One Song-Each Album: In Flames

As with any band that has so many great songs and great albums, it’s sometimes hard top pick a favorite album. What’s even harder is picking just one song from an album as your favorite. In this new series I’m going to go through my collection of bands that I have just about every album from and pick just one song from each album as if I wanted to make my own “Best Of”, but can only choose one song from each album. First up is In Flames.

In Flames I have only come to really know in the past year and only recently completed collection of their albums. The Swedish band caught my ear with A Sense Of Purpose which I thought was great…until I heard the rest of their albums.

Lunar Strain: A tough album to pick one song from because there is a lot of Diversity here. Everlost Part 2 with Jennica Johansson doing guest vocals, which are beautiful, is a great song as is Harglaten, with that eastern European feel to it. I’m not a big Dark Tranquility fan so the vocals on Lunar Strain fall short for me. With that said, I have to pick Dreamscape.

The Jester Race: Perhaps the album with the most melody, Jester race has a lot of clean guitars on it that compliment the distorted riffs and rhythm. My pick from The Jester Race is Artifacts Of Black Rain. I love the progression of this song.

Whoracle: It seems that Whoracle has a bit less melody in it and goes for a heavy, faster approach than the first two albums. I can’t say that I really like this album and perhaps it’s because of the lack of melody that I liked so much in Jester Race. If they continued that on every album it would eventually become a bit stale I suppose. My favorite from Whoracle is Gyroscope.

Colony: Although this is perhaps my favorite In Flames album, picking from colony was actually easy even though there are a lot of quality songs on the album. I would love to say that Pallar Anders Visa is my favorite, but the title track, Colony, is easily my favorite song.

Clayman: Clayman has a lot of that whispering/moaning talking on it that kind of grows a little old, but it’s still a heavy album, but I wouldn’t call it their best. The song the grabs me the most is Swim. It easily seems like the heaviest song on the album and the vocals sound great on it.

Reroute To Remain: I have to agree with most people when they say this was the start of a change in In Flames. You can clearly hear the more friendly, mainstream sound in the music right from the title track. Whenever I listen to each album in order, Reroute always throws me off a bit. Honestly, if I could avoid this album in this mix I would. Since I’m including a song from every full length, I have to pick Egonomic only because it’s the heaviest song all the way through and doesn’t have the metalcorish breakdowns and Kornish singing anywhere in it.

Soundtrack To Your Escape: Soundtrack also seems to stick to that mainstream sound. In fact it seems like there is a lot of riff recycling going on on a lot of these In Flames albums. The more I listen, the more I hear it. The stand out track on this album to me is F(r)iend. It just follows the earlier In Flames format of heavier songs, whereas every other song on the album seems to follow the format started on Reroute.

Come Clarity: Come Clarity is a better album than Soundtrack and Reroute. Though it still has a lot of the mainstream feel to it and not so much of that early Gothenberg sound. I’m not authority on the Gothenberg metal by any means, so don’t get me wrong. Come Clarity just has a certain catchy-ness to it that’s hard to ignore. Simply put, Versus Terminus is my favorite on this album.

A Sense Of Purpose: I praised this album when I first heard it, but I find it very forgettable at times. Sure I can remember Alias and The Mirror’s Truth because they are singles and have videos but the track that still sticks in my mind is Disconnected. The solo in Sleepless Again reminds me of a power ballad solo from the early 90’s. Perhaps I don’t give this album enough listening time.

So there you have it. 9 albums and 9 songs.

1. Lunar Strain: Dreamscape
2. Jester Race: Artifacts Of Black Rain
3. Whoracle: Gyroscope
4. Colony: Colony
5. Clayman: Swim
6. Reroute To Remain: Egonomic
7. Soundtrack To Your Escape: F(r)iend
8. Come Clarity: Versus Terminus
9. A Sense Of Purpose: Disconnected

If I were to put together a play-list it would be much more than 9 songs. Your turn, 1 song from each album. If you don’t have an album pick an extra song from an album you do have, but do not exceed 9 songs.

Next Up: Opeth. This one is going to be extremely difficult for me.

(Images: Amazon.com