That is a pretty phenomenal album cover. Much better than midget jester.

The three songs released thus far are all a welcome return to form, so hopefully the rest of the album is in the same vein.

They're still missing the hooks and songwriting craft of the old days, but it's nice to hear some aggression in the music again. It's just not In Flames. Not sure what this is.

Looks like a black metal band cover to me. However you can't judge a book by the cover. So I expect they may be put like 1 or 2 average tracks however mainly album will be sound like a usual hipster metal.

Meet the maker is bang on....welcome back.....

Sounds like it could be their best since Clayman IMO.

Mediocre album. Old In Flames is gone forever.

Written by Ghost79 on 09.02.2023 at 13:18

Mediocre album. Old In Flames is gone forever.

Maybe you should stop clinging to the past and realize over time all bands change. Value what they did back then and just enjoy the album (or don't and just not listen to it). It's not old In flames but it's a good improvement over the last 20 years of material and for fans of that, it's really all we can ask.

Best album since Come Clarity imo. The chorus of the last song was pretty shit tho.

The songs before the full album release are all that really worth on this album in my opinion. I had really high expectations for this one...
But after a few more spins I think its close to an 8
considering an new era for In Flames!!!

"Meet Your Maker" and "Bleeding Out" are top notch songs

In Flames still have their trademark phenomenal guitar tone, but the songwriting department is exactly as I expected, decent but nothing groundbreaking,. The clean vocals again don't do anything for me, and apart from a few really good songs, "Bleeding Out" probably being the highlight for me, alot of songs are mediocre at best. This band has always had a great sound, but for me they've just fallen short of quality, I can see why they are highly appreciated though.

This was a happy surprise for me, got more than i expected!

Just listen to The Halo Effect instead. This album is exactly as disappointing as expected. The gothenburg sound is completely gone. This is some emo alt metal by some middle aged men. It's sad that two of the biggest names in Swedish death metal, Amon Amarth being the other one, has deteriorated this much. They together with Metallica should just call it quits.

Stick to the singles. In The Dark isn't bad. Pure Light of Mind is awful, almost as bad as This Is Our House. Bleeding Out sucks too. The best songs are Foregone pt. 1, Meet Your Maker, and State of Slow Decay (which rip-offs riffs from ATG's Blinded By Fear). Great Deceiver is okay too.

Half of this album is just alt rock filler.

It's funny, if you took like 3 songs from each album after Jesper left, and put them together, you'd have 1 phenomenal record. Instead, we've had 5 bums which are all mid at best, awful at worst.

I really liked the first single (State Of Slow Decay) but like the song title says it was only downhill from that. I'm trying not to be narrow-minded when it comes to new music but I have to admit I was disappointed the album didn't sound much like the old days. There is still some nice melodies but somehow the vocals ruin those pretty often. It's not all that bad but still... disappointing. Album cover art is great looking though.

It has its moments, but it's nowhere near consistent enough to generally rival their glory days. Foregone Pt 2 is a very frustrating song - it spends the entire second half fluctuating between some nice melodic instrumental passages and an irritating vocal refrain that reminds me why I've not missed listening to Friden's clean singing

Written by rawb on 09.02.2023 at 21:25

Written by Ghost79 on 09.02.2023 at 13:18

Mediocre album. Old In Flames is gone forever.

Maybe you should stop clinging to the past and realize over time all bands change. Value what they did back then and just enjoy the album (or don't and just not listen to it). It's not old In flames but it's a good improvement over the last 20 years of material and for fans of that, it's really all we can ask.

You're absolutely right in your statement but at the same time rating this album a 10 is just ridiculous. Even though they've changed their sound it's still the same band so you will automatically compare this to their earlier albums. So within that context this is nowhere close to a perfect album. Even though I really enjoy their early albums I still wouldn't rate any of them a perfect 10, not even Colony or Clayman. I gave this a 5 and that's being generous. I'm not saying that I'm right and you're wrong, taste in music is highly personal, but I'm quite certain that a majority of people here agree with me in that this is album isn't even close to a 10.

My 2 cents are pretty simple: they should have kept the alt rock style of Battles and developed it from then on. The oldschool days are over, Battles had some really great catchy songs and smart synths, last two albums however have this extremely annoying US metalcore guitar tone by Howard Benson which really doesn't connect with the music and diminishing songwriting quality.

Those 'we-can-do-it-again' songs like State of Slow Decay or In the Dark just don't work. It's obvious they do not want to play like this, they just got bad PR for Battles and now there's this The Halo Effect as well. An understandable but rather disappointing compliance.

Written by Nejde on 10.02.2023 at 16:09

Written by rawb on 09.02.2023 at 21:25

Written by Ghost79 on 09.02.2023 at 13:18

Mediocre album. Old In Flames is gone forever.

Maybe you should stop clinging to the past and realize over time all bands change. Value what they did back then and just enjoy the album (or don't and just not listen to it). It's not old In flames but it's a good improvement over the last 20 years of material and for fans of that, it's really all we can ask.

You're absolutely right in your statement but at the same time rating this album a 10 is just ridiculous. Even though they've changed their sound it's still the same band so you will automatically compare this to their earlier albums. So within that context this is nowhere close to a perfect album. Even though I really enjoy their early albums I still wouldn't rate any of them a perfect 10, not even Colony or Clayman. I gave this a 5 and that's being generous. I'm not saying that I'm right and you're wrong, taste in music is highly personal, but I'm quite certain that a majority of people here agree with me in that this is album isn't even close to a 10.

