In Flames: Covering Their Tracks

Even as their latest album Reroute To Remain continues to race up the metal charts despite being almost a year old, Sweden's In Flames are gearing up to record yet another masterpiece of crunchy riffs and throat-tearing vocals. Bassist Peter Iwers was somewhat reluctant to give any details to ChartAttack...

ChartAttack: With each album, In Flames seems to be moving away from your dark metal roots while still retaining heavy sound. How do you do it?
Peter Iwers: Well, we're not different people, so we'll still sound like In Flames. Basically we try not to do the same thing over and over. It's never thought-up though. It's very natural, like aging. As we get older, well, the music doesn't get older but it evolves. It's so different because we can't say what it will be like between albums. A lot of things have an impact on what the album will sound like: what we listen to, where our heads are. Stuff like that.

That all makes sense, but as soon as you have one album started, you seem to be headfirst into the next one.
Yeah, but it still takes time to get it done because we're extensive with pre-production. It's better for all of us to be a part of writing, so for this next album we've rented a house and have written some songs together but we aren't recording until September. We do write all the time though. We have 11 new songs for this one but we'll write more. It's only the first phase, so we'll take one out or mix two together at this point.

This is the first album of your career that wasn't produced by Fredrick Nordstrom.
That was the best decision ever. The production is way better. We did everything with Fredrick in the past so it was interesting to use someone else and see their take on it. He helped us grow but this newer sound is much more fulfilling. It's got more of everything to it, so maybe that's what had an impact on it becoming a bit more popular.

What was the benefit of using Daniel Bergstrand?
He was really pushing us where Fredrick just wanted to get it done. We talked about someone else for the next album but it was so great to work with him, we'll go back. It took forever to record but it came out so well. He was there from early morning to late night, there all the time, which isn't the case with our old producer. We knew it was the last time to record with him the last time.

Why use Fredrick for so long then?
He's a good producer! He's not sloppy or anything. He's from the same place as us and it's a great studio. We were used to him, so it just moved along that we recorded there. He was surprised that we chose to go somewhere else but he understood it. He's a good friend and we needed to progress and evolve a little bit.

Explain the Trigger EP. Is that to tide fans over?
We wanted a single to go with the video for "Trigger," but it's boring for people to just buy a song they already have. We did the goofy "C64" song, the new song "Watch Them Feed" and a couple of cover songs even though only one (Genesis' "Land Of Confusion") made it on there. We don't want people to pay lots of money for nothing. That's also why we have some enhanced stuff on there. I haven't seen any of it but it's there! I'll get around to it.

Another infamous In Flames cover? Which one didn't make it?
There's another cover song... that's all I'll say. We might use it one day! It's fun to do something different and In Flame it. You'll see what I mean...