In Flames - Come Clarity

Great Album = For Music Enthusiasts

In Flames is by far one of my favorite metal bands. I loved their last album, Soundtrack to Your Escape. I feel that with every new release the band keeps changing and improving on their music.

Have they become a little more mainstream? The question should be "who cares?".

I can't understand people who cling to a specific genre of music as if clinging to some sad identity problem. Many bands now a day defy clear labeling; maybe they are heavy metal, melodic metal, nu metal, etc. So what if a band sounds a little different than they did when they started? If they sounded exactly the same then they would be stale and old....

All these kids crying "they went mainstream" are a bit pathetic. If the album has catchy tunes or lyrics then so be it, stop complaining. If the music is good then just enjoy it and shut up. If it offends your 'hardcore' soul then stop listening to the album, go buy some black clothes at Hot Topic and make yourself happy.

In the end, this is a great album that In Flames fans and metal fan alike will thoroughly enjoy.

February 3, 2008

Come Clarity

There may be nothing worse for a metalhead than hearing a favorite band go pop. Sweden's In Flames was one of the most respected acts in death metal, having emerged terra firma with The Jester Race in 1995 and steadily releasing solid albums thereafter. But then the band got a little too big for their britches, and when 2002's Reroute to Remain came out, it drew comparisons to Linkin Park and left purists slack-jawed in horror. Rather than try to win back their core audience, however, the band clung to their hopes and released their second radio-ready cherry bomb in a row--Soundtrack to Your Escape. For all but the most faithful, the future of In Flames looked bleak.

Of course, the trade-off of mainstream dilution is a wider audience, and their swerve toward pop culture granted them the exposure that allowed their incredible new album, Come Clarity, to be heard by people like you and me. They landed a premier spot at last summer's Ozzfest, and Come Clarity debuted on the U.S. Billboard charts at a whopping #58. The album was even reviewed by Pitchfork, the likes of which doesn't come near death metal with a ten-foot pole. As they say, three times a charm, and while Come Clarity won't pick up all the pieces of their shattered fan base, it thankfully finds the band moving back toward the melodic death metal that made them a hit.

When I say that Come Clarity is melodic, I mean it. Even the most skull-crushing riffs are quite tuneful, and as catchy as the limitations of death metal will allow. So, while vitriol-soaked thrashers like "Take This Life" and "Versus Terminus" will blow your ears clean off your head, they won't make them bleed. That principle lies at the core of the "Gothenburg sound"--a Swedish death metal subtype whose bands wrote songs-with-a-capital-S while working within metallic boundaries. These are songs, without a doubt; almost all employ bridges, boast killer choruses and end up around the three-and-a-half minute mark. I would call Come Clarity metallic pop if the term didn't make me think of Whitesnake, so let's call it death metal for beginners.

Despite the added melodicism, and the band's country of origin, Come Clarity isn't very "Scandinavian." The lofty, classically-influenced lead guitar is present, but their new label treats them like a hardcore band, shifting the focus to the chunky, earth-shaking rhythm guitar. Vocals run the gamut from a throaty, mid-range death growl to soaring, beautifully introspective alterna-rock bellows. Finally, there are none of those preening keyboards to hijack the rock; Come Clarity lets the bass, drums, and dueling guitars do all the talking.

A typical winter in Sweden is a little like being assaulted with 10,000 snowballs at once. The harshness of the winter months tends to influence the bulk of Scandinavian metal, but In Flames is more concerned with creating electricity, and you get the feeling that they would be much happier if the earth exploded than if it froze over. While their heavy metal brethren often set their sights on hell or the tops of castle towers, In Flames keep their music strictly earthbound.

Old fans may be hesitant to embrace Come Clarity because, even with the Judas Priest influence in tow, it still contains a healthy dose of nu-metal in the vocals and riffs. Grumble and seethe they may, but much of the Swedish death metal that saw its greatest days in the `90s is now beginning to show wrinkles. Come Clarity refreshingly extracts the best from both camps and fuses them into one cogent, powerful, challenging and electrifying statement of purpose. We desperately need albums like this--ones that are easy to access but never pander, and mold marginalized music into something that just about anybody can enjoy. June 8, 2007

...

Of the many available titles, I have chosen to review Come Clarity because this appears to be the point in the band's career where they have decided that no matter what they do, they're going to somehow garner even more popularity and appeal to an even larger fanbase of mindless sheep that are eagerly awaiting to eat their crap with a golden spoon... and unremarkably, they've delivered.

I hesitate to label Come Clarity the worst metal album of all time, just as I hesitate to label it the worst album in the band's discography, because either of those conclusions would imply that this album is worse than Reroute to Remain or, say, Soundtrack to Your Escape; two albums which I have developed a striking aversion to and that I believe are equally terrible in their own ways. Come Clarity is awful on an entirely different level though, because while RtR and STYE can possibly be written off as the band "experimenting" with different styles, Come Clarity is something of a mammoth accomplishment for In Flames - they have managed to convince many old time fans that the album is a return to form for the band; that it's a stronger In Flames; that they have redeemed themselves.

I am completely baffled.

I'm not going to bother doing a song by song analysis of this garbage, because every song is absurdly formulaic and pretty much the same. The formula works on some level, because I actually caught myself tapping my foot on numerous occasions while listening to this, and equally often I felt like I was supposed to be singing along with Anders Fridén - who, by the way, sucks here more than he has ever sucked before. His screaming brings to mind the last moments of a rabid ferret as its lungs are methodically ripped out through its throat, and his "singing" is on a level of emo that I cannot effectively put into words (which is actually fitting, since the lyrics match).

