Hopefully the guitar tone in Chop Suey is changed.

If I heard Icarus instrumentally, it could almost pass for a Protest The Hero song

Fun song overall, honestly makes me wanna check out the last few albums again because I basically forgot all about them.

I was mildly surprised at how much I enjoyed this since I thought Guardians was pretty boring. I even enjoyed the cleans on this.

If they're gonna do cleans though Idk why they don't let Dustin do them.

Edit: That may be Dustin on the first set of cleans lol I honestly am not sure

These guys have grown formulaic enough to me that even their “experimental” songs you can practically call when it’s gonna pick up in tempo or drop into half time. I’d love to see them explore some of the post metal elements they’ve hinted at on and off instead of just releasing constellations over and over.

Icarus lives!

ABR leaning into post metal influences would be a dream come true but they like their tappy leads too much for that

With the caveat that all ABR songs are basically the same now, I enjoyed Icarus as a standalone

@bloc Their last few are pretty by-the-numbers, unfortunately Which still means pretty decent quality coming from ABR, but not a lot of memorable tracks from the albums after Rescue & Restore.

R&R was were my interest dropped off too but they did have a few hits off phantom anthem.

At what point does Dustin just absorb all their powers? Dude's pretty versatile.

Their Westworld theme song cover was cool.
As for this song...I really don't give a shit.

At this point, they could release an album with tracks from their other albums and I wouldn't know the difference

post metal[core] is the only logical evolution ABR could take if they wanted to stick around and keep trying to (albeit slowly) evolve more into a legendary level-type band

so this song is kinda cool but like they have so much better up their sleeves they just don't fucking do anything about it and as a fan thats met and played with Matt and JB on separate occasions for a bit, there's so much talent they have that they don't necessarily utilize as much as they should, and Brett, Jake, Dustin are all extremely talented in their own respects and just in general, they can do so much better so it confuses me why they havent yet besides maybe label shit or saving it for later(?)

"but not a lot of memorable tracks from the albums after Rescue & Restore."

[2] Found in Far Away Places is decent, Phantom Anthem is forgettable, Guardians is mostly forgettable but the last two tracks rip.

It's maddening how much talent the band has and doesn't use — remember Creative Captivity where they basically threw a bunch of instruments at the wall to see what stuck and they all worked and how they never did anything like that again?

"Creative Captivity" is an apt description of this band's sound

Also I think the answer to why these guys aren't evolving is that they're Christian, and they don't believe in evolution

^ lulz
No, I think they are following the formula that sells

"These guys have grown formulaic enough to me that even their “experimental” songs you can practically call when it’s gonna pick up in tempo or drop into half time. I’d love to see them explore some of the post metal elements they’ve hinted at on and off instead of just releasing constellations over and over."

This is a really good summary of how I've felt about this band for the last decade. I'd rather see them try (and even fail) at something new than releasing the same album for the thousandth time.

But truthfully this stuff doesn't sound like Constellations at all...

They definitely have maintained the same style and formula throughout their entire career, but to me they didn't get "samey" until FiFAP

I never really got the appeal of this band. I respect their capacity to perform, but they kind of always seemed like that band you imitate when you want to take the safe route to having a decent local metalcore band. So an archetype, in a sense. Writing this comment just made me realize I have no clue what the differences are between their albums, and should probably compare their first and last albums to figure out what the actual diversity is in their music.

Major differences between Thrill Seeker and their current drivel

^ Yup. They've gotten worse and worse after Thrill Seeker. As all the albums after it are essentially indistinguishable from one another, and that's 3/4 because they have possibly the most average/generic vocalist in the genre. The two vocalists before Luhrs were unique enough that combined with the more raw instrumentals they had created far better albums than they're putting out now.

They really need to bring Hershey or McManness back. Looks Fragile After All and Thrill Seeker were lightyears ahead of the shit they put out now.

Lol

Nah ya lost me there. I love Jake. Just think their sound is stale. Nothing they put out is bad or offensive

damn... good thing art is subjective, i think this is one of their best songs to dates and definitely the top song on this album, maybe metalcore is just dying, and this is a breath of fresh air

"Metalcore" has been dead since 2010, save for a few one-off bands.

Fake news