IN FLAMES Clayman Re-recorded 2020

[DE4life]

Thankfully my girlfriend at the time was a fan of MDM (but that was her limit as far as metal is concerned) so she was as much into IF, DT, ATG, etc as I was. She actually liked WATV and couldn't understand why I didn't. That's when I knew our relationship was doomed.

Personally I put Character and Fiction some way below Damage Done, but YMMV depending on your personal tastes.

Stanne's vocals lost their range of emotion around Haven/DD but I wouldn't say they lost their variation until WATV. He's pretty much been Robo-Stanne ever since, although there were some parts on Atoma that harkened back to the good ol' days. I know that after DD Stanne blew out his vocals and had to take a year off recovering, which might be why his voice changed. There is definitely a big difference in how he sounds on Character compared to Damage Done (for me, anyway). Damage Done's vocals are quite raw and almost yelled rather than growled. Everything after DD is a lot more refined and using proper technique, which is obviously for the best but I do miss pre-Character Stanne's harsh vocals for sure. With that said he's still got a very unique vocal sound which people seem to either love or hate.

 

[DE4life]

Also the opening to Single Part of Two is incredible. It's probably my favourite song on the album as a whole, but I remember I used to listen to the first minute of that song over and over again when I first started getting into extreme metal. I was still trying to come to grips with the vocals, and Stanne's in particular were more difficult for me to process compared to Anders or Speed, but I'd listen to the intro of Single Part of Two repeatedly. Eventually Stanne's vocals clicked with me and I was able to enjoy the entire song (and Damage Done as an album by extension).

 

[drawntoblack]

I agree with what you said about his vocals. After Fiction his harsh vocals sound like he is barking out in conversational volume/loudness, there isn't a lot of pushing of his voice, there is no sense of frustration. It definitely at times feels anticlimactic because a lot of his lyrics would deliver more of an impact otherwise. On the other hand - he has been doing this for 30 years now, fucked his voice in the process and now has to be careful I imagine. No quarrel with that at all, I can still appreciate how his growls are still so rare in terms of proper enunciation, you could always understand everything clearly. On the other hand his clean vocals got better and better which makes sense. Compare it to Tomas Lindberg's vocals who's been sounding like he has no lungs for the past 15 years... and Anders who is somewhere inbetween. Stanne is aging like fine wine when all is taken into account. Easily my favorite lyricist in metal too.

Speaking of girlfriend-related anecdotes, around 2008 when A sense of purpose came out I had a girlfriend that I took frequent longer bus rides to. Coincidentally that was right when I started getting into harsher music and Damage Done was also on steady rotation, to the point where nowadays I can't help but immediately associate it with travelling and bus rides. Same thing goes for STYE.

The new DT track also grew on me a lot.

 

[DE4life]

I think Phantom Days is a great mix of Atoma with Character/Fiction - I was a bit surprised by the lukewarm response on here. It sounds great to me. I love how the song effortlessly changes tempo at various points, with the vocals and instruments perfectly complimenting each other. You only have to listen to the structure of the music to confirm DT are absolute masters of their craft.

Also undeniable that DT have consistently had some of the best lyrics in metal pretty much since day one. It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that Skydancer's lyrics were written by teenage Swedes. It reads like something ripped out of Shakespeare or some other olde English text. Granted those lyrics are at times pretentious and just utilising complex words and sentences for the sake of it, but it's still hugely impressive.

Lyrics on DD album are a little more stripped back than the band's usual fare but in some ways that makes them even better. Cathode Ray Sunshine has so many little puns and references to physics that you'd only catch if you have studied the concepts. Amazing effort put into that. Every song on that album has depth at both a musical and lyrical level, and it's just before Stanne blew his voice out so the vocal punch is still there when needed.

 

[Man Made Bod]

All three of the big Gothenburg bands were on top of their lyric game at one point or another. DD and ATG have remained consistent in that department while In Flames' lyrics have notoriously declined over the years.

I've listened to Phantom Days a few times and it's a solid track, pretty much what you would expect from their first single. I also enjoyed the shifting tempo changes and the solo that vaguely sounded like a mellower Arch Enemy lead. No doubt the deeper cuts of the album are where we'll start to see the new guitarists shine. That cover art is seriously dope.

Did anybody notice that the limited edition of Moment comes with two bonus tracks? I'm wondering if it will be like Atoma's bonus tracks, which were unlike any of the other songs on the album.

