IN FLAMES headlined the Göteborg Brinner festival at Frihamnen on Saturday, August 22, and used their hometown slot to stage something close to a Gothenburg family reunion. DARK TRANQUILLITY's Mikael Stanne and TRIVIUM's Matt Heafy both came out during the set, and the band pulled a song out of storage that had not been played live in fourteen years.
Heafy joined for "Artifacts Of The Black Rain", from IN FLAMES' second album, 1996's "The Jester Race" — the record that did more than any other to fix the melodic death metal template the city exported to the rest of the world. Stanne's spot carried an extra layer of history. He shared vocals with Anders Fridén on "Behind Space", a track from the 1994 debut "Lunar Strain", an album on which Stanne, not Fridén, was the singer. Fridén did not join IN FLAMES full time until the following year.
Stanne posted a photo of himself with Fridén and Heafy the day after. "Such an amazing time last night Göteborg Brinner," he wrote. "Sharing the stage with Anders Fridén was awesome and hanging with the lovely Matt Heafy didn't hurt either. Fantastic show and the most incredible hometown crowd. The emotional hangover is real."
The 21-song set also produced a genuine rarity: "Gyroscope", played for the first time since 2012, slotted directly between the two guest appearances.
IN FLAMES setlist, Göteborg Brinner, August 22, 2026:
- Colony
- Deliver Us
- In The Dark
- Voices
- Paralyzed
- The Quiet Place
- Meet Your Maker
- The Chosen Pessimist
- Cloud Connected
- Artifacts Of The Black Rain (with Matt Heafy)
- Gyroscope (first time since 2012)
- Behind Space (with Mikael Stanne)
- Trigger
- Only For The Weak
- Foregone Pt. 2
- State Of Slow Decay
- Alias
- The Mirror's Truth
- I Am Above
- Take This Life
- My Sweet Shadow
The band are still touring behind 2023's "Foregone" while a fifteenth studio album sits finished-but-unreleased. It was cut at Howard Benson's Los Angeles studio with engineer Mike Plotnikoff — Benson has produced every IN FLAMES record since 2016's "Battles" — and it marks the recording debut of drummer Jon Rice, previously of BEHEMOTH, JOB FOR A COWBOY and THE RED CHORD, who has been touring with the band since May 2025.
Asked recently by Magenta TV whether he knew at the time that IN FLAMES were shaping an entire subgenre, Fridén was blunt. "No, no, no, no, not at all. We were just fans of music, and we just wanted to create our way of what we thought heavy metal was," he said. "I'm really honored and humbled to hear those things, but I don't let it get to my head. It's not good for you."
He also had no patience for the idea that riffs belong to anyone. "If IRON MAIDEN is listening right now, then we stole some of your riffs. And that's just the truth."
Source: blabbermouth.net