Review Summary: A huge step up from This Darkened Heart; The Fall Of Deals while being rather repetitive and seeming to follow similar structures, is still a solid effort and a great album for Metalcore.
All That Remains are a six piece metalcore act out of the birthplace of the genre, Massachusetts. Their latest effort
The Fall Of Ideals has been getting tons of recognition from the metal community, hailed as the return of good metalcore. After all of this hype and a review expressing a 4.5/5 rating from a respected member I decided to check this album out, so after many days and a few torrents later I was finally able to hear what all of the fuss was about...
The Fall of Ideals is definitely and improvement from
This Darkened Heart, which I really didn't like at all. Phil has gotten so much better at both clean and harsh vocals. Just listening to the incredibly high pitched opening scream on
This Calling, or the low outro grunt on
It Dwells In Me you can see he has so much range. And not only does he have range, his voice is extremely strong and powerful at any pitch. Sometimes, his voice really sounds off. Like for example, the incredibly low grunts on
The Weak Willed, they sound so out of place. They really kill the atmosphere there. His clean voice is really powerful. On almost all the songs their will be at least one clean vox section. He doesn't have to much range in his clean voice sadly, he has some, but not nearly what his scream has.
The guitar work on this album is also exceedingly good. The solos while have some fast shredding parts, are also well thought out and display a good bit of emotion. The harmonies are also for the most part used nicely, I'd prefer if they used more than just 3rd harmonies, though.
We Stand has a beautiful harmony/solo section. It flows very nicely with the song, and yet it's still very technical. Another thing I like about the guitars is the use of clean passages. They can be tedious at times, but also amazing at others. For example, the clean section in
Six is astonishing All of this is not to say these guys are constantly amazing. Towards the end of the album, a lot of the riffs start to sound similar. Even the solos start to sound like they were all written in the same frame of mind. For the most part they each start out with a few bended and vibrated notes, some fast parts (I think I even heard some sweeping), and then directly following that they go back into having emotion. At first it sounded great, but after a few songs it started to get old. They should also stick to what they know. For example,
Not Alone starts off sounding like an incredibly cliche progressive song, luckily that only lasts for a few moments.
The rhythm section is also very tight. The drumming on this album is superb. Very technical, Shannon is a beast, not only with his feet but also with his hands. However, I feel that he overplays at points. Sometimes his fills can really enhance songs, but it can also take away sometimes. You can tell that he is just trying to put in monster fill after monster fill. He also overuses his double bass a lot. Whenever I listen to the chorus of
This Calling I always cringe at the repetitive 32nd notes he uses. It would sound so much better if not only he played slower, but if he was playing something that actually fit the song. Don't get me wrong though, he does have some great fills, and when he uses his bass pedals sparingly it sounds amazing, I just wish he do that more often. The bass however is almost completely out of the mix. The few times I can hear it though I'm not really impressed, which makes me think I'm not missing anything. This album would definitely bennefit from an original and good bassist too. It would help take away from some of repetitiveness of the album.
Overall, this is a solid effort, and a definately improvement from
This Darkend Heart. If they spent more time writing songs, or even just released this as an EP it would be so much better. Half the album is really good, but the other half is just the same thing, save a few different riffs. The vocals are a nice change from the standard monotone screaming that is plaguing so much music out there. The instruments while all technically advanced (except maybe the bass) need to work on being 1.) consistent, and 2.) knowing when not to play. Still, this album is a good album, especially for metalcore.
