Sounds of a Playground Fading

I personally think SoaPF is an improvement over A Sense of Purpose. While I did enjoy ASoP it was still a rather weak release. On Sounds In Flames seem to go for a little heavier approach and while its nothing like their old school melodic death metal albums its better than the last album.

First, either I'm getting used to Anders' vocals or he is actually getting better at his singing and growling. Where as post Colony his screams seemed almost too forced and like he was trying to copy Jonathan Davis from Korn. Here I don't even cringe while listening. This is a big deal since in the past Anders Friden was probably the weak link of the band. I'm interested to see how those who disliked his style in the past feel about what they might hear here. I have to admit though on Ropes his singing voice kinda falls flat and sounds a bit weak, probably because his accent is so obvious.

The lyrics are still a mess. Its not even necessarily the subject matter (personal struggles which has been done to death), but the lyrical make up itself. Old In Flames always had interesting lyrics about science fiction and future issues. But on the last 3 or 4 albums they switched to inner turmoil. But Anders must still not have a good grasp on english or something because the lyrics just don't flow properly in a number of places.

One of the big things about this record is how guitarist (and the last founding member) Jesper Stromblad left before the recording began. But as soon as you go through the album once you can tell that with the last few releases Jesper played a smaller and smaller part in the writing process. This sounds like a proper progression of A Sense of Purpose and what you would expect the band to sound like even if Jesper had stayed. So Bjorn and Niclas Engelin pull off the same sound you know and love (or don't) from the past few albums.

In Flames continue adding a little more of a progressive/experimental edge to their sound. The Jester's door is a mix of electronic and instrumental music but is very quiet and soft. The title track is soft guitars for about the first minute before shooting off into something resembling what you might hear from Come Clarity. There are really no bad tracks on this album save for maybe Jester's Door which is basically a throw away/filler track. The band really hits the melody strong here though with tracks like Deliver Us, All For Me, The Puzzle, ect ect. As always there is a big emphasis on the guitar harmonies, one of my favorite things about IF.

There album hits on a darker tone though as well. Along with Jester's Door there is The Attic which is like this albums shorter version of The Chosen Pessimist. The last minute or two of Liberation isn't quite as dark but the clean guitars going on with the drumming sticking to the background as the song finishes give it that sort of feel.

Sounds of A Playground Fading is an excellent album if you take it for what it is, a modern metal album. It's a sort of mix between A Sense of Purpose and Come Clarity with a little more progressive/experimental frame of mind to it. As always Daniel Svensson's drumming is a joy to listen to and the melody makes this an easy, fun album to get into. The riffs stand out as being easy on the ear without crossing into alternative/rock territory. And with Anders vocal improvements I think In Flames fans who enjoy their discography as a whole are in for a treat.

Originally reviewed @ http://abaddonsmetalshop.blogspot.com/

This album is exactly what you've come to expect from In Flames if you've listened to more than one post-Clayman album. This is essentially Reroute to Remain part V. The previous album, A Sense of Purpose, was in some ways a slight departure from this sound – indeed sound being the keyword here – but they have returned again to making replicas of their grand sellout album, Reroute to Remain. Each such replica has its own definitive characteristics, and for this album such a characteristic is increased softness of sound and very prominent synth.

