Meet Your Maker
PRE-HISTORY
I was not a metalhead growing up. After industrial lost the lustre it held through my early teenage years, punk and hardcore ruled the day. A visit to a friend at UMass Dartmouth in 1999 was to realign my world. Said friend had a maniacal long-haired roommate named Warren who saw my Converge shirt and asked if I liked metal. I probably wrinkled my nose. Thankfully, he was persistent.
“Check out In Flames. They’re like hardcore with sick dual guitars.”
I was skeptical, but curiosity won out: I picked up a copy of Colony. It wasn’t love at first listen, but the intricacy of the guitars was something I hadn’t heard before. In particular, the middle section of “Zombie Inc.” triggered something in the back of my mind. I could see the potential.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrdGYVir6DU&feature=youtu.be” target=
In Flames – “Zombie Inc”
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There was something impossibly goofy about In Flames’ bizarre command of English — “Gather the faithful and propose a toast!” — but they understood hooks, and fuck: those dual guitars actually were pretty sick. I picked up Clayman when it came out, then worked back to Whoracle and The Jester Race. By the time Reroute to Remain took them to pseudo-stardom, I was up to my ears in metal.
DISMISS THE CYNICS
In all their awkward glory, In Flames introduced me to another world. It was Anders Fridén’s death growls that opened my ears to brutal death and other extreme sounds. Naturally, as I dug deeper, my earlier influences fell away as death, doom, and black metal supplanted all else. Hardcore and metalcore lacked the majesty I’d later trace back to Maiden and Priest. My In Flames CDs found their way to back of the shelf, a remnant of an earlier, vaguely embarrassing point in my listening history. As gateway bands go, I could have done worse, but the deluge of shitty hardcore bands cribbing Swedeath licks soured my ears on that sound for years.
When I heard that In Flames were playing the Wiltern in Los Angeles with Trivium and Veil of Maya, my interest level was less than zero. A band past its prime, trudging through the album/tour cycle with mall-metal and deathcore opening acts, at a fairly expensive venue? Sounds as thrilling as dental surgery. But for whatever reason — some sick sense of nostalgia, probably — I dug out my copy of The Jester Race and gave it a spin. Then Colony.
“Gather the faithful and propose a toast!”
Hmm. Distant echoes of fond memories came trickling back. I re-downloaded Reroute to Remain. Still sounded huge, stupid, and catchy as hell — goddamn. A pulse of curiosity started to beat at the base of my skull. What would it be like to see these guys after all these years, with the best intentions and (as close as I can possibly come to) an open mind? Fuck it, why not?
Therefore, it is with a sliver of hope and far more fear that I see them live for the first time, tonight. I haven’t heard them since Come Clarity (2006) — which was a whisker away from jock jams with that horrible “Scream” song — but the early material is now fresh in my mind.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBsJB7zZEPU&feature=youtu.be” target=
In Flames – “Scream”
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I’m about to close the circuit, and I’m not sure what to expect (besides disappointment, right?). To prepare myself, I download their latest album, Sounds of a Playground Fading (2011), the title of which reminds me of the first Korn album in the worst way. It is exactly as bad as I imagined. They seem as confused as I do about their fusion of melodeath and alternate dimension radio-detritus. But I hold out hope for tonight. I hope they play some old shit.
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In Flames at the Wiltern – “Cloud Connected”
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In Flames at the Wiltern – “All For Me”
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AFTERMATH
Well, that was odd.
Every fear came true: bad song selection, bad crowd, horrendous opening acts. But finally seeing them live was satisfying, not only in the sense that I’ll never need to see them again (though I won’t, and that’s fine with me).
Discomfort was my immediate reaction upon arriving at the Wiltern, a large venue seemingly filled with Avenged Sevenfold and Slipknot t-shirts. I missed the openers (Kyng?), but caught the latter half of Veil of Maya, who played a continuous brown note of bass drops and breakdowns to the applause of absolutely no one. Trivium were next, all smiles and feigned excitement, channeling the passion of a YouTube instructional video into some miserable pseudo-metal. The crowd — ever fickle — ate it up.
Despite Trivium’s actual music, the crowd was sufficiently jazzed by the time In Flames would appear. They’re a silly-looking band: Anders looked like a 19-year-old hipster, decked out in trucker hat, flannel shirt, and skinny jeans, while the rest of the band — all of them — wore traditional ankle-length metal-dude cargo shorts. The energy was palpable and infectious as the band launched into the first three tracks from… their latest album. Apparently this crowd had paid to see just that. Heads bobbed, girls danced, jocks high-fived. Even disliking the newer songs wasn’t enough to keep my wall of cynicism intact, and I found myself awkwardly grooving along.
To their credit, In Flames have always been a restless band, following their muse through numerous stylistic shifts, willing to alienate one audience in exchange for another. What that meant as a fan, though, was that if you came for old material, you were shit out of luck. Of the 16-song setlist, they played “The Hive” off Whoracle and “Swim” off Clayman, with the rest from Reroute onwards, including six songs from the new album. Again, to their credit, the new stuff worked better live than on record. Rather than relying on guitar flash, the later material is all forced groove induction, by way of a ridiculously loud, mechanical sounding kick drum. Between the epileptic-baiting insanity of the lightshow and that kick drum, bodies were forced to contort to the beat like galley slaves. In a sense, the songs felt more like dance music than metal, which wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but not what I wanted out of a show. These songs felt like the result of extensive live testing over the years — rhythm replacing guitar in terms of importance — honing in on what makes the kids move, and that was about all they gave you.
Standing there, drink in hand, watching the crowd soak up this bastard amalgamation of big-beat metal, my mind drifted back to my beginning. The years since my first exposure to Colony have seen the band moving constantly in one direction, while my listening tastes have followed, essentially, the opposite course. At this point, I’m confronting an unbridgeable gap; it felt like attending the funeral of someone you haven’t seen in 15 years. The corpse on display is entirely different from the person you remember, despite the traces of familiar features.
Of course the encounter was disappointing. It couldn’t be any other way. But there is a certain satisfaction in confronting the past and laying it all to rest. I may be imbuing a pointless encounter with unnecessary sentiment, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel good to meet your maker, if only to mutter ‘fuck you’ and be on your way.
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What band got you into metal? How did you feel when you finally saw them live?
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