 

[DE4life]

The track by track review that Mindd posted suggests that Moment is going to be pretty varied in of itself, so who knows how the bonus tracks will factor in.

 

[A88]

Hours Passed in Exile - pretty much the best thing DT ever did, and one of the top melodeath songs IMO. Great tempo, great balance between atmosphere and just epic melodeath riffing, fantastic electronics and guitar effects, Stanne on top of his game, catchy chorus, super melodic solo...

Even the bonus tracks on DD are awesome. The Poison Well must be one of the catchiest DT songs ever.

As for Phantom Days, been growing on me a little bit, but still nothing special. Then again, the first single from the last album was also quite forgettable and the album still kicked ass.

 

[mindd]

The synth-strings part in the middle of Fabric always reminds me of old-school JRPGs somehow

 

[DE4life]

Hours Passed in Exile - pretty much the best thing DT ever did, and one of the top melodeath songs IMO. Great tempo, great balance between atmosphere and just epic melodeath riffing, fantastic electronics and guitar effects, Stanne on top of his game, catchy chorus, super melodic solo.

Yeah this is one of my favourites off DD too. Honestly the album just has killer track after killer track. The first eight songs are all fucking amazing and different enough to stand out on their own merits rather than just being part of an awesome album. The Enemy and I, Deception give us a brief lull (both still really good songs though) then right back to greatness with White Noise/Black Silence, Ex Nihilo and Poison Well.

2002 was really the last great year for the OG Gothenberg boys (IF, DT, Soilwork - ATG were long dead at this point). After Reroute IF ended up in the toilet with STYE and never really recovered despite some decent efforts in the years since. DT kept strong with Character and Fiction then decided to go industrial which was a 'nope' from me. Soilwork released a Natural Born Chaos b-sides album a year later, then went through a painful decade or so before finally coming back to life in 2013 - and they've kept the momentum going ever since. If you count Arch Enemy in this group then from my perspective they also went to shit after releasing Anthems of Rebellion in 2003.

Take me back to the late 90s/early 00s. Great new metal coming out, no hipster-hamster Anders, no Corona, no Venky's, no Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and no Donald Trump as President. A good time to be alive.

 

[drawntoblack]

Sure I'm down to just spam awesome DT tracks



What I love about Mind Matters is how it's a great example how a gothenburg style band can sound both modern but also retain its roots at the same time. There's chugging, there's also that signature fast pedal riffing going on - and there is also a nicely incorporated folky melody that fits really nicely, that short melodic bridge that first appears at 0:27, you could fit that into Lunar Strain, Jester Race and Clayman, and it wouldn't feel out of place on either of those records.
And aforementioned lyrics also really help everything age nicely. Whenever DT touched upon social issues 15 or 20 years ago, those lyrics are now more relevant than ever, and I don't mean in vague terms. Cathode Ray Sunshine is a great example. And also a great song.

 

[DE4life]

Mind Matters has some really nice old school MDM riffing going on. Another one that doesn't get mentioned too often is Dry Run.



Love that intro. Some of Stanne's growls/screams here are reminiscent of his Gallery/The Mind's I style.

My Negation is a song that has some really weird pacing and musical transitions, but somehow it works. At times it reminds me of parts out of Of Chaos And Eternal Night. Chorus is very Damage Done-esque (album rather than song).



Lost To Apathy is probably the most 'accessible' song on the album - awesome track though. Nothing fancy, just straightforward MDM. The ending of the chorus with Stanne's "lost to apathy" vocal accompanied by guitar @ 01:18 has really strong Of Chaos and Eternal Night vibes. Reminds me a lot of "Away, Delight, Away" which is a massively underrated DT track.





It's only really when I start talking about DT that I realise how fucking great they are.

 

[A88]

no Venky's

@drawntoblack

Am I 1 is another good example. A lot of traditional MDM guitarwork in that one, but with all the keys and production sounds very modern (for the time).

DT seems to be the most mature, but also the least flashy of Gothenburg bands. Just consistently very good or at least solid.

 

[DE4life]

Venky's are no laughing matter bro I figured they'd be gone by now, but it's been ten years and I'm starting to think I'll die with them still owning the club - and by that I mean they're going to own us for another 60ish years, not that I'm planning to kill myself imminently. Although watching Blackburn play does create that urge sometimes.

As for DT, yeah, most consistent Gothenberg band for sure in terms of staying largely metal and not straying too far from the beaten path after Haven. They seemed to get their experimentation out of the way early on with Projector & Haven and never really went back to softening their sound. There's not really a DT equivilent of "Delight and Angers" or "Witan" or "Reason to Believe". Not in recent times anyway. Closest you'd get is the songs they did with female vocals like Mundane and the Magic, or some of the experimental stuff from Projector like Nether Novas (great song by the by) or Auctioned.

I appreciate DT's consistency but they have bored me at times as well - particularly with albums like Haven, WATV and Construct. Even Atoma, whilst solid and decent, didn't hold my interest as an album for that long. I, The Mask held my interest longer - although objectively I would say Atoma is technically a better crafted album in practically every respect.

 

[Man Made Bod]

Character is my favorite DT album. Listening to the album just feels like being on a synth-drenched melodeath roller coaster from beginning to end. The production is amazing with a balanced mix and a some great samples/tones from the drums. One track that hasn't been mentioned yet that I think is awesome is Out of Nothing.



That intro may be one of my favorite intros to a DT song (along with Hours Passed in Exile), listen to that crisp af bass line. Overall it's an awesome song, but that intro really sets the tone as the badass track it is.

 

[drawntoblack]

They easily had the best bass tone on Character, I liked that bass player too, shame he left.

I don't think that DT is the least "flashy". Or maybe flashy is just not the best word. They easily have the most intricate compositions out of the main trio of bands. There are a lot of unusual time signatures in their music, a lot of weird chord changes, but it's done so well musically that you don't even notice it since it flows so well. On DT's section of this website there is a guy who did a lot of technical breakdowns for all of their albums, it's a good read. Basically he went song by song and deconstructed every part into time signatures and it's really eye opening.
I never rated At The Gates much as song writers. Or melody writers. They just had good riffs, and like most swedish death metal bands, their songs are mostly just riff salads. I mean, you could literally blindly take and swap riffs between songs on SOTS and nobody would even notice. That doesn't necessarily devalue the music because their music is quite effective at what it is trying to do. But there is no real mastery behind the process.
In Flames were similar to them in the sense that they were experts at writing absolutely unrivaled melodies and leads. To this day there is no band that can outdo them. As they evolved they grew to basically write catchy pop songs. Even at it's peak, let's say Clayman, I can't really say that songs are better than the sum of its parts. Because the parts are individually so amazing that they can't really form a bad song. Mind you, I like and have listened to In Flames way way more often than DT over the years, and even today I still do.
Whereas Dark Tranquillity are absolutely expert songwriters, and you can tell that every note is deliberately chosen and placed where it should be. They never went for writing arena style choruses because it could never work, despite them being quite competent at it too. If they only wanted to go down the In Flames route I have no doubts that they would've been ahead of them for two decades now in popularity. Fortunately they happen to have way too much artistic integrity.

When it comes to recent albums, I actually enjoyed Construct a lot. It had that gothy atmosphere due to abundance of synths and that makes the entire album quite rounded. I also enjoyed that Stanne really didn't hold back with amount of clean vocals. On the other hand Atoma utterly bored me. It's still a complex record, and undoubtedly it's quality, but I just couldn't get into it. I haven't listened to it since it came out, I should give it another chance probably. But even though I enjoyed Construct, I hated the muffled production, hated that guitars had no real definition. Fortunately this new single sounds great in terms of production so I'm really having high hopes for the full album.

 

[mindd]

When it comes to recent albums, I actually enjoyed Construct a lot. It had that gothy atmosphere due to abundance of synths and that makes the entire album quite rounded. I also enjoyed that Stanne really didn't hold back with amount of clean vocals.

Here I agree with you, Construct is one of my favorite DT albums. Gave it a relisten yesterday and enjoyed every minute of it, and it holds its theme, mood and style nicely in every song. It is really good at what it is intended to be, although it may be a different style (and I enjoy this style a lot, at least how DT pulled it off).

They seemed to get their experimentation out of the way early on with Projector & Haven and never really went back to softening their sound. There's not really a DT equivilent of "Delight and Angers" or "Witan" or "Reason to Believe". Not in recent times anyway. Closest you'd get is the songs they did with female vocals like Mundane and the Magic, or some of the experimental stuff from Projector like Nether Novas (great song by the by) or Auctioned.

About that, seems like there will be some of that stuff on Moment, at least from that review. Jokes about arena choruses and all that.
By the way, there was that experimental EP with the Atoma release, The Absolute, in case someone hasn't heard those.


Nice two songs in a very different style.

 

[DE4life]

I re-listened to Construct last year and it still didn't do much for me. There were a couple of songs that I liked, but by and large the lack of melody made the album a ponderous listen for me. It was always the melodic part of melodic death metal that drew me to these bands, and when it becomes industrial death metal (industrial has never been a genre I've cared for) I lose interest. I can understand people enjoying Construct, and even WATV, but they are not to my taste.

The artistic integrity angle is never something I cared too much about - I think Anders & Bjorn (and Jesper, actually) genuinely enjoy simple, pop type music, so why is it not artistically integral for them to produce this themselves? All that matters to me as a non-musician is whether I enjoy listening to the music or not. Learning how music is technically crafted doesn't heighten my enjoyment of it. Even if WATV or Construct were absolute genius in terms of how the songs are created it wouldn't change the fact that listening to them bores me.

Overall even though IF are less technical and have strayed much further than their roots than DT, I still find myself listening to IF a lot more. Due to their release cycles being very similar across their careers, you can compare the bands' albums across time and IF wins most of the time for me. Bolded the album I prefer for each head to head.

Lunar/Sub v Skydancer/Chaos

TJR v The Gallery - tough one, but I like more of TJR than I do The Gallery.

Whoracle v The Mind's I

Colony v Projector

Clayman v Haven

Reroute to Remain v Damage Done - another really tough one but DD wins based on superior production values

STYE v Character - not even close as a contest

Come Clarity v Fiction - CC is a more enjoyable listen to me than Fiction although both are very good albums

ASOP v WATV

SOAPF v Construct

Siren Charms v Atoma

I, The Mask v Moment - It remains to be seen but judging from the single I think Moment has a good chance of winning this one too

So overall excluding ITM v Moment it's 7/11 for IF and 4/11 for DT, although with Moment's release it could become 7/12 to 5/12.

I feel like part of the reason DT lagged behind IF and even Soilwork later on is because they fractured their initial fanbase quite early on. IF and DT both released hugely influential and awesome albums in 95/96 with TJR & The Gallery, but whilst IF went on to produce 3 godly records one after the other with Whoracle, Colony and Clayman, DT seemed to lose their focus by producing the (imo) uninspired Mind's I, experimental Projector and synth-riddled Haven. By the time they finally got back on track with Damage Done, ironically, the damage may already have been done.

 

[DE4life]

By the way, there was that experimental EP with the Atoma release, The Absolute, in case someone hasn't heard those.


Nice two songs in a very different style.

I've never heard these - really cool tracks. Stanne's cleans get a nice showcase here and he sounds great.

 

[drawntoblack]

You are right, integrity shouldn't matter, you should judge the art/product on separate basis, with disregard of who made it and how. Except sometimes you really can't help it.
I'm an amateur musician so naturally I feel inclined to these things because to me they matter a whole lot. Integrity is a funny thing especially because people on this forum almost unanimously feel like In Flames are nowadays intentionally giving up on it. I disagree, the more the time goes I find myself believing that Bjorn is simply incapable of creating that kind of music without Jesper and that they (Bjorn and Anders) are simply doing the best they can, mostly winging it. It just so happens that their current best is a giant septic tank of shit.
To me, there is something incredibly worthy of respect when bands manage to create music with collective effort without a singular mastermind. It blows my mind that for a while now the main songwriters in DT for an instance have been the drummer and the keyboard player. I'm not saying that guarantees good music being created but if the music happens to be good, it will usually be really good because possessing understanding of multiple different instruments is invaluable.

When it comes to ranking their albums head to head, it's simple for me. Up to Clayman/Haven, In Flames win every time. After Clayman, DT wins every time with CC/Fiction being an equal tie, I love them equally. Oddly enough, I could never get into The Gallery and to me it's a very overrated record.

 

[DE4life]

I understand where you're coming from re: artistic integrity, as I have similar hangups when it comes to writing. I'm in a different place when it comes to music as I've never played an instrument or studied music theory. In terms of music analysis I am extremely casual - either it sounds good and I like it, or it's not interesting to me and I don't. I analyse fiction in a completely different way, so I understand why a musician would judge and appreciate music differently to me, as somebody who isn't interested in creative writing would judge a book completely differently to me.

It took me a while to really get into the Gallery. It was only probably around 2010-ish that the album really clicked with me in a way it didn't before. I still don't like everything on the album, but what I do like I really like. Punish My Heaven & Lethe in particular are two of my absolute favourite MDM songs of all time.



Great track and amazing performance here from Stanne - but you can see from this video why his voicebox ended up exploding.