Review Summary: What The Order of Things lacks in substance it makes up for in honesty.
Even in their heyday I was never big on All That Remains. I recognize that
The Fall of Ideals is an exceptionally solid melodic metalcore album worth even more with nostalgia factored in, but aside from that they’ve never made another wholly enjoyable release. In 2012 All That Remains made a conscious decision to go in a more poppy direction on
A War We Cannot Win. The riffs were slowed to compensate for the more melodic vocal approach from frontman Phil Labonte, and the tracks themselves typically followed a screamed verse/sung chorus formula. While the album was met with some commercial acclaim, it failed to deliver on all fronts musically. It was neither catchy nor memorable – every song sounded like a slightly altered version of the last. Needless to say, expectations were not high for All That Remains’ seventh full-length
The Order of Things, of which singles ‘This Probably Won’t End Well’, ‘No Knock’ and ‘Tru-Kvlt-Metal’ were met with lukewarm to negative reception due to their watered-down hard rock tendencies laced with a tacky metalcore coating. However despite being initially off-putting, these songs are a testament to the point All That Remains are in their career – self-aware and unyielding, treating music as shiny ear candy with no intention of drafting off
The Fall of Ideal’s coattails. It’s a double edged sword in this case because, while
The Order of Things is consistent in its message and delivery, the songs themselves simply aren’t very interesting.
The Order of Things is an improvement over
A War You Cannot Win in almost every respect. Rather than trying to coalesce the dissonance of metalcore with poppy choruses,
The Order of Things sees the band shed almost all hardcore elements for a streamlined rock feel throughout. There are some exceptions, one being sole-screamer ‘No Knock’ which leans more toward nü metal with quasi-shout/rapping over discordant chord progressions, and album highlight ‘Pernicious’ which tacks a highly melodic vocal performance onto an instrumentally metalcore blueprint. ‘Pernicious’ really is the only case where the streamlined-core approach works in the band’s favor. Other standouts on the album include opener ‘This Probably Won’t End Well’ and ‘The Greatest Generation’ as perfectly respectable radio-friendly rock songs – rather than masquerading the pop melodies with tepid hardcore riffs and perfunctory yells, All That Remains embrace the mainstream aspect of their sound and these songs are more focused and memorable as a result.
At worst
The Order of Things is simply tame and uninspired, which unfortunately is the case for a majority of the album. Many guitar leads sound tired and forced, and Phil’s vocals aren’t at all what they used to be. Lyrically is where the true horror in the album lies. ‘No Knock’ for instance is chock full of zingers like:
“It’s fuckin’ easy, see? We blow the front door on one, two, three; Kill everyone in sight; We’ll stack the bodies high; And when the smoke clears we’ll all just smile; And everyone goes home”. Ballad ‘For You’ is on the opposite end of the spectrum instrumentally reaching the maximum cringe-level in nearly every respect, and the seven-minute closer ‘Criticism and Self-Realization’ has a few good ideas that quickly lose their appeal due to the track’s excessive length and overall lack of variation.
The deciding factor on how you feel about
The Order of Things is your perception of the album beforehand: If you go in expecting a return-to-form then this album will no doubt be a harrowing experience. However with no prior expectations or bias, you can find solace in the fact that All That Remains are simply doing what they want to do. What
The Order of Things lacks in substance it makes up for in honesty – it may be a paper-thin experience, but its greatest strength is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything more.
Recommended Tracks:
➢ This Probably Won’t End Well
➢ A Reason for Me to Fight
➢ Pernicious
➢ Tru-Kvlt-Metal