I'm allowed to misclick on a small mobile phone screen.. I gave it an 8, it's good and im comparing it to nothing. This clearly isn't the in flames from 2002 and before but it isn't in flames from 2002 onward. This albums stands up on it's own as a decent piece of music. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one

Written by Nejde on 10.02.2023 at 16:09

Written by rawb on 09.02.2023 at 21:25


Maybe you should stop clinging to the past and realize over time all bands change. Value what they did back then and just enjoy the album (or don't and just not listen to it). It's not old In flames but it's a good improvement over the last 20 years of material and for fans of that, it's really all we can ask.

rating this album a 10 is just ridiculous.
...
I'm not saying that I'm right and you're wrong, taste in music is highly personal

If rawb is a fan of latest In Flames and possibly dislikes early In Flames,
plus taste in music is highly personal,
I am absolutely fine with rawb expressing his personal taste by rating this album a 10.
We should be more open minded towards a subjective interpretation of the rating system -- that is meant to say, 10s on the few albums we worship the most, instead of 10s on albums that can be considered perfect from an objective point of view.

Just my two cents on this, of course.

Written by Redel on 10.02.2023 at 20:10

If rawb is a fan of latest In Flames and possibly dislikes early In Flames,
plus taste in music is highly personal,
I am absolutely fine with rawb expressing his personal taste by rating this album a 10.
We should be more open minded towards a subjective interpretation of the rating system -- that is meant to say, 10s on the few albums we worship the most, instead of 10s on albums that can be considered perfect from an objective point of view.

Just my two cents on this, of course.

I agree. It's worth an 8. I misclicked the 10 originally. It's not the classic in flames I loved but it's not the stuff they put out after reroute to remain.

More metalcore

Ech...

In Flames... Where are your flames? First single was phenomenal, second was good, third brought fear that it all going to happen again.

So I am listening to it now and unfortunately it happened again. Its much better than previous crap they released and definitely step in the right direction but thay are not there yet.

I agree that singles were the best album had to offer. Album itself is difficult to judge. I really wanted to be return of proper In Flames i remember. Unfortunately it's only one step in right direction

Classic In Flames is indeed gone forever and we've got to accept that. For a modern In Flames album, though, this is surprisingly good. The Reroute and Come Clarity aggression is back on several songs, and even the less aggressive ones are more listenable than anything on the previous three albums.

Written by Redel on 10.02.2023 at 20:10

If rawb is a fan of latest In Flames and possibly dislikes early In Flames,
plus taste in music is highly personal,
I am absolutely fine with rawb expressing his personal taste by rating this album a 10.
We should be more open minded towards a subjective interpretation of the rating system -- that is meant to say, 10s on the few albums we worship the most, instead of 10s on albums that can be considered perfect from an objective point of view.

I get your point but look at it this way instead. Let's say the albums we worship are Judas Priest's Painkiller, Megadeth's Rust In Peace and Death's Symbolic which happens to be the top 3 albums on Metal Storm. Most of us will agree those albums are worth 10s or at least 9s. Now compare those three albums with Foregone. Do you see why it may seem ridiculous to rate this album a 10 regardless of personal taste instead of looking at it from a more objective point of view? I personally only give 10s to albums I listen to frequently, at least once a month. I love Pantera, my all time favourite band, still I haven't given 10s on all of their albums because I mostly listen to Cowboys From Hell and Far Beyond Driven.

Now I'm not casting a shadow on rawb, he has a total of 6 votes but there are other users who spam 10s. Just today I checked a user who out 715 votes had given 655 10s. That is what surely could be considered rating abuse. There's other users that are also spamming 10s. Saw another user who had over 2500 10s given. Who the hell has that many perfect albums? It's just plain rating abuse and I don't understand the point in doing it.

Again, and I can't stress this enough, musical taste is highly personal but I think we all need a bit more consideration when rating albums and not rate a 10 out of sheer affection just because we love a certain band.

Written by Nejde on 10.02.2023 at 22:04

I get your point but look at it this way instead. Let's say the albums we worship are Judas Priest's Painkiller, Megadeth's Rust In Peace and Death's Symbolic which happens to be the top 3 albums on Metal Storm. Most of us will agree those albums are worth 10s or at least 9s. Now compare those three albums with Foregone. Do you see why it may seem ridiculous to rate this album a 10 regardless of personal taste instead of looking at it from a more objective point of view?

Sure it does. But as I said, let's allow for a bit more of a subjective note in the context of voting.

Written by Nejde on 10.02.2023 at 22:04

Now I'm not casting a shadow on rawb, he has a total of 6 votes but there are other users who spam 10s. Just today I checked a user who out 715 votes had given 655 10s. That is what surely could be considered rating abuse. There's other users that are also spamming 10s. Saw another user who had over 2500 10s given. Who the hell has that many perfect albums? It's just plain rating abuse and I don't understand the point in doing it.

Again, and I can't stress this enough, musical taste is highly personal but I think we all need a bit more consideration when rating albums and not rate a 10 out of sheer affection just because we love a certain band.

But that is rating abuse -- a totally different topic. We were not talking about that so far here, at least I dont detect any at rawb's votes.
So, yeah sure, spamming 10s is clearly an issue. But that should be considered separately from a single 10 on one specific album.

Written by Redel on 10.02.2023 at 22:38

But that is rating abuse -- a totally different topic. We were not talking about that so far here, at least I dont detect any at rawb's votes.
So, yeah sure, spamming 10s is clearly an issue. But that should be considered separately from a single 10 on one specific album.

That was exactly what I was pointing out. No shadow on rawb, he has done nothing wrong. I just side tracked a bit, speaking in general about how we vote on this site.

It's pretty good. There's two songs I'll skip for sure every time

I thought the album was very good .... the best since retoute to remain for me .....
It's an 8 album for me.... and on the date I voted the album has a 7.5 ...so I give a note 10 to dub the average trying to reach 8 which I think is the fair grade... that's how what i usually do.... and I think a lot of people on the site think the same way since the average is done this way