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In Flames - Come Clarity

 

	RELEASED: Feb 7th, 2006 PRODUCER:Daniel Bergstrand LABEL:Ferret BAND:Anders Friden Jesper Stromblad Bjorn Gelotte Peter Iwers Daniel Svensson
+ Heavier songwriting, Great hooks, Solid instrumentals - Very few great songs	TRACKS: 1.Take This Life 2.Leeches 3.Reflect the Storm 4.Dead End 5.Scream 6. Come Clarity 7.Vacuum 8.Pacing Death’s Trail 9.Crawl Through Knives 10.Versus Terminus 11.Our Infinite Struggle 12. Vanishing Light 13.Your Bedtime Story Is Scaring Everyone

OVERVIEW

From the beginning…well, anyone into heavy music should already know all about In Flames anyway, so screw the history lesson.  And to those of you who have been screaming “sellout” for every album following 1996’s “The Jester Race” – get a life.  Seriously.  In Flames isn’t going to make the exact same album 8 times in a row.  If they did, they’d be called Slayer.  The bottom line is that, like most great bands, In Flames is going to do whatever they want and make the music they want to, regardless of how much it doesn’t sound like anything they’ve ever done before.  And I, for one, would rather have a band that’s not afraid to experiment and tweak the formula – or, in these guys’ case, completely rewrite the playbook every now and then (Reroute to Remain comes to mind). Far from the Deftones-ish, dark feel of “Soundtrack to Your Escape”, but also far from their straight melodeath past, “Come Clarity” is sort of an In Flames cocktail; it retains some of the sampling, melodic singing, and slight nu-metal tendencies of “Reroute” and “Soundtrack”, which significantly upping the heaviness and jackhammer riffing that made albums like “Colony” and “Clayman” great.  So it’s not really a return to form, but it’s certainly heavy, infectious, and basically an exhibition of everything In Flames does well.

SONGS

“Come Clarity” goes straight for the throat right off the bat, with skull-pounding riffage that completely eschews the softer guitars of their latest work for straight brutality.  Don’t miss Daniel Svensson’s airtight drumming on this one.  “Leeches” is an electronic/keyboard-tinged number with another sing-along chorus and a welcome guitar solo, and “Reflect the Storm” dares to slow the pace slightly, but still comes off as a remarkably solid song.  This brings us to what is perhaps the biggest surprise on the record – “Dead End”, which features Swedish vocalist Lisa Miskovsky and just screams “crossover single”, but it works surprisingly well.  “Scream” is where their nu-metallish riffing comes back slightly, but the breakneck pace of the verses in this one ought to keep the purists at least somewhat happy.  “Come Clarity” should win some sort of prize for being the closest to a ballad In Flames has ever written, and although it’s a great song, it’s certainly not the IF a lot of people know and love.  “Vacuum” kicks things back into high-octane mode once again, but unfortunately, this is the point in the record where the songwriting starts to go slightly downhill.  “Pacing Death’s Trail” is significantly better, and “Crawl Through Knives” is a straight up masterpiece, with a chorus that should come with a Surgeon General’s warning and some of Anders Friden’s best sustained screams on the record.  Unfortunately, the rest of the album sort of struggles after this – “Versus Terminus” and “Our Infinite Struggle” are certainly heavy, just not memorable, and “A Vanishing Light” features some great lead playing and would’ve done just fine as a closing track.  Instead, we have “Your Bedtime Story is Scaring Everyone”, which is purely electronic until about 3:40, where suddenly the crushing guitars return for a brief moment, and the track then sort of fades out.

CONCLUSION

It’s hard to say whether or not this album is “better” than any of their previous work, but I will state that this is a welcome return to some of their more brutal aspects while maintaining an ever-maturing sense of melody that these Swedish legends built their reputation on.  I like this record a lot, and, while it’s not exactly timeless, it’s darn solid, and sometimes that’s exactly what a band needs to put out.

Review by Matt Rewinski

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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