Seriously, what the hell happened to this band?

[Metalmilitia2000]

Johan's vocals had attitude and power.

 

[WhiteBeastofWotan]

I''d take his unique roar over angela's girly generic scream any day.

 

[Dead Winter]

Yep. I can't stand her rasp and all that posturing.

 

[Dreadful]

Jesper left the band non temporarily to battle alcoholism...I guess he needed more time for that and other stuff.

I'm a nazi when it comes to Johan era Arch enemy up to Wages of Sin. Those first 4 records are flawless...Doomsday Machine? Rise of the Tyrant? (ok, Rise had a few pretty good songs)

 

[Karmic]

I''d take his unique roar over angela's girly generic scream any day.

Yet his style is much more common than hers? I mean which do you hear more often?

As for IF, as much as I do like them being from the same city and all it's sorta true.. at least when they play live they pretty much always play old stuff as well as new.

 

[Pitiless Wanderer]

i used to love In Flames. They were one of my favorite bands and Colony is one of the best albums ever, IMO. Zombie Inc is one of my top 2 or 3 metal songs ever. The band went to shit after Clayman.

 

[WhiteBeastofWotan]

Yet his style is much more common than hers? I mean which do you hear more often?

Hers, without a doubt.

 

[Dead Winter]

His style was almost like Danzig-meets-Gorefest. It was definitely interesting.

 

[CrackedKnäckebröd]

I don't get what people like about the gothenburg scene at all... It was a bunch of clueless swedish teenagers making crap music in a small rainy city in the western parts of a small rainy country, trying to play death metal and Iron Maiden at the same time, and writing shitty lyrics in horrible english about stuff no one gives a shit about. In the end, they all sold out and started playing pop with distortion and occasional growls.

 

[Dead Winter]

It was that marriage of death metal and Iron Maiden that we loved so much, plus the songs were insanely catchy.

The lyrics weren't so bad and neither was their English. Also, you have to remember that this was mid-90s, so we didn't really have that much to compare it to. There was Morbid Angel, Death, Cannibal Corpse, and early Carcass which inevitably ended up sounding like something from Gothenburg with Heartwork, their best album.

Did it get a little ridiculous towards the end? Yes. Did it spawn a bunch of scene screamo kids? Yes. Did it help launch the careers of a slew of shitty metal/death/emo/screamo core bands? Yes.

However, DT, IF, Soilwork, and ATG were great bands who wrote cool music for their time. We're a little spoiled now because there's literally nowhere left to explore in metal. At that time there was still a lot of unchartered territory and they made their mark. If you don't understand that, you're probably 13 years old and don't remember any of it because you were still shitting your diapers.

 

[Karmic]

Hers, without a doubt.

is this taken from the context of when she first joined the band or now? Given the popularity of metal now and then, it's easy to call a lesser known band then non-generic.... I'd argue that (at least here) you'd find more people sounding like Liiva than you would Gossow.

And to add to what DW said, think of how many bands that were with from the absolute start and that have gained massive amounts of popularity throughout the years. Then name one of them that hasn't "evolved" in their sound. For better or for worse, "metal" is a genre which also has evolved over time and undergone major changes in almost all aspects.

 

[Det Som Engang Var]

I don't get what people like about the gothenburg scene at all... It was a bunch of clueless swedish teenagers making crap music in a small rainy city in the western parts of a small rainy country, trying to play death metal and Iron Maiden at the same time, and writing shitty lyrics in horrible english about stuff no one gives a shit about. In the end, they all sold out and started playing pop with distortion and occasional growls.

The melodies. I only like old In Flames to be honest. I don't care for DT, Soilwork, or any of the others.

But old In Flames had those power metal melodies without the cheesiness of power metal. Melo death is such a misnomer, it was more like power metal with harsh vocals.

 

[Dreadful]

is this taken from the context of when she first joined the band or now? Given the popularity of metal now and then, it's easy to call a lesser known band then non-generic.... I'd argue that (at least here) you'd find more people sounding like Liiva than you would Gossow.

Johan Liiva wasn't a typical deeper vocalist. He had that throaty howl that separated him from the lot of death metal singers...People that are like him are Barney Greenway, Atrocity on their 2nd record, some of the groove metal bands like Lipid, you can hear it in Fear Factory a bit. It's that testosterone howl that isn't replicated much...bands like Pantera, Machine Head and Vader have their version of that but not like the Greenway style which Johan does.

 

[azal]

agree with everyone that old IF, AE, DT, etc is rulage, and this new stuff does nothing for me, but the way i see it is all these bands change, and that's just something that happens. In Flames get the brunt of the hate because they got very popular.

When I look back to my favorite metal bands in 1997, the only band that hasn't let me down is Meshuggah. So that's a rare occurrence when it happens that a band suits your tastes as you get older for a period of over 10 years.

In Flames, Arch Enemy, Opeth, hell, even Nevermore, all changed over a decade into something that didn't appeal to me that much anymore, and i don't really have animosity towards them, I still love the old shit as much as I loved it back then.