The video for In Flames’ “The Truth” is an entertaining mini-movie. In it, a group of young hacktivists, living off-grid in a tunnel, abducts a kid immersed in violent first-person-shooter games and deprograms him, restoring him—their computer monitor informs us—to “normal brain function”.

It’s tuneful, anthemic, and pleasingly evocative of Vancouver sci-fi author William Gibson, who has a noted fondness for interstitial rebels. But the high point comes when the same hacktivists, in searching out new subjects to liberate, burst in on a young man—an actor, not a member of the band—joyfully jamming out Björn Gelotte’s solo.

They leave apologetically, since the kid is obviously engaged in something authentic, and needs no rescue.

In Flames frontman Anders Fridén, calling the Straight from his home in Stockholm, explains that the song poses the question of “how we can continue what we do to each other, trying to come up with these monstrous machines to kill each other, and at the same time, look our kids in the eye and tell them to eat your breakfast, go to school, be nice to your neighbour, when we are sort of the opposite ourselves”.

He’s intelligent and articulate, decrying how “we haven’t learned anything—everything is about me, me, me all the time.” But he’s hardly on a soapbox.

“We don’t tend to bring political themes into the band,” he tells the Straight. The conflicts referred to in Battles, the title of the album—In Flames’ twelfth studio venture, and the first with Grammy-nominated producer Howard Benson—are mostly interior, “about the inner struggles we have”. These include facing up to mortality, the theme of the other single from the album, “The End”, which has a connected mini-movie of its own.

While it doesn’t hurt that the lyrics are interesting, there’s a refreshing lack of pretension to what In Flames does. While there are dozens of bands wrapping themselves in one ism or another—Satanism, paganism, anarchism, whatever—In Flames is first and foremost a band, less interested in waving banners than it is in playing concerts and entertaining fans.

“I really think that’s what we’re here to do,” Fridén agrees. “We’re there to entertain and get you away from the craziness that surrounds you normally, to give you a glimpse of something good.”

The empowering quality to In Flames’ music lies, he thinks, in its emphasis on melody—because whatever changes In Flames has gone through since its inception in 1990, when the band was associated more with death metal, “it’s still always about the melody first.”

Comments on YouTube for both videos show fans bickering about what direction the band should take—with devotees of its older output preferring “The End” and those willing to see the band push boundaries embracing “The Truth”.

But Fridén only takes heed of such matters when talking to journalists, he says. “I think I can’t control it, so there’s no point in me caring, really. I can’t do anything about it; if you don’t like it, I can’t go home to your house and tell you that you should like it!”

On the other hand, he adds, “I really appreciate that there are people who like it, and that I can continue to do what I love and travel the world and play this type of music. But I can’t write for those people—I can’t write for anyone else. I have to do the music that I believe in.”

In Flames plays the Commodore next Wednesday (December 14).