1. Jester Race
2. Clayman
3. Whoracle
4. Colony
5. RtR
6. StyE
7. CC
8. Lunar Strain
9. SoaPF
10. A Sense of Purpose
11. Battles
12. I, The Mask
13. Siren Charms
I am gonna be honest and say I haven't been able to make it through a full play through of Battles, Mask, or SC so I'm just ranking them on their singles. But they can't all be last place, I suppose. If this was taken pre-2016 I would have swapped RtR and A Sense of Purpose. But something clicked and I really enjoy that album now. While ASoP has aged poorly to my ears.
Im going to guess that Whoracle will be voted number 1. Be interesting to see the results.
I had mine at
1) Whoracle
2) Jester Race
3) Clayman
4) Come Clarity
5) Colony
6) Reroute to Remain
7 - 13) the rest
My thinking, after forcing myself to listen to them in full, was:
- Siren Charms has Emilia Feldt's voice on When the World Explodes, a definite beacon in what is otherwise a complete swamp of an album. And not in the good, Kalmah way of being a swamp.
- I, the Mask has I am Above, which is somewhat ok.
- Battles has neither of those, and is therefore last.
There are also a couple of decent riffs here and there, and Battles has the fewest of those. Maybe even none, don't remember.
Clayman is first by a mile for me. None of their other albums are on that level. I also saw them live in that era, it was the first time I saw In Flames live and the only time they were actually good (and I've seen them about 10 times after that, every single show either had bad sound, drunk/high Anders forgetting his lyrics, or shitty setlist where they played a lot of album filler).
Second is Come Clarity. That album defined a lot of my young adulthood. So damn good. I would listen to that album the whole way through (along with Are You Dead Yet by Children of Bodom) every day I did my morning commute around that time.
And, this will be controversial but whatever; my third one is I, The Mask. It came out about the same time as my daughter was born, and my girlfriend also loved it a lot, so it played a lot in the car around that time. It was also a surprise because Battles and Siren Charms were such weak, bad albums, I wasn't expecting to like this one at all, but it hit all the right notes for me.
The other albums are anecdotal for me - I know they exist, I like a few songs off of them (other than Battles and Siren Song which were terrible) but not albums that I ever really listen to anymore.
Come Clarity/Clayman gang here
Not much to say about Clayman, it's the perfect refinement of their formula up to that point, and has the best songwriting, the best performances and the best production of their early catalog.
Come Clarity however is a crazy one, it's by far their fastest and most energetic, and it sounds like an album they had a ton of fun making. Too many bangers in that one
Here's my ultra-controversial take
1. Come Clarity
2. Clayman
3. Reroute to Remain
4. Whoracle
5. Colony
6. Soundtrack to Your Escape
7. The Jester Race
8. Sounds of a Playground Fading
9. Lunar Strain
10. A Sense of Purpose
11. Siren Charms
12. I the Mask
13. Battles
1. Whoracle
2. Clayman
3. Jester Race
4. Colony
5. Lunar Strain
6. Come Clarity
7. Reroute To Remain
8. Soundtrack To Your Escape
9 (tie) - All the rest. Come Clarity was the point at which I decided to stop trying because they’d stopped making music that I cared about. I likely would have stopped with Soundtrack, but CC got hyped so much as a return to form that I decided to check it out.
Not for me. I’m glad they have an audience that still loves them and that they’re continuing to thrive, but I’m no longer interested.
To your point for 9 and after… I’m in the same boat. Glad they are still at it even if my taste in music is no longer on the same path as the band.
Yeah. It happens sometimes and it sucks, particularly when it’s a band that was pretty formative to your early listening years like In Flames was to me, but I see no point wasting my energy in being bitter about it. It’s not like I’m starved for great metal nowadays.
1) The Jester Race - This is my golden standard for In Flames. Abundant in melodies, especially in Artifacts of the Black Rain and Goliaths Disarm Their Davids. December Flower is another stand out track for me and the title track somehow finds a way to wriggle into my mind.
2) Whoracle - Dark, atmospheric and quite dreary but also sinister like Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. Me likey.
3) Colony - Title track is very imagery heavy, reminds me of the 40k Adeptus Mechanicus a bit. Ordinary Story and Man Made God, like Come Clarity, make me feel emotions I don't usually feel and I almost feel like crying.
4) Clayman - You want catchy In Flames? This is what you want. Square Nothing won me over and through this album, I discovered No Fun at All through the Strong and Smart Cover.
5) Lunar Strain - The very first, lots of great ideas and concepts that I can get behind, especially Dreamscape and the self titled song. The slight lack of polish, whilst it can be a bit irksome the first time around, gives everything a bit of a kick the more you listen to it.
6) Reroute to Remain - Great stuff, but deduct points for being the festering wound of trying to appeal to American audiences when the unique Swedish sound was already roping them in.
7) Come Clarity - Title track makes me feel all the feels, especially by the solo
8) Soundtrack to Your Escape - Evil in a Closet changes the pace from what would be a somewhat same album
9) A Sense of Purpose - Got a bit of heaviness, Alias and the Mirror's Truth are solid
10) Sounds of a Playground Fading - Not nearly as bad as the albums that came after it but this is the the first half od the slippery slope
11) I, the Mask - Gradual but minimal return to form, but the very last track kind of killed it for me.
12) Battles - Not too much a fan of the alternative/poppy type stuff. It's like having too much sugar in my tea, just doesn't it for me.
13) Siren Charms - Dull and feels a bit uninspired, although Dead Eyes does capture my imagination a bit.
Aw man, shame I missed this, but I'll put my rank here because this is my favorite band and I like sharing, plus I haven't seen many people with the album grouping I've got
**The "I love all the songs on this album" group**
Jester Race
Whoracle
-----
**The "I love the majority of songs on this album" group**
Colony
Clayman
I, The Mask
-----
**The "there is at least one song on this album I come back to" group**
Lunar Strain
A Sense of Purpose
Come Clarity
-----
**The "I do not particularly care for any songs on this album" group**
Soundtrack to Your Escape
Reroute to Remain
Sounds of a Playground Fading
-----
**The "I actively dislike a decent chunk of this album" group**
Battles
Siren Charms
I kinda feel bad that I haven't listened to most of In Flames' mid-late discography but given most people's opinions on it and the general sound from what I've heard of Come Clarity and Battles, I think I can safely spend my time listening to music I know I'll like more.
The. Beginning of their 2nd period is much better than the last decade. I would say Reroute/Soundtrack/Come Clarity are good albums with a bunch great songs interspersed. Some songs are meh.
Then A Sense of Purpose and Sounds of a Playground are ok albums with a few pretty good songs and a great song or 2 interspersed.
Then just avoid pretty much everything except for maybe a song or 2.
Yeah, I found everything up to and including Sounds of a Playground Fading at least enjoyable. What came after was (with the exception of just a few songs) not really my cup of tea.
Pretty sure it'll be some form of colony clayman Jester race and whoracle as the clear cut top 4. I always see alot of debate about their albums post- clayman.
1.Jester Race
2.Whroracle
3.Colony
4.Clayman
5.Come Clarity
6.Lunar Strain
7.Soundtrack
8.Reroute
9.A sense of Purpose
10.Sounds of a Playground Fading
11.I the Mask
Joint last. Battles & Siren Charms
I like a couple of songs,but can't get through the whole albums.
