Style: Melodic death metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: A primitive look into a promising bands future
Thoughts: The early to mid 90's were a treasure trove of creativity in metal. A lot of artists simply asked a question of "what if we combined x with y?" The end results could be fascinating. You get Atheist asking the question with death metal and jazz and getting Unquestionable Presence. You have Phlebotomized asking it with classical and death metal and getting Immense, Intense, Suspense. And then you have In Flames that asked what would happen if Iron Maiden made death metal?
Lunar Strain is their first attempt at that question... and it is unlike any other album in their discography. Supposedly written in three days by Jesper, Lunar Strain starts off with one of In Flames most iconic songs: Behind Space.
Behind Space is the perfect opener, it shows us exactly what the band is about. Starting off with an instantly recognizable melody the vocalist (Mikael Stanne from Dark Tranquillity) shout out a command to call him by his astral name. The song continues through various melodies and tempos until we get to the end, and this is where Lunar Strain is different from every other In Flames release.
At the end of the Behind Space is a folk guitar interlude. It only last for a few minutes but it's fascinating that the band was experimenting with folk elements in their debut. This is seen again at the start of Starforsaken with violins, and even a third time on Hårgalåten. This is not something the band would ever explore again, and listening to Lunar Strain feels like were looking into a time capsule from 1994.
Lunar Strain is rough. There are a ton of ideas in here, but not all of them are good. That said this album set the foundation for what would be some of the finest metal albums to come out of Göteborg from any band.
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