Metal Reviews

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Very nice interview. You handled the "Sellout" questions very well. As for the answers, I hate it when people say "I don't listen to anything modern." It's kind of like they gave up IMO. Over all though, he had some good answers.

Agreed, and you asked the BM question! I liked how you kept trying to get him to admit he was in it for the women.

Yea he did that with Bodom as well. No doubt Jason is dissapointed by the lack of left over groupie action.

You find with a lot of guys in bands that are constantly touring and writing that they really don't have time to keep up with what's going on in the scene (for want of a better word). When it comes to time off from the band, a lot of people kinda want to de-submerge themselves from music for a while.

Case in point is Metallica with St Anger - they spent so much time stuck in a rut it became a like temporal vortex ( ) and by the time they finally dragged the album's carcass out into the sunlight, the stuff they were trying to emulate was no longer trendy.

Somehow this guy sounds like he is aware that they did sell out.

I actually picked that up too.

I thought it was just a good way to tip toe around their past two albums sounding like NU-Metal.

Undoubtedly.

He seems aware that his band sold out, but doesnt seem to care.

The biggest impression i got was that peter has little or no say in what the band writes in terms of music. I believe that had he not been so invloved in the music industry for so long, he would have likely stopped listening to metal, worked some typical job listening to contemporary adult rock and citing that metal was some youthful phenomenon he went through. I mean, c'mon...ALL he listens to is old stuff, and he believes that NO bands now are pushing metal to new boundaries? thats a little riduculous if you ask me. Not that really i think that's Un-Metal or anything to know every single new band out there, but its kind of like a businessman being totally unfamiliar to the competition around him, or being totally oblivious to the current market.

Essentially, In Flames seems to be mostly from the brains of Anders' and has changed mostly due to the fact that his taste in music has changed also. Notice that he wears many shitty metalcore band tshirts now, and that peter said that they used to worship bands like sepultura back in the day. I think that most people that used to go apeshit for sepultura do not listen to Caliban, or think that Zao is awesome.

Another load of bullcrap was that touring with Trivium was a suggestion from management. It is flamboiantly obvious that the music industry is trying to market this band the most they can (hence the presence of their music on numerous video games and acting as a support for other whoreish bands like Bodom) so it just adds to the light in which In Flames changing when a band that is being pushed so friggin much by labels is tagging along when there are tons of more worthy groups which could have instead.

Also peter almost slipped and said that they decided reinsert the melody that had been missing on the previous albums.. this i can only attribute to the enourmous amount of heat the band had been getting from dedicated fans, despite his facade that "In Flames does what it wants, and if you don't like it, tough luck"...

anyways... what they say and what they are are two different things if you ask me, even if they really believe what they say, it doesn't make it true.

Interesting...

I'll get stick for this, but Zao are a pretty good band. For metalcore, I mean.

They're not horrible, but they're really more of a hardcore band than anything else. I remember lsitening to these guys during my old punk days when they were just getting out of the christian-core stuff... But to tell me a few years ago that Zao would be touring with a melodeath band like In Flames would have incited the same reaction i had when i found out that Less Than Jake (punk-ska-ish band) was supporting Bon Jovi.

(Totally off-topic but the at Less Than Jake concert i saw outdoors here in montreal in 99', Suicide Machines was opening for them and had the craziest circle pit i ever saw. It must have been thirty meters in diameter and went AROUND those tents that are typically far away from the stage).. ahh the old days

yeah nice interview... better than the bodom one I thought.
Come clarity is a great album i would have liked him to say a little more about the music... gonna see if i can catch a In Flames/Sepultura concert, the new sepultura is awesome...

Hail. Now I'm going to listen to Immolation.

nice post =)

Nice interview Jason. Once purely Jesper Stromblad's band, over the years In Flames became the Anders Friden show. Iwers seems to be a businessman, much like Stromblad must be at this point. I didn't find anything in the interview that would make me like Iwers, but I can't fault him for hitching himself to a popular horse, considering he never was involved in the creative process of the band anyway.

i don't like this.... just because a band gets popular it becomes a sellout?? WTF? In Flames are great!!!!!

Hahaha. Good morning.

well, it's true....