With the release of their fourth studio effort for Prosthetic Records, "Overcome," All That Remains has further cemented their place as just another Killswitch Engage wannabe in a melodic metal world that is truly and despondently lost.
The Springfield, Mass. band first broke into the popular metal scene in 2006 with "The Fall of Ideals," an album produced by, shockingly, Adam Dutkiewicz, the mastermind behind fellow New England metal act Killswitch Engage. Under Dutkiewicz's watchful eye, All That Remains managed to weed out the unnecessary bits of soloing and harshness and refined their tone to something that was at once brutal yet enticingly melodic.
"Overcome," the first album from All That Remains to not be produced by Dutkiewicz, suffers greatly from the loss of the sagacious teachings of the seasoned sensei. Alliteration aside, the record attempts to move toward the melodic, but comes to a fork in the road in regards to style: They could either embrace the technically difficult yet excessive riffs, or they can finally make the move to melody and try to weed out the unnecessary gimmicks that plague metal as a genre. When the band arrives at this crossroads, it makes the unwise decision of pitching camp right there, remaining blissfully ignorant of the options in front of them.
The album opens with "Before the Damned," a wonderfully tight arrangement of double bass drum attacks from drummer Jason Costa and palm-muted alternate picking from guitarists Mike Martin and Oli Herbert. The first verse begins with the standard syncopated guitar riff covered by the guttural screams of vocalist Phil Labonte, and soon dissolves into a clean-vocal chorus, but unfortunately none of these parts are melodic or impressive enough to be remembered, and by the time the second track, "Two Weeks," kicks in, "Before the Damned" is all but forgotten.
The first single from the album (if the term is even appropriate in this genre anymore), "Chiron," is undifferentiated from the rest of the face-meltingly intense cuts. In truth, all of the songs from "Overcome" feature the same tired combination of technicality and melody, so in order to choose one cut to be a single, the band most likely chose from a hat.
The most interesting part of "Chiron," which finds itself lost somewhere in the middle of the album, is the fact that its name is taken from a wise centaur who served as a teacher to Achilles, amongst other Greek mythological heroes. One might think a song about an enlightened half-horse-half-man would be worth at least one listen. One would think so, at least.
The latter half of the album finds the listener repeatedly face-palming himself as each track starts off with potential, only to disintegrate into the monotonous blast-beat and rapid-picking archetypes that have been used by innumerable other metal bands, most of whom do it better than All That Remains.
"Days Without," "Relinquish" and "Overcome" blend into a seamless mush of distortion and boringly triggered drums. The only saving grace is the melodic choruses that seemingly spring from nowhere once every three minutes, only to be stepped on by some classically trained guitarist making sure everyone knows he can sweep pick arpeggios really freaking fast.
When the album finally winds to a close, it's hard to put one's finger on where exactly this band went wrong, but the thought it would take to find the answer to such a conundrum would hardly be worth the while. If you're looking for a good melodic metal album from a band that doesn't really care about impressing you with their technical skills, go pick up Killswitch Engage's "As Daylight Dies." If you're really angry at your eardrums for some reason, pick up a copy of "Overcome."