It appears even less effort than ever before was put into writing this new album. In Flames has reduced itself to the level of the most generic metalcore-infused alternative rock bands. The songs repeat themselves nauseously, and the music jumps from wall-of-sound esque grand wailing choruses – that are, mind you, the most saccharine thing you've ever heard by a metal band that isn't a group of fruitcakes from Italy playing ”power metal” – into the most generic possible groove metal riffs that I frankly once thought In Flames would never resort to. As I said before, this direction should come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to In Flames's records from the last decade or so: from this band we've come to expect downtuned guitars that spit out obnoxious groove riffs, a singer who's mainly capable of emitting whiny half-screams and writing lyrics that would make an angsty teenager blush with embarrasment, uninnovative drumming and simple pop rock songwriting. This is nothing but metalcore in its most radio-friendly form. In Flames has went quite far in making this as plastic and soft as possible. No instrument – not even the downtuned occasionally fast guitar chugs, or the drum sounds, or even the so-called harsh vocals – has any edge to it, and it's all further softened by the wall-of-sound effect created by possibly hundreds of layers, as well as the soft, mellow synth sounds so very prevalent here. The melodies and harmonies are all fluffy, nice, soft – what the album's audience probably consider to be beautiful, but what only to the ears of one whose musical taste is largely defined by what MTV plays is anything but ridiculous – and only counterpointed by the post-chorus groove metal riffs, that may sound brutal, again, to the MTV audience, but what are incredibly tame and weak to the ears of anyone else.

There is little reason to listen to this album, not even for the sake of morbid curiosity, for even in that department this album will leave you disappointed. The music is mostly inoffensive; it's not as such a fuck-up from In Flames in the way St. Anger or Amoral's Ari Koivunen album are – it's professionally made, it's well calculated and considering it's prime function (money) it's pulled off quite well, if very lazily (as the self-repeating never changing drum patterns portray) – but the effect it makes it possibly even worse. For any real metal fan this is just as toxic as St. Anger, or even worse, for it's a hideous mutilation of the elements of metal that once influenced In Flames.

So if you are a Gothenburg fan and have not been lying inside a cryogenic sleep chamber for the last couple of months, you know the utterly impossible has happened and Jesper Stromblad has quit In Flames. Sure, this is not as alarming as if Steve Harris had waved The Beast goodbye, and Jesper hasn’t been exactly writing everything for the group lately, but not every band can survive the departure of a key songwriter easily. The interesting thing is that In Flames has. You'd be hard pressed to actually tell the difference.

If you know the band, you know they work around a formula for almost every album, and this one is, obviously, ASOP's more eclectic brother. The blueprint is laid down the same way: moshing palm muted riffs, “wall of sound” production, clean sung hooks, acoustic stuff to create a faux back-to-the-roots feel and all that stuff. I was hoping for the input of newcomer Niclas Engelin, but the man brought nothing new to the table (as Bjorn pretty much wrote the entire album) and Peter Iwers keeps on holding to his “Bassist that could not give less of a shit” trophy for dear life, so we don't get that much of a change.

However, once again In Flames falters when it comes to songwriting. It might sound like nitpicking, but the listener will soon notice how the first seconds of “Darker Times”, “Enter Tragedy” and “The Puzzle” sound almost the same, while the title track and “Darker Times” have the same chord progression for the chorus. Check it out, you can safely sing the former’s chorus into the latter and vice-versa. Again, I don’t mean to be a nitpicking asshole, but that reeks of lazy work and shouldn’t be present on an album by a band that is hailed by their new fans as being so adventurous and ever-changing.

The most unsettling aspect, at least for me, was the existence of “Liberation”, which is the perfect example (not to say proof) of how this band desires to be Sweden’s heavier answer to 30 Seconds to Mars. A dreadful pop/alt rock song that features brain-dead instrumentation and probably Jared Leto himself, because Anders comes up as a pretty convincing sound-alike, except for his inclination towards nasal singing. Let’s make things simple: If you’re aiming to play on the radio, just release a pop album already and stop pretending to be some kind of revolutionary modern metal band. I don’t know what is worse, actually; if it’s the actual song or the myriad of fans that will applaud this piece of crap, declaring the band to be oh so open minded.

