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Swedish
powerhouse In Flames is without a doubt one of the most
important semi underground melodic death metal bands in history.
But whether they will ever be able to make an album as
influential as the seminal The Jester Race is anyone’s
bet. My bet is they won’t. Mostly because even if they were to
regress and brutalize their sound, their work would be unfairly
judged against their third genre shaping release. But this is
just talk, with A Sense of Purpose - the band’s tenth
full-length - this quintet clearly states that they are not
about to look back in time with nostalgia. Instead, they seem
and sound content with the times, picking up where the
surprisingly roaring riffs of Come Clarity left off and
accentuating even more their fancy for melody, big choruses and more
melody.
Frankly, it
doesn’t help that A Sense of Purpose could pass as the
work of a decent American or European melodic death metal band
that’s been heavily touched by In Flames’ early work. To put it
bluntly; this could be the work of an In Flames rip off that
somehow has managed to kidnap vocalist Anders Friden. But there
you have it; that’s what happens when you’ve touched a
generation and plenty are working hard at beating you at your
own game.
For what it
is though A Sense of Purpose sounds great. It sounds
stadium big. It’s been produced by the band, Swedish sound
maverick Daniel Bergstrand (Messhuggah, Behemoth) and Roberto
Laghi; and it has been mixed by Toby Wright (Alice In Chains,
Korn, Slayer). The result has nothing on the rough side; it has
a boxing glove punch but it’s also baby’s ass cheek smooth. The
songs themselves thunder in typical New Wave of Swedish Death
Metal fashion; except, A Sense of Purpose has very little
of death metal.
In other
words, the tempo isn’t frenetic all the time. In Flames sounds
controlled and half the record is spent with the band running at
mid-tempo. There are also the introspective moments; the string
passage of “Alias” and the whole bombast of “The Chosen Pessismist”,
which actually kind of ruins the album. But In Flames fans
won’t fail finding what they like. Jesper Stromblad and Bjorn
Gelotte are world class guitarists; their playing shines in
counted moments, but their blinding shredding has also caved in
giving way to keyboards and programming which expand this album
in size. Their best card now is vocalist Anders Friden, one of
the best extreme vocalists out there; when gruff his
half-phantasmagoric/half-constipated approach is energezing,
when clean he doesn’t sound like a pussy or an idiot. That
helps. A lot.
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