Revisiting: In Flames' Reroute to Remain

 

Reroute to Remain by In Flames

Release Year: 2002

Last Time I Listened to It: I occasionally revisit my favorite songs but I haven't listened to the full record from start to finish in at least three years, since I was working writing digital content for a company that owned a bunch of radio stations. My God... Has it been that long?

My introduction to In Flames was through a song included on an MTV Headbangers Ball compilation. That song, Cloud Connected, blew me away.  It was massive and heavy, yet soaring and triumphant at the same time. It was magnificent.

So I immediately went to seek out the album Cloud Connected came from. That album, Reroute to Remain was my introduction to Swedish melodic death metal. And I loved it. I wanted more. I bought every In Flames album I could find. I got into other Swedish meldodeath bands, like Arch Enemy and Soilwork. Reroute to Remain was the start of something big for me.

Reroute opens with a pretty good punch in the face. The title track is a big, brawny jam, full of roaring guitars and cymbal work that comes at you like sheets of rain. System follows, picking up the pace a few beats per minute.  Drifter is even faster, galloping along like the Headless Horseman on a stormy autumn night. Trigger is another banger and the perfect set-up for Cloud Connected. And Cloud Connected? Well, it's still as potent and powerful as the first time I heard it.

Reroute isn't all crushing riffs, drums and a guitar sound that's eerily reminiscent of an angry bus engine. The album takes times to slow down on Dawn of a New Day. Singer Ander Friden drops the scary screams to croon about moving on and leaving the past in the past. It's quite a contrast with the rest of the record but it adds needed texture and a contemplative feel to the album.

The back half of the albums has some more killer moments, like the stop-start riffs of Dark Signs and the harmonized fiddles in Metaphor. It's around this time you realize the star of this record has been drummer Daniel Svensson, whose propulsive, heavy playing provides not only a foundation for everything else the band is doing, but also gives the albums its character with driving kick drums and a firestorm of cymbals. Guitarists Jesper Stromblad and Bjorn Gellote throw down riff after riff and some killer harmonized guitar melodies. Friden is frantic and gives the record its soul. But it's Svensson who really owns Reroute.

The Verdict: This record still works pretty well for me. If there's a major flaw with Reroute, it's that it's too long. And while the front half of is excellent, the back half drags. It's honestly hard for me to tell a lot of those tracks apart from one another unless they really do something different, Metaphor. 

That said, the good stuff on Reroute is fantastic. If they'd taken the 10 or 11 best tunes and trimmed some of the less-interesting stuff, this album would've been a modern classic. As I've gotten more and more into In Flames, I've developed more love for their earlier, more death metal-y output. But Reroute to Remain is the sound of a band searching for a new sound and that makes this album exciting in a way some of their other stuff isn't.

Best Songs: Reroute to Remain, System, Cloud Connected, Dawn of a New Day