In a stuffy yet luxurious tour bus parked across the street from Irving Plaza in New York City, a tall, heavily tattooed, but soft-spoken drummer sat, awaiting one of the biggest shows of the year.
Once a soccer player dreaming of professional greatness, Daniel Svensson of Swedish metal legends In Flames took a load off in the quiet tour bus before the June 30 New York show.
The amiable, low-key drummer is explosive on stage and a wizard on the kit, but in the hour before the show he is quiet and composed.
With the release of its most recent album, "Reroute to Remain," and the new "Trigger EP," which contains the single "Trigger," music videos, a cover of Genesis's "Land of Confusion," a club remix of "Cloud Connected" and a new song called "Watch Them Feed," In Flames certainly has a lot to bring to the stage.
Unfortunately, not all the feedback has been good.
"Hardcore fans were really bitching about ['Reroute to Remain'], calling it new metal...we were called sellouts," Svensson said. "The thing is, those kids already called us sellouts after the tour we did with Slipknot."
Pleasing the fans isn't always easy, and In Flames seems to be stuck between rock and a much harder place. With its Maiden-esque dueling guitars, pounding double-bass drums and screaming/melodic vocals, In Flames falls into a category that people have many different names for.
"People have to label everything, especially this kind of music. There's a million different labels-Nordic metal, death metal, Viking metal...we prefer just to call it a metal band," Svensson said.
It's the typical musician's quandary for In Flames- keep it extra heavy with no change and please the hardcore fans, or experiment with style change and risk being labeled a sellout.
Despite criticism, the overall response to "Reroute to Remain" and "Trigger EP" has been good, and the band has sold a few more albums, so it is not all for naught.
"We just wanted to do something different," Svensson said with a smirk. "If you repeat yourself it gets boring after a while, and there's no point in continuing. The hardcore fans think 'Jester Race' is the best album - or 'Master of Puppets'-but we don't need to please just those fans-that is more a sellout than trying to experiment more."
The lesson that the veteran drummer tried to expound was that "you have to be honest with yourself. It's not about the money."
And it's not about being mainstream either. In Flames considers itself on the edge of mainstream, Svensson said, but unable to get any bigger because then it would be too mainstream.
"It's still kind of taboo, the music we play; we're not really allowed to take the next step. I just want to play in front of as many people as possible and spread the music to other people," Svensson said.
Fortunately, this time around, In Flames will play to droves of insane fans; the band got to pick its tourmates. In choosing American metal monsters Chimaira and Unearth alongside old friends and Swedish metal counterparts, Soilwork, In Flames guaranteed itself quite a crowd.
"We really liked their albums, and the package was pretty cool together," Svensson said.
In some ways, the lineup was meant to show a sense of cooperation between the bands. Many listeners get the impression that bands in this genre compete mercilessly. In response to this misinterpretation, In Flames and Soilwork released identical videos for "Trigger" and "Rejection Role," respectively. Both videos satirically depict the "rival" band showing up at its counterpart's show and starting a fistfight.
"People think that we compete against each other, so [the videos] were to show them that they were wrong. It's a healthy competition. We push each other's limits a little bit."
In Flames is pushing its limits again, recording a new album now, which should be out sometime next year. Recording begins this month and continues in October. The band is experimenting in the studio, making a more "straightforward metal album," according to Svensson.
Like they did this summer, In Flames prepares to amaze fans once again.
