Sounds of a Playground Fading

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.