In Flames Challenge - Sounds of a Playground Fading

2011's Sounds of a Playground Fading


First - the title is the worst. I hope it's a "lost in translation" thing.

Second, I don't know how much real review I have for this album. But first, it's an official video party:

Sounds of Playground Fading


Where Dead Ships Dwell - go to around 2 minutes - killer solo. That's one of two cogent memories I have about this record.

Deliver Us


That said - these are a pretty accurate representation of the record. It's all fine, I guess. Most songs have cool parts, but overall feel nu-metallish. The vocals are all pretty terrible.

So I remember three things from this record:

Where Dead Ships Dwell is an  un-stellar song with a stellar solo, by late-period In Flames standards.

The Attic is a terrible song. Hated it. I didn't like Ropes, but Anders sings without any additional effects, which is ballsy and not awful on Ropes.

This album was powerfully mediocre. It failed to hold my attention. My mind kept wandering while I was listening and I zoned out for vast swaths of the record. You have to understand - I listen to these in the car on the way to and from work. It's the only time I can listen to music, so it's me and my radio and sitting still in rush out traffic.

So, while sitting still, with nothing to focus on but this music and the inner workings of my mind.
Two instances come to mind.

First, I found myself actually humming a Dimension Zero song, because Jesper Stromblad posted lyrics to the song on Facebook that day, filling me with hopes for a new Dimension Zero album. It was this song (so good)

Later, I found myself thing about Archer. I think here's how I ended up there:
I went from Ander's vocals
to singing vs screaming
to coughing
to coughing blood as a death metal thing
to my death metal band (Servant Girl Annihilator)
to that band's unrealized drunk cover-album idea called Monsters of Rot
to thinking about other title puns like something on Now That's What I Call Music (no joke - How Splats Blood I Scrawl Music)
to sex puns (Now That's What I Call Blown Dick?)
to sex
to the part in Archer where it's a flashback of the blonde guy (Barry?) who was kidnapped with Lana and he deflected the laser with a mirror and he's like "Sorry I'm inside you right now" because they were tied up together naked
to Archer

Not attention grabbing music.

So unattention-grabbing, in fact, that when I grabbed the full album video from Youtube, the advertisement was a full length official video for a whole other band. Not a great band either.



Anyway, long story short - furiously forgettable record. Decent riffs, sometimes, but not great. Two goats. Also, maybe this takes the cake for most videos in a post.