In Flames - Breaking The Mold Page 3
By Martin Popoff

"Like I said, it was the first tour. And because of that we didn't have any expectations, or pretty low expectations. And we were pretty amazed and pretty surprised and now we are eager to get back (ed. which the band will be doing, starting next month). The tour we did there, it is actually a really big part of why we made the album. If you can get this sort of energy out of playing in a foreign country, then you should do it again I think. All sorts of people came up to us afterwards saying that they didn't think this kind of music existed and they were wondering where they could get it. So overall it was very positive and it made us work that much harder on the album."

And where did you have some of the biggest crowds? "I think it was in Canada, Montreal. It was excellent! Sold out a month in advance or something. It was about 700 people, but people were hanging from the ceiling and stuff. It was amazing. People almost thrashed the stage. But the whole tour was great. There was no problem there. Everybody was really friendly. We had very low expectations. We heard that in the U.S. there weren't going to be too many people at the shows and the people who were there were going to be half interested, a bit rough, a bit redneck. But this never happened. We had an excellent crowd everywhere and they enjoyed themselves so that felt really good."

This time back the band should have no problem pulling an extra half-again army of metalheads, judging by the effusive press pouring in for Clay Man. Besides the musical progressions on the album, the band lyrically have moved on as well, Anders having formed a loose concept for the literary side of things.

In Flames - Breaking The Mold Page 4