All That Remains have released their first new music since Oli Herbert passed away six years ago. Jason Richardson joined in 2019 to fill Oli's role on guitars, and this song definitely sounds like he got to do some of the songwriting. The riffing is very similar to his solo work.

Phil Labonte can slob on my knob like corn on the cob. "We have Aaron Lewis at home" ass bitch.

Also, dude is pushing fifty and still hangs out almost exclusively with people in their twenties because he hasn't updated his personality since 2012 and stopped emotionally developing a solid decade before that.

Why is this here? I'm serious

Does anyone here even like All That Remains? I certainly don't

Twitter tantrums aside, it's not completely shit.

I will always have a soft spot for All That Remains' early stuff. I was first exposed to them at the Sounds of the Underground tour in ~2006. At that time in my life I was just getting clean after being into some pretty hard drugs, and was rediscovering a lot of the things I loved before cocaine, metal music included.

ATR was pretty early on the lineup, and they put on a fun show and I listened to This Darkened Heart a lot in the years that came. I have moved past them, but still go back to that album from time to time and the nostalgia is still strong.

But yeah, Phil also seems like a douche and the new stuff blows

This band sounds like the 2000's version of late 1980's glam rock. Melodramatic love songs, sweeping melodies, etc. Only with more modern dressing, like the occasional "Yaaaargh" and chug guitar riff, and of course, shorter hair.

Not really my thing either, and although I don't know much about the members' individual convictions, I would certainly hope none of the share the same questionable "Values" as Aaron Lewis.

Well, I thought it was a nice song at least

Weird song I thought. Sounds like each bit is perfectly ok on it's own but the whole thing just doesn't seem to come together as a song, and there's something about the production that I can't put my finger on that I don't like.

Jason Richardson also continues to be the most one trick pony around. Guy said all he had to say guitar wise on Born of Osiris' The Discovery.

Since Oli Herbert passed away (obviously murdered by his wife, and it still baffles me that she isn't behind bars for this) the band has been pretty much reduced to just Phil Labont and Mike Martin, from the original-ish line-up, and they don't really have the writting skills necessary to really make interesting music anymore. Even with Herbert, their music was only really ever good from 2002 to 2006, and they have been on a steady decline since.

Maybe I'll give this one a spin, out of curiosity, but I don't expect much.

I tend to agree, I always thought This Darkened Heart was a pretty decent album. Never cared for their other stuff.

Metal is a genre that sadly froze its own time around the mid 2000s and then stayed that way for eternity.

The Fall of Ideals is about the only album of theirs I ever listened to much. But not much of a metalcore guy.

Lol what did this guy do to you bro?

1 and a half albums worth of upper tier metalcore for the times back in the day. Doesn't sound like anything new going on on this song, meh.

It's a cliche, I know, but in this case the old saying 'the earlier stuff is the best' truly applies. Both TDH and TFOI are solid no bullshit metalcore albums, among the best that was released in the genre at the time. For We Are Many had some good stuff, but ever since then, it's been mostly miss, sadly. Unearth are still delivering though.

You know... every single time you spout this kind of non-sensical old fart cliché, you out yourself as someone who doesn't know much about metal at all. Just saying.

Damn. Harsh.

(but kinda facts)

I'm sorry, but I'm missing the point of going in just about every thread about "newer bands" just to post broad overgeneralizations of how bad metal has become. Like, what's the actual point of this? It's a terrible way to start a conversation...

I wonder if SanPeron meant to say that metalcore is frozen in the 2000s rather than metal as a whole. That would be a more reasonable take although still false.

You will read me complain about the state of metal for a long time, at least until I see the genre going in any visible direction that isn't rehashing old genres. You out yourself as a guy who takes criticism of modern metal as an attack or something, I couldn't care less about what you think is knowing about metal.

Genuinely curious what direction you want metal to go that it hasn't been doing. It doesn't really seem like you're paying attention if you think this stuff.

fixed

Iam not the one who decides that. Iam not a metal musician, just a fan. I don't want metal to go anywhere, just release new creative music, styles and bands. Today we have a lot of quantity of bands, but very few have quality. When something new appears and I like it, I usually comment it.

