A Sense of Purpose

In Flames, a band from Sweden, representing a genre sometimes dubbed 'melodic death metal,' released a CD in early 2008. It has become something of a controversy to those who have listened to the album as to whether or not this is their strongest offering ever. One long time fan claims: "This is my favorite In Flames album." However, haters have labeled this album emo. I think however, if one is opened to the style of this kind of music, that songs from this album will only sound better as time moves forward.

In older days "melodic death metal" functioned primarily on melodies from guitar tone, with seldom any tone coming from the singer's voice. Now, the reason why I bring this up is because the singer in this band, Anders, has come into his own not only as an artist, song writer, and lyricist, but as an extremely competent and versatile singer. I'm not talking about Tony's delusional, high pitched blazing screams of a retard. Anders is the real deal. His creativity is highlighted particularly on an 8 minute track of his design, the longest In Flames song ever recorded entitled The Chosen Pessimist.

This is definitely one of those albums that is nearly perfect from beginning to end. Musically very technical and fast, however also juiced with excellent guitar tone, catchy hooks, and short yet sweet guitar solos. The lyrics are something I've been wanting to talk about for a long time. The nature of most of the themes are a fear of lost control, losing self identity, and franticness. These emotions are seldom associated with musical inspiration, yet find a home perfectly in In Flames' new offering.

As with all things metal, it's all about the delivery and another really neat thing about A Sense of Purpose is the Album art. In Flames are professionals, and took a bit of a dare when they chose Alex Pardee to handle art direction, but the dare worked out perfectly because he inscribed all the lyrics in crazy handwriting that is different for every song, as well as included flares of color, appropriately illustrating In Flames trademark musical infusion of the strange color that goes with the dark things in life. Check out Alex Pardee's website if you wanna see some fucked up shit!

There was a DVD " making of..." released with the digipack. In Flames have their own studio in Sweden where they pretty much took a month to hang out together, party, and made this CD. Their past two CDs were not created this way, which may explain why I didn't listen to those albums much either. My favorite songs include, Sleepless Again, Delight and Angers, and March to the Shore, but I urge all interested to give this a listen from beginning to end, it's a real fired up and emotional experience.