Trigger

The immediate aftermath of “Reroute To Remain” can be easily recognized, even by steadfast fans of In Flames, as the low point in said bands turbulent career. And right smack in the middle of this freefall is the infamous “Trigger” EP, probably the most concentrated dose of nu-metal and non-metal tendencies of anything ever to be passed off as an album by the same band that brought us “Subterranean” and “The Jester Race”. It is quite perplexing that anyone claiming to be a fan of melodeath, or even a power metal fan who took an interest in this band earlier in their career, could launch a defense of this, but through the years, this has actually happened.

Launching off this rather unfortunate bastard is a pair of stylistic holdovers from the widely criticized directional shift “Reroute To Remain”. The edited version of the title song, for lack of any real distinction from its studio album version, is the best song on here. The amount of riff oriented stylistic holdover from “Clayman” and “Colony” are pretty obvious, in spite of the heavy keyboard elements and Fear Factory inspired clean vocal chorus, and drive things along fairly well. The non-album song that follows “Watch Them Feed” is fast and somewhat thrashing, but the riff set sounds extremely dumbed down and nu-metal oriented. In fact, I’ve often heard people mistake this song for Slipknot’s “Before I Forget”, though these are often followed by claims that In Flames stole the idea from their favorite nu-metal band in spite of the fact that it came out 1 year prior, so the intelligence of those making the comparison is questionable.

The further things progress, the more mechanized the sound of this becomes. The really bad rendition of Genesis’ “Land Of Confusion” is a pure travesty to the practice of metal-oriented covers of non-metal songs, perhaps topped only by the pseudo-metal rendition that Disturbed offered up several years later. The metalcore sounding screams and flat sounding clean vocals destroy any sense of melody the song has, and the hypnotic yet sloppy guitar work does little to compensate. This is followed by two gloriously terrible techno renditions of two original songs, one of them a recent one that was bad to begin with, the other an unassailable classic that is bastardized into an almost completely synthetic collage of noise. It’s bad enough that these guys can’t seem to stop themselves from self-plagiarizing “Moonshield” in order to fill up albums, but here they’ve actually resorted to butchering it for a pointless EP release.

Rave junkies and Slipknot worshipers might go for this sort of rubbish, but I don’t, and neither should you. It would be more advisable to get a bargain copy of “Reroute To Remain” and suffer through the original versions of the two modified ones found on here and count yourself lucky that you didn’t have to suffer the rest of the decrepit drivel on here. I didn’t quite have the heart to completely bomb this thing since the title song, even in this inferior form, has some musical merit. But this is about as close to pure musical revulsion as In Flames has ever gotten, and it should not be encouraged with your hard earned cash.

Well, the new "In Flames" CD Reroute To Remain has landed, and it was only a matter of time before the new single off the album would appear as an EP. Seriously, you didn't see it coming? If you didn't, there is something wrong with you. No offense, but...god...It was kind of easy to spot with the Cloud Connected CD Single released before this one.

The second major single off of the album, 'Trigger', is receiving massive airplay around the world, and now is your chance to own the 'Single Edit', as well as three bonus tracks, and some visual goodies as well. It's like Halloween all over again! But is it worth as much cash as you have to shell out just to add it to your collection?

Hmm...let's all think. 'Trigger (Single Edit)' isn't the actual full length song (obviously). The song is a slightly shorter version of the original. No big loss there, but to a true fan it kind of hurts. Then, you've got the bonus non-album track 'Watch Them Feed', which is just as good a song as any of the tracks off Reroute To Remain. Nothing special here.

However, the most interesting part of the EP is the cover of the "Genesis" song 'Land Of Confusion'. This track makes the EP, aside from the single and the video tracks, but hey, you'll get tired of the single when it is over played enough. The do the song justice.

And then...there were the remixes. These things are more like filler for the album. The 'Cloud Connected (Club Connected Remix)' is actually pretty good, but a bit too mainstream of a remix. And the final track, 'Moonshield (C64 Karaoke Version) sounds like music that would go to an old Nintendo video game, and can get kind of irritating at times.

