Former In Flames Guitarist Jesper Strömbland on Influencing Metalcore: “It’s an Honor to Be a Part of Creating This”
Swedish melodic death metal trailblazers In Flames have released two new singles in the last month and change—“The Great Deceiver” today and “State of Slow Decay” at the end of June—and fans have hailed it as a return to form of their older melodic death metal style. It’s this style that In Flames returned to—alongside many of In Flames’ Swedish peers like At the Gates—that influenced so many metalcore bands in the ’90s and ’00s. Former guitarist Jesper Strömblad is rather proud of his role in the development.
In an interview with Blabbermouth regarding his new band The Halo Effect (also the subject of the latest podcast with vocalist Mikael Stanne), Strömblad was asked about the metalcore bands that took influence from In Flames, such as Killswitch Engage, As I Lay Dying and Trivium.
“[Metalcore] was more of a tribute. It was amazing you could hear it and the members of the successful American bands who mentioned Swedish bands as their influence. From little Sweden, we have been part of creating this genre of metalcore, like Killswitch [Engage] and As I Lay Dying. It’s an honor to be a part of creating this.”
The guitarist also spoke on the health of the Swedish death metal scene and says things are doing very well.
“Look at bands like Arch Enemy and Amon Amarth. Some of the tours that are coming up now have a capacity of 15, 16,000 people. Swedish melodic death metal in 2022 is still on the rise. These bands have been around for a long, long time, and finally, they reap the rewards. They totally earned it. It’s so cool to see how it’s still relevant.”
Later in the interview, Strömblad said that The Halo Effect is his main priority these days, even if Stanne is also releasing music with Dark Tranquility.
“Yeah, it is. Maybe sometimes it will be a little puzzling if it clashes, but The Halo Effect is my priority. I’m laying low with everything else right now. We started working on this album so long ago. We are already planning to start recording a new album. I don’t know if I should say that.”
