Bledsoe: In Flames members are no Swedish meatballs

Why does metal music from Scandinavia tend to be more melodic than metal from elsewhere? Peter Iwers, bassist with pioneering Swedish death metal act In Flames says it has to do with attitude.

"People are very open-minded in Sweden and we just listen to whatever is good," says Iwers. "If it's good, I'll listen to it. I grew up on Toto, Genesis ..."

Iwers sees absolutely no shame in listing artists who might fall into the adult contemporary vein as old favorites. However, it was a band that was a little darker that set him on his current path:

"It was when I saw Iron Maiden when I was 13 years old. It was the biggest, the coolest thing I ever saw and since that day I wanted to be a musician."

Shortly thereafter, Iwers began playing guitar, which his older brother played, but when he found himself in a band with two good guitarists, he switched to bass.

"Then I became really interested in the symbiosis between drum and bass and took it from there."

In Flames began in Gothenburg, Sweden, when Jesper Str<0x00F6>mblad wanted to form a more melodic project than his band Ceremonial Oath. It was five years later that the group found its defining vocalist, Anders Friden, and four years after that before Iwers and guitarist Niklas Engelin joined the group. Iwers replaced original In Flames bassist Johan Larsson.

"My part when I first came in was to just do what the first bass player did," says Iwers.

However, as time went on Iwers began to put his own personal stamp on the music. And, says Iwers, he and the band try to grow with each new endeavor.

"We try to always create music that is (beyond) what we did before without changing it too much."

Iwers says there have been some great moments in the past 10 years.

"The best one was when we played at Scandinavia's biggest outdoor arena in Gothenburg, where we come from, and we opened up for Iron Maiden, my heroes. Playing before a crowd of about 65,000 people. That was fantastic!"

Iwers did get to meet the members of Iron Maiden and it made him very nervous - which, he says, is a good thing.

"I know a lot of musicians who stopped being influenced by their heroes, they stopped being star struck when they meet them, but I never want to lose that feeling. It's (like you) become a little kid again!"

And there must be a sense of camaraderie with a band like Iron Maiden, which comes from an age when metal had melody. In Flames has gotten some criticism through the years as not being "metal enough." Some metal fanatics only want music that is monochromatically black.

"There's always going to be opinions here and there, but I don't care what people think unless they have a constructive opinion. We do this music because we like it, but some people think we do it because it gets us more mainstream or whatever and they couldn't be more wrong. I can look myself in the mirror every day and say I did this because I liked it, not because somebody told me to."

And how is it that Sweden, a land where everyone appears to be happy, is a great exporter of metal?

"That's why we're happy. We can express ourselves in the music, I guess!"

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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