This is the In Flames we love!”
“This song feels like they’re waving to their older fans saying, ‘We haven’t forgotten about you.’”
“After a dozen long years I can finally pick up a new In Flames album.”
These, plus thousands more comments of relief and adulation, await when you look up In Flames’ blistering State Of Slow Decay on YouTube. The lead single from the Gothenburg five-piece’s impending 14th album, Foregone, was the first wholly melodeath music they’d released in 22 years. It also marked the ceasefire in the war between the band and their oldest fans, who for the same span of time had craved completely different things.
In the early 2000s, In Flames ditched the growls and guitar harmonies of the genre they’d helped define, replacing them with nu metal melodies and electronics. And they’ve been steadfast in their refusal to cave in to pressure and turn back. However, when Hammer sits down with frontman Anders Fridén and guitarist Björn Gelotte in the lobby of their rather fancy London hotel, something unprecedented happens: the singer admits the band’s latest material has been lacking.
“I feel that some of our mixes have been too laidback,” Anders reflects,