The songs are chorus-driven and very catchy, but consequently amount to nothing more than really bad riffing, poppy and jumpy guitar melodies, and (as I mentioned earlier) sections where you will literally be compelled to look up the lyrics and start singing along. If this doesn't seem inherently bad, then I remind you that In Flames are considered a melodic death metal band, not a melodic pop-punk band.

A few songs in particular stand out -

"Leeches" kind of reminds me of a Machinae Supremacy track for the first 10 seconds or so, which is kind of cool, but it then turns into more or less total trash with a chorus featuring Anders singing "It burns, it rips, it hurts!" in a voice of such soaring and majestic magnitude that it shouldn't have any problems serving as the anthem to the listener slitting his wrists.

"Dead End" starts off slightly less than completely horrible, and then turns into an Evanescence song, with Anders actually harmonizing with the guest female vocalist in the chorus... I don't think much of it, but I guess it's something new for him. At around the 2:10 mark, the song features a guitar "solo" worthy of the poppiest of pop bands.

"Scream" starts off with a riff that I think I probably came up with one day when I was around 14 years old, playing around with my first freshly purchased electric guitar in my mom's basement. Seriously, it made me cringe.

The title track features a bunch of acoustic noodling, Anders singing in a processed and distant voice, and a ridiculously catchy chorus that will probably go down in history as a perfect example of what NOT to do if you're a band that's associated in any way with death metal.

"Crawl Through Knives" features a chorus that is... ugh... sounds like the guys found an anti-social high school freshman with sprinkles in his hair to perform guest vocals.

Every other track is basically some combination of the above tracks.

The biggest problem that I see with this album is the retarded juxtaposition of several disparate elements that should never, ever, ever be placed together in the same context. Any semblance of a cool riff is consistently destroyed by a sing-along emo chorus. Every attempt at a solo is crushed by the use of poppy melodies ripped straight from a Silverstein album. Every halfway decent roar from Anders is guaranteed to soon be drowned out by something that sounds like Korn's Jonathan Davis. For every good idea, there's something that comes along and completely nullifies it.

Another problem with this album is the mixing/mastering job. It sucks. Bad. There's audible distortion in several areas, and the whole thing is just obscenely loud. Listening through the entire album is an exercise in monotony.

Anyway, Come Clarity isn't a return to form for In Flames. In many ways, they've actually moved even further away from what originally made them a tolerable band, and I don't see them making any kind of effort to remedy that. This will probably be the last In Flames album I buy... but then again, I said the same thing about Soundtrack to Your Escape.

All in all, horrible. January 9, 2007

4.5 Stars - Excellent outing by the Swedes

A lot of metalheads these days have little to no idea what commercial viability, nu-metal, or emocore are. I see all these adjectives thrown out to describe In Flames latest effort, "Come Clarity", and none of them ring anywhere near true. So, instead of pasting a bunch of vague and often incorrect genre labels to try to describe this album, I'll use specifics and concrete examples.

First off, In Flames, if you don't know, are a highly influential band that, along with (most notably) Dark Tranquility and a smattering of followers, defined the Gothenberg sound of melodic death metal. Essentially, bands like Soilwork, Disarmonia Mundi, Callenish Circle, et all pretty much owe their existence to In Flames, and I'm pretty sure they're sick of hearing it. Sorry guys, you know the score.

Though their sound has evolved, their newest offering shows a culmination of all the changes and experimentations they've done on their newer releases, coupled with the straight-up melodeath they helped pioneer. Crushing, heavy death guitars that break into melodic interludes, screamed verses that make way for absolutely devestating grooved choruses, often so catchy someone needs to deem them illegal. To the delight of a lot of people, the synth leads they really started messing around with on their last two albums have been cut back quite a bit, used sparingly and to great effect.

Indeed, In Flames has come back from the critically lampooned "Soundtrack to your Escape" and the polarizing "Reroute to Remain" with a hybrid of their earlier works and those releases. All throughout the album, the Swedish pioneers deliver 12 tracks of energetic and, quite frankly, inspired metal. The entire band sounds re-energized and ready to kick your face in, and they do it quite well. You can scour around Youtube and drop a listen to the video they released for "Take This Life", and what you'll hear is a summary for the rest of the CD.

If you want it as brutal as possible, and if some clean vocals scare you off, look elsewhere. However, if In Flames has ever caught your attention in the past, and there were even a few moments on "Reroute to Remain" that made you want to hit up the nearest circle pit, you'd do well to check this album out. It's writing is rock solid, the performances are inspired, and the songs themselves showcase the sound these guys have been looking for.

Excellent effort. December 25, 2006

Better than Soundtrack Equal to Reroute Streamlined like crazy

Ok I really like this album a lot and I think its better than Soundtrack and ok better than Reroute however I like Reroutes songs better individually but as a whole its really incosistant where as CC has all good tracks cept for Scream and Take This Life. However any chance to denounce the fact that this band is stretching out its hand to the mainstream is deff utterly dead on this album. You can clearly see the elements that they put into their music to get more exposure on the mainstream audience. However I dont think its bad the music is still deff good however different and its deff working and in a good way ive seen many new IF fans discover not only the band and its newer music but its older stuff too and aswell discover other great swedish bands like Soilwork and Dark tranquillity so all is well that ends well and right now id say that it is so. December 4, 2006

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