Whoracle

Let's see . . . how to describe In Flames. Well, think Children of Bodom. Now replace the kickass Power Metal they play with so-so Melo-Death riffs. Make Alexi, the lead singer, constipated and hoarse at the same time. Simmer and stir. The result is a pretty damn close description of In Flames.

Listening to this shit is like lighting up a giant turd and smoking it. The vocals are bad, the riffs are boring and overused, the vocals are bad, the drummer doesn't know what fucking song he is playing, the vocals are bad, the vocals are bad, the double bass is absolutely indistinguishable from the bass drum and the vocals are bad. Oh, and did I mention that the vocals are PURE, UNDILUTED SHIT?

I mean, what the fuck was Jesper thinking when he brough Anders fucking Fridén in to do vocals? He could not have picked a worse person on the face of the planet to do Death vocals, and that includes Madonna, Vanilla Ice and myself. It sounds like what my dog does when she's sick as fuck and constipated, with an intersparced mixture of sounds alluding to a morbidly obese man trying to shit out a humongous, very stubborn turd. On top of it all, if you listen really closely you can hear that he sounds like he is perpetually on the brink of tears. Really. He's about to cry. And before you say, "BUT SHEARMAN U DON'T KNWO HARSH VOX U LIK SISY POWER METAL LOLOLOL!!," let me assure you that I am quite familiar with harsh vocals and just because you're not actually singing does not mean you have a license to sound like whatever the fuck you want.

If that were all of In Flames problems, I wouldn't even bother writing this review. But the fact is that this band is universally a worthless piece of trash. The guitars are perhaps the most disappointing, because they often tease you by playing something that sounds like it might turn into, God forbid, a cool set of riffs or something, and then they promptly yank it away from you and blast you with mallcore chunking, or, worse yet, play that same riff over and over again, pounding the fucking thing into the ground until you want to hurl. Both of these cardinal sins are committed . . . wait for it . . . AT THE SAME TIME in the album's first track, Jotun. That takes a certain special kind of shittiness to do. Congratulations, guys. By playing a cool chord progression, then taking it away and pounding into a bunch of mallcore chunking, and then playing that same opening over and over again ON TOP of the chunking, you have managed to sound like dog shit in a way I never thought possible. And then Anders starts singing, and the Suck is complete.

And what about the lower instruments? I can see those old commercials now--the ones where the scenario is the little old lady looking at the sandwich and the question is "Where's the beef?," except here the scenario is In Flames playing Food for the Gods and the question is "Where's the bass?" Answer: Playing at the exact same time as the bass drum and stopping well before any pauses in the playing to avoid doing something stupid like actually being heard. What a bitch that would be, huh Peter? And then Anders starts singing, and the Suck is complete.

And then there's the drums. Instead of talking about how shitty the drumming is, let's take a listen to track 2 of this coaster. When we start this track, we're hearing some nice riffs (which are quickly taken away, in case you were wondering) and a solid strong-beat blast from the drums, indicating that this song is going to be played in triplets. That's fine, but then the band members have some sort of disagreement, and at 0:07, the guitar continues to play in triplets while the drummer, apparantly out to prove he can successfully bang on drums while having his head up a cow's ass, starts playing meatbeats; in other words, they're playing two different rhythms at exactly the same time! You can't even fucking headband to this piece of shit because you can't find the goddamn beat in this monstrosity! And then Anders starts singing, and the Suck is complete.

The same shit continues all throughout this abomination of an album. Bastardized and repeated riffs intermingle with a nonexistant bass line and drumming so haphazard that Lar$ himself would be proud. Each song consists of a promising opening, followed by the rest of the band coming in and a total degeneration into mallcore shit or worse. And then Anders starts singing, and the Suck is complete.