And so we come to the end of the All That Remains run.  After the disappointment of Overcome I tried one more time with For We Are Many, mainly because Adam Dutkiewicz returned to the producer’s chair.  The band curbs a bit of the active rock polish and brings the melodic death from earlier albums to the fore, making for a solid album the nevertheless failed to get me to return to the fold. Continue reading “All That Remains: For We Are Many (2010)”

You can hear it within the first 10 seconds of “Before the Damned” on Overcome, the fourth album from All That Remains. After re-listening to the previous albums I thought it was going to be the further dilution of the band’s sound into a washed out puddle that killed the record.  But nope, as soon as the Overcome starts I remembered exactly what the biggest problem was.

Your Honor, the Prosecution calls to the stand Mr. Jason Suecof. Continue reading “All That Remains: Overcome (2008)”

I picture All That Remains sitting in a dark room, having just finished another show where attendance was maybe…less than optimal.  Heads down and sweaty, they’re deciding what the next step is when a slick dressed and well-fed gentlemen enters, exclaiming, “Hey!  Maybe do a little more with those clean vocals and homogenize those lyrics so you’re not alienating folks!”  He leaves, the scent of cash wafting in his wake.  Enter Overcome.

Haha, that’s tomorrow’s review.  Instead the band takes all that advice to heart in a way that doesn’t suck at all and gets The Fall of Ideals, my vote for All That Remains’s best album. Continue reading “All That Remains: The Fall of Ideals (2006)”

Does anyone else remember when All That Remains kicked ass?  Earlier in their career they kind of got lost in the shuffle of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal propagated by bands like Shadows Fall, Unearth, and Lamb of God.  If anything the band was known for the fact that Phil Labonte was the original vocalist for Shadows Fall.  When I fell back into metal I picked up the most recent albums from both band to see what the fuss was about.  15 years later I can’t tell you what happened to my copy of The War Within, but damn if I don’t keep coming back to This Darkened Heart, which I’ll always love no matter how much of a gun-toting right wing nut Labonte becomes. Continue reading “All That Remains: This Darkened Heart (2004)”