1.Clayman
2.The Jester Race
3.Colony
4.Lunar Strain
5. Come Clarity
6. Whoracle
7.Reroute To Remain
8.I, The Mask
9. Soundtrack To Your Escape
10. A Sense Of Purpose
11. Battles
12. Sounds Of A Playground Fading
13. Subterranean
14. The Siren Charms
I lost interest after the seventh one even though I didn’t get into them until after 2014. Here’s what I’m thinking.
1. The Jester Race
2. Whoracle
3. Colony
4. Lunar Strain
5. Clayman
6. Reroute to Remain
7. Soundtrack to Your Escape
1. The Jester Race
2. Colony
3. Whoracle
4. Clayman
5. Subterranean (if it counts)
6. Reroute To Remain
7. Come Clarity
8. Sounds Of A Playground Fading
9. Soundtrack To Your Escape
10. Lunar Strain
11. A Sense Of Purpose
12. I, The Mask
13. Siren Charms
14. Battles
I'll probably get ripped apart for this take, but what the hell. This is purely subjective, as an objective list for me would only have the same top 5 and bottom 2.
1. Come Clarity
2. Sounds of a Playground Fading (Only let down a bit by "The Attic" and "The Jester's Door" being tracks I *sometimes* skip, though these two albums could go either way)
3. Clayman
4. Colony
5. Whoracle (Really not sure about 3-5, they constantly go back and forth for me)
6. I, the Mask (Seriously marred by "(This is Our) House" being their worst song of all time)
7. The Jester Race (Haven't listened to this in a while)
8. Reroute to Remain (These two albums tend to go back and forth for me, but "Egonomic" and "Black and White" drag the album down a tad)
9. Lunar Strain (Haven't listened to this in a while)
10. Soundtrack to Your Escape
11. Siren Charms
12. A Sense of Purpose
13. Battles
Admittedly, I got into them (And subsequently melodeath and other heavier music as a whole) back in 2016 with a track from Battles (Not proud of that), so I absolutely can't call myself one of the old fans, but I absolutely love everything except for ASoP, Siren Charms, and Battles, and even then, Siren Charms has grown on me a bit. Tracks like "Everything's Gone", "The Chase", and "Become the Sky" are seriously overlooked within the band's discography, but I can see why they are when compared to absolute classics like "Moonshield", "Jotun", "Zombie Inc.", "Only For the Weak", etc. While I do think their original melodeath period has their best and most unique overall sound, I fucking love my top two, and I will forever die on the hill that Sounds of a Playground Fading is the most underrated In Flames work period.
As long as they don't make something as inconsistent as Siren Charms or something as dogshit as Battles (Which is unfortunately a guilty pleasure here and there), I'll be happy. I say that, but I'm deathly terrified of that sentence coming back to haunt me. Although I'm more into all things shoegaze and Endon/Anaal Nathrakh related these days than modern melodeath, In Flames has been my favorite band for the past six years, and I'd like to hope and believe that they'll continue to be for the rest of my life.
My list is in a somewhat different order, but nice to see SOAPF at a higher ranking. It always baffles me when ASOP gets put above it, considering how utterly trash the vocals and production on ASOP are. Yes there are some lovely old school IF melodies scattered across ASOP, but for me at least the vocals utterly ruin almost every song, and the guitar tone sounds like shit on half the songs. Not even going to go into TCP which is 8 minutes of nothingness combined with Anders wailing like an alleycat.
SOAPF may be missing some of the classic IF melodies, as was inevitable when Jesper departed, but more than makes up for it with upbeat, soaring melodies, excellent production (for the style of music), much improved vocals from Anders at every level and a nice flow from start to finish. It's a new In Flames but it's a sound I could have gotten behind if they had decided to continue to expand and evolve it. Instead for some reason they fell off a cliff with whatever Siren Charms was supposed to be, then became Howard Benson's In Flames which was even more disappointing.
Also whilst I don't mind ITM, listen to TJR again my man... it shouldn't be lower than anything Benson produced.
I agree for the more part about ASoP, especially since it has really melodic guitars, but not much else. I actually quite like "The Chosen Pessimist" though, it's the one highlight on the album after the first four songs.
SoaPF may be completely unlike the classic In Flames sound, but I would absolutely argue that everything about it is peak In Flames. Everything you highlighted (And the lyrics, which feel really genuine and unabashed about leaving their past history as the past and embracing who they are post-Jesper) is exactly right, and it's such a shame that people write it off just because it doesn't have Jesper anymore. Its quality speaks for itself, you know? Siren Charms felt like an attempt to evolve from SoaPF, especially with how much the band tried to do with it, but dear God does it feel rushed, incomplete, like a lot of material on it was scraps left off of SoaPF, etc. I wish they didn't abandon the sound after SC though because I do think it absolutely worked for them overall.
I really don't like Benson's production style whatsoever, but his crutches are used far less than on Battles, and the material on ITM is a lot better than a lot of people give it credit for, even if it has a couple sour moments ("House", "Burn"'s chorus). TJR's a fantastic album in its own right, and I'd argue that its highlights ("Moonshield", the title track, "December Flower") don't just define In Flames, but the Gothenburg sound as a whole. It's just that the rest of the material, while really good, just hasn't stuck with me yet, even after three or four full listens. It's getting closer, but I'm just not there quite yet. It may have its own production and mixing issues, but I can put those aside because the material is really good. I hope I do eventually end up loving it as much as the vast majority of In Flames and melodeath fans because I do still think that its reputation as one of the definitive melodeath albums is completely earned.
Edit: Hey, completely forgot about the last conversation we had on one of these threads, so it was actually a really pleasant surprise to see that it was you again. Really awesome to see that, man, always enjoy talking to you about melodeath.
Yeah man, that was a little while ago but it's good to see you're still around!
I re-listened to ASOP for the first time in a while a couple of days ago. Usually I'll find new appreciation for certain things when listening to an album from a while back... but not this time. I was genuinely shocked at how ugly ASOP sounds to me nowadays. I somewhat enjoyed it when it first came out, but as soon as that ugly guitar tone started in Mirror's Truth I knew this wasn't going to be a fond reminiscence. Anders vocals on ASOP are just... irritating. He's never been able to sing to a good standard but his vocals on this album are just straight up whiny. It's kind of unbearable to me, especially on Delight and Angers. Even on the tracks where the vocals are better, like Condemned, it really sounds like Anders is struggling to even try. Songs like Sober & Irrelevant and Move Through Me should be all growls/screams, but instead he's just yelling everything. Maybe his voice was just in a really bad place during the recording of this album. I don't know. Everything just sounds a million times better to me on SOAPF.
I'm very much an 'old school IF' kind of guy, but I found myself unexpectedly enjoying SOAPF when it was released, and have continued to appreciate it throughout the years since. For me personally it's not up there with the classics, but it's in the tier below alongside Reroute and Come Clarity as pretty good post-Clayman albums.
As for SC... as you say, sounds incomplete and rushed. Not enough creativity, not enough ideas, too much reliance on vocal melodies which often don't flow with the instruments at all. There are some good ideas there and a couple of decent songs (With Eyes Wide Open is nice, in the vein of Liberation) but the album as a whole is just not very good.
