Review Summary: All Shall Perish's second album shows marked growth from their first, but is held back from reaching true excellence by several filler tracks.
All Shall Perish has an interesting sound, ranging from deathcore with some slight technical riff elements to full on technical death metal, and occasionally including groove metal elements into their songs (think Job for a Cowboy's drums and Whitechapel's and God Dethroned's melodic guitars). The band's vocal style is a polished variety of high-pitched screeches, low growls, clean vocals, and a strange mix of styles that's different enough to make for an intriguing listen. Oh, and it sounds great. The guitars and drums often go hand-in-hand, but that's not to say that either instrumental aspect of the band is co-dependent. Solos and complex riffs independent of the drumwork are present within most, if not all songs, and the drums themselves can both get you pumped up and mellow down your mood quite effectively.
The band also provides instrumentals in most of their albums (although their debut lacked one), and
The Price of Existence is no exception - the instrumental here being "Greyson". Their instrumentals always lend very well to the follow-up tracks, and although "We Hold These Truths", the song after the instrumental, isn't running directly off of the last track's ending, it uses the mood established to really make the song interesting. I love attention to atmosphere in music, and that's one reason why I liked
The Price of Existence. They pay attention to what sounds good and combine that with meaningful tracks to convey their views - in this case, it'd be corruption.
The intro track "Eradication" is a great hit off the album in my opinion. It starts off strong, but listenable (although not the most accessible of the tracks off this album) and rightly sets the scene for the rest of the record. It is, however, not the best song off the album. The next few tracks, excluding "Day of Justice", didn't stick out to me very much, but while they may not have been memorable, they certainly weren't bad. I'll keep coming back to this record and I'll end up enjoying it more and wanting to change my rating, eventually, because that's how I am with bands I don't really know too well.
The atmospheric intensity of "Prisoner of War" starts out like a
Two Steps from Hell song before they break out the epic-sounding guitar riffs and steady drum beat. I really enjoyed this track, - particularly the ominous echo-y vocals mid-way through - along with "Greyson" and "We Hold These Truths". However, past that, the next two tracks suffer from more of the "not too shabby, not too stellar" syndrome that the early portions of the album had. Once I listened to the epic closure, "The Last Relapse", I felt like the wait until that track was just a waste of time, as only certain portions of the previous tracks stood out to me. The wait was worth it, I suppose, because the closing track is a really great song. The band manages to keep the song interesting for a whopping six minutes and forty-one seconds, but not just in a "well it's alright" kinda way. It's a very well-written and well-executed song, both in instrumental and lyrical aspects.
All in all,
The Price of Existence lies in some twilight zone between excellence and middle-class. Filler brings it down, but it's a strange type of filler - a filler you're almost drawn to. Regardless of the harm done by tracks that don't hold up to the highlights, my final consensus is that it's a good album to own, but if you're still sketchy about the album or even the band as a whole, you might confine yourself to the recommended tracks.
Recommended Tracks:
1.) Eradication
2.) Day of Justice
3.) Prisoner of War
4.) We Hold These Truths
5.) The Last Relapse
