mirror’s Truth EP more and more as time goes on, and I’m so happy those songs aren’t just dead to the band. Even if this doesn’t end up becoming a setlist, I can be happy that Tilt is even on that playlist.

 

[The Grayfox]

For me, the real diamond in the set is Jotun. If they bust that out, I think that would be pretty cool. It's a really fun song. And I agree with you: a set like that is about as good as you could hope for. No Siren Charms, no Battles and a pretty even split in terms of 'old vs new' stuff. Which is why I don't think this will be the actual setlist

As far as Foregone goes, it almost feels like an album that was made because they thought it's what fans wanted. Granted, some did. There were plenty of people praising it. But it felt dishonest because of that. And I think Anders & Bjorn feat. The American Boys feel it too, which is why the promotion for it was abysmal. It didn't seem like they wanted to play the songs live either. There was very little that felt genuine about Foregone. That didn't improve with time either. If anything, it seems even less genuine and more dishonest now.

While I definitely agree that Benson is a problem, I'm not at all confident that things would improve if he wasn't around. In the last decade, I'm sure he's put his fingerprints all over every single thing Anders and Bjorn have done and his impact will be there for the remainder of the band's existence, whether he's there or not. If you take a look back at the Metallica documentary "A Year and a Half in the Life..." from the early 90's, you can watch the relationship between Metallica and producer Bob Rock unfold. And if you really watch, you can see him nitpick everything they did that made them Metallica. He was quite successful in stripping them of what made them special and turning them into an arena band. Granted, it worked out well for them. Anyway, he was their producer and 5th member for over a decade and his presence has never left, even though he hasn't had anything to do with them in the last 20 years. When somebody like that is welcomed into the fold, their job is to fundamentally change the way things are done in the studio. In fact, I would wager that there are a lot of parallels between the Bob Rock/Metallica relationship and the Howard Benson/In Flames one.

 

[eochaid]

Ah. I don't think that Benson is the problem here. In my opinion, is Bjorn's lack of confidence and Anders lack of a clear direction of how the band should sound like, his inability to make a sound of his own (he has always relied on others to that) and his stubbornness in relying in his non existent vocal abilities.

At this point, their discography is a mess of different styles without an internal coherence, and that makes people disoriented about what might come next.

The fact that House and SOSD are part of the dame playlist just says a lot about the band's lack of a clear planification.

 

[Xpyro125]

Ah. I don't think that Benson is the problem here. In my opinion, is Bjorn's lack of confidence and Anders lack of a clear direction of how the band should sound like, his inability to make a sound of his own (he has always relied on others to that) and his stubbornness in relying in his non existent vocal abilities.

Honestly, I think a lack of confidence was it, especially after SC, but I think especially after ITM and Anders’ vocal training, it’s moreso Björn just… Kinda going on autopilot. He no longer listens to new music, doesn’t really come up with new ideas— And while a ton of people do love the heavier direction with Foregone and claim it to be phenomenal melodeath, I’d say that they either don’t know what melodeath is, or in the case of people who used to hate In Flames, don’t like it. Foregone is a take on a shitty, overly-processed subgenre done fine, which it doesn’t need much ingenuity nor creativity to accomplish. That masks the album’s flaws for a lot of people, and more power to them at that point.

But honestly? Between his Odd Island Brewing and Restaurant 2112, I personally think those are more of his passions at this point.

At this point, their discography is a mess of different styles without an internal coherence, and that makes people disoriented about what might come next.

I will give the band a bit of credit, but I honestly kinda love that they do something different every time. It’s purely subjective, and it’s a double-edged sword— If they do something I like, fuck, it’ll be worse next time; if they do something I hate, at least they’ll do something different afterwards. I personally don’t think that’s the decision-making a band should take on, but it is a quality I enjoy from them given who they are as musicians. I have to imagine that for longtime fans though, this is a fucking travesty of a quality for them to have.

 

[eochaid]

I don't mind experimentation but, the changes seem to be too random to have been made on purpose. Then, i would love some experimentation when it comes to song structures and adding new sounds to their music. They did nothing of that. Just went from pop metal to pop alt rock and then tried to be melodeath again but with a lack of understanding of what melodeath is.

Aside from that, all the songs share the same patterns.

Then, Bjorn... Even if he doesn't listen to new music, a statement that I strongly distrust, he could always try to add some classic rock or metal vibes and structures to his songs. After all, all of these bands started mixing their influences to come up with something new. Bjorn... He just puts some random riffs that say nothing about his personality or his influences.

 

[Xpyro125]

I don't mind experimentation but, the changes seem to be too random to have been made on purpose. Then, i would love some experimentation when it comes to song structures and adding new sounds to their music. They did nothing of that. Just went from pop metal to pop alt rock and then tried to be melodeath again but with a lack of understanding of what melodeath is.

Aside from that, all the songs share the same patterns.

Then, Bjorn... Even if he doesn't listen to new music, a statement that I strongly distrust, he could always try to add some classic rock or metal vibes and structures to his songs. After all, all of these bands started mixing their influences to come up with something new. Bjorn... He just puts some random riffs that say nothing about his personality or his influences.

That pretty much sums up my issues with Foregone as an In Flames album specifically— It’s just I, the Mask in denial, and I liked it a lot more when the band was honest about being alt metal.