In Flames - Clayman Review

So In Flames have just come off of four massive groundbreaking albums. Lunar Strain essentially created the genre known as Melodic Death Metal. The Jester Race created massive guitar soniscapes and uped the ante on the first album. With Whoracle they created a "perfect" concept album about earths past, present, and future. Finally with Colony they modernized their sound and made themselves more accesible to less hardcore fans. Now we come the the fork in the road known as Clayman. In Flames 5th studio album was released in 2000 and with the dawning of a new decade In Flames were starting to realize that they could become popular amongst mainstream metal crowd's. If Colony was that realization then Clayman was definantly them making a bid for mainstream sucsess. This turns out to be a good thing as In Flames craft one of their most acsessible albums without alienating hardcore fans (a mistake they would make in the future). The album is really good and has some of In Flames best, most hard hitting songs while still making itself... easier to listen to for mainstream audiences. The album is not perfect by any means nor does it touch their earlier albums in quality but there are good songs here. Some In Flames fans even consider it their favourite album and Im sorry if im offending you guys but thats not my intent (trust me the next couple albums with get worse). The songwriting is mostly solid and like their other albums the guitar harmonies are still extremly prevelent. But the guitar sound is more modern and the riffs seem more bland. As for the lyrics they are mostly solid but some songs (ahem, Pinball Map) arent as thought out or as meaningfull as earlier In Flames releases. Still every track is enjoyable and the album is very solid. As for the production, its amazing! This is the early 2000s were talking about (my favourite time for music production) but still this produciton is really good. Every guitar note rings through yet doesnt sound muffled or bland as it would on later releases. The drums click and boom at the prefect times and Bass is mixed extremly well. Every instrument shines through exactly when it needs to. Overall this is a very good album. If you like modern In Flames, Pick this up, and If you like the classic In Flames, you should pick this up as well. A few flaws but still very very solid. 9/10