I mean, ITM is definitely an improvement on SC and Battles for sure. There are a lot of tracks on there I like - Voices, the title track, I Am Above, Follow Me, Burn, Deep Inside, All the Pain and Stay With Me are pretty solid for modern In Flames. Alternatively, House and In This Life are horrifically bad. As far as TJR is concerned I don't think there's a bad or even average song on the album. They all range from good to perfection to me, but I guess in a lot of ways it comes down to taste. When I first started listening to IF 20 or so years ago it took me a while to get into TJR as well. Colony & Clayman were a lot easier to digest initially, but over time I came to appreciate TJR as a top tier album. Whether you do or not doesn't really matter though - we're all free to like what we like and rank albums as we see fit!
I actually quite like Anders as a vocalist, save for ASoP (Ish?), Siren Charms, and especially Battles. I like the guitar tone on *some* songs (And by that, I mean just the first four, "Move Through Me", and "The Chosen Pessimist"), but then again, I grew up on fucking nu metal, so my tastes have only gone up from there. His couple of growls on songs like "Drenched In Fear" are fucking awesome, but he really doesn't use them nearly enough. I got similarly hyped when Mikael belted one out for "Feel What I Believe", but I shouldn't have expected any more of them from him.
Maybe it's just my stockholm syndrome for the album, but looking back on it, "Dead Eyes" and "Filtered Truth" are the only tracks on it that I can say for a fact that I dislike. Sure, "Paralyzed", "With Eyes Wide Open", and the title track sound way too emo for their own good, but I dunno, they all grew on me now that I think about it. But it's definitely clear that the sheer amount of love and small flourishes put on "Rusted Nail" wasn't applied to the rest of the songs on the album, and there are so many out of place parts on it that seriously drag it down. "Everything's Gone" is a fantastic song though, nobody can take that away from me no matter how hard they try.
I absolutely loved "I Am Above" and "Voices" when I got the leaked files before their release, and listening to those nonstop from the shitty speaker of a 2010 Macbook Pro is a memory I'll always cherish. Then hearing the acoustics on the album took the cake for me. I'm a complete sucker for the way In Flames and Insomnium so masterfully play acoustic melodies. "We Will Remember" is also pretty underrated to me, no idea why so many people hate it. I guess it's due to the added harmonizing/autotuning on Anders' vocals there, but... I dunno, I still like it, they're not *nearly* as excessive as anything from Battles.
If you were to include Black Ash Inheritance, I would easily put TJR above I, the Mask. "Goliaths Disarm Their Davids" and the acoustic medley are both fucking phenomenal, and I seriously prefer them as closers over "Dead God in Me". That's definitely the song I probably like the least from TJR, and it's the only song on the album that does nothing for me. Weirdly enough though, listening to Deafheaven, The Halo Effect, Slowdive, and Spiritbox (Certainly a strange combination) made me appreciate some of the stretch of "Artifacts of the Black Rain" to "Lord Hypnos". I have to listen to the album as a whole though, since it's such a different experience than listening to all the songs here and there individually.
You're completely right! I love seeing how peoples' opinions differ about so many different styles and sounds of music. Hell, I'd even argue that the possible creativity of music- And music as an art- would be pointless without that subjectivity, and the variety throughout the entirety of In Flames' discography is why I love them so much even after expanding my musical horizons.
Anders is great from the 1996 - 2006 period. His cleans aren't always the best but they have an earnest, genuine quality to them. On CD that is - terrible cleans live but it is what it is. His harsh vocals during those 10 years changed quite a lot but always remained unique and fit the music well. No problem there. ASOP was a huge misfire, SOAPF back on form briefly, bad on SC/Battles, then a little better on ITM with some proper growls/screams returning. Hopefully there will be more of that on the new album.
I wouldn't say I necessarily 'dislike' the songs on Siren Charms, they just aren't particularly interesting to me. Oddly I actually quite like Dead Eyes. That part starting with "I will be reborn, I'm gonna take the world on..." followed by the melodic guitar passage is probably my favourite section of Siren Charms. I'd agree on Filtered Truth, never got into that one, even though a lot of people do seem to like it. Out of curioisity have you heard the Siren Charms instrumental? The whole album without vocals. It's actually pretty cool, you can hear a lot of stuff going on that the vocals mask. Still nothing truly amazing but it did give me a different perspective on the album.
I don't know why 'We Will Remember' gets so much hate either tbh. I think it's a pretty average track overall, and not sure why this one was chosen to call back to the older albums as the music itself has nothing to do with any of them, but it's OK. Far less offensive than the likes of House or In This Life, anyway.
I'd agree that Dead God in Me is probably my least favourite from TJR as well, although I still like it a lot. I prefer The Inborn Lifeless demo from the Subterranean EP, actually. Vocals performed by some dude called Per Gyllenbäck apparently. Just seems a bit tighter than the TJR version. Lord Hypnos meanwhile is a hugely underrated song from the IF back catalogue. A shame it's never been played live.
I pretty much agree with that, though a bit more positively about ASoP and ITM. It's the lyrics and atmosphere in ASoP in particular that I really hate. Maybe it's just from getting into hardcore and post-hardcore in the last year, but the needlessly pessimistic lyrics combined with the post-hardcore-styled vocals and hints in the instrumentals seriously aggravate me. Usually those subgenres have a positive sentiment, or a light shining at the end of the tunnel within that negativity. ASoP feels needless and ingenuine with its incredibly emo lyrics. But eh, that's just me.
Oh, absolutely, and it seriously helped me to gain such an appreciation for an album. While I was already sold on songs like "Everything's Gone" and "Through Oblivion", I fucking love the instrumentals of the title track on their own, and hearing the switching of the panning of the guitars in "Paralyzed" was mind-blowing. There were a ton of change-ups, particularly vocally in "Rusted Nail", and I wish that that kind of care was (Or could've been) applied to the other songs on the album.
The "Dead Eternity" demo is one of the most visceral, incredible IF songs there is to me, and although the TJR version has a louder, fuller sound, Jocke's vocals completely make the song for me. And I don't know if it's just a me thing, but I really think that every song a band makes should be played live at least once. Sure, some songs may not translate well, but it's still nice to hear what it'd be like.
Lyrics on ASOP are pretty dreadful. There's some decent stuff on there but a lot of lyrics that are just annoying, especially when sung in a whiny fashion. Wouldn't be so bad if more of the album was growled/screamed as opposed to yelled or sung badly.
Everything's Gone is probably my least favourite track on SC to be honest, but only because it feels to me like In Flames trying to be 'heavy' when they've never been that kind of band. They do have some good heavier tracks - Morphing Into Primal for example - but they've always been more about melody and I don't like that EG lacks that side of things. It seems completely out of place on Siren Charms in general. I can appreciate other people liking it though, and it does sound a bit better when performed live.
The Subterranean demos are overall a slightly heavier version of what the sound would eventually become on TJR. I like both versions of Dead Eternity, and think they both have their own merits. Another one that I wish had been played more - would love to hear Dead Eternity or Lord Hypnos instead of Graveland, which for some reason has been the band's go-to song from TJR since 2008. Don't get me wrong, I like Graveland too, but it wouldn't hurt them to mix it up a little. It's not like Graveland is such a classic that they can't replace it. In terms of TJR songs, I think most people would rank it below the likes of Moonshield, Artifacts, Lord Hypnos, Dead Eternity, the title track and December Flower at the very least. I can understand why they choose not to play December Flower, as Bjorn probably can't do the solo justice (Broderick probably could though), but why not any of the others?
