Right, I am sufficiently rested now to give an account of my experience with the mighty N'Flamez
The two support bands were alright. Sonic Syndicate's look counts against them, but the stuff they play isn't bad. The problem is it all sounded the same to me. Gojira were fine for the first twenty minutes but I got bored of them soon after. Quite heavy, though, and had tons of support in the crowd.
In Flames took a while to come on because of their rather extravagant set up, which I don't think is really worth it. There's a lighted board at the back which has windows media player visualisation style graphics on it, and on the newer songs actually has the words to the song on it (not good when the song is Alias or Delight and Angers, it looks incredibly lame).
They kicked off with The Chosen Pessismist... the entire song. I think this is a mistake, it did very little and the crowd was only reacting because it was the first song. They performed most of the song behind a huge white curtain, before it fell when the guitars kicked in. They mixed the set up a fair amount from some of the stuff I've seen posted - Satellites was played early in the show, whilst the "medley" was played fairly late. I have a rant to get to in regards to that, but I'll get to that later. They played My Sweet Shadow, Colony, and Come Clarity, which I hadn't seen posted in previous setlists. There were no real surprises and no Zombie Inc, but I imagine these changes were done because it was a London show, and they tend to pull out the commercial shit for London.
The actual performance was fine. In order to hide the fact Anders vocals are pretty weak, the mic volume was turned down to drown most of the vocals in the rest of the sound. Most of the singing, except from TCP and Come Clarity was a backing track, with Anders holding the mic so far away from himself that I doubt any of his own voice was actually a part of it. It was kind of sad to see when Jesper and Bjorn and even Anders came over to the side I was at (I was at the barrier on jesper's side of the stage) that they were all surprised that I knew the lyrics to the stuff from fuckin' Colony! Guess they're used to people standing there looking confused or just headbanging because "It's In Flames!1!11" but not having a clue otherwise. They looked bored playing some of the newer songs, which is worrying, but for the older songs and the Come Clarity/Reroute stuff they seemed a lot more animated.
The fans fucking suck. Come Clarity was far and away the album most fans there knew and wanted to hear songs from. I seriously believe the majority of these awful excuses for human beings have only heard Cloud Connected, Trigger, The Quiet Place, My Sweet Shadow and the Come Clarity album. Anders was asking people to sing along to the Pinball Map chorus and it was shockingly dead, I was the only person around my area who even knew the words to the chorus, and I heard a guy behind me say "is this from The Jester Race?" ... it's pretty shocking, considering they've played Pinball Map on pretty much every tour in the past 5 years. Saying that, I imagine for most of them it was their first In Flames gig, as loads of them waited around for an encore despite the fact In Flames do not do encores and the set was already on its way to being dismantled. The songs from Colony and Clayman got very little reaction from everybody except me, and the songs from TJR.... well, they might as well have been playing hip hop. In Flames new breed of fan, as aforementioned, fucking sucks. They only have themselves to blame for catering to that market, and I'm sure they don't care as long as the money keeps coming in. The loud squeels from girls (and maybe some emo boys) when Take This Life and Come Clarity came on, in comparison to the silence for Dead God in me or Insipid 2000, was sickening.
Another thing that irked me was that In Flames did not find a single slot in their 20-song setlist for a song from Whoracle. I know the old songs do not get much of a reaction, largely because In Flames have a faggy fanbase, but would it be so difficult to include one song from an album that is arguably one of their best? When Anders rants about people needing to have The Jester Race (as he did yesterday, "if you don't have the jester race you're either deaf or dumb bla bla bla" he said the same shit last time I saw them) to be true metalheads. Why not mention Whoracle? Fuck, they don't even play Episode 666 anymore. They play nothing from Whoracle and seem to have a complete disregard for it. Well, for pretty much everything in the old catalogue. "We're going to play you a couple of songs from The Jester Race", followed by 2 mins of Dead God in Me (why choose this song??) and one minute of The Jester Race is not "playing two songs", it's showing you don't give a shit about your older material and can't even be bothered anymore to play entire TJR songs in your set, let alone Whoracle. I'm less bothered about Lunar Strain/Sub because Anders wasn't on vocals for those albums anyway, but there should be at least one if not two songs from TJR and the same for Whoracle.
Overall I did have a good time, but I came away with very mixed feelings. In Flames still perform well, and seeing Satellites and Astronauts, probably one of, if not my favourite song of all time, was something very special. However, there is a magic gone from their shows now. The combination of trendy support bands, gay emo fans, disregard for old material and acting like they are the Gods of metal (well, Anders anyhow) is a bit disjointing when one is trying to enjoy the show as an older In Flames fan. for what it's worth, I probably would go again to see them, as I do like most of their newer material and they do put on a good show, but it ain't the same.
uke:
