Review Summary: There's something new on every In Flames album, but nothing radically different, and the band sounds like they always did: competent, but ultimately lacking the spirit of their earlier outings.
In Flames – A Sense of Purpose
When a band as old as In Flames releases a new record, it’s almost irrelevant to read what the fan base says: on their ninth studio album, they’ve pretty much drawn dividing lines between the groups that prefer the old material and the new material anyway. In Flames’ sole measure of judgement by now is how much In Flames themselves decide they need to make their albums artistically relevant. Fortunately for themselves, they are not afraid to (re)-invent the wheel sometimes; although this album feels pedestrian in places, and some songs seem like extraneous leftover material only suitable to clog up and pad the album’s runtime, other moments do showcase the brilliance of a band exactly in the know of what they are doing, why they are doing it and what they can achieve.
On their newest album, A Sense of Purpose, the deciding factor lies very much in the return of the fabled guitar harmonies. Their twin guitar attack, something that became sparse during the Reroute to Remain and Soundtrack To Your Escape days, seems to have made its glorious return to the tape, and much good it has done them. In Flames were always known for their ability to construe licks and harmonies that went well with the slightly more aggressive riffing of their earlier material; the blueprint of death metal was not only changed by limiting the excessive brutality, but quality was added by implementing a more old-school, Iron Maiden-esque approach to the lead melodies. Suddenly, death metal was listenable, and one could hear the movements of strings flowing as opposed to being bashed out of their skulls. But after streamlining and losing some of the aggression, these melodies also went away, and particularly on Soundtrack the quality of the album seemed to suffer for it. But they were brought back on Come Clarity, and they are also ever prevalent on this one.
Now that In Flames have mellowed out their sound, coming closer to a cross between what Slayer would sound like if they stole an old-school 80s metal lead guitar sound, and padded it with harmonious synthesizer melodies, these guitar ditties are not lost on the music; in fact, they are expertly used by the band to emphasize that the brutality in the band has to be doused with some melody to achieve higher staying power. In fact, a song like The Mirror’s Truth is carried less on the strength of the main riff, than it is on the little driving guitar bits that pop up every so often, lending a sense of direction and purpose to the song. Quite often the band forgets that they are still metal, and sometimes the production on the rhythm guitar sound is lacking, making the material almost too saccharine and inoffensive (Delight and Angers in particular is way too moody and quirky to qualify as more than metal), but they know how to carry a tune.
One particular moment, however, stands out as the exceptional testimony to the fact that In Flames are still a relevant band in this day and age, even though their spawn sometimes seems to steal the spotlight from them (too many bands these days are clearly doing what In Flames did a decade before them). The Chosen Pessimist is not only the longest track the band has composed, but also the furthest removed from their standard formula. On here, the band toys with atmosphere, something they developed in their less guitar-centric era, and the keyboard-heavy song drifts from a few lilting guitar lines to a full-bodied conclusion at the end. In fact, the song has a vibe that is way more reminiscent of a blend between progressive metal and post-rock, as were the band’s skills suddenly incarnate in the songwriting talents of a God is an Astronaut or Sigur Ros. Anders even adopts a volatile croak on the song, making it sound like he’s almost breaking more than he’s building. As much as In Flames have attempted to sound fragile rather than solid lately, on this track, every element that embodies that same fragility seems to be woven together perfectly into a composition that is at once more genuine than the semi-emotional escapades the band tried out earlier and at the same time more elaborate than the concise, rocking framework the band usually excels at.
There are still two other main factors that clog this album up, and seem to prevent it from becoming top class In Flames material. For a first, some of the shorter songs, particularly towards the end, are too paint-by-numbers to merit inclusion in the august circles that are populated by old favourites (think Only for the Weak, Cloud Connected and Pinball Map). There is just no way something like Drenched in Fear is memorable enough for any In Flames fan to recite it heartily to a fellow in the high school corridors. In Flames clearly got some of their experiments right, but their willingness to experiment leads them only to form about half an album on average; the rest always seems to be defined as filler material, and on this album, the ratio of good to bad is no different from most of their other albums.
The second one is the fact that somehow, after years and years of practice, Anders Friden has still not learned how to channel most of his emotional anxiety into something resembling more than teenager angst. Some of the words he uses to express his natural hesitance to existence are decidedly flat and uninspired (“I feel like *** / but at least I feel something”). The other is that his vocals have deteriorated with age, as if all the excessive screaming has taken its toll on his voice; he mostly sticks to semi-gruff vocals that veer more into clean territory, and his drawl isn’t particularly pleasant to listen to. In fact, his flat voice renders some of the beautifully harmonised choruses perplexingly futile, as were his Jon Davis crooning a sure-fire method to kill off rather than enhance a song. His presence on the album is grating and ruins otherwise fantastic material.
In Flames are therefore still In Flames, and on occasion they are still very able to cook up things that sound invigorated and promising, much like their former, younger, hungry selves. But with age they have become slicker and cleverer, and they have less of the oomph they used to possess. They seem to be too skilled to release an actual abomination, as every album they do has had a compositional merit somewhere (although sometimes harder to find at first glance), but they also seem to be incapable of matching the consistency and intensity of older records, which makes this simply another addition to the In Flames catalogue, a must-have for any fan, but not a disc that will satisfy the newcomer or the old-school diehard seeking more brutality. And this will probably not change, given the fact In Flames seem to be content with the status quo of their fan base and please themselves artistically, and judging by their album sales and reputation, they are completely entitled to head down this path. That leads to the paradoxical conclusion that, surprisingly, even though In Flames always sound new, there’s nothing really surprising about what they’re doing, and this album doesn’t depart from that trend. And by now, we have come to expect a tad more of an outfit that gave us some of the most classic metal records of the late nineties.
