Ah, how the mighty have fallen. No one laments In Flames’ long slide into mediocrity more than I, and like most of the metal world, I’ve watched the proceedings with a sort of rubbernecking fascination. Sure, it’s awful to behold, but I haven’t been able to completely tear my attention away any more than the average motorist can zone out the aftermath of a train wreck. The wholly lamentable quality of the band’s two most recent albums thus imparts a bittersweet quality on the recent Candlelight Records reissues of early In Flames material. Both are of top quality, particularly after the remastering treatment they have received, but of the two, the Subterranean EP is perhaps the more poignant; it serves as a reminder of how excellent this band once was and how much more they could have done with their virtually limitless potential.

More tightly focused than its predecessor Lunar Strain, Subterranean presents the archetypal Gothenburg sound. It’s melodic, sure, but unlike the band’s later material, it hasn’t forgotten that ‘melodeath’ is short for ‘melodic death metal.’ The relative minor guitar harmonies are tremolo-picked as often as they’re allowed to play smoothly off of each other, and they are galvanized by pounding, rigid thrash/death rhythmic structures that don’t often allow the Jesper Strömblad leads to wander too far afield. In Flames’ early folk influence is still here, though; both opener “Everdying” and “Timeless” contain large stretches of the divisive acoustic harmonizing that still shows up in modern melodic death releases. However, the band at this point was still balancing the clean-guitar twiddling with a dark, thrashy, early Metallica-esque menace that eventually receded in favor of the all-out Maiden crush evident on the seminal The Jester Race. “Biosphere,” in particular, contains some riffs that make it clear that the now equally decrepit Bay Area thrashers played the same role in developing In Flames’ signature sound that Slayer played in the creative evolution of infamous contemporaries At the Gates. Also noteworthy here is the presence of unheralded intermediary vocalist Henke Forss, who has since slipped into metal obscurity but lent a rasping, signature Gothenburg growl to this release. His anonymity is understandable, sandwiched as he is between Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity) and Anders Friden at the same position in the same band, but his vocal abilities are essentially equivalent to those of the two better-known singers at the same time.

Packaged with the four main tracks of the EP are two unreleased demo versions of The Jester Race cuts and two covers. Another vocalist unknown for his In Flames career is featured here; this time, Jocke Gothberg of Dimension Zero fame takes the tiller. The demo tracks, “Dead Eternity” and “The Inborn Lifeless” (which would later become “Dead God In Me”) are essentially indistinguishable from their Jester Race versions, and the cover songs are really the prizes here. These two selections—“Eye of the Beholder” by Metallica and “Murders In the Rue Morgue” by Iron Maiden, fittingly enough—see In Flames paying homage to their heroes in the same note-for-note manner that their imitators continue to mimc In Flames themselves.

This rerelease is valuable not only as an excellent metal album but also as a historical document. Even those who are sick to death of the Gothenburg sound (and I certainly don’t blame you) would do well to remember that, along with Dark Tranquillity, Eucharist and At the Gates, In Flames did it first, and those who do things first most often do them best. At the very least, it does a mind better to dwell on this band’s past than it does on their present. In other words, try not to let the fact that the train crashed distract you from how impressive said train once was.