All That Remains - Overcome (2008)

Album: Overcome
Genre: Metal
Label: Prosthetic / Razor and Tie

Tracks:
1. Before the Damned
2. Two Weeks
3. Undone
4. Forever In Your Hands
5. Chiron
6. Days Without
7. A Song For The Hopeless
8. Do Not Obey
9. Relinquish
10. Overcome
11. Believe in Nothing

Overcome is the fourth full-length studio release from Springfield’s (MA) own All That Remains, one of the heavy hitters on Prosthetic Records’ solid lineup. Overcome’s release date was officially September 16, 2008. The album’s first single will be “Chiron” and will be one of the downloadble songs for Rock Band, along with “Two Weeks”.

First off, let’s start with what this album did right. They capitalized on one of the few shortcomings of The Fall of Ideals, being that the new album is consistent, and does not have any overly strong or weak points. Overcome also has some really good songwriting, and makes use of some really great melodies. My favorite examples of this is the clean vocal melody in the song “Two Weeks” [track 2] or the guitar parts in “Before the Damned” [track 1] when there are no vocals (pre-verse, about 22 seconds in).

That about covers the good things about this album. Now to begin the bash-fest that will be this review from here on out.

The first thing I want to address is the vocals. The melodic vocals sound AWFUL. I really want to know what the hell happened to Philip Labonte’s voice, or why the decision was made to change the way they were. The screaming/growling vocals are very sub-par throughout the album, but are at times just as fantastic as those from The Fall of Ideals. In some instances the screaming/growling sound almost like clones from previous albums (”Before The Damned” could easily have been from The Fall of Ideals). Most cases of the more intense vocals are simply yelling, though, similar to the new Bullet For My Valentine approach. It worked for them, but certainly doesn’t fit for All That Remains.

The next issue is that the intensity is turned way down on this album. It’s still heavy and aggressive. but lacks the “oomph” that they used to have, and none of the songs hit that hard. Obviously the biggest example of something missing from Overcome are vocals like the opening few seconds of “This Calling” [Track 1 from TFoI]. There are no longer visceral, blood-curdling screams. The guitars are no longer as intense, either. They took off a bit of the crunchiness from the guitar sound, although the style of the more rhythmic picking is still as solid (although used less frequently).

All in all, the album shows some potential, but feels overly polished and refined (well done, Jason Suecof). All That Remains have lost their edge it seems. With it’s overly consistent mediocrity, I found it hard to get into this as an album. Granted, there were a couple songs that caught my attention, those songs were addressed in the only paragraph about the good. A pleasant and un-engaging album, because of this there was not much to say about it.

Track picks: “Before the Damned” and “Chiron”