Well… Lyrically, for the first time in years, Anders seems to be showing sparks of the poetic stuff from the old days amidst the whole adolescent ennui. I for one can see a stark difference from the lyrics of the title track (which seem to claim the film “Children of Men” as an influence) and stuff like “You'll never understand me/and I don't care what you think/or maybe I do” from “The Puzzle” or maybe “I'm tired; I'm fed up of this life!” from “Enter Tragedy”. Tracks are also plagued (again) by the "You and me" lyrical dead end, and another awful cliché rears its ugly head here, the “I need your help/I need you to help me somehow” idiocy. This way of writing romantic/tragic lyrics often degenerates into a cheesy, emo-ish pastiche when used in a shallow way like this. Check it out at tracks 4, 6 and 10 and you’ll see. Summing up, pretty much every lyric here, (except for tracks 1 and 2) would perfectly fit on Come Clarity with its glaring emo sensibilities. And I don’t mean it as some kind of cheap insult, seriously. Maybe it is just me. I just find it damn hard to take a bunch of old guys (only one, actually) writing about pre-pubescent affection seriously, just as much as I take Rhapsody and their dragons, sorcery and enchanted swords.

Not much can be said about the singer’s performance either. This album contains way less screams and more cleans, though; "Ropes” features mostly clean vocals, and I mean CLEAN, without a hint of any distortion whatsoever. On this particular track, I don't find Anders’ voice particularly grating, but he desperately needs vocal coaching to teach him how to control things, because his voice cracks incessantly and that hiccup that has been plaguing (in my opinion) his voice since, I don’t know, goddamn Skydancer is not a good sign. Seriously, get some coaching to help you get a grip on what remains of your cords. The cool tricks and layers of backing vocals will never be able to fully help outside the studio doors.

As per usual, In Flames sometimes sheds off the trash and comes up with some interesting stuff. Just like “My Sweet Shadow”, “The Puzzle” ends with a memorable and beautiful atmospheric guitar/keyboard line, while Daniel (who is inexplicably formulaic here) finds himself some space to write an attention grabbing pattern in the really good intro of “All for Me”, on which the bass drum adds a measure each time the power chord soars. Props also go to “A New Dawn” with its tasteful middle break and a feeling that should please Colony/Clayman fans a lot, and I found myself really enjoying the duo between the orchestral elements and the electric ones nearing the end of the song before the last chorus.

While Bjorn shows signs of weakness at writing good rhythm guitar riffs, his leads come up as pretty rocking overall. Oh, and the majority of the choruses is surprisingly catchy, probably being the album's best asset amidst the sub-par songwriting, for “Sounds of a Playground Fading” acts just like a pop album; if the songs are getting a little bit boring, the choruses will probably pick them up, and it is up to you if this is a good thing or not. I particularly don’t mind chorus-driven, straightforward albums, IF the other parts of the songs manage to catch my attention as well. Unfortunately, most of the songs here are boringly uneventful until the chorus comes to keep the skip button away from you.

In Flames took another step into the future, but it seems like they’ve finally opted to be the icon for the legions of bands that desperately try to be the link between modern metal and accessible melodic rock music. This is a catchy but badly disjointed album, dragged down by an uninteresting vocal performance and an over-reliance on hooks instead of competent songwriting to keep the listener’s attention.

I don’t despise the music here for being “easy to listen”, but even then, there is a difference between competent and pedestrian. The Swedish quintet, unfortunately, still lacks the ability/vision to distinguish both and ends up stranded in a line between them.

Highlights; A New Dawn, The Puzzle, and the chorus of the title track.

Well, times sure have changed since the true Gothenburg days. The 1990's in the Scandinavian metal scene was a time of courageous song writing and originality. Bands like In Flames and Dark Tranquility were completely different from anything forged from the depths of the earth. Melodies, raspy vocals, double bass, harmony, and progressive song writing were just beginning to be morphed into one genre. In Flames helped pioneer the genre of Melodic Death Metal much like the Beatles did for rock n' roll. The truth is, In Flames had their time. In my opinion this time was between Lunar Strain and Clayman. The albums that followed sounded like something shifted dramatically within the band. It could have been the influence of Western popular culture, or it simply could have been that the band was bored and tired of writing the same material over and over again. Mike Akerfeldt from Opeth has stated in interviews that the reason Opeth shifted their writing style was partly due to the fact that everyone was now writing melodic, dual guitar, harmonizing metal. In my mind, their transition was much more original than that of what In Flames made. My personal heart lies deep within their Gothenburg style writing when the melodies and progressive song writing was at the essence of the band.

