Alt Press had At The Gates vocalist Tomas Lindberg sit down for a chat and during the course of it asked him whether or not the evolution of their one-time friendly rivals In Flames‘ played a part in where they wanted to take their current sound. In Flames‘ continuing distance from their death metal roots has of course been a polarizing transition to many listeners. Lindberg himself respectfully answered:
“No, I mean, we don’t really let any band invade our thoughts like that. I’ve seen these kind of reviews where some are positive and they mention In Flames as an antithesis of it, like, “Yeah, that’s so good, because it’s not In Flames.” That’s irrelevant. [Laughs.] Listen to the album, and make up your own mind. In Flames are all friends of ours. To me, the new In Flames is not the music I listen to. The new material is not what I’d usually listen to. I will say that I’m amazed by how much energy people put into that discussion and argument about the new In Flames.
Because if you really follow each In Flames album, the change between each one is not really that big. It’s not mind-blowingly different. The steps are small, and it’s taken, like, eight albums to come to this album. If this new album came out after Jester Race, yeah, I would’ve understood if people were… you know. Bands develop, and sometimes they don’t develop the way you want them to. But if they would just play music to please their fans, then they would be sellouts.
I actually believe that In Flames are doing this because they want to do exactly this—not to [get bigger] or anything, because they already have an audience; they don’t have to do that. We haven’t really thought of what In Flames are doing when we were doing this record. The guys, as friends, they’ve been very intrigued by it, like, “How does it sound?” So we talk about that, and they’re interested in what’s going on in the At The Gates camp.”
At The Gates‘ first album since 1995, “At War With Reality“, is now in stores.
