When bands like In Flames are planning to release a new album, we should always be on the alert. With “Come Clarity” two years ago the Swedes told us that their creative paths have changed and that there is no way back. When the details about “A Sense of Purpose” where revealed it got clear that everybody who expects more old-school music from this band should think twice before listening to the CD. In Flames are now a modern band and everyone who does not want to accept that changes will still pursue their development won’t be welcome for a collective listening to the new album. It surely deserves to be played many times. Not only ten, but even more are needed to feel its structure, which is built of some strong and other weaker layers compounded by two or three songs. There are many snares in “A Sense of Purpose” that are dangerous for the unprepared ear. The disc is homogeneous, the songs are not varied enough, on first hearing the riffs do not sound different. In fact the content of the album is not as boring as this - the tempo from song to song changes, some of the compositions break the traditional frames and the main connecting material are the melodic choruses. It is really strange to listen to so many clean vocals from In Flames and this is the main thing that disturbs the majority of the extreme metal fans. The first and the last two songs are maybe the strongest part of the album. There’s the musicians’ power present in them in a best way linked with their desire to make things more modern. They succeed to transfer in 2008 the best from the death metal sound whose ratios they shaped more than a decade ago. Three great bonus songs are included in the Japanese version of “A Sense of Purpose”, which is the serial studio record by a band which successfully manages to be interesting and provocative for the metal brotherhood with every step it makes in its discography.