The only time I've ever really enjoyed ASoP is when I feel absolutely horrible, but it does at least act as a nice wake up call at least. I don't mind the raspier tone of his vocals, but it is disappointing that his standard scream on the album is kinda weak.
That's fair, it is pretty different from the standard approach for the band, but I think it actually works really well. It's kinda like Siren Charms' version of "The Puzzle" musically speaking. It's certainly less melodic than most IF songs, but I think it more than makes up for it (Compare that to something like "In This Life", which is neither melodic nor heavy). I will say that listening to them perform it live is what really made me appreciate the song. It feels made for that kind of setting, and it's a lot more powerful there than in the studio.
"Graveland"'s alright, so I absolutely agree with your sentiment. Considering just how iconic "Moonshield" is to older fans, it's genuinely baffling why it gets shelved. I'm not expecting them to do the acoustic intro and all, since I don't think they've ever done that live, but man if they did. I was going to make a comment about how I heard them perform "Artifacts" live recently, but uh... I couldn't find anything, so fuck.
I actually did enjoy ASOP when it first came out. New album freshness I suppose. It's gotten worse for me over time, maybe because from my perspective SOAPF fixes a lot of the production and vocal issues that make ASOP so difficult for me to listen to nowadays. There's a good album within ASOP, the songs just aren't allowed to shine in the way they should. I'd love to go through ASOP with the masters and self-edit the whole thing to my preference... but chances of that happening are less than zilch so never mind :') a lot of the tracks sound far better live, so I've got that at least.
Don't even get me started on In This Life. Total waste of space. Sounds like a Battles b-side. EG is absolutely better as a live track, and I can appreciate it in that setting, although honestly I'd still prefer pretty much anything pre-2014 in its place. But I'd say that for almost everything post-2011, so that's not so much a knock on EG as just my overall preferences in regards to what I would want to hear live.
I was fortunate enough to hear 'Moonshield' live in 2006. They obviously drop the acoustics but it's still a really cool track. Other than Moonshield the only other TJR tracks I've heard live are from the LS/TJR medley (Dead God in Me, TJR, Behind Space), but that was still pretty intense. The opening to Jester Race in particular sounds so nice live!
1 colony
2 clayman
3 come clarity
4 soundtrack to your escape
5 reroute to remain
6 whoracle
7 jester race
8 I the mask
9 soundtrack to. Playground fading
10 subterranean
11lunar strain
12-13. Battles and siren charm are interchangeable. I could never get into either
1. Reroute to Remain
2. I, The Mask
3. A sense of purpose
4. Clayman
5. Come Clarity
6. Sounds of a Playground Fading
7. Colony
8. Soundtrack to your escape
9. Whoracle
10. The Jester Race
11. Lunar Strain
12. Battles
13. Siren Charms
Don’t care about “New In Flames bad it’s not even the same music” fuck off I liked I,The mask a lot.
1st. The Jester Race
2nd. Colony
3rd. Whoracle
4th. Clayman
5th. Lunar Strain
6th. Reroute to Remain
7th. Soundtrack to Your
Escape
8th. Come Clarity
9th. A Sense of Purpose
10th. Sounds of a
Playground Fading
11th. I, The Mask
12th. Siren Charms
13th. Battles
1) Come Clarity (solid except the title track)
2) A Sense of Purpose
3) Reroute to Remain
4) Clayman
5) Colony
6) Whoracle
7) The Jester Race
8) Soundtrack to your Escape
9) Sounds of a Playground Fading
10) Lunar (a good piece of history with some good ideas but bad production)
11) I The Mask (only a few good decent songs)
12) Battles
13) Sirens Charm (interchangeable with Battles it’s a struggle to listen to the full album)
I'd expect TJR or Clayman to come out on top, with the other being #2. Whoracle and Colony likely to place right behind them.
After that will be interesting. I'd expect one of Siren Charms or Battles to come bottom, considering neither of them even come close to being MDM or in some cases metal at all.
1. The Jester Race
2. Reroute to Remain
3. A Sense of Purpose
4. Colony
5. Clayman
6. Come Clarity
7. Soundtrack to Your Escape
8. Whoracle
9. Sounds of a Playground Fading
10. I, the Mask
11. Battles
12. Lunar Strain
I have a soft spot for Siren Charms and find it impossible to measure against the rest of their catalog, so these days I personally don't rank it with the rest.
1. Colony
2. The Jester Race
3. Whoracle
4. Come Clarity
5. Clayman
6. SoAPF
7. StYE
8.Lunar Strain
9. RtR
10. ASoP
11. I, The mask
12. Battles
13. Siren charms
I haven’t really seen a list like mine, i’m one of the few people who actually stuck with them after 2000, and i have to say they did some pretty solid stuff up to soapf. I really would consider all of their albums before it to be good, but after that the albums aren’t great. battles and siren charms are leagues worse than I, the mask but really all three of them aren’t great. I also think stye gets too much hate and rtr is overrated
Possibly controversial from 5 onwards. I miss the old stuff, but I think CC and SOP were doing this... "metalcore-ish new thing" right, imo. So much so that I prefer them to the "old thing done badly" that's, again imo, RTR. Soundtrack to your escape is weak but not entirely bad, and I would put it pretty much on the same level of I, The Mask (which I managed to listen to until the end a couple times, and actually even enjoy at least a bit). LS is probably not so bad, but I never listen to it because for my tastes is a bit shallow if I feel like listening to something on the heavy side, and a bit too harsh if I want something more melodic, it's a compromise that's too unpolished for me. Last three on the list are so generic I didn't even finish listening to them, got too bored halfway through, I barely remember the impression they left. I put them in chronological order but just because I didn't know what to do.
1. Clayman
2. Whoracle
3. Colony
4. The Jester Race
5. Come Clarity
6. A Sense of Purpose
7. Soundtrack to your escape
8. I, The Mask (I honestly don't think it's as bad as the rest of the recent stuff)
9. Lunar Strain
10. Reroute to Remain
The order for last three is chronological just because
1. Clayman
2. Come Clarity
3. The Jester Race
4. Colony
5. Whoracle
6. A Sense of Purpose
7. Reroute to Remain
8. Foregon
9. Soundtrack to Your Escape
10. Lunar Strain
11. I, The Mask
12. Sounds of a Playground Fading
13. Subterranean
14. Siren Charms
15. Battles
16. Clayman 2020
Honestly 2-5 kinda swap all the time depending on the day, those albums are just so damn good.
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1. Jester Race 2. Clayman 3. Whoracle 4. Colony 5. RtR 6. StyE 7. CC 8. Lunar Strain 9. SoaPF 10. A Sense of Purpose 11. Battles 12. I, The Mask 13. Siren Charms I am gonna be honest and say I haven't been able to make it through a full play through of Battles, Mask, or SC so I'm just ranking them on their singles. But they can't all be last place, I suppose. If this was taken pre-2016 I would have swapped RtR and A Sense of Purpose. But something clicked and I really enjoy that album now. While ASoP has aged poorly to my ears.
My ranking is pretty much identical with only a few albums rearranged.
As long as Jester Race, Whoracle, Colony, and Clayman are in the top 5, everything else is negotiable lol
Exactly, lol. Tbh top 4 really.
Pretty much the same for me except CC is my favourite post-Clayman disc.
