In Flames Move Forward — Unlike Metallica

Melodic death metal — the slightly more accessible offspring of straightforward death metal that's characterized by thick, rumbling rhythms and piercing, detuned guitars offset by vocals that oscillate between guttural bellows, intertwining harmonies and, well, melodies — is beginning to overshadow its precursor in popularity.

Most of that recognition is accredited to Gothenburg, Sweden's In Flames, who are considered pioneers of the sub-genre, and have been using such elements in their music at least since 2000's Clayman album.

As the band continue to evolve with ninth studio effort A Sense Of Purpose, their most celebrated release to date, guitarists Jesper Stromblad and Bjorn Gelotte, vocalist Anders Friden, bassist Peter Iwers and drummer Daniel Svensson see things slightly differently.

A strong divide exists between fans of the traditional death metal sound exemplified on their 1993 album Lunar Strain and 1996's The Jester Race and those who are more appreciative of the melodic tendencies explored thereafter. It continues to cause conflict. Main writer and band founder Stromblad understands both sides of the fight, but is growing weary of struggling to keep the peace.

ChartAttack: Your career trajectory seems constantly on the incline, even after 18 years. I do notice, though, that you're leaning more towards the newer material and less to the older stuff. Why?
Jesper Stromblad: It is surprising. When I look at it, I feel like our career path is... like the opposite of, say, Metallica's. Their fans always want to hear the older songs. They don't care for the new stuff as much, while ours only seem to want to hear the newer stuff. They're not familiar with our early material as much, especially not the first two albums.

I see what you mean. The longer they're around, the less their new music appeals to fans, while you have the opposite — most people don't have a clue about your early music and are only familiar with the latest stuff. Can you appreciate that situation?
I know how those people feel. I started to become disappointed with Metallica around Load. By the time St. Anger came out, though, I gave up on them. The day it came out, I ran down to buy it and put it on immediately. By the third song, I was so upset I threw the case at the wall. I hated it. They were ruined for me.

I know that's how some fans react to us. Still, even if you hate one album, others remain special to you. I dislike the new Metallica, but Master Of Puppets is a classic. I hope fans that might not like some of our albums still think others are worthwhile.

The reactions are that strong?
I read it on message boards all of the time: "You were my favourite band, but you've changed so much, I'll never listen to you again."

I try to focus on the positive, like how well we're doing with shows and selling albums, but those things still get to you. We still get people whining about how our sound has changed from the first two albums. That was a long time.

This lineup has been together for over 10 years now. Any In Flames fan has read about this supposed overnight switch from straight death metal to more melodic. I still feel like it's been a natural progression, though. At the same time, we try to make sure that we pay our respects to older fans. We bring out songs from the albums before Anders joined.

I've seen you do that. It's an interesting reaction from the audience.
Definitely. Almost everyone in the crowd is just standing there staring because they don't know the song, but you can see these pockets of people who are really happy to hear something from the earlier days. At least they're at the show, though, which means they're still fans.

It must be difficult to see everyone go from freaking out to standing there dumbfounded.
It can be, but we still love those songs and we want to play them. It's also great to see those few people really happy to know we're thinking of them and maybe those kids who don't know the songs will be interested in finding out what the hell we just played. If there was complete silence during those songs, we'd be in trouble.

Are you ever compelled to just play a set from the earlier days?
It's an interesting idea, but I've never thought of it. I don't know if we could eliminate some of our favourite songs from the past 10 years, too. But we can't really put that many of those [older] songs into the set. With this many albums and songs in our career, it's really tough to make up a set list. Fans want to hear certain songs and inside the band, everyone's fighting over what they want to play. I guess you can't please everybody... not even your own band sometimes.