Swedish innovators play with the formula
Being innovators often means that you don’t get the credit for what you’ve done, but also that people don’t like it if you change from the path you’ve been on.
It’s the same with what you might call a “signature sound” – those bands you know just by the opening riff. They aren’t allowed to be different. Ok, no one wants AC/DC to release a dubstep record, but the criticism some get when they take a left turn gets tiresome.
Into this arena – literally given their chart bothering escapades in their native Sweden where their albums routinely occupy the top end of the charts – come In Flames. They more or less invented Melodic Death Metal, but they formed 26 years ago and there are precisely no original members left from that time, they are surely entitled to change things up?
What they’ve done for this – their 12th album – is work with an outside producer in Howard Benson. One of the most respected knob twiddlers around, Benson has worked with everyone from Motorhead and Skindred, to Kelly Clarkson and glam herberts Bang Tango. In short, he knows what he’s doing and he has helped In Flames come back with something that sounds like it wants to fill Wembley Stadium.
It lays its cards down on the table early on, and opening cut “The End” is kind of Lamb of God meets Alter Bridge, and if ever groove metal had ideas of classic rock then this is it. “Like Sand” is a slow building thing with a mighty hook, “The Truth” combines pulsing elecro riffery with backing vocals with echoes of Pink Floyd’s “Brick in the Wall.”
And actually, the riffs here are superb, as Björn Gelotte is at his best. His work on “In My Room” counterbalanced beautifully by brooding bass line – a situation that “Before I Fall” likes so much it happily does it again.
If by and large In Flames have seemed a touch restrained here, then “Through My Eyes” is the one where they really let themselves go. A real rabble rouser, it will get moshpits going all over the world, while the title track beats with a dark heart, but does pack in a magnificent chorus in – all in less than three minutes. “Here In My Eyes” is even better – ostensibly a ballad, it kicks in with a double guitar melody that Maiden would approve of and shows all the modern metal kids just how things should get done, and for reference, seething with rage should get done like “Underneath My Skin” too.
“Wallflower” is by far the longest at over seven minutes, and sees them inject a pleasing prog strand into things, to create a highlight for the whole album, while “Save Me” ends things by ploughing the same furrow as much of the record has, by making modern metal with a classic rock feel, and making it as clean as you like.n
Pretty short – its 12 songs come in just over three quarters of an hour – and pretty sweet, “Battles” is not viscerally exciting perhaps, and it does sound a touch cold rather than organic, but it is as polished a slice of modern metal as you will find.
If this was some young, good looking bunch of Americans in skinny jeans with sleeves full of tats then the magazines would be lining up to proclaim them as the biggest new thing in rock. Whether In Flames are afforded the same adulation for “Battles” remains to be seen, but you sense they feel felt invigorated here.
Rating 8/10
