After hearing a leaked song from Siren Charms, I'm giving up what little hope I had left for the band. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_82E5hVJCc It's just watered down metalcore in the vein of Asking Alexandria, and that's just sad.

I've certainly heard worse, but it is sad that this is what they've become. I guess they're one of those bands where they started out the best and each album got progressively worse and worse.

They've become the Metallica of MeloDeath

At least Metallica kinda made a comeback, though. I don't think that anyone will argue that Death Magnetic was worse than Load/Reload/St. Anger.

I really hope In Flames follows suit...

Wow, that was pretty fucking bad even by metalcore standards. Well, at least the softer mellow parts with the female vocals have a decent atmosphere to them, but that's as far as my praise goes. Everything else about that song is horrible.

yep, the new shit is awful (just last week I watched the vid of My Sweet Shadow, ugh ... but the vocals on this are even worse), but at the same time, I can still enjoy the old songs, and I'm glad that the guys I have to thank for those songs, now that they're commercial as fuck, are hopefully making a lot of money and enjoying themselves in well-attended shows that may even have attractive female fans.
it's not for me, but they've already done me enough good without being rewarded for it, so...whatever.

The old albums will always be amazing. At least Dark Tranquility and At The Gates are still doing metal...

...In Flames has been a lost cause since like 2002. Did I travel back in time?

The new album is sounding so bad I'd rather have them make another RTR... and that's saying something.

Come Clarity wasn't too bad tho... But not the best

Feel the same way except more like 2000. This band hasn't released anything worth listening to since Clayman imo.

Either way, they haven't released anything remarkable in nearly a decade and a half now...

I wasn't even a huge fan of The Jester Race or Colony, I did like Lunar Strain though.

A Sense of Purpose was mostly good. They managed to reconnect themselves with their melodeath roots with that album. Sure it's still groovy as anything, but they combined it with nice leads like the one in "I'm the Highway". Sadly they dropped the ball again with "Sounds of a Playground Fading", and this time the ball rolled into the yard of Mr Mundane and Mrs Easy money. I haven't heard a single thing of the new album that excites me. Booooooo.

Their groove songs are terrible but I liked this soft track, they should just play alternative rock. At least Anders isn't as utterly terrible when he uses his clean vocals. I'd like a full album of songs like that opposed to the "omg, we're so varied, guys!" they promised for Sirens. I've revisited some of their old stuff this week and while I have nothing against bands evolving, they're nowhere near the quality of The Jester Race, Whoracle or Colony.

I can actually dig the softer stuff....the last tolerable album was Come Clarity and that's only because the first half of the album was really solid - especially "Dead End" and the title track. For whatever reason, I really like this song.

Sucks for them. Metallica got millions of dollars and arena tours when they sold out. Last time I checked In Flames is still no bigger than a House of Blues tour.

Hate me, but I dig the new songs. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of Ander's lately vocal delivery, I'm still looking forward for Siren Charms, 'When The World Explodes' was pretty good.

The last good In Flames album is Clayman. They died after that one.

Strange time to say they've "died". I thought the new single "Rusted Nail" was more decent than anything since Clayman, albeit still awful. Everything since then has felt forced, and not in a good way. I'm not against them doing what they want to do, it just feels like they haven't fallen into their element yet.

I thought most people officially gave up on In Flames in 2004 with Soundtrack to Your Escape. You would have to like their new sound and direction to honestly stay with them until 2014. And if that's the case, I imagine the OP's stance is simply temporary.

if I had a penny every time anyone said "I always supported In Flames but they lost me with that one" ...I'd have lots more money to spend on chocolate, cognac and In Flames merchandise.

The only interesting thing about In Flames is the reaction that their once-loyal fanbase seems to be having for this album. Their facebook page is flooded with fans crying 'sell-out' and for them to return to "the glory days of their debut, 'Reroute to Remain'". At the same time, their fanboys respond with lengthy posts whining about how "closed-minded" metalheads are, and how bands need to "change" (oh, I'm sorry..."evolve") to stay alive.

It seems like the lose of Jesper, who seems like the only member who still really cared about death metal, made them finally lose whatever thread of their roots that remained through the years since "Clayman".

I didn't even like Clayman much at all, honestly.

I really never listened to anything past that, but this thread inspired me enough to spin a few tracks off of the epic Reroute to Remain in honour of it all.

