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In Flames.
"I actually think we toned down a little bit with what we included on this album compared to the previous album," jests In Flames frontman Anders Friden, on the subject of the group's latest release 'Soundtrack To Your Escape'. "On the last album I think that I got a little bit carried away in the studio, as the producer and I seemed to be working all day and night on it. This one has been out now over here in Sweden for a while, and there's not a single thing I would change about it."
Friden was originally a fan of the group before joining in early 2000. "I believe in In Flames and the sound which we have created 110%," he declares. "Since day one we always believed in ourselves and nobody outside of the band was ever taken into consideration regarding our sound and image, it was always about ourselves and what we were trying to create. I think that's the reason why we have come this far, because we have never listened to anyone else, and I think that it is very important that you stay true to yourself."
After listening to 'Soundtrack To Your Escape' at length, it's clear that this recording is perhaps not as technical as past releases and is, by Friden's own admission, comparably "toned down." He's quick to dismiss the notion that they've had creative troubles. "No way, I don't think that writing is that hard, I mean we can write when we are on the road, and so we can always write when we are at home," states Friden. "For the past two albums we rented this house somewhere where the whole band goes for two weeks, and I bring a little bit of recording equipment, and we just start jamming and putting pieces together, and we pretty much wrote two songs every day from all the ideas that we had, and after two weeks we kind of had an album. The main problem is synchronising our feelings together when working on certain pieces these days."
Given that In Flames is predominantly a heavy act, it was interesting to learn of Friden's other musical goals."With In Flames there is nothing more that I really want to experiment with musically, but in my spare time I listen to all sorts of music like Massive Attack and Portishead for example, and that is something that I would like to do on the side in the future at some point," he muses. "I really do have a strong need to dabble in other styles of music."
Recently the group were presented with the coveted Metal Hammer Golden Gods award for 'Best Underground Act' on British television, an achievement which Friden found to be a little peculiar."Well, winning that award was kind of funny, as many people were saying to us at the time, 'you guys sold out, blah, blah'," he laughs. "I guess you could say that we were kind of surprised."
As every generation tends to believe that their artists have been able to reach the absolute limits, it was interesting to hear Friden's thoughts on whether music has the capacity to get any more extreme than it is at present.
"I do think that we can go further, but I think it comes down to genre mixing... ," he ponders. "Obviously you can play grind or whatever, or heavy E string and that will sound really extreme, but then it's not really music anymore. I don't know how much heavier it can really get from a lot of these grindcore bands, but when I got into death metal I was listening to the band Death, and I was like 'wow, it can't get heavier than this,' but when you go back now and listen to those albums, they really aren't that heavy."
Adam Hood
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'Soundtrack To Your Escape' is out now through Chatterbox and In Flames play at Heaven on Fri 17 Sept with Chimaera and Truth Corroded.
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