Whoracle

(Edited)

By the year 1997, In Flames had released two great albums (The Subterranean EP being the best thing they've ever done), ranging from the overall rawness of "Lunar Strain" to the polished and more melody-based "The Jester Race" and established themselves as one of the quintessential bands of the famed Gothenburg scene. I happen to like In Flames a lot because of those two albums (and the EP), but hell, "Whoracle" is really overrated.

"The Jester Race" was the album that laid the blueprint for the subgenre, not this. This is a worsened, more streamlined and dumbed down version of the aforementioned classic. Every element of TJR is here, but watered down and made uninteresting by the songwriting flaws. "Whoracle" is just a bloody repetitive album on which the musicians involved think they can write songs that revolves around ONE idea/motif that gets played over and over again and get away with it. And guess what, they DID get away with it, because this album is considered a Gothenburg classic. What a joke.

When it comes to this band's bad albums right before their recent mallcore atrocities, some long-time fans seem to simply forget about this one and point "Colony" (Which is not a bad album by any means) or "Clayman" (Which is far more commercial, but still not dull enough to be entirely mallcore) as the rotten apples in the orchard, but I beg to differ. "Whoracle" is where In Flames' most poignant flaws (No, it's not the whiny multi-tracked vocals nor the vacuum-cleaner distortion, not yet) come to light, and they piss me off.


Now, let’s begin with Anders’ annoying performance. This guy was never a great vocalist to begin with, always sounding way too much hoarse, at least to my ears. Also, he should never, NEVER try to sing clean vocals. Nevertheless, we are forced to listen to his irritating and downright laughable crooning in every single In Flames album since "The Jester Race". Take "Jester Script Transfigured", for an example. That's a pretty nice and relaxing ballad with great melodies and an overall trippy feeling, but Friden's abysmal clean vocals fucking ruin the verses and severely maim the atmosphere of this nice song. Also when he's not trying to sing, he just... Talks (Jotun's verses) or does some kind of stupid and nonsensical voiceover (Intro of "Worlds within the Margin"). Goddamn, just shut up and let the guitars play!

If you're the vocalist of a melodeath band and sometimes feel like skipping the growls, you should try to reach some degree of melody with your voice! For an example, Mikael Stanne's experimentation with clean vocals on Projector sound a billion times better than this.

As for the guitars, they really don't impress me. I mean, Jesper's fancy melodies and cool soloing are still there, but the riffing is awful and repetitive as hell. Take a look at "Jotun"; the first 33 seconds of the song are cool and rocking enough, but suddenly Anders comes out of nowhere with his cemetery answering machine vocals and everything goes downhill, the riffing becomes a lot of simple mallcore chugging and the main melody gets repeated into oblivion. The same thing happens with other songs like "Episode 666" and "The Hive", where they just keep playing the same goddamn riff over and over again with very slight modifications, and on top of that, we have Anders droning, uninteresting vocal attack that shows no dynamics, no forcefulness and no variation whatsoever.


Apparently, "Whoracle" has a concept behind it. The fact is that if you don't know this, you will only find out after some research, because the godawful lyrics won't help you. I mean, "Episode 666" is about an apocalyptic event that's being televised, but who the hell would've guessed it? That shit doesn't make sense at all! Listen, I’m all into abstract, metaphorical and subjective music (I like Arcturus), but this meaningless garbage is terrible. You've got a pretty nice concept behind your album and you just don't know how to put it into lyrics? Screw this, go listen to Edge of Sanity and learn something.

The drums are pretty standard and the bass is mostly inaudible. Big surprise, ain't it? Yeah, this is a far cry from the Subterranean EP days.

Now, this isn't a totally worthless album, there are some cool things here and there. In Flames always knew how and when to use acoustics, and they do one hell of a good work here, every acoustic passage on this album rocks (Even the title track), especially on my favorite track "Dialogue with the Stars" (Guess why? Yes, it's an instrumental), that has a folky atmosphere going on and remembers me of this band's best song, Moonshield. Also, the synth parts in "Worlds within the Margin" are subtle but pretty cool if you manage to ignore Ander's attempts to imitate a parrot.

I really like those brief moments when Strömblad remembers he's a talented guitarist and decides to nail kickass solos in otherwise boring songs (The Hive, Morphing Into Primal and the aforementioned WWTM, where the synths meld with the guitars in the end of the solo, creating a brief but very cool wall of sound).

Well, this one receives a lot of praise, but I'm telling you, it's not all that good. If you have an open mind and can get past the sheer repetition and awful vocals, there's a chance you might dig this. If that's the case, check out "Dialogue with the Stars" for a very nice instrumental, "Jester Script Transfigured" for a great 'space rock acoustic guitar meets folky electric riffs' ballad, "Gyroscope" for another fun balance between acoustic/electric, "The Hive" for cool power metal soloing and "WWTM" for simple but tasteful synth usage and that's it. Oh, and do yourself a favor and ignore the Depeche Mode cover, please.

If you're new to In Flames, check out "Colony" or "The Jester Race" first, leave this little uncoordinated chugfest for later, the band can (or could) do better.