Review Summary: Surrounded by a tornado of undeserved vanity, "Outlive You All" is the bro-core album of the year so far...
What does one get when you combine two “hardcore” vocalists with limited instrumental experience, a computer, and an unrequited need to show the scene some br00tal music? You get “Outlive You All”, undoubtedly one of the year’s most misguided, self-fulfilling releases. Composed of Atreyu’s Alex Varkatzas and Brandan Schieppati of Bleeding Through, “I Am War” can best be described as a faux-thrash/ metalcore hybrid that borrows heavily the sounds of visionary pioneers like Attack Attack and Of Mice and Men with the use of superfluous chugging and little else. The idea of the project was to channel the spirit of old-school thrash and instead what was shown was juvenile in every sense.
The bass and guitar duties were handled by Schieppati, a vocalist, and it shows. The skill he exhibits ranges from slow chugging all the way up to fast chugging with very little variation in song structure or arrangement of his instruments. An example of this being that the 4th, 5th, and 6th songs start almost exactly the same and with the longest of the three clocking in at just above 2 minutes, it’s no surprise they don’t deviate much in their sound at all. It’s painfully evident that Schieppati simply isn’t a guitar player and having him play a bunch of chugs and simple chords seems like a curious decision considering all of the excellent guitar players out there. To keep with the spirit of old-school thrash, electronic drums are used for this release (that or the production went terribly wrong), and they are used horribly. Much like the guitar playing, it’s hard not to notice the same beats being played over and over again in a tired, empty fashion. Relegating drums to background noise in a metal release is a pretty difficult feat, but “Outlive You All” manages to do it and do it well.
Put aside all the horrible instrumentation, the mediocre vocals (actually the best part of the album), the fact that 2 grown ass men named a song “Uninvite Me To Your Facebook Party”, and you still have the gall. Both Schieppati and Varkatzas are singers of bands who jumped in on the emo-y metalcore scene at the right place at the right time and found some success yet for some reason they feel that they can and should, with just the two of them, produce a thrash record because they needed to express their hardcore roots. Having that level of self-image is fine if you have the chops to back it up but with “Outlive You All”, both of these men have shown neither the ability, nor the spirit to do the things they think they can do.
