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Rating:
The first album with Anders Fridèn for the Swedes In Flames, the fathers - along with Dark Tranquillity - of Swedish death metal.
If Dark Tranquillity are heavily influenced by typically classic and "progressive" sounds, In Flames play the role of the silly brother.
Few refinements and simple, straightforward riffs with clear (iron) maiden inspiration are the strengths of the five Swedes, who over the years have managed to establish themselves as one of the best bands on the extreme scene.
Finally, we can listen to the real vocal abilities of Fridèn, 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, which, as we know, relegates the CD to the shelf after just two weeks; beautiful yes, but short-lived.
Being already the second album for the Swedes, the band is functioning fully, especially in terms of songwriting, in the hands of the Stromblad-Gelotte pair, (who then played the drums), and so we can enjoy the almost folk melodies of Moonshield or the decidedly more melodic-death-oriented ones of Artifacts Of The Black Rain. All accompanied by the ethereal lyrics written with four hands by Niklas Sundin of Dark Tranquillity and Anders Fridèn (the two are great friends).
After the heaviest song of this entire Jester Race, namely Graveland, and the classic Lord Hypnos, the beginning of Dead Eternity offers us a riff that, although dated 1996, in the years to come we will hear many (too many) times on many (too many) CDs.
It continues more or less on the same coordinates for the entire duration of the platter (In Flames have certainly not accustomed us to great changes in style apart from the last release), never resulting in boredom but with a feeling of pleasant satisfaction, something we will anticipate on a larger scale in the subsequent Whoracle.
A decent appetizer... burp!
Tracklist Lyrics Samples 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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By Wallego
The epicness is present in every part!
I would classify this The Jester Race among the absolute masterpieces of Death Metal.
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.