I always got the impression from SanPeron's posts that he laments that he didn't get to enjoy when Metal was a this big media/cultural fad/trend/force back in the formative days and longs to be part of a scene like that. And not saying that in a negative way, as I think he's cool. But that is over and the era of huge scenes has been killed by the ability to dive as deep into any niche as you want via the internet.

I agree that the MA view of metal is not the mainstream view of metal, its very myopic at times IMO.

My issue is more with the fact that you tend to paint all of modern metal as being the same, with extremely broad strokes, and always do so by choosing either the worst of the worst, like how you used Falling in Reverse or All that Remains as proofs of why metal is going bad, or by overgeneralizing statements, like when you said that all melodic black metal bands are like Kvaen, and just doing the same thing over and over. However, I don't see you in threads about bands who do their own thing and push the boundaries of metal further and further, like Sigh, Blut Aus Nord, Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice, Ad Nauseam, Deathspell Omega, Panopticon, Mastodon, Pallbearer, Messa, Power Trip. Like... do you really think that none of these bands have any kind of originality to their sound and that they are just reashing old ideas over and over?

Oh, and I'm not sure, but weren't you the one who was complaining about Dødheimsgard's latest album getting 1st place in the AOTY poll of 2023? I mean, that new and original stuff, no? Even if you don't like it.



I get that, but they are entirely different eras, with entirely different ways of "consuming music". The days of big labels pushing for a few big names, and the huge cultural phenomenon of bands like Maiden, Sabbath and Metallica are long gone. But that's not just for metal. We won't get anymore Pink Floyd's and The Beatles, and I don't expect extreme metal will ever have other names like Death, Darkthrone or Mayhem. That's just not how music is today. It doesn't mean that "the state of metal" is bad. If anything, the boundaries of the genre have basically exploded entirely, and there are now niches for basically every subsubsubgenre of metal, and musicians have much more creative freedom then what they used to have in the 70's and 80's.

Thanks Ace I always appreciate all your comments and you always strike me as very mature and chill. My dad was a metalhead in the 80s and he inculcated my love for this music, you are right in many ways. Metalcore was the scene I grew up with, along with the end of nu metal, but I always had a deep love and respect for the classic bands.

Seeing this All That Remains video, sounding exactly like it was 20 years ago, it just amazes me, that's why I said that it seemed like time was frozen, it's a sensation that I have with a lot of modern metal.

HeavenDuff is right. Sorry.

Playing devil's advocate, those comments regarding Dødheimsgard's belong to his time of "I want metal to be popular and that's why I'm against anything avant-garde, to be relevant again it has to be simple" and he seems to have evolved quite a bit in that respect and seems more open to new things.

Now the fact that he spends 90% of his comments complaining about the state of today's metal is because he literally has nothing (or hasn't shown) to contribute as a metal enthusiast to the conversation, so the best one can do is to ignore him until he stops that nonsense and starts contributing or until he leaves.

Metalcore was a trend or even a fad, sadly. Like most trends, it died out relatively quickly, and bands had to change their sound to fit with new trends. Otherwise, most bands just kind of go stale and become parody of themselves. But to say that metal sucks because of one trend (that's arguably not even metal), is kind of an overreaction.



Fair enough.

Also, I want to point insist on the fact that I don't want to drive away people with differing views or that there shouldn't be criticism of anything "modern" or "new" metal, but rather that it's kinf of pointless to just go on and on about how most metal sucks today, and never really truly engaging in in-depths discussions. There's nothing interesting about these superficial overgeneralizations, and it doesn't lead to interesting discussions.

If his statement was something like "Metalcore always was a limited subgenre of metal, and it mostly stopped evolving around the middle of the 00's and went stale." instead of just saying that all metal froze in 20 years ago and has not evolved since, I would have probably agreed with him. But man... give me a little something to work with...

