Band : All That Remains
Album title : For We Are many
Label : Razor & Tie
Distributor : Prosthetic
Release date : 12/10/2010
Release : CD

For a more detailed history-of-the-band on this relatively popular American Metalcore/ Melodic Death Metal act from Springfield, Massachusetts, I strongly urge you to either check out colleague Ivan's review of ATR's previous album Overcome (which sold over 240,000 copies to date and went to #16 in the Billboard 200 album charts), posted on 17/09/2008...or the band's page at Wikipedia.

For the purposes of this review, we'll just state the fact hat the band's had a stable line-up since 2007 when drummer Jason Costa came into the picture and original members Philip Labonte (ex-Shadows Fall, lead vocals) and Oli Herbert (lead guitar) and later additions Mike Martin (rhythm guitar, joined in 2003) and Jeanne Sagan (bass, entered the fold in 2006), something which is always good for the consistency of a band's output. For the recordings of the new album the band again (for the 3rd time in a row) made use of Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz as their recording engineer/ producer...why break up a winning team indeed? In an interview with Revolver Magazine(August 2010 issue) the lead singer said, “Fans of Overcome won't be disappointed, but the disc will also offer new twists and turns.”! Well, if that's so, I am not the good person to tell you where those differences with the band's previous material lays, because this is in fact my introduction to the band's music!

I can tell you what I hear on thís album though! And that is, quite simply put, a Melodic Death Metal basis (nice lead and solo parts to enhance the melodic side of things on top of the catchy riffs) with some underlaying Hardcore elements...atop of which the singers (yep, there's a second dude in the band providing an additional vocal layer) bring a varied vocal landscape. Here and there you'll get a song with predominantly rough vocals, but overall the lead singer operates with a rather clean voice (and occasionally there's a third singer in the band throwing in some additional layer of clean vocals). Nothing specifically high-pitched, and with a certain vocal timbre which make the band identifiable! Those among you calling themselves fans of the band may have been lucky enough to follow the band's progress between recordings and actual release of the album, and will probably already have downloaded the title song of the album in the period from August 18 to September 6, when the band put the song up at their own website (www.) allthatremainsonline.com for free download. If not, you can listen to it at myspace.com/allthatremains, where it's posted alongside another song off the album, and older material (and a threesome of videos, among which one...yeah, for the new album's title track!).

Now although I can understand why the average young American goes somewhat wild for this band, I'm a slightly more demanding music lover, and I must confess not being that hot about this band. They're not bad, mind you, but I'm personally not running out of the house to go buy the album either! Anyways, credit where credit is due! Oh yeah, I hear ATR is to tour in Europe during November and December, and that following US dates during September and October.

89/100

Tony.