In Flames - Breaking The Mold Page 2
By Martin Popoff

"Yes, I guess you can say we co-produced it," offers drummer-turned-guitarist Bjorn Gelotte, flown to New York for press duties, another signal that In Flames are on fire. "But the reason we used Fredrik is that we've always used him. We were thinking of using someone else but it wouldn't feel right because we know each other so well. He knows what direction we are heading with the music. And it was easier for us to tell him to calm down if he had a lot of ideas than we would with another producer. It's very important for us to be in control of our music, not letting others tell us what to do or give us pressure. We don't work well under those circumstances."

So familiarity with Fredrik took pressure off the band, as did the fact that Colony and Clay Man are the first two In Flames albums with the same line-up. "Yes, that never occurred before," confirms Gelotte. "I think that makes a big difference with the sound, because we grew together with all the touring that we did. We toured Europe with Children Of Bodom, Arch Enemy and Dark Tranquillity, and then we toured the U.S. together with Moonspell. That was our first tour of the U.S. and it felt really fresh. So many people didn't even know this kind of music existed. And we took the energy and inspiration from all these things, and put it together with our new solid family vibe. We recorded stuff and worked on the songs for about a month and got an idea of how the album was going to sound. And then we just simply recorded it. Everybody had input on it and it was very relaxed. We used the energy and the momentum we had from all that touring."

This was an interesting point Gelotte came back to further in the interview. It seems that the band prepared themselves for the North American jaunt by ruthlessly lowering their expectations. And once things went better than planned, the experience actually catapulted the band into Clay Man. Pretty cool how a couple or few hundred insane In Flamiacs per night can actually cause a record. And hard to believe. But that's what happened.

In Flames - Breaking The Mold Page 3