Don't take it the wrong way though, the EP is great. You get the single, a pretty good non-album track, an amazing cover song, a catchy remix, and a kind of annoying remix that if you just ignore it, it won't go away, but won't be in your minds all day bothering you. And can someone say videos? Both videos for 'Trigger' and 'Cloud Connected' are on here in amazing clarity.

So, is it really worth the eight dollars plus shipping at certain locations for this EP? Well, it all depends. If you are a die hard "In Flames" fan, no price is too high. The EP is packed with good material, but if you aren't really into them, you might want to wait until some kind of holiday or something where people will actually buy it for you. The videos are available on-line if you know where to look, but some of the tracks aren't. To say whether or not you must have it in your collection is more of a call on faith and lineage to the group, and not so much on your wallet.

If you are a fan of In Flames, you probably will like this. That is if you like the material from “Reroute to Remain”. If you didn’t like RtR, I highly suggest you to stay away from this EP at all costs. For the most part, it’s a single edit, new song, a cover song and 2 remixes. Most of you would probably download this than spend 10$ on it. Anyways, on with the song reviews

1) Trigger (Single Edit) – I can’t really stand the single edit for some strange reason. The normal version was fine to me, but this one wasn’t that good to me. Sounds mostly techno-ish. If you don’t like the new stuff, you’ll hate this song. 6/10

2) Watch Them Feed – This is In Flames’ new song they specifically made for the EP. I really liked it. What I thought was unusual about it was that Anders’ had sworn in the song. Aside from that, it’s a pretty good song with a catchy chorus. 8/10

3) Land of Confusion (Genesis Cover) – I haven’t actually heard the real version of the song, so I can’t say much about it. The song has a pretty good beat, but not much of a good chorus. 7/10

4) Cloud Connected (Club Connected Remix) – This was surprisingly a good remixed song. It’s got a good beat to it, but not really as good as the original version of “Cloud Connected”. The problem with the song that I noticed most of the bass lines were removed, which sucked.

5) Moonshield (C64 Karaoke Version) – Bah, I did not like this remix at all. Every word in the song was removed, as well as all the guitar, bass and drum fills. Sadly, the vocals were removed to. Horrible remix to a classic song 3/10

Overall, it’s an average EP. Mostly techno sounding metal, well for the most part. There are 2 other things on the EP though. A video of “Trigger” and “Cloud Connected”. If you are a good or diehard fan of In Flames’ you will really like this EP. But if you only like In Flames’ old stuff, you will hate this. 67%

I miss the days when In Flames used to make good albums and EP's rather than rehash garbage like this. This is by far the worst EP In Flames has produced. Black Ash Inheritance has the good Goliath's Disarm their Davids and Acoustic Melody and the 5 songs on Subterranean are all around excellent. Unlike Trigger EP however does not have anything on it that makes it a worthwhile purchase.

1. Trigger [Radio Edit]- I absolutely hated this song on RtR so its no surprise I hated it here. The song has an ok maybe 10 seconds or so before it starts to go downhill and just doesn't stop. The pop influenced chorus is absolutely annoying and to make matters worse, the chorus is beat into the ground as about 75% of the song is just the chorus being repeated over and over again with little variation. It's boring, annoying and repetitive. The video that goes along with it is hilarious because there is no way people would actually jump around to this song like they do in the video. The only positive thing I could say about this song is that its cut down in this EP so its over quicker than the album. 1/10

2. Watch Them Feed- A new song. Don't get excited because it sounds like it could fit right on RtR. It starts off with a slipknot-ish riff then some other mallcore-like riff then finally Anders comes on spouting the simplistic the lyrics. More mallcore riffs ensue. Anders comes back on screaming some more simplistic lyrics then shifts over to his weird distorted vocals that were on RtR. The song then shifts to more mallcore riffs then back to Anders distorted vocals and finally breaks out into a chorus which sounds exactly like half of the ones on RtR. A very weak solo follows the chorus and then goes back into Anders distorted vocals followed by the RtR chorus again. After that listeners are then subjected to the mallcore riffs again and the song then thankfully closes out. Overall this song would be mediocre even on RtR. 1/10

