Well, to be honest I did not expect much of this evening. Don’t get me wrong, I always loved In Flames, from the beginning till “Clayman”, but with their latest album “Reroute To Remain” they really disappointed me. The album has a few good songs, but in its entire it never touched or pleased me. So it’s needless to say that my expectations of the new album “Soundtrack To Your Escape” were not very high, especially with the rumours of even more nu-metal influences.

So it was without knowing any of the new songs and with a feeling of “let’s go see In Flames for a last time live before all of the old magic disappears” that I drove to Antwerp. And the omen on the road did not predict anything good either! Heavy traffic jams along the way caused me to arrive at the venue only a few minutes before In Flames started their set, missing the two opening bands DevilDriver and Caliban.

DevilDriver is the new band of (ex?) Coal Chamber singer/mastermind Dez Fafara. They play nu-metal, and although I haven’t heard any of their music yet, I believe that it’s of some better quality than the typical mainstream nu-metal shit from the US. Caliban is a German hard-core band and their music is a mix of Ryker’s, Hatebreed and Merauder with nu-metal influences. I saw them opening for Soilwork a few months ago but was not really impressed.

But now back to In Flames. When I arrived at the venue the stage-curtains were closed creating an atmosphere of the unknown. Only a few minutes later it went dark, the intro started and the curtains slowly opened. You could see immediately that In Flames is no little band anymore but a big player in today’s metal scene: they had a nice big stage setup with the band name carved in big metal plates which could be illuminated, creating a very cool effect. After a minute or so the band came on stage and got a very warm welcome from an almost sold out Hof Ter Lo.

They kicked off with “Dead Alone”, for me the first song I heard from the new album, and continued with “Pinball Map”, “System” and “Episode 666”. The crowd went crazy, banging and jumping like mad. The rest of the set was a mixture of mostly new songs and material from “Reroute To Remain” down to “Whoracle”, with only one short reminder of the old days (Behind Space) and unfortunately nothing from “The Jester Race”. After more than 90 minutes the Gothenburg-quintet left the stage, leaving a crowd behind that screamed for more, but unfortunately they did not return for a second encore.

My personal highlights were “Colony” and “Behind Space” but I also have to admit that the new songs were quite ok, and now, after listening to the new album at home I can say that “Soundtrack To Your Escape” is a good album, much better than “Reroute To Remain”, giving me hope for the future of In Flames. I was also pleased with the strong representation (five songs) from the “Whoracle” and “Colony” albums. The thing that bothered me the most, beside the lack of music from “The Jester Race”, was the sometimes annoying and stupid comments and drunken talk between the songs from Anders.

So at the end the one thing I did not expect happened: it turned out to be a good show, I enjoyed it and I will go and see In Flames again in the future when I have the chance. Hopefully they will rearrange their set list a bit by then, giving songs like “Artifacts Of The Black Rain” or “Jotun” a chance to be enjoyed by their old fans as well as the newer ones, because I believe that a lot of them do not know these musical gems from the past!

Here is the set list from the show, but unfortunately we did not have the pyrotechnics in Antwerp. Also many thanks to Tonnie (www.metalfan.nl) for the pictures.