“Embody the Invisible” by In Flames
The lyrics of In Flames’ “Embody the Invisible” start off in an existential, epoch-alluding sort of way, with the vocalist speaking to the extinction of species but permanency of the Earth itself, and that sorta stuff. However, as it progresses, i.e. getting past the only two actual verses this track possesses, the lyrics become a lot more personal.
So what’s being put forth can be considered existential in nature as far as the premise goes. But conclusively, what we’re dealing with here is sort of a description as to how the vocalist lives his life, or something like that.
The Lyrics
Indeed, you will notice this song has a very powerful, may we even say spiritually-minded title. But truth be told, the wording itself doesn’t necessarily read that deep. Instead, what the vocalist seems to be getting at is something like the notion that we all have dealt with some of the less-than-ideal personal aspects of living in the world, such as contending “loneliness”, living in “fear” and being the victims of other types of, let’s say in context, emotional maladies. And what the In Flames’ gang appears to be saying is that they are not the kind of people to whine and complain about such.
Or put otherwise, it’s as if what’s being argued is that we all are dealing with various types of serious inner issues. That is “what’s written in the soul”, i.e. what a person may have or is currently going through that another would not be able to ascertain simply by looking at them.
But some of us, such as the vocalist apparently, opt to bear these “burdens” , as he poetically puts it, “in the blinding silence”. And furthermore, it seems as if he is attributing such a practice to the aforementioned loneliness. In other words, when a person is “too proud to show the wounds” they have suffered “alone through the years”, that’s a form of solitude in and of itself, in a manner of speaking.
Takeaway
If all of the above doesn’t particularly make sense, let it be known that whereas the lyrics of “Embody the Invisible” are in fact in English, In Flames itself is a Swedish band. And truthfully, one can kinda tell that these lyrics were perhaps not written by someone who has English as their first language, as is presumably the lyricist in this case, Anders Fridén, who is a native Swede.
But Sweden is a country with a rich history in, shall we say simplistic-English music (i.e. ABBA). So with that in mind, it’s obvious that the intent of this piece is to be some type of profound psychological/social track. But some clarity in terms of what it’s meant to relay appears to get lost along the way.
In Flames
In Flames is a group of heavy metal musicians that has been around since the early 1990s. Between 1994 and 2019 they have dropped 13 studio albums,
“Embody the Invisible” is from the fourth of those efforts, a project titled Colony, which came out through Nuclear Blast on 31 May 1999. At that time, In Flames consisted of frontman Anders Fridén and guitarist Björn Gelotte, who remain down to this day.
At that particular juncture in the band’s history, they were joined by three others, including guitarist Jesper Strömblad. The other two are:
- bassist Peter Iwers
- drummer Daniel Svensson
“Embody the Invisible”
“Embody the Invisible” was featured on the 2003 videogame Tony Hawk’s Underground.
It is the aforementioned Fridén, Gelotte and Strömblad who wrote this track.
The entire band produced it with Fredrik Nordström, a session musician who ran with In Flames during the late 1990s.