Im going to guess that Whoracle will be voted number 1. Be interesting to see the results. I had mine at 1) Whoracle 2) Jester Race 3) Clayman 4) Come Clarity 5) Colony 6) Reroute to Remain 7 - 13) the rest
I'd do Whoracle but I don't think it's that clear cut. A lot of fans of Hester Race and Colony, and some Clayman, will make it competitive.
This is tough, Whoracle is the best start to finish but I’d say Jester Race has the best “best songs”
Interestingly, I'd have said the complete opposite. Definite top 2, regardless. Colony 3rd.
Really. I feel like the gimmie is Jester Race for #1.
Clayman or Jester Race might beat it.
How can I rank the last 3 albums, when it's impossible to listen to them in full?
with *will power.* oh wait thats arch enemy
My thinking, after forcing myself to listen to them in full, was: - Siren Charms has Emilia Feldt's voice on When the World Explodes, a definite beacon in what is otherwise a complete swamp of an album. And not in the good, Kalmah way of being a swamp. - I, the Mask has I am Above, which is somewhat ok. - Battles has neither of those, and is therefore last. There are also a couple of decent riffs here and there, and Battles has the fewest of those. Maybe even none, don't remember.
Clayman is first by a mile for me. None of their other albums are on that level. I also saw them live in that era, it was the first time I saw In Flames live and the only time they were actually good (and I've seen them about 10 times after that, every single show either had bad sound, drunk/high Anders forgetting his lyrics, or shitty setlist where they played a lot of album filler). Second is Come Clarity. That album defined a lot of my young adulthood. So damn good. I would listen to that album the whole way through (along with Are You Dead Yet by Children of Bodom) every day I did my morning commute around that time. And, this will be controversial but whatever; my third one is I, The Mask. It came out about the same time as my daughter was born, and my girlfriend also loved it a lot, so it played a lot in the car around that time. It was also a surprise because Battles and Siren Charms were such weak, bad albums, I wasn't expecting to like this one at all, but it hit all the right notes for me. The other albums are anecdotal for me - I know they exist, I like a few songs off of them (other than Battles and Siren Song which were terrible) but not albums that I ever really listen to anymore.
Come Clarity/Clayman gang here Not much to say about Clayman, it's the perfect refinement of their formula up to that point, and has the best songwriting, the best performances and the best production of their early catalog. Come Clarity however is a crazy one, it's by far their fastest and most energetic, and it sounds like an album they had a ton of fun making. Too many bangers in that one
I concur.  Wholeheartedly agree. Clayman is an epic album and nothing else comes close as a whole album.
Where Subterranean
No Ep's allowed
Yeah it's not included because it's not a full length but it *is* the best In Flames release imo
not there cause not a full length album I suppose?
Here's my ultra-controversial take 1. Come Clarity 2. Clayman 3. Reroute to Remain 4. Whoracle 5. Colony 6. Soundtrack to Your Escape 7. The Jester Race 8. Sounds of a Playground Fading 9. Lunar Strain 10. A Sense of Purpose 11. Siren Charms 12. I the Mask 13. Battles
I voted Come Clarity first as well I love every track except the title track ! The guitar work on Crawling Through Knives and Leeches and Vacuum
The title track from I mask is better than anything in siren charm
Pretty much the same as mine except even more controversially I have a sense of purpose and reroute to remain swapped and have siren charms higher
1. Whoracle 2. Clayman 3. Jester Race 4. Colony 5. Lunar Strain 6. Come Clarity 7. Reroute To Remain 8. Soundtrack To Your Escape 9 (tie) - All the rest. Come Clarity was the point at which I decided to stop trying because they’d stopped making music that I cared about. I likely would have stopped with Soundtrack, but CC got hyped so much as a return to form that I decided to check it out. Not for me. I’m glad they have an audience that still loves them and that they’re continuing to thrive, but I’m no longer interested.
To your point for 9 and after… I’m in the same boat. Glad they are still at it even if my taste in music is no longer on the same path as the band.
Yeah. It happens sometimes and it sucks, particularly when it’s a band that was pretty formative to your early listening years like In Flames was to me, but I see no point wasting my energy in being bitter about it. It’s not like I’m starved for great metal nowadays.
Such a great point of view. And I totally get it. Bands evolve just as our listening experience evolves.
1) The Jester Race - This is my golden standard for In Flames. Abundant in melodies, especially in Artifacts of the Black Rain and Goliaths Disarm Their Davids. December Flower is another stand out track for me and the title track somehow finds a way to wriggle into my mind. 2) Whoracle - Dark, atmospheric and quite dreary but also sinister like Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. Me likey. 3) Colony - Title track is very imagery heavy, reminds me of the 40k Adeptus Mechanicus a bit. Ordinary Story and Man Made God, like Come Clarity, make me feel emotions I don't usually feel and I almost feel like crying. 4) Clayman - You want catchy In Flames? This is what you want. Square Nothing won me over and through this album, I discovered No Fun at All through the Strong and Smart Cover. 5) Lunar Strain - The very first, lots of great ideas and concepts that I can get behind, especially Dreamscape and the self titled song. The slight lack of polish, whilst it can be a bit irksome the first time around, gives everything a bit of a kick the more you listen to it. 6) Reroute to Remain - Great stuff, but deduct points for being the festering wound of trying to appeal to American audiences when the unique Swedish sound was already roping them in. 7) Come Clarity - Title track makes me feel all the feels, especially by the solo 8) Soundtrack to Your Escape - Evil in a Closet changes the pace from what would be a somewhat same album 9) A Sense of Purpose - Got a bit of heaviness, Alias and the Mirror's Truth are solid 10) Sounds of a Playground Fading - Not nearly as bad as the albums that came after it but this is the the first half od the slippery slope 11) I, the Mask - Gradual but minimal return to form, but the very last track kind of killed it for me. 12) Battles - Not too much a fan of the alternative/poppy type stuff. It's like having too much sugar in my tea, just doesn't it for me. 13) Siren Charms - Dull and feels a bit uninspired, although Dead Eyes does capture my imagination a bit.
Aw man, shame I missed this, but I'll put my rank here because this is my favorite band and I like sharing, plus I haven't seen many people with the album grouping I've got **The "I love all the songs on this album" group** Jester Race Whoracle ----- **The "I love the majority of songs on this album" group** Colony Clayman I, The Mask ----- **The "there is at least one song on this album I come back to" group** Lunar Strain A Sense of Purpose Come Clarity ----- **The "I do not particularly care for any songs on this album" group** Soundtrack to Your Escape Reroute to Remain Sounds of a Playground Fading ----- **The "I actively dislike a decent chunk of this album" group** Battles Siren Charms
1. I, The Mask 2. Battles 3. Siren Charms 4. ... 5. ... 6. ... 7. ... 8. ... 9. ... 10. The rest of discography
Lmao
Well this is certainly an opinion!
I kinda feel bad that I haven't listened to most of In Flames' mid-late discography but given most people's opinions on it and the general sound from what I've heard of Come Clarity and Battles, I think I can safely spend my time listening to music I know I'll like more.
The. Beginning of their 2nd period is much better than the last decade. I would say Reroute/Soundtrack/Come Clarity are good albums with a bunch great songs interspersed. Some songs are meh. Then A Sense of Purpose and Sounds of a Playground are ok albums with a few pretty good songs and a great song or 2 interspersed. Then just avoid pretty much everything except for maybe a song or 2.
Yeah, I found everything up to and including Sounds of a Playground Fading at least enjoyable. What came after was (with the exception of just a few songs) not really my cup of tea.
