Sounds of a Playground Fading

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.