"Fourteen songs of conscious insanity" and the only thing I can remember is the sort of cool intro riff to "Cloud Connected," and even that is about as simple as playing with duplo blox. Oh and Anders' clean vocals are some of the wrost I have ever heard. It is like one part bedroom-bm-croak-so-my-mom-wont-hear-me simpering whispers, and one part holding your nose when you sing. Sort of like the clean vocals on Trivium's debut.

Wtf m8!

was Metallica not a stadium band decades ago? (what year are you saying they sold out in?) my imagination sees that as being after the peak of their popular success -- I'd have thought they were doing better than In Flames their whole career, particularly because they began in the era where people swallowed whatever music they were given (pre-internet, pre mp3, pre global competition), so it was much easier for Metallica to do well than it would be for _any_ band, not just shitty new In Flames, to do that well today.


neither. but most bands will never make a song I'll like as much as I loved Only for the Weak (even the video was cool). it was for me what [insert early Metallica song name] is for a lot of people. and eventually I grew to really like Satellites, too.


"Metaphor" starts out so promising, but the vocals just don't do it for me. there're definitely some good fragments amongst the songs on that album.


while In Flames fans are around, might be a good time to ask: do any of you know what the original/folk title of the "Pallar Anders Visa" melody is?

was a time when people thought clayman was the tipping point. i agreed with them at the time and i still do - that album was the first shit one. but luckily for in flames, they got so much worse that clayman is now almost always included as part of their good stuff, and even the piece of shit after that. that's almost an achievement.

what was so bad about clayman? anders vocals?

There is nothing inherently "wrong" with Clayman, or any In Flames record for that matter really. Music is subjective. I just feel like Clayman was their last honest effort, and the last time they were truly melodeath despite the groove influences coming more into play on that album. Still catchy, heavy, and metal nonetheless. Songs like Square Nothing and Brush The Dust Away are among my favorites on that record.

There's these things called foreign countries (I know you're aware of them since you don't like any of their languages) and In Flames are notably bigger in some places than in the USA.

Yeah, but his point still stands, even if he is a bit thick - Metallica is infinitely bigger than In Flames.

They're still definitely reaping the rewards, though, shifting around 300,000 albums in this climate is not to be sniffed at. And for a time, In Flames were a stadium band in some places.

^ that's true...I think they did a giant performance in Brazil? But, alas, I don't remember all that much.

Going back and listening to Clayman vs the song I heard from the new album, Clayman is a fucking masterpiece. Wow...how sad. Even the new Metallica is better than that garbage.

^ Yeah, even Lords of Summer is better than this song.

I just took a listen to the two that are up from Siren Charms. I haven't heard a single note of music they've done since that song Take This Life, and even then I never heard the whole album, or the one they did before it for that matter, so I'm not really in touch with their progression. The songs are not really my thing, but I will say its interesting that even if I I didn't know I was listening to In Flames going into it, I could still tell. They have a distinct style of writing that has remained unique for their entire career, no matter what the main aesthetic is, and I can respect that.

Anders definitely has the Johnathan Davis just-woke-up-and-I'm-grumpy vocals down pat.

I liked When The World Explodes, actually. Pretty neat that they have a female guest vocalist on it. They went for having a singer that sounded like a Siren on Siren Charms and succeeded pretty well. Rusted Nail is just disjointed and they literally recycled a riff from STYE.

Reroute to Remain, STYE and Come Clarity all have a nostalgic element to them for me, since they are among the first metal albums I got and Come Clarity was released right around the time I first saw In Flames, which was the first show I went to that I drove to Philadelphia for.

If I wasn't "done" with In Flames then I'm certainly not going to be "done" now. Even though I hope they release a return to form album, they sort of did with A Sense of Purpose (so shoot me) and I think Sounds of a Playground Fading was an honest effort to retain the signature modern melodic sound of In Flames by the remaining band members after Jesper left.

Siren Charms is an album I anticipate, it might be a grower even if it is as bad as STYE (my least favorite overall In Flames album to date). Let's hope they have a few throwbacks on this record to the old albums as well (which the past three have done).

Am I the only one who actually likes In Flames' newer stuff? I could never get into their early stuff. Come Clarity is probably my favorite album of theirs along with A Sense of Purpose

Today I learned people actually care enough to say new In Flames is bad. What year is this?