I don't care much for In Flame's newer material and much of that is due to the vocals of Anders. I am a death growl kind of guy. I do appreciate clean vocals once in a while but for some reason Anders does not reach a clean quality worth praising about. It sounds whiny and desperate. To me, it seems that he tries too hard. NU Metal, or Americanized metal according to me, is much more prominent in their music these days. I personally get very irritated by the American influence and think that much of the Metal-core is a bunch of junk.

As far as Sounds of a Playground Fading goes, I don't care for it. A few of the songs tease past riff writing, more like something off of Clayman, but the emotions seem very absent. Yeah, here and there they put in epic guitar melodies and ripping drums, much of what old time fans originally loved the band for, but they don't stick and are very brief. The songs are bland and just sound like every other Metal-core band out there these days. I wish I could tell the band, "Hey guys, aren't you the ones who developed an original sound? Aren't you the ones who defied possibilities in metal song writing?" My disappointment is clear when listening to this record but because of my dedication to the band, I will always try to find something to enjoy, even if it is only a couple of songs. But you know what, that is the beauty of music. Even when things seem like they have hit rock bottom, there are often things that seem like a candle is still burning. A few of the songs are a joy to crank up. I can still find myself head-banging and groovin'.

I don't think In Flames will ever return to their melodic death metal past. The trail they have taken is just too different and as they have grown, their music has evolved with them. This is something that happens to all bands whether we like it or not. I will always buy IF records until they can't spit anymore out. That is just the kind of fan I am. Though, most likely what will be playing in my cd player will be a Lunar Strain, Jester Race, Whoracle, Colony, or Clayman album.

In a maneuver that surprises no one, the first post-Strömblad album from In Flames continues to polarize the band's fan base and tread ever closer to the pop rock orientations that have been hinted at for almost a decade (beginning around Reroute to Remain). The modus operandi of the previous album returns: big hooks, emotional vocals that alternate between happiness and despair, traditional/power metal inspired solos, and plenty of modern metal grooves to sate the festival audiences whose moshing aspirations include anything with a guitar mute. If anything, it pushes well past A Sense of Purpose into the terrain of pure, mainstream heavy rock, with the faint traces of the band's 90s melodic riffing structures the one thing anchoring it to any semblance of the band's backlog.

Now, I happened to enjoy A Sense of Purpose, much to my shock. There were about 7-8 songs there that mustered memorable guitar patterns, overly whining but effective vocals, and a nice variation in grooves and tempos, and the rest of the record did not fall far behind. I'm honestly not opposed to In Flames doing whatever the hell they want with themselves, as long as the music entertains, and even if it wasn't perfect, that album seemed to strike a good balance of their modern elements and the songwriting skill of the prior decade. Sounds of a Playground Fading builds upon similar aesthetics, only heavily favoring the slower to mid-paced fare and cleaning up on the processing of the production. There's much more clarity to the rhythm guitar and a lot of positive punch to the heavier sections, yet the lion's share of the new tracks seem to lack that same level of explosive energy that had my ears buzzing with the most bliss I had for the band since Whoracle. Some even feel like neutered, cardboard cutouts of previous tunes.

For example, the 2nd riff in "Puzzle", my favorite song on this album, is strikingly similar to a number of patterns used in "Disconnected", "The Mirror's Truth", and so forth, but at least it compensates with a passionate momentum and some uplifting atmosphere. The title track has a lot of the rhythmic bounce that dominated Reroute to Remain, with pleasant but predictable fills that don't inspire much hope for the rest of the fare. There are mild electronic influences (as in the intro to "Where the Dead Ships Dwell") and acoustic intros ("All For Me", "Fear is the Weakness"), but these are all par for the course after the previous set of albums, and they aren't writing anything so sugary here that this diversification brings strength to the song structures.

