Previously billed in heavy rock circles as "one to watch," it's easy to see why upon positioning this new disc in the CD tray, you standg back and let it roar. Burn baby burn! "In Flames" reach new heights with this latest masterpiece, "Colony," which will make a true believer out of metal skeptics everywhere. Think you've heard it all before? No room for growth or excitement within the confines of prevailing music labels and the preponderance of similar bands all writing the same song with different titles? Think again.

Not since the tremendous "Slaughter Of The Soul" from "At The Gates" has there been an album that's gotten me this pumped. That one is more than likely one that many fans point to when digging through the rubble for that "landmark" album that just sets the standard for the rest to follow.

"Colony" will be the next one to set the industry on its ear. In league with the newest material from other closely related artists, such as "Blackstar Rising" and current labelmates "Night In Gales," another budding superstar of the realm, "Colony" spits fire at every angle, leaving any potential thoughts of doubt smoldering in the dark. It's like when you meet someone who you really dig, and you know it's too good to be true, so you'll try and try to find fault, even in the slightest degree, to allow a conceivable let down be easier to absorb. Yet, for all your efforts, you can't do it. In much the same way, this album is faultless. "Colony" has everything going for it, particularly recalling traditional metal, borrowing the best left behind from vintage Maiden, with hints of Goth, to transitional black-styles powerfully displayed with a bombastic production where the drums just explode and the battling twin axes in full splendor. (No offense to mother-in-laws in general, you understand). You'll need a rest at about the halfway point so the band graciously provided a minute's worth of kick back with "Pallar Anders Visa," a short term orchestral maneuver, hypnotic in its effect, before fading aside for one of the album's heaviest and best, "Coerced Coexistence." A breakout of a song, it twists and turns it's way through your mind leaving an eventual paralysis that'll go far in explaining the charred remains left of you four songs later.

If "In Flames'" "Colony" is representative of the hopeful direction heavy metal is continuing to move in as we head toward the next century, it's going to create an earthshaking effect that'll quickly put to rest any previous causes any of us had to bitch about in the first place.

Trust me, being engulfed never felt so good.