(Rated this album with 4 out of 10) Reviewed by
janitor-x
from Colorado Springs, Colorado United States
I love listening to Unearth and Atreyu so I decided to pick-up some In Flames because they were the big influence on those bands and other bands I like. On "Black Ash Inheritance" and the other CDs I listened to, In Flames sound an awful lot like Iron Maiden only a little faster with death metal style vocals. The guitar sound is almost exactly like Iron Maiden, who I never liked. I think that Iron Maiden is basically glam metal from the '80's and In Flames are helping to bring that dead sound back. I thought there would be some Unearth/Meshuggah style chunky, crunch sounds on "Black Ash Inheritance", but there was none. The futuristic, sci-fi cover looked really cheesy, but I bought it anyway. The music inside is pretty cheesy too. The Gothenburg sound is pretty much all the same; a Judas Priest/ Iron Maiden guitar sound with harsher vocals. I tried out Soilwork, the Haunted, and At The Gates and they were the same as In Flames. I think European music must be about ten years behind American music. Bands like Unearth and Atre use little bits of Iron Maiden style guitar surrounded by brutal metalcore which makes more digestable. But In Flames was a big influence on the majority of metalcore bands so I do respect them for that.