Then there are a few songs that feel plain weak. "Jester's Door" is this self-referential, spoken word piece which had me gagging up my lunch. I'm not sure if it's a metaphor for Jesper's time with the band, or refers to the constant criticism leveled at the band for their ever morphing sound strategy, but its cheesy and should have been left on the cutting room floor. "A New Dawn" feels like an attempt to channel back to the times of Clayman or Whoracle, but the dual melody is simply too familiar, the grooves entirely lackluster. "The Attic" and "Liberation" see the band more directly in pop/modern rock terrain, the former a moody piece with atmospheric guitars and mostly whispered vocals, the latter radio rock with echoing guitar lines redolent of Amorphis on Tuonela...

Yeah, sure, great. So you can write mediocre rock songs that abandon the metal of your youths. Are these anything more than emo exercises for Anders? You can write them. That doesn't mean you HAVE TO, and such pieces serve only to the detriment of this record, unless In Flames are trying to land a spot on the soundtrack to the latest season of The Hills. Again, I'm not in opposition to such branching out, but the Swedes will always be the best at their heavier material, and Sounds of a Playground Fading ultimately needs a lot more of it to choke by. There are some decent cuts here ("The Puzzle" and "Ropes") that adapt and refine the tactics of the last album, but where I found myself unexpectedly in step with that effort's blaze of glory, I just kept drawing blanks this time. Sounds of a Playground Fading is hardly their worst, and I got more out of it than, say, Soundtrack to Your Escape, but its not about to win them many new friends.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

With the release of this record, In Flames continue in the style of their great and diversified predecessor "A sense of purpose...". That means that they do further experimentations and get away from their death metal roots. Anybody that is waiting for the band to dig in its own past and come back to where they were might be disappointed by this release and should bury its hopes. But anybody that liked the more experimental tracks from the last album such as the modern and diversified single "Alias" or the overlong psychedelic ballad "The chosen pessimist" will adore this album. The modern electronic sounds of the single "Deliver us" should be a good idea for anyone if he or she should really check this album out. The great opener and title track that opens with a calm and spiritual melody that could also fit to a ballad by "Dream Theater" or "Metallica" and surprises with a heavily addicting chorus also gives a good hint at what we should expect to come further on this release.

I know that most metal maniacs won't like this. The ratings for this album might be very low in the near future and anything else would be a surprise to me. Those reviewers will tell you that the band forgets about its roots, sounds more like an alternative rock act, tends towards too commercial melodies, lacks of heaviness and writes strange lyrics about inner struggles and all those things are eventually right. But the band fact that this band tries out something new, does some great experimentations and continues its way even if a long time band member quit them and many fans were rather disappointed by the last records proves that they do what they like and don't do what we expect from them or what would be a commercial success.

The thing that changed in comparison to the last record is that the single tracks are less outstanding but that the album as a whole is very coherent and strong and no song sounds too similar to any other on here. I must also underline the diversified vocals that are more powerful and yet more diversified as before and don't sound as whiny as on the last record.

At some points, the band heads into an as experimental direction as the surprising last album from "Linkin Park" with electronic sounds in "Deliver us", atmospheric sound collages in "The attic" or the psychedelic experiment "Jester's Door". Clean vocal passages in the potential next single hits "Ropes" or the stunning closing "Liberation" where the band sounds as melodic and commercial and free from any metal boundaries as never before remind me of modern alternative rock acts such as the emotional "Thirty seconds to Mars", the more and more interesting "My Chemical Romance" and even the more progressive "Muse". Especially the second part of the album heads into such a direction and makes me think that the band could even go further into this direction on an upcoming record.