3. Land Of Confusion- An interesting song but as with this case interesting doesn't necessarily mean good. The is a cover of a song by Genesis. I never heard the original so I can't comment on how much they butchered it but I can't say I overly enjoyed Anders crappy distorted vocals which are used quite a bit on this track. 0.5/10

4. Club Connected- What the fuck is this? They took the most pop influenced song on RtR and actually turned into a pop techno song. However, even far as pop music goes, this song still sucks. This song would never ever be played at any club anywhere. As much as I hate pop music to listen to, it works good at clubs. This song just wouldn't not work well in a club setting. Anders whiny vocals certainly don't inspire me to start dancing and while there is a semi catchy beat to the song I still wouldn't feel inclined to dance to it. Overall it is a stupid idea exexcuted badly which makes it the all around horrible song which it is. 0.5/10

5. Moonshield (C64 Karaoke Version)- Another moronic idea. Who would ever consider singing a metal song karaoke? Granted its no longer a metal song as they ruined the original song by turning it into some horrible NES song but then that brings up the question, who sings karaoke to damn nintendo music? 0.5/10
This EP is just full of stupid ideas. A useless radio edit, a techno remix, and a horrible karaoke song are just wasted space for what could have been good material. Who am I kidding? If they didn't put those on it there would have just been more RtR wannabe songs like Watch them Feed. It would most likely be a lose-lose situation either way. Overall, this EP is a pile of shit. Go buy The Jester Race/Black Ash Inheritance and get some value for your money.

Score 7%

The new Trigger EP, is nothing short of Reroute to Remain. Of what I've heard from Reroute to Remain, this stuff is very similar. It has its ups and downs, as Reroute to Remain did. Since it is an EP, I'll give a song by song analysis.

Trigger- Trigger is featured on Reroute to Remain. This song has good quailites and bad qualities. It starts off with an amazing drum beat, which lasts throughout the whole song. The riff is your typical In Flames sounding. But then the vocals come in. You can't really hear them at first, but when they come in clear, you will start to headbang. During the chorus the singing is clean (not growled vocals). Even though this is kind of different from the In Flames scene, it's not really too bad. When the vocals are very hearable, with that mallcorish type of distorted vocals...yeah that kind of ruins the song. They could have dropped that part out, and instead play the chorus two times. That way the song would not be so repeditive.

Watch Them Feed- This is the new song on the EP. Overall it's not to bad. It has more of the Clayman type sound to it. Fast drumming (most of the time constant beating on the snare, with the occasional fill). The riffs are pretty fast and blazing. The chrous slows down the song, and the vocals kind of suck at this part. However, there is a neat solo (or lick) that makes the song all worth it. Still it has the Reroute sound to it at times, while other times it sounds like it came off of Clayman.

Land Of Confusion- This song is definetly different from any In Flames I have ever heard. Probably because it is a Genesis cover. It starts off heavy, then it has the drums and singer play, then the guitar riff plays. It's okay, just different. The chorus totally blows (vocal wise). The vocals are once again distorted (sounds like he is singing in a phone or something).

Cloud Connected- This also comes off of Reroute to Remain. For the most part the vocals suck, especially during the main verse. They are distorted and well...there hardly hearable. It has more of a feal good feeling to it. It also has a lot of techno sounds and beats to it. Not usual In Flames, but not necessarily awful.

Moonshield- If there is any great song on this album it would have to be this one. Hahaha! It's actually funny. It is a karaoke version of the In Flames song Moonshield. So you can sing along to it. However instead of using guitars and the such, it's all put through a keyboard (at least it sounds that way). It sounds a lot like a song you would hear on a video game. Excellent song!

Overall, this album isn't worth it. Basically, if you like Reroute to Remain, you will enjoy this EP. The songs, while not being classic In Flames material, are nonetheless horrible then the album Reroute to Remain. I would pick it up for the cool version of Moonshield let alone!