If you can't figure out what the title of the band is, you've probably guessed that this is a Death Metal band. It's actually one of the more easy band logos to read, albeit an old logo, and that's appropriate because the band IN FLAMES deserves more than a single labeling.

Sure, if you turned them on briefly you would hear the screechy voice, the melodic guitars, the perfect quicksilver fast drumline, but if you were more than a casual listener you might find that this band's recent two albums Reroute To Remain & the earlier Clayman bring something new to the table.

To be more precise, In Flames brings the old and the new together. Even when they're belting out a hardcore song, there is an apparent concentration on keeping the songs interesting and not falling into the same Death Metal progression >>> a speed picking tremolo-single-note hash accompanied by a double-kick drum, served up rapid style <<<

Oh, IN FLAMES have both. Believe you me. They keep the tools that a band like this should utilize but they make careful choices of driving riffology and, the kicker, their singer attempts to follow a melody despite the fact that he's got gravel in his mouth! This is good quality, riverbed gravel though, polished to a perfection over years of meditation on the genre. On the "Clayman" CD check out the song Square Nothing for an example of how melodically sung Death Metal should be.

That's a hell of a rash you got there.

There is an extremely important transformation as well on the "Clayman" album. The title track has an electronic, anthem stylized element to it that will become a large part of In Flame's recent album...

I'd bore you by listing all the songs you should check out on this album because most of them, if you like hardcore Rock N' Roll, are worth your time. There's the obvious single, Trigger, and if you want a sample of what this band had evolved into, download it somewhere or watch Uranium on a Much Music channel. This song also appears on the "Freddy Vs. Jason" soundtrack; so it can't be all that bad, now huh?

Also on Reroute to Remain there's an interesting alternative sounding blues-country-like song with a fiddle, and unlike Metallica's attempt on Load and <gag> Reload, it succeeds on the scale of listenability (I'm making up words here like a three-bit thug, but I like it ahuh). The song is entitled Metaphor and its definitely a song that plainly sticks out on the album. When I first heard it I had to download another version (this is all before I bought the album. HEHEHE-HA) just to make sure it was really In Flames.

Well they are a genuine band. What can I say? And that's good because the state of music reeks like a pair of socks encrusted with athelete's foot that's just been used to scrub a barrio hooker's hatchet wound.

Sick huh? Did that all in one try too. But I'm not lying... the hard music is flaying its tired arms helplessly in a sea of monotony. If you like heavier music you're going to find an unequal balance of old, boring Death Metal bands or NU Metal that sounds like sad fuck-parties of Korn and Creed.

I would even turn to Hip Hop if it wasn't still trapped in its "check out my gansta life, I gots it all: drugs, bitches, platinum teeth, and a repetitive bassline that occurs over a BORROWED chorus from another, better song. Did I mention I can't sing, neither? I just talk over the music, keeping time but adding nothing new to the genre."

On a side note: Eminem is innovative in his style but not his themes (no more about your controversial stance to mainstream America, and ESPECIALLY no more about your kid and your ex-wife and your crazy mother; we get it, we get it already). Busta Rhymes at least tries to make different music and not always about the same subject. Wyclef Jean is even better in this respect.

Of course I'm generalizing about Death Metal and about Hip Hop, and about all the other music that just doesn't do it for me. Sure, sure, there are expections and they will be noted. Yet, us humans here on Earth are easily conditioned and it's in our instincts to LEARN and to behave accordingly to the knowledge we have reaped.

So I've learned that almost 100% of the time I turn on the radio, the songs are lame. The more youthful generation might think these bands are good and that I'm being an old curmudgeon and not really listening. Well I was guilty of their folly too. After I got out of Highschool there was nothing--- there was shit. Bored of Death Metal's insistence on remaining the same, I listened to bands like Silverchair, Oasis and Seven Mary Three and I really looked forward to listening to The Smashing Pumpkins and Bush because they were the heaviest thing around that yielded memorable songs. See how the young are? They take whatever the media feeds them, a good obedient lapdog.

But sometimes pop music is good. It's all right to like what everyone else does (why do you think it got so damn popular in the first place?). There are times, however, that one needs to go underground and unearth a treasure or two.

And with IN FLAMES, it is my belief, that us Metal auditors have hit the mother-load.

GIGGLES 11/24/03