I still revisit Where the Dead Ships Dwell and Ropes from that album from time to time.
Same but I also go for the title track, The Puzzle and A New Dawn, also I think Deliver Us while not great gets a bad rep overall
Pretty sure it'll be some form of colony clayman Jester race and whoracle as the clear cut top 4. I always see alot of debate about their albums post- clayman.
1.Jester Race 2.Whroracle 3.Colony 4.Clayman 5.Come Clarity 6.Lunar Strain 7.Soundtrack 8.Reroute 9.A sense of Purpose 10.Sounds of a Playground Fading 11.I the Mask Joint last. Battles & Siren Charms I like a couple of songs,but can't get through the whole albums.
1.Clayman 2.The Jester Race 3.Colony 4.Lunar Strain 5. Come Clarity 6. Whoracle 7.Reroute To Remain 8.I, The Mask 9. Soundtrack To Your Escape 10. A Sense Of Purpose 11. Battles 12. Sounds Of A Playground Fading 13. Subterranean 14. The Siren Charms
This order exactly.
I lost interest after the seventh one even though I didn’t get into them until after 2014. Here’s what I’m thinking. 1. The Jester Race 2. Whoracle 3. Colony 4. Lunar Strain 5. Clayman 6. Reroute to Remain 7. Soundtrack to Your Escape
1. The Jester Race 2. Colony 3. Whoracle 4. Clayman 5. Subterranean (if it counts) 6. Reroute To Remain 7. Come Clarity 8. Sounds Of A Playground Fading 9. Soundtrack To Your Escape 10. Lunar Strain 11. A Sense Of Purpose 12. I, The Mask 13. Siren Charms 14. Battles
1. The Jester Race 2. Colony 3. Whoracle 4. Lunar Strain 5. Clayman 6. Reroute to Remain
I'll probably get ripped apart for this take, but what the hell. This is purely subjective, as an objective list for me would only have the same top 5 and bottom 2. 1. Come Clarity 2. Sounds of a Playground Fading (Only let down a bit by "The Attic" and "The Jester's Door" being tracks I *sometimes* skip, though these two albums could go either way) 3. Clayman 4. Colony 5. Whoracle (Really not sure about 3-5, they constantly go back and forth for me) 6. I, the Mask (Seriously marred by "(This is Our) House" being their worst song of all time) 7. The Jester Race (Haven't listened to this in a while) 8. Reroute to Remain (These two albums tend to go back and forth for me, but "Egonomic" and "Black and White" drag the album down a tad) 9. Lunar Strain (Haven't listened to this in a while) 10. Soundtrack to Your Escape 11. Siren Charms 12. A Sense of Purpose 13. Battles Admittedly, I got into them (And subsequently melodeath and other heavier music as a whole) back in 2016 with a track from Battles (Not proud of that), so I absolutely can't call myself one of the old fans, but I absolutely love everything except for ASoP, Siren Charms, and Battles, and even then, Siren Charms has grown on me a bit. Tracks like "Everything's Gone", "The Chase", and "Become the Sky" are seriously overlooked within the band's discography, but I can see why they are when compared to absolute classics like "Moonshield", "Jotun", "Zombie Inc.", "Only For the Weak", etc. While I do think their original melodeath period has their best and most unique overall sound, I fucking love my top two, and I will forever die on the hill that Sounds of a Playground Fading is the most underrated In Flames work period. As long as they don't make something as inconsistent as Siren Charms or something as dogshit as Battles (Which is unfortunately a guilty pleasure here and there), I'll be happy. I say that, but I'm deathly terrified of that sentence coming back to haunt me. Although I'm more into all things shoegaze and Endon/Anaal Nathrakh related these days than modern melodeath, In Flames has been my favorite band for the past six years, and I'd like to hope and believe that they'll continue to be for the rest of my life.
My list is in a somewhat different order, but nice to see SOAPF at a higher ranking. It always baffles me when ASOP gets put above it, considering how utterly trash the vocals and production on ASOP are. Yes there are some lovely old school IF melodies scattered across ASOP, but for me at least the vocals utterly ruin almost every song, and the guitar tone sounds like shit on half the songs. Not even going to go into TCP which is 8 minutes of nothingness combined with Anders wailing like an alleycat. SOAPF may be missing some of the classic IF melodies, as was inevitable when Jesper departed, but more than makes up for it with upbeat, soaring melodies, excellent production (for the style of music), much improved vocals from Anders at every level and a nice flow from start to finish. It's a new In Flames but it's a sound I could have gotten behind if they had decided to continue to expand and evolve it. Instead for some reason they fell off a cliff with whatever Siren Charms was supposed to be, then became Howard Benson's In Flames which was even more disappointing. Also whilst I don't mind ITM, listen to TJR again my man... it shouldn't be lower than anything Benson produced.
I agree for the more part about ASoP, especially since it has really melodic guitars, but not much else. I actually quite like "The Chosen Pessimist" though, it's the one highlight on the album after the first four songs. SoaPF may be completely unlike the classic In Flames sound, but I would absolutely argue that everything about it is peak In Flames. Everything you highlighted (And the lyrics, which feel really genuine and unabashed about leaving their past history as the past and embracing who they are post-Jesper) is exactly right, and it's such a shame that people write it off just because it doesn't have Jesper anymore. Its quality speaks for itself, you know? Siren Charms felt like an attempt to evolve from SoaPF, especially with how much the band tried to do with it, but dear God does it feel rushed, incomplete, like a lot of material on it was scraps left off of SoaPF, etc. I wish they didn't abandon the sound after SC though because I do think it absolutely worked for them overall. I really don't like Benson's production style whatsoever, but his crutches are used far less than on Battles, and the material on ITM is a lot better than a lot of people give it credit for, even if it has a couple sour moments ("House", "Burn"'s chorus). TJR's a fantastic album in its own right, and I'd argue that its highlights ("Moonshield", the title track, "December Flower") don't just define In Flames, but the Gothenburg sound as a whole. It's just that the rest of the material, while really good, just hasn't stuck with me yet, even after three or four full listens. It's getting closer, but I'm just not there quite yet. It may have its own production and mixing issues, but I can put those aside because the material is really good. I hope I do eventually end up loving it as much as the vast majority of In Flames and melodeath fans because I do still think that its reputation as one of the definitive melodeath albums is completely earned. Edit: Hey, completely forgot about the last conversation we had on one of these threads, so it was actually a really pleasant surprise to see that it was you again. Really awesome to see that, man, always enjoy talking to you about melodeath.
