Review Summary: What else did you expect?
As I Lay Dying (sorry, Tim Lambesis and friends) are an interesting beast. Or at least they were until 2013 when “the event that shall not be named” took place. A reunion, a disbanding, a reforming, and most recently another disbanding later, here we are with Through Storms Ahead. Leaving aside the fact that the band essentially split up once again, just a few days before the album was released (due to band members witnessing behaviour that reportedly made them question their own morality), the question remains: is the album good?
Yes. Just about. It’s all here on paper. Solid musicianship, decent enough vocals, and unlike the previous album Shaped By Fire, the lyrics are not all about redemption with Tim finding endless ways to say “I’m sorry, please forgive me!” But there’s no heart or emotion to it. They’re here to do a job and they do it well, but it feels like a conveyor belt at this point. Pumping the songs out with no great design or artistic flourish in mind.
The riffs are decent, the breakdowns exist, and the vocals are adequately performed. But it feels like the whole album was created to keep the train moving, instead of rejuvenating a former pillar of metalcore. There’s a mid-to-fast semi-shredding riff, Tim screams something about pain and anguish, there’s a solid clean chorus, and either a solo or a breakdown. Everybody plays their part to a decent or even good level, but nothing really interesting or skilled happens, especially if you’ve heard this band before. It’s not bad, it’s just nothing special.
The biggest disappointment here is the clean singer Ryan Neff. He is frankly not amazing. He’s just about OK. Josh was iconic so anybody would have been a step down, but I didn’t expect this far of a drop in vocal quality. It got to a point after a couple of songs that I actively did not look forward to the chorus; and this is supposed to be the catchiest part of the song, the part that you remember the most. And honestly, I struggle to remember a chorus that really stands out here, with one or two exceptions.
Even getting in different vocalists doesn’t really save them. We Are The Dead is essentially Gatekeeper from the previous album. It has not one but two guest vocalists (Alex from Slaughter To Prevail and Tom from Chelsea Grin) but it’s still just above passable. That’s a theme for the album. Just beyond average but not much more than that.
Sometimes there are semi-interesting moments though. Whitewashed Tomb is a highlight, simply for its variety. Starting off with a semi-acoustic intro, moving into a decent riff, a couple of solos, and a brief semi-acoustic bridge before the end. It’s the only song I came close to enjoying, for this reason. The Cave We Fear To Enter is another highlight, with the chorus “All I see and all I know is pain” serving as a catchy motif throughout and Ryan’s vocals being slightly better than the other songs. Burden too is not a bad song, featuring a fast riff, a very AILD breakdown, a pretty decent solo, and Tim’s vocals being very solid. But everything else is standard fare that fits in with their discography but never stands out.
Overall, this is a competent effort and it’s not really boring to listen to. It just doesn’t have any substance to it. It’s As I Lay Dying by numbers, making the same music they have always made, because it’s what they know how to do instead of because they actually want to do it. It’s a shame because they do have potential to do something really decent as opposed to just passable.
But what else did we expect from a band in a genre whose golden age is long over, featuring a man desperate to keep the train moving at all costs? The sensible thing to do here is for the band (just Tim at this point) to retire and hang up their boots. The glory days are over and nostalgia only gets you so far. But I suspect that we might get a couple of more albums out of Tim yet, and anybody unfortunate enough to work with him. For now, it’s passable metalcore for anybody still interested in 2024. And that might just be enough to keep the train moving, at least to another station or two.
