I'd say that would have been a preferable outcome in the long run compared to what happened. Some good moments on Reroute to Remain and Come Clarity are not worth all the complete fucking garbage that's forever soiled the In Flames name since the turn of the century.

+1

Back when I used to run races a lot, 'Colony' was one of my go-to CDs to run to (yeah, I used to keep a pocket full of CDs when I ran... in my cargo shorts, haha). 'Embody the Invisible' was just perfect to kick things off, except that I'd get overly excited and start out of the gates too fast, haha.

After "Black Sabbath", "War Pigs", "Victim of Changes", "Exciter", "Overkill", "Ace of Spades", "Iron Fist", "Prowler", "Where Eagles Dare", "Aces High", "Fight Fire with Fire", "Battery", "Blackened", "Hell Awaits", "Angel of Death", "South of Heaven", "Solitude", "Twist of Cain", "Evil", "A Dangerous Meeting", "Black Metal", "Satanic Lust", "Into the Crypts of Rays", "Invincible Force", "Curse the Gods", "The Exorcist", "Disintegrator/Incinerator", "Death Row", "Saint Vitus", "Charred Remains", "Internal Bleeding", "Infected", "Golgotha", "Demonic Incarnate", "What Kind of God", "Immortal Rites", "Rapture", "Lake of Fire", "Higher Coward", "In Battle there Is No Law", "The IVth Crusade", "Obscura", "When the Sun Drank the Weight of Water", "Heroes in Godly Blaze", "M.S. Bismarck", "The Tree of Life and Death", "Cromlech", "Kathaarian Life Code", "Natassja in Eternal Sleep", "Transilvanian Hunger", "Funeral Fog", "Sleep of Death", "Det Som En Gang Var" and "Dunkelheit" I can still come up with at least a hundred more. I have left out albums with intros and everything underground enough to not be known to mainstream metal zines, and still got a ton of vastly superior album openers.

That... seems a bit unnecessary.

Come to think of it, In Flames had quite a knack for placing strong openers on their records. Behind Space, Stand Ablaze, Moonshield, Jotun, the aforementioned Embody the Invisible, Bullet Ride - I'd expect to find all of them on a hypothetical best-of compilation.

Yeh but like most bands put the best songs at the front of the album

I need to re-listen to The Jester Race, because I remember being quite bored by it the first time, but people keep talking about it being their best album so maybe there's something I'm not hearing that I'll notice on another listen.

I really liked Lunar Strain, but I've never heard anything beyond Jester Race since I've seen a lot of people (not in this thread obviously) say they took a nosedive in quality after that.

@drone - The only one I don't know there is 'Infected'. Great choices, all of them are better than In Flames

Come on now. 'One of the best album openers ever'. It's a good song but not even close.

I think you guys are taking that statement a bit too seriously. It was clearly just an expression of praise for the song, not actually systematically comparing it to scores of other album openers.

"You can hear In Flames' minute-long teaser for the tour below, accompanied by some new music that sounds like it's straight off 2006's Come Clarity. […] could In Flames be going back to being a heavier band again?"

Cause going back to Come Clarity would be a good thing? Come Clarity was pretty much the beginning of the end for In Flames. It's a pretty bad album in terms of riffing, but it's by sporadically decent song-writing gave us a few good tracks... It's not "good" to be going back there.

And "being heavier" just isn't something that matters. If you have to use the word "heavier" to find something good to say about a band's music, it's most likely because it's a boring deathcore chug-shit of a band.

Well yeah it is a relative improvement. The band totally and utterly died with Reroute to Remain anyway.

Come on, it's listed right after "Internal Bleeding" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgNg50xzgz0

Well shit.

Needs more 'Silent Empire' and 'Wings'.

Victim of Changes is not the opening song to Sad Wings of Destiny. Prelude (then Tyrant) is.

Geez, Embody the Invisible must be pretty terrible indeed if South of Heaven is better than it...

.

Some of you just love to talk shit about bands. To flat out say they suck is just retarded. They play polished, melodic death metal. They've got a legacy with their early albums and they still put out great songs now and then today. What is with people and jumping on bandwagons on fucking forums

What bandwagon? The overwhelming majority likes the band quite a bit and worships their old albums. Everything you just said is dumb and wrong.