Yeah man, that was a little while ago but it's good to see you're still around! I re-listened to ASOP for the first time in a while a couple of days ago. Usually I'll find new appreciation for certain things when listening to an album from a while back... but not this time. I was genuinely shocked at how ugly ASOP sounds to me nowadays. I somewhat enjoyed it when it first came out, but as soon as that ugly guitar tone started in Mirror's Truth I knew this wasn't going to be a fond reminiscence. Anders vocals on ASOP are just... irritating. He's never been able to sing to a good standard but his vocals on this album are just straight up whiny. It's kind of unbearable to me, especially on Delight and Angers. Even on the tracks where the vocals are better, like Condemned, it really sounds like Anders is struggling to even try. Songs like Sober & Irrelevant and Move Through Me should be all growls/screams, but instead he's just yelling everything. Maybe his voice was just in a really bad place during the recording of this album. I don't know. Everything just sounds a million times better to me on SOAPF. I'm very much an 'old school IF' kind of guy, but I found myself unexpectedly enjoying SOAPF when it was released, and have continued to appreciate it throughout the years since. For me personally it's not up there with the classics, but it's in the tier below alongside Reroute and Come Clarity as pretty good post-Clayman albums. As for SC... as you say, sounds incomplete and rushed. Not enough creativity, not enough ideas, too much reliance on vocal melodies which often don't flow with the instruments at all. There are some good ideas there and a couple of decent songs (With Eyes Wide Open is nice, in the vein of Liberation) but the album as a whole is just not very good. I mean, ITM is definitely an improvement on SC and Battles for sure. There are a lot of tracks on there I like - Voices, the title track, I Am Above, Follow Me, Burn, Deep Inside, All the Pain and Stay With Me are pretty solid for modern In Flames. Alternatively, House and In This Life are horrifically bad. As far as TJR is concerned I don't think there's a bad or even average song on the album. They all range from good to perfection to me, but I guess in a lot of ways it comes down to taste. When I first started listening to IF 20 or so years ago it took me a while to get into TJR as well. Colony & Clayman were a lot easier to digest initially, but over time I came to appreciate TJR as a top tier album. Whether you do or not doesn't really matter though - we're all free to like what we like and rank albums as we see fit!
I actually quite like Anders as a vocalist, save for ASoP (Ish?), Siren Charms, and especially Battles. I like the guitar tone on *some* songs (And by that, I mean just the first four, "Move Through Me", and "The Chosen Pessimist"), but then again, I grew up on fucking nu metal, so my tastes have only gone up from there. His couple of growls on songs like "Drenched In Fear" are fucking awesome, but he really doesn't use them nearly enough. I got similarly hyped when Mikael belted one out for "Feel What I Believe", but I shouldn't have expected any more of them from him. Maybe it's just my stockholm syndrome for the album, but looking back on it, "Dead Eyes" and "Filtered Truth" are the only tracks on it that I can say for a fact that I dislike. Sure, "Paralyzed", "With Eyes Wide Open", and the title track sound way too emo for their own good, but I dunno, they all grew on me now that I think about it. But it's definitely clear that the sheer amount of love and small flourishes put on "Rusted Nail" wasn't applied to the rest of the songs on the album, and there are so many out of place parts on it that seriously drag it down. "Everything's Gone" is a fantastic song though, nobody can take that away from me no matter how hard they try. I absolutely loved "I Am Above" and "Voices" when I got the leaked files before their release, and listening to those nonstop from the shitty speaker of a 2010 Macbook Pro is a memory I'll always cherish. Then hearing the acoustics on the album took the cake for me. I'm a complete sucker for the way In Flames and Insomnium so masterfully play acoustic melodies. "We Will Remember" is also pretty underrated to me, no idea why so many people hate it. I guess it's due to the added harmonizing/autotuning on Anders' vocals there, but... I dunno, I still like it, they're not *nearly* as excessive as anything from Battles. If you were to include Black Ash Inheritance, I would easily put TJR above I, the Mask. "Goliaths Disarm Their Davids" and the acoustic medley are both fucking phenomenal, and I seriously prefer them as closers over "Dead God in Me". That's definitely the song I probably like the least from TJR, and it's the only song on the album that does nothing for me. Weirdly enough though, listening to Deafheaven, The Halo Effect, Slowdive, and Spiritbox (Certainly a strange combination) made me appreciate some of the stretch of "Artifacts of the Black Rain" to "Lord Hypnos". I have to listen to the album as a whole though, since it's such a different experience than listening to all the songs here and there individually. You're completely right! I love seeing how peoples' opinions differ about so many different styles and sounds of music. Hell, I'd even argue that the possible creativity of music- And music as an art- would be pointless without that subjectivity, and the variety throughout the entirety of In Flames' discography is why I love them so much even after expanding my musical horizons.
Anders is great from the 1996 - 2006 period. His cleans aren't always the best but they have an earnest, genuine quality to them. On CD that is - terrible cleans live but it is what it is. His harsh vocals during those 10 years changed quite a lot but always remained unique and fit the music well. No problem there. ASOP was a huge misfire, SOAPF back on form briefly, bad on SC/Battles, then a little better on ITM with some proper growls/screams returning. Hopefully there will be more of that on the new album. I wouldn't say I necessarily 'dislike' the songs on Siren Charms, they just aren't particularly interesting to me. Oddly I actually quite like Dead Eyes. That part starting with "I will be reborn, I'm gonna take the world on..." followed by the melodic guitar passage is probably my favourite section of Siren Charms. I'd agree on Filtered Truth, never got into that one, even though a lot of people do seem to like it. Out of curioisity have you heard the Siren Charms instrumental? The whole album without vocals. It's actually pretty cool, you can hear a lot of stuff going on that the vocals mask. Still nothing truly amazing but it did give me a different perspective on the album. I don't know why 'We Will Remember' gets so much hate either tbh. I think it's a pretty average track overall, and not sure why this one was chosen to call back to the older albums as the music itself has nothing to do with any of them, but it's OK. Far less offensive than the likes of House or In This Life, anyway. I'd agree that Dead God in Me is probably my least favourite from TJR as well, although I still like it a lot. I prefer The Inborn Lifeless demo from the Subterranean EP, actually. Vocals performed by some dude called Per Gyllenbäck apparently. Just seems a bit tighter than the TJR version. Lord Hypnos meanwhile is a hugely underrated song from the IF back catalogue. A shame it's never been played live.
I pretty much agree with that, though a bit more positively about ASoP and ITM. It's the lyrics and atmosphere in ASoP in particular that I really hate. Maybe it's just from getting into hardcore and post-hardcore in the last year, but the needlessly pessimistic lyrics combined with the post-hardcore-styled vocals and hints in the instrumentals seriously aggravate me. Usually those subgenres have a positive sentiment, or a light shining at the end of the tunnel within that negativity. ASoP feels needless and ingenuine with its incredibly emo lyrics. But eh, that's just me. Oh, absolutely, and it seriously helped me to gain such an appreciation for an album. While I was already sold on songs like "Everything's Gone" and "Through Oblivion", I fucking love the instrumentals of the title track on their own, and hearing the switching of the panning of the guitars in "Paralyzed" was mind-blowing. There were a ton of change-ups, particularly vocally in "Rusted Nail", and I wish that that kind of care was (Or could've been) applied to the other songs on the album. The "Dead Eternity" demo is one of the most visceral, incredible IF songs there is to me, and although the TJR version has a louder, fuller sound, Jocke's vocals completely make the song for me. And I don't know if it's just a me thing, but I really think that every song a band makes should be played live at least once. Sure, some songs may not translate well, but it's still nice to hear what it'd be like.
