What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Perhaps one of the big clichés, but unusually evident when it comes to In Flames and their new album ’Siren Charms’.
To lose one of the musical engines of a band usually means a ticket to the graveyard of bands for an eternal rest among abandoned careers and reasonably forgotten last albums. Sure, history has proven the opposite once or twice – but one could question if anyone has risen from the ashes with such strength and power as In Flames? When guitarist Jesper Strömblad left the band following 2008’s A Sense of Purpose, the harbingers of doom were very vocal on the imminent collapse of the Gothenburg band.
That never happened. In what must be described as a pure backlash, the band delivered its strongest album to date – Sounds of a Playground Fading – which was both awarded for gold-level sales and topped charts in both Sweden and Germany. Siren Charms, the first album with Niclas Engelin as permanent guitarist in the band, cements the greatness hinted at with the previous album; this is a band taking it’s game several steps forward, leaving both imitators and nay-sayers far behind.
