IIT we discuss how awesome In Flames used to be

Shpongled

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Aug 30, 2001
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These guys used to be so great. The Jester Race and Whoracle are two of the best metal albums ever imo. They're like one huge harmony all the way through.

It really sucks how fast these guys went downhill once Bjorn switched from drums to guitar. Colony was a great album but after that, their descent into irrelevance began. Now I couldn't care less about them, but their older stuff will always hold a special place in my musical heart.



This is awesome; Dead Eternity live from 1996.

 
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In Flames is like AC/DC to me; a number of great tunes but overall their body of work consists of mostly mediocre sound-a-likes. Both are the sort of band that scream "Greatest Hits" album, and then you could have all dozen or so really good songs.
 
I'll gladly take part in this conversation because they used to be one of my favorite bands. Colony remains one of my favorite albums ever. Everything about it, from the production, to the energy of the songs, to the jaw-dropping riffs in Zombie Inc really combines to encompass everything a great melodic death metal album should sound like. It is a very sad and perplexing downward spiral they fell into. Anything after Clayman SUCKS. It's remarkable how much of a 180 they did by "Shifting the melody from the guitars to the vocals" as Anders himself said in an interview before R2R came out.
 
The Jester Race/Black Ash Inheritance is the best melo death album ever in my opinion. I also like Colony.

The 5150 lead tones were so good. Hell, even the rythem tone. The Jester Race guitar tone sounds just like the album cover.
 
Still reminiscently sounds like gaycore american schoolboy nu-metal, but the execution was superior because it was Swedish. Just my two cents.
 
Coincidentally, I have been wearing an In Flames shirt today. At work one of my coworkers was all like "Hey, awesome shirt." Nowadays you have to be careful showing off that you're an In Flames fan, because as far as I know, the new In Flames sells their shirts at Hot Topic. As a result of In Flames sucking so much now, I ignored his comment. So he repeated it a few minutes later, "Hey, awesome shirt, that band rules." So I just nodded so that he'd know I heard him. I was worried to get into a conversation because who knows which In Flames he may have been referring to! Old and unruly, or new and friggin' crappy.
 
Still reminiscently sounds like gaycore american schoolboy nu-metal, but the execution was superior because it was Swedish. Just my two cents.
well thats pretty interesting considering nu-metal didnt even really start until the mid ninties or so, and didnt get popular until the late ninties which is when in flames started to incorperate some nu-metal chug a teeny tiny bit with clayman in 2000, and then full bore with RTR and the rest and the songs posted are from a few years before that so i guess the point is SHUT YOUR STUPID CANADIAN FACE
 
Coincidentally, I have been wearing an In Flames shirt today. At work one of my coworkers was all like "Hey, awesome shirt." Nowadays you have to be careful showing off that you're an In Flames fan, because as far as I know, the new In Flames sells their shirts at Hot Topic. As a result of In Flames sucking so much now, I ignored his comment. So he repeated it a few minutes later, "Hey, awesome shirt, that band rules." So I just nodded so that he'd know I heard him. I was worried to get into a conversation because who knows which In Flames he may have been referring to! Old and unruly, or new and friggin' crappy.
yes, this is the drawback to owning shirts of semi-known bands such as an in flames or a dimmu borgir. you might be repping a quality classic album, but that wont stop some trailer dweller from complimenting your shirt then asking if you attended the recent Slipknot or equivalent show :erk:
 
Colony still kills. The only album I liked from N*Flaymz was Reroute to Remain, actually. It was really catchy and poppy and had some great choruses.

Now as for In Flames, I thought their last gasp of dying breath was Clayman, which was quite ho-hum imo, aside from a few standout tracks like Only For the Weak (great riff) and a few others. But I'm all about Whoracle and Colony. Jester Race was great as well, but a bit too folk-ish for me. When they started getting into more of that Swedish Melodeath, I thought that was their peak. Again, Colony is by far my favorite album of theirs.

So, due to their sucking extremely hard for the past few years, I distinguish them with the aforementioned monikers. I still like RTR, but it's more reminiscent of a period in my life that was really, really interesting. Every time I hear Trigger or RTR, it takes me back. I guess for me In Flames is a nostalgia band...but holy shit Coerced Coexistence is still fucking killer.

 
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It's not fair. In Flames was awesome and now they suck so much and have become the domain of trendy latchkey kids. Same thing as with Children of Bodom(say) only in the case of In Flames there's a much greater gulf between the albums that suck and the albums that rule.
 
In flames up until Clayman is definitely in my top of favorite metal too (except I don't like Lunar Strain at all). It's a shame they really don't have it anymore, even live they've been getting worse (especially the vocals) but I will admit I am a sucker for when they randomly play old stuff like when I saw them play The Jester Race once. Fucking awesome.