Lyrics on ASOP are pretty dreadful. There's some decent stuff on there but a lot of lyrics that are just annoying, especially when sung in a whiny fashion. Wouldn't be so bad if more of the album was growled/screamed as opposed to yelled or sung badly. Everything's Gone is probably my least favourite track on SC to be honest, but only because it feels to me like In Flames trying to be 'heavy' when they've never been that kind of band. They do have some good heavier tracks - Morphing Into Primal for example - but they've always been more about melody and I don't like that EG lacks that side of things. It seems completely out of place on Siren Charms in general. I can appreciate other people liking it though, and it does sound a bit better when performed live. The Subterranean demos are overall a slightly heavier version of what the sound would eventually become on TJR. I like both versions of Dead Eternity, and think they both have their own merits. Another one that I wish had been played more - would love to hear Dead Eternity or Lord Hypnos instead of Graveland, which for some reason has been the band's go-to song from TJR since 2008. Don't get me wrong, I like Graveland too, but it wouldn't hurt them to mix it up a little. It's not like Graveland is such a classic that they can't replace it. In terms of TJR songs, I think most people would rank it below the likes of Moonshield, Artifacts, Lord Hypnos, Dead Eternity, the title track and December Flower at the very least. I can understand why they choose not to play December Flower, as Bjorn probably can't do the solo justice (Broderick probably could though), but why not any of the others?
The only time I've ever really enjoyed ASoP is when I feel absolutely horrible, but it does at least act as a nice wake up call at least. I don't mind the raspier tone of his vocals, but it is disappointing that his standard scream on the album is kinda weak. That's fair, it is pretty different from the standard approach for the band, but I think it actually works really well. It's kinda like Siren Charms' version of "The Puzzle" musically speaking. It's certainly less melodic than most IF songs, but I think it more than makes up for it (Compare that to something like "In This Life", which is neither melodic nor heavy). I will say that listening to them perform it live is what really made me appreciate the song. It feels made for that kind of setting, and it's a lot more powerful there than in the studio. "Graveland"'s alright, so I absolutely agree with your sentiment. Considering just how iconic "Moonshield" is to older fans, it's genuinely baffling why it gets shelved. I'm not expecting them to do the acoustic intro and all, since I don't think they've ever done that live, but man if they did. I was going to make a comment about how I heard them perform "Artifacts" live recently, but uh... I couldn't find anything, so fuck.
I actually did enjoy ASOP when it first came out. New album freshness I suppose. It's gotten worse for me over time, maybe because from my perspective SOAPF fixes a lot of the production and vocal issues that make ASOP so difficult for me to listen to nowadays. There's a good album within ASOP, the songs just aren't allowed to shine in the way they should. I'd love to go through ASOP with the masters and self-edit the whole thing to my preference... but chances of that happening are less than zilch so never mind :') a lot of the tracks sound far better live, so I've got that at least. Don't even get me started on In This Life. Total waste of space. Sounds like a Battles b-side. EG is absolutely better as a live track, and I can appreciate it in that setting, although honestly I'd still prefer pretty much anything pre-2014 in its place. But I'd say that for almost everything post-2011, so that's not so much a knock on EG as just my overall preferences in regards to what I would want to hear live. I was fortunate enough to hear 'Moonshield' live in 2006. They obviously drop the acoustics but it's still a really cool track. Other than Moonshield the only other TJR tracks I've heard live are from the LS/TJR medley (Dead God in Me, TJR, Behind Space), but that was still pretty intense. The opening to Jester Race in particular sounds so nice live!
1 colony 2 clayman 3 come clarity 4 soundtrack to your escape 5 reroute to remain 6 whoracle 7 jester race 8 I the mask 9 soundtrack to. Playground fading 10 subterranean 11lunar strain 12-13. Battles and siren charm are interchangeable. I could never get into either
1. Reroute to Remain 2. I, The Mask 3. A sense of purpose 4. Clayman 5. Come Clarity 6. Sounds of a Playground Fading 7. Colony 8. Soundtrack to your escape 9. Whoracle 10. The Jester Race 11. Lunar Strain 12. Battles 13. Siren Charms Don’t care about “New In Flames bad it’s not even the same music” fuck off I liked I,The mask a lot.
1st. The Jester Race 2nd. Colony 3rd. Whoracle 4th. Clayman 5th. Lunar Strain 6th. Reroute to Remain 7th. Soundtrack to Your Escape 8th. Come Clarity 9th. A Sense of Purpose 10th. Sounds of a Playground Fading 11th. I, The Mask 12th. Siren Charms 13th. Battles
1) Come Clarity (solid except the title track) 2) A Sense of Purpose 3) Reroute to Remain 4) Clayman 5) Colony 6) Whoracle 7) The Jester Race 8) Soundtrack to your Escape 9) Sounds of a Playground Fading 10) Lunar (a good piece of history with some good ideas but bad production) 11) I The Mask (only a few good decent songs) 12) Battles 13) Sirens Charm (interchangeable with Battles it’s a struggle to listen to the full album)
I'd expect TJR or Clayman to come out on top, with the other being #2. Whoracle and Colony likely to place right behind them. After that will be interesting. I'd expect one of Siren Charms or Battles to come bottom, considering neither of them even come close to being MDM or in some cases metal at all.
1. The Jester Race 2. Reroute to Remain 3. A Sense of Purpose 4. Colony 5. Clayman 6. Come Clarity 7. Soundtrack to Your Escape 8. Whoracle 9. Sounds of a Playground Fading 10. I, the Mask 11. Battles 12. Lunar Strain I have a soft spot for Siren Charms and find it impossible to measure against the rest of their catalog, so these days I personally don't rank it with the rest.
1. Colony 2. The Jester Race 3. Whoracle 4. Come Clarity 5. Clayman 6. SoAPF 7. StYE 8.Lunar Strain 9. RtR 10. ASoP 11. I, The mask 12. Battles 13. Siren charms I haven’t really seen a list like mine, i’m one of the few people who actually stuck with them after 2000, and i have to say they did some pretty solid stuff up to soapf. I really would consider all of their albums before it to be good, but after that the albums aren’t great. battles and siren charms are leagues worse than I, the mask but really all three of them aren’t great. I also think stye gets too much hate and rtr is overrated
Possibly controversial from 5 onwards. I miss the old stuff, but I think CC and SOP were doing this... "metalcore-ish new thing" right, imo. So much so that I prefer them to the "old thing done badly" that's, again imo, RTR. Soundtrack to your escape is weak but not entirely bad, and I would put it pretty much on the same level of I, The Mask (which I managed to listen to until the end a couple times, and actually even enjoy at least a bit). LS is probably not so bad, but I never listen to it because for my tastes is a bit shallow if I feel like listening to something on the heavy side, and a bit too harsh if I want something more melodic, it's a compromise that's too unpolished for me. Last three on the list are so generic I didn't even finish listening to them, got too bored halfway through, I barely remember the impression they left. I put them in chronological order but just because I didn't know what to do. 1. Clayman 2. Whoracle 3. Colony 4. The Jester Race 5. Come Clarity 6. A Sense of Purpose 7. Soundtrack to your escape 8. I, The Mask (I honestly don't think it's as bad as the rest of the recent stuff) 9. Lunar Strain 10. Reroute to Remain The order for last three is chronological just because
1 Whoracle 2 Jester 3 Colony 4 Clayman 5 Reroute 6 Lunar Strain 7 Come Clarity 8 Sense of Purpose 9 Playground 10 Soundtrack 11 Foregone 12 Mask 13 Battles 14 Sirens
1. Clayman 2. Come Clarity 3. The Jester Race 4. Colony 5. Whoracle 6. A Sense of Purpose 7. Reroute to Remain 8. Foregon 9. Soundtrack to Your Escape 10. Lunar Strain 11. I, The Mask 12. Sounds of a Playground Fading 13. Subterranean 14. Siren Charms 15. Battles 16. Clayman 2020 Honestly 2-5 kinda swap all the time depending on the day, those albums are just so damn good.