YMMV / In Flames

• Awesome Art:
  • Say what you will about A Sense of Purpose, Sounds of a Playground Fading and Foregone, but the illustrations for the three albums look splendid.
  • This goes double regarding the artwork for The Jester Race and Whoracle.
• Awesome Music:
  • The Jester Race is considered a masterpiece and landmark in the Melodic Death Metal genre
  • Heck, their entire 90s discography (from Lunar Strain to Colony) is nothing but this.
• Broken Base:
  • When they changed their sound with their 2002 release Reroute to Remain, many longtime fans who had been following the band since they first emerged reacted negatively to their change in style, citing it as 'not being heavy enough', and describing Anders' clean singing as pussy. However, some fans loved the new sound, at times even more than the old. This conflict has led to many internet wars, particularly on heavy metal websites and YouTube videos.
  • While RtR is the album that solidified it, it can be argued the band had been drifting towards this stylistic change already since 1999's Colony. That was the first In Flames album to feature clean singing (until then, their music consisted strictly of growling and some occasional mumbling), while the songs were noticeably less abrasive and more refined than on the prior three albums. Clayman was an even further departure from the band's roots, with Anders' growls becoming more scream-y alongside higher in tone and the music putting greater emphasis on catchiness. Reroute to Remain was simply the icing on the cake.
  • Even the fans who defended the band's post-Reroute work have reacted to the post-Jesper albums — wherein the band pretty much ditched every trace of melodeath — rather coolly.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: While this doesn't necessarily reflect badly on the album itself, Lunar Strain is this for the band. During the production of this album In Flames was mostly an experimental side-project by members of Dark Tranquillity, and Mikael Stanne performed the vocals instead of Anders Fridén. The two would later switch positions, with Anders performing permanently as the vocalist for In Flames starting in '95 and Mikael Stanne performing the vocals for Dark Tranquillity. Consequently, Lunar Strain sounds much different from other albums in the band's discography, although the emphasis on melodic content and folk influences is readily apparent.
• Epic Riff:
  • "Stand Ablaze", "Moonshield", "December Flower", "Jotun", "The Hive", "Scorn", "Cloud Connected", "Trigger", "Come Clarity", "Take This Life", "Scream", "Deliver Us"...so many examples....
  • "Behind Space". For fans of the old In Flames, and Lunar Strain in particular, this is THE Epic Riff from them.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With Dark Tranquillity and At the Gates, for whatever reason. Ultimately unfounded, however, as the members of each of the "Big Three" Swedish melodeath bands are all friends, have toured together, and have helped each other from time to time.
  • Fans also have a notable rivalry with the band's side project The Halo Effect, due to it being comprised of former In Flames members who have continued to play in the style of "classic" melodeath. This is in spite of Anders Friden stating that there's no such rivalry between the bands' respective members (he's always been friends with all past members of In Flames), and guitarist Niclas Engelin (who joined before Reroute to Remain) remaining in the official In Flames lineup.
• Fanon Discontinuity: As the band is considered one of the Big 4 of Melodic Death Metal, many metalheads will ignore anything that comes after Clayman ^note Or, if one could be so generous, anything after Reroute to Remain.
• Once Original, Now Overdone: Younger fans of Melodic Death Metal and metalcore have little to no idea of what made In Flames' music so special, and those who have not heard their pre-Reroute to Remain albums may as well easily mistake them for any early-2000s metalcore band.
• Signature Song: "Behind Space," "Moonshield", "Only for the Weak," "Take This Life", "Deliver Us".
• Song Association: "Deliver Us" is gaining the title of signature song probably because it was featured in Saints Row IV.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Parts of "Here Until Forever" sound eerily close to Bring Me the Horizon's "Drown", particularly the chorus.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Most of the band's recent albums have been met with this as a result of their shift away from the melodic death metal to alternative metal. This in turn has led to some fans moving over to rival acts such as At the Gates or The Haunted.
• Wangst: The lyrics on their material from Reroute to Remain onward (and to a much lesser extent, Clayman) frequently stray into this.
• Win Back the Crowd: I, the Mask showed signs of doing this, reintroducing more melodeath elements in a way that invites comparison to Soilwork in particular, and being more well-received than the bulk of their post-RtR material ^note Come Clarity aside. Only time will tell whether it succeeds in doing so, and whether the band would continue pursuing the fusion of old and new sounds in future releases.

---