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Rating: The epicness often can be found immediately in a Melodic Death Metal album, well, in "The Jester Race" by In Flames, the epicness is present in every part! Goosebumps, exciting, "The Jester Race" is probably one of the best albums of the genre, with an enviable production and unmatched skills of the band's members. Upon listening to the title-track, you'll fall in love with this album, just as I did. The epicness is reached with all the tracks, but even more so with the title-track, Lord Hypnos, and Artifacts of the Black Rain. However, in some songs, there is also a certain melancholic side, and songs like Dead Eternity, Dead God in Me, Moonshield, and Graveland are examples of this. The instrumentals The Jester Dance and Wayfaerer are also beautiful. The only particular that might seem like a thorn in the side is the voice of the singer Anders Fridén, which, in reality, I find suitable for this style, that is, a hoarse growl, effective and always punctual, and I found a certain monotony that unites some tracks, which, however, is very enjoyable and not tiring. Finally, I would classify this "The Jester Race" among the absolute masterpieces of Death Metal, because I found it very intense and exciting, something that only a few bands of this genre know or knew how to do, (Death, Opeth, Dissection, just to name a few...) P.S.: This is my first review. I hope you liked it :)
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Moonshield (05:03)
Tired of dull ages, I walk the same ground,
collecting the tragedies still
Hollow ambitions in a hollow mind
carried my cross to the hill
And how I lust for the dance and the fire
taste of the nectarine sunset to drink
spill me the wind and the fire
to steal of the colors-I'm the moonshield
Shattered hope became my guide
and grief and pain my friends
a brother pact in blood-ink penned
declared my silent end
Naked and dying under worlds of silent stone
reaching for the moonshield that once upon us shone
And how I lust for the dance and the fire
taste of the nectarine sunset to drink
spill me the wind and the fire
to steal of the colors-I'm the moonshield
04 Graveland (02:48)
Mankind - proud conqueror and king
swings its flag of primal glory to the winds
Titans of the power-myth that failed
Neanderthal hunger for the flesh of war so frail
So weak, so hollow-minded
the primat flock responds
the jester race submits
For each day of war is a failure for man,
enslaved in her mordial genes
Illusions bleed from their fetid cores,
bent to their rotten extremes
We, the plague of Terra Firma,
nature's grand and last mistake
plant the poisoned seed of cancer,
set the severed fruits awake
Burning like frozen relics
in god's archaic graveland
Burn the visionaire
Kill the ideaologies
Mankind must die
The doves and the angels return to their graves
with flames on their pestilent wings
while mushroom-clouds haunt their virginwhite skies
to rape their utopian dreams
For each day of war is a failure for man,
enslaved in her mordial genes
Illusions bleed from their fetid cores,
bent to their rotten extremes
Living the last days of evolution's end
from the nest of humanity, the graveland vultures rend
05 Lord Hypnos (04:03)
I lie in your soother arms, lord Hypnos
your garmet alive with your song
I lie in your soother arms, lord Hypnos
Steep the spiral to your far abode,
in the wake of slumber, on visions I rode
and fell like history through the chasm of ages
into the charged, forbidden zones
How I have searched
through a million worlds and faces
yet unaware, I have not found
my own true face, traceless and profound
So, find me in these grandiose halls
where long ago summers eternally fall
and tune the strings of truthful longing
to the frozen music of gods
Hypnagonia's lucid horizons
play with the yearning I've quelled
as I strike towrads the Pantheon
and what therein is held
08 December Flower (04:11)
Towards the rich archaic heavens
Towards the lack diorama
You are the artist and the texture
That plays with mantle of the earth
When the bleakest of powders
Lie rooted to the starched stones
And the roots that feed the peaking trees
embrace the sleeping stones
Archaic pearls of sleep and death
The voice of December losing its breath
As the floweryard of white and grey is haunted, is haunted
White as the down of flaking snow
The heroic emblems of life
Green is the colour of my death
As in winter-guise I swoop towards the ground
Green is the landscape of my sorrowfilled passing
Archaic pearls of sleep and death
The voice of December losing its breath
As the floweryard of white and grey is haunted, is haunted
White as the down of flaking snow
The heroic emblems of life
We Are In Flames
Towards the dead archaic heavens
We Are The Mantle and The Texture
The alters, the mantle of the earth
Archaic pearls of sleep and death
The voice of December losing its breath
As the floweryard of white and grey is haunted, is haunted
White as the down of flaking snow
The heroic emblems of life
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Other reviews
By wwwhatemoornet
Finally, we can listen to the real vocal abilities of Fridén, literally blossomed like a little country flower after the questionable performance on Dark Tranquillity’s Skydancer.
An album and a band that use easily assimilated melody as their best weapon, not exaggerating in doses but balancing it wisely to give everything a longevity that distances any In Flames CD from the ephemeral.
By Angeldust82
From the very beginning, we realize we are dealing with a band in dazzling form, capable of caressing us and suddenly lashing out with a Melodic Death Metal of devastating impact.
Fredrick Johansson...offers us something transcendental, unique, astonishing, and from his fingers pours a clear cascade in the form of ascending and descending scales. 40 seconds to replay infinitely.