That doesn't mean that there are no more heavy riffs or scratched vocals like in "The puzzle" or "Enter tragedy" that should please to all fans of the band and that remind more of the songs of the last records. Some tracks also mix melodic death metal passages with surprising alternative rock passages and even orchestral arrangements like in the amazing "A new dawn" where the title indicated the style and direction. The changes are progressive on this record and not done in a radical way like "Linkin Park" did it. Anybody that listened to the last record should have been mentally prepared for this next step which is "Sounds of a playground fading". But any purist metal head that doesn't care at all about progressive alternative rock will have many problems to get an approach to this record.

In the end it really depends on how open minded you are if you are able to accept and eventually adore this record. Accept that you don't have a melodic death metal album in front of you but a potpourri of modern metal music with some major progressive metal and alternative rock influences that follow the style of the last record. As i liked the last record, I adore this album and this is a thing I never expected from a band like In Flames a few years ago when I was rather into heavy and power metal music. I have opened my mind and musically grown up and I think that this is a very refreshing piece of music that isn't comparable to any album I have in my collection until today. "Sounds of a playground fading" makes now a true In Flames fan out of me and I recently discovered their whole back catalogue which is different from what I hear here but very great in a different way. This record is a solid candidate for my top ten album list of the year 2011 and better than all those boring old fashioned bands such as "Saxon" or "HammerFall" or the revival groups such as "Hell" that bore me to death with their new nostalgic releases. But I let them live in their past while I listen to some modern music from time to time such as In Flames do with this record where I can't find one single filler. After a great last decade I'm now sure that the new decade will be musically as interesting and modern metal music must not hide in the shadows of the legendary eighties. I don't need to be wrongfully nostalgic as I feel happy to grow up in a time where music like this is made. This album is more than music, it's a statement and only a few chosen ones will follow In Flames on their way towards future records and I will surely be with them.

In Flames we trust!

After the release of A Sense of Purpose, In Flames had appeared to have gone down in mostly everyone's opinion of them. From back in the hey day of Clayman and Whoracle, In Flames have appeared to have lost all touch with their Melodeath roots, and would need to re-reoute to remain, the irony, but this record showed a definite sign that things were picking up for Anders and co.
From the first record they released off this record, Deliver Us, they appeared to have veered for the better away from ASOP more so towards the previous 3-4 releases - more along the lines of Take this Life and most of Come Clarity. Half of this album is of a musical style previously seen since Clayman, the other takes after "Your Bedtime Story is Scaring Everyone" in that it feels like it shouldn't be on one of Melodeath's finests' albums, at all.

Whilst this album shares many properties with ASOP, it's more likeable for any diehard fans, largely due to In Flames' retraction back onto their heavier albums. A few solid riffs throughout makes this a mainstay for 2011 metal records, Anders is clearly enjoying this record as he makes it as he's covering topics and song themes that he hasn't been covering over his 20 or so year career with In Flames and Dark Tranquillity.

This album shouldn't be bought if you're looking for In Flames returning to their roots, but to complete the collection, as whilst it's not bad, it's not In Flames as most of us have loved them. This record shows real influences from metalcore from most of the recent bands, but very little influence from any of their Gothenburg bretherin which IF have sorely missed in the past 2 records.

The highlights to this album for me were definitely Liberation and Deliver Us, both are definitely something worth listening to as songs, but never compared to anything IF have released before; Liberation being their most commercially accessible song they've released to date bordering on pop rock, and for some reason is my guilty secret off this album as it's very simple to listen to, both musically and lyrically, not a masterclass in either. Deliver Us is perhaps the heaviest song off this album, and the first release, so it had more plays as it was out a month before the rest of the album, it's more technical, but again, no masterclass here.

For me, this album isn't too bad, but as an IF release? It's pretty poor, It's not something that'll be a mainstay in my Ipod for an extended period of time. It probably won't even get half the plays as an album that Clayman got as a single, but it will get listens mainly because It's IF. But definitely them at their worst, as ASOP had a clear theme that made it listenable, this is just strange...A clear downhill progression from ASOP, and definitely from anything prior to that.