Hey, I keep a metal related blog and have written a piece about Clayman and its impact upon me as a fan of metal, and discuss some other In Flames related stuff. Would be great to hear some fellow IF fans opinions and two cents. Thanks!
Fondly remembering Clayman
- Thread starter The Metal Pigeon
- Start date
Paul LaPlaca
Member
Great read, man. I agree with you on pretty much everything about the early days, Clayman was the first IF album I bought and listened to all the way through... It was Anders' vocals that gave me my first appreciation of growls and screams and opened up the world of extreme metal to me in general. I also loved the way you tackled the theme of the lyrics and the way that the music itself, particularly the guitar melodies seemed a part of that.
I don't agree with your damning report on SOAPF though, I can understand your frustration with post-Reroute IF, the fact that they seem to take one step forward and two steps back stylistically is a problem which a lot of us have to deal with. Particularly Soundtrack and A Sense of Purpose. I genuinely think that last album was different though, for me it combined way more of what I loved about pre-2000 IF with the best parts of the experiments within the genre they've conducted since Reroute. I felt the acoustic introduction to the title track smacked as much of Subterranean as the riffing did Come Clarity. I thought All For Me felt like a revisiting of Gyroscope, Fear is the Weakness could happily sit on Clayman... Enter Tragedy had traces of Artifacts, etc.
Obviously, they're not the same; there are a lot of other elements in there rather than simply the Gothenburg MDM which dominated the first five LPs, but SOAPF felt like an evolution growing out of those roots, rather than an attempt to cut them off entirely, which some of the previous efforts have definitely felt like.
Obviously we're not going to agree on this, and I'm not attempting to convince you otherwise... I just felt it was worthwhile to try and provide a discussion.
I don't agree with your damning report on SOAPF though, I can understand your frustration with post-Reroute IF, the fact that they seem to take one step forward and two steps back stylistically is a problem which a lot of us have to deal with. Particularly Soundtrack and A Sense of Purpose. I genuinely think that last album was different though, for me it combined way more of what I loved about pre-2000 IF with the best parts of the experiments within the genre they've conducted since Reroute. I felt the acoustic introduction to the title track smacked as much of Subterranean as the riffing did Come Clarity. I thought All For Me felt like a revisiting of Gyroscope, Fear is the Weakness could happily sit on Clayman... Enter Tragedy had traces of Artifacts, etc.
Obviously, they're not the same; there are a lot of other elements in there rather than simply the Gothenburg MDM which dominated the first five LPs, but SOAPF felt like an evolution growing out of those roots, rather than an attempt to cut them off entirely, which some of the previous efforts have definitely felt like.
Obviously we're not going to agree on this, and I'm not attempting to convince you otherwise... I just felt it was worthwhile to try and provide a discussion.
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