Band:	In Flames
Album:	Come Clarity
Style:	Alternative metal, Gothenburg metal
Release date:	February 03, 2006
A review by:	Herzebeth

Disc I [CD]
01. Take This Life
02. Leeches
03. Reflect The Storm
04. Dead End [feat. Lisa Miskovsky]
05. Scream
06. Come Clarity
07. Vacuum
08. Pacing Death's Trail
09. Crawl Through Knives
10. Versus Terminus
11. Our Infinite Struggle
12. Vanishing Light
13. Your Bedtime Story Is Scaring Everyone

Disc II [DVD - Live In Studio]
01. Take This Life
02. Leeches
03. Reflect The Storm
04. Dead End
05. Scream
06. Come Clarity
07. Vacuum
08. Pacing Death's Trail
09. Crawl Through Knives
10. Versus Terminus
11. Our Infinite Struggle
12. Vanishing Light
13. Your Bedtime Story Is Scaring Everyone

I don't know what happened to this band in particular, they never were that good neither though, but they used to be decent that's for sure (for example their album "Whoracle", which I sold for regrettable reasons), and now they became almost Metalcore. And before you all "In Flames" fanatics start spitting in my face let me explain a little more; Metalcore is a form of Melodic Death Metal which was created for Hardcore fans that wanted their genre to be more aggressive, so more o less is what In Flames stands for now, just with some complex guitar solos.

This time the music is just naïve and in one word "trendy", even the vocal work is annoying and weird, the clean vocalizations (for example in the choruses of "Reflect The Storm" and generally in the whole album) sound like an Emo kid singing the song he loves the most while watching the video on MTV. As far as the music goes, everything is a fuzzy riff with heavy harmonics and awful distortions also the drumming enters with simplistic and almost dull patterns, etc.; in the end the overall structure of each song is a catchy intro, ascending fillings in the middle then the chorus and a boring finale, nothing more nothing less.

A high point is "Dead End", I can't say that I know the name of that female vocalist, but she has a really familiar and beautiful voice, this feature at least made me open my eyes again and say "uh, that was interesting"; too bad the male vocals had to drown the beauty of this melodious feeling. Then everything gets back to normal beats, cheesy scales and one of the worst string jokes I've ever heard in an introduction (Come Clarity) which, by the way, was "dialogue with the stars" gone bad, so I guess when you're out of fresh ideas you just repeat what you or what others did correctly in the past; and I won't even say nothing about that Jonathan Davis Rip-Off from the same track, just hear it yourself; I swear I almost thought it was Jonathan doing guest vocals.

The album goes by and some riffs are decent some beats are horrid and the vocal work keeps that unpleasant Metalcore/Emo tone (I can't even explain how awful that voice is). What went wrong? Believe me I don't know, but it's such a disappointment because this is the first "2006" album I hear, and it was blatant immatureness.

Best Moments: unfortunately this album has no good moments; the female vocal work is decent at least.