Most of the genre I listen to have don't evolve all that much to my ears, power metal, trad metal, thrash metal, death metal. Sure you get "lets add in some other elements, but not too much..." or it gets more technical or "progressive". But the avant guard shit I listen to often sounds less metal than stuff that doesn't make the MA cut, and most is just unlistenable to me. A lot of recommendations are atonal disjointed messes without a hook to be found. But I'm getting old.

But when I'm cranking Eternal Champion or Visigoth I don't care that its "just" more cool heavy metal worshiping at the alter of classic Manowar, Maiden, etc. I'm too busy rocking.

Them: "this band is just Maiden worship"
Me: "nice"

I like new and interesting stuff too, and there's plenty of that out there. But yeah man...give me that straight up old school metal any time and I'm here for it.

And I mean, by some point, and when the big "cannons" or a genre are established, it's kind of silly to expect new music in the same genre or subgenre to be radically different from what was made in that (sub)genre already. And again, it's kind of the same with all great musical genre throughout history. Classical music and Jazz come to mind. They are genres of music that have been developped, codified, explored, defined and redefined. What else can be done within these genres that breaks new grounds without radically breaking the codes of said genres?

So should we stop writing new jazz and classical altogether? Or should we just enjoy the works for their good compositions, good hooks, good melodies, good harmonies, etc. etc. etc. while understanding that these new works will be made within the parameters of what defines the genre? Like you said, I don't mind the fact that bands nowadays will just make good music without breaking all that many new grounds.

On the other hand I still think that newer bands can break new grounds, but like many others have already said on the forum here (and I agree with this idea), the way to make something new in metal now is to mix elements of various genres, even genres outside of metal. I also think it's fine for a band to fit withing a scene or subscene, and just have their own thing they do very well and that makes them unique. Kind of like how Imperial Triumphant is another avant-garde dissonant black/death metal band, but with jazz elements and their whole art deco aesthetic.

Nah, there's an absolute glut of 100% quality stuff now. That's just not true at all.

Yeah, last year I listened to only 46 new releases and about 20 of them I thought were like 8/10 or better, and if I start looking for releases from just the last 5 years I can probably easily make a top 100 of absolutely high quality releases. Quite simply the fun of being a metal nerd is to dive in and discover new things both old and new.

The latest Messa, White Ward, Demoniac, Pharaoh, Blood Star, Ponte del Diavolo, Cruel Force... everything from new bands doing some inventive, subtle experimenting to cult bands coming back and some bands mining great classic sounds. Even Bruce Dickinson and Judas Priest managed to hold up their legacies this year really well. There's an abundance. It's really only a problem if you're expecting something to make you feel like you're 16 and discovering Priest or Slayer again to the tee. Music as a whole is doing just fine.

I find new stuff all the time and am more open-minded musically than I ever was, and it's a shame if people are really just brushing off a lot of this amazing stuff coming out.

It would be crazy to expect something new, adventurous, innovative or remotely interresting in a new All that Remains album, though. Like I said earlier, they were already on the downhill while Oli Herbert was still alive. But now that he's gone, they are basically a heavier, more nu-metal version of Disturbed. Still, early ATR was quite solid. Herbert's knack for melodic metal and solid leads and arrangements was making them standout in a very positive way.

I'm not SanPeron, but what he is getting at is that metalheads have such an incredibly specific definition of metal that any evolution that isn't incestuous navel-gazing is immediately thrown out and forced to make its own scene. There's a reason the stereotypical metalhead is a gen X/boomer dad with graying hair. Metalheads decry losing a generation to "false metal" without even bothering to understand why said generation did that in the first place.

Which is fine. Not every genre needs to endlessly evolve. But don't complain that all the 2000's kids went to go listen to -core music is all I'm saying. We did that for a reason.

Nothing I said was about -core music - I know the thread is about one of those bands, but SanPeron just said metal in general was lagging, which it isn't. There's tons of music out there that is definitively metal and really good and interesting. I'm not even bashing -core stuff. I'm just saying metal is doing fine and this dichotomy of "modern core stuff" vs "gray haired oldies" isn't really real.

It's not the worst thing I've ever heard out of a 2000s metalcore band, in fact, it's a slight improvement over what they did on The Fall