Lol. They used to, like more than a decade ago. They currently play metalcore/white dude with dreadlocks nu-metal.

In my time on this forum I have only seen a couple of people outright dismissing the band as a whole. Most people here seem to like or at least tolerate their first albums, and think their new albums are bad in various degrees because *insert personal reasons*

Other people like some of the new stuff. I actually quite like A Sense Of Purpose. I think it succeeds in mixing the nu-metal/alt rock of new In Flames with the effective and simple melodic hooks of their earlier work.

I'm not seeing the bandwagon. It's you making a hasty conclusion because you can't handle opinions.

#triggered

The sample does nothing for me, not even a little bit. Hard pass on anything new from In Flames. As for the band themselves I can't even remember the last album by them I bothered with. Reroute maybe? I dunno, I know I've sampled songs from their post Clayman era but nothing ever caught my fancy.

I think I'm in the weird here but I don't care for Jester or Whoreacle one bit. I love Lunar Strain (the best album they ever did imo, and the only album they had a decent vocalist for) and Clayman, Colony. Other than those three albums though I don't really gives two fucks about the band.

Um....that was absolutely dreadful. Where have they stopped sucking??

I was expecting more. The first half is ok but nothing great, the seconds sucks.

At the very least this thread got me to dust off some old In Flames which I haven't listened to in at least 10 years. I mostly can't do melodic death metal these days but it's been enjoyable

I keep telling myself that one of these days In Flames is going to put out a record that tears everyone a new asshole with speed, brutality and melody all mixed together.

This won't be that album but I'll be satisfied if it is at least as good as Sounds of a Playground Fading.

Actually, I think of him as the Jonathan Davis of Melodic Death Metal since the release of Only for the Weak music video!

i dont believe you op

I was gonna go full "WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE!? HOW CAN YOU EVEN CONSIDER THAT ALBUM ANY GOOD!?" until I saw your username. Then it all made sense.

In your world, Protest the Hero is a Progressive Power Metal band; so Sounds of a Playground Fading must be a good album in GoatFangsland.

In Flames never really appealed to me. I honestly rather listen to STYE, Come Clarity, and A Sense of Purpose then any of their older stuff, I just never got the appeal. Ive seen them a few times live and I just don't get it.

I was going to point out In Flames opened for Mudvayne and they still kicked ass, but that was back in '03 in support of Reroute to Remain and if you didn't like Come Clarity then I doubt you'd have kind words around that period of their career haha. Personally I liked Come Clarity, so I'm kinda excited to at least have something on that level if the footage represents the album as a whole.

In Flames also took a significant turn live after 2004. STYE is when they started with the synth-dominated sound, but they never really incorporated that with a live musician. While Reroute was the turning point on record, from 03-05 they went from playing five from that and a dozen earlier songs, to playing over a dozen from Reroute and beyond and maybe three earlier songs.

So here we have a new song from the upcoming album:




Plus additional info+album cover:

http://decibelmagazine.com/blog/2016/8/24/in-flames-to-release-new-album-battles-in-november-debut-track-the-end

Actually I think that Colony is considered one of, if not the best IF album here on MA, while Whoracle and Clayman the worst. Imo everything pre-TJR is great, but unrefined, TJR and Colony is great too, but the former has too much power and folk and the later is too much melodic and "happy". Clayman where the first sign of things to come, and Whoracle is perfect.


Well, it's a bit better than their last... and no, they're not going in the right direction, like I expected after hearing the samples. Unfortunately I firmly believe that they'll never make anything close to the masterpiece that is Whoracle.

The song is so bad, even the cover-art is face-palming.

Lazy ass!

Oh, my God!

How can Anders still sound like crap after, what, 23 years of growling? He's gotten worse!

And of course musically it is as unappealing as ever.

Is that a children's choir? It's buried in the chorus, but takes the lead at 2:48.

From the Deicbel story:

Mealy-mouthed equivocation. They are making yet another album of high-school diary alt-metal, surprising nobody, and they have not stopped sucking at all.

I don't hate the cover art, but their logo looks very out-of-place on it. I could see it being a very cool retrowave cover.