Review Summary: It's fine, guys...it's fine...everything's fine.
The year is 2008: I’m in my “leavers” jumper in the high school courtyard, eating my M&Ms cookies and Lunchables while watching a group of other dudes play hacky sack. I have one of my mate’s earphones in while he has the other, listening to a venerable slab of metalcore on his iPod shuffle. Those were simpler times. Plenty of people seem to want to go back to those times, including a few of the bands in the aforementioned venerable slab, one such band being As I Lay Dying, who have returned after a 7-year absence (excluding two Wovenwar albums) with Shaped by Fire, and it’s…fine. It’s fine, guys. Seriously, it’s fine.
What is there really to say about the album that couldn’t be said about their previous releases? It’s a 44 minute chunk of fairly standard, straight-forward metalcore, following mostly the exact same song structure and thematic progression. Everybody does their job to a satisfactory degree, with the exception of Lambesis, whose vocal prowess has diminished significantly in the time between albums (perhaps he was too embarrassed to practise in his prison block), and the mix is average, which doesn’t really do anyone any favours. It follows the same path that previous titles have followed, although I remember liking Awakened and The Powerless Rise a lot more than this. It could be that after so many years of watching a genre as a whole evolve, progress, consolidate (and in certain areas, degrade), providing the exact same experience to a changing audience will inevitably lead to diminishing returns.
Shaped by Fire, as previously mentioned, is fine. If you’re content with inoffensive, competently constructed songs performed by competent musicians that are all about the same length and the same format, then this album will appease you. You may even spin it more than a few times. However, if you’re searching for a sign of progression, experimentation, or anything that steps outsides the boundaries of what As I Lay Dying are comfortable with, you won’t find it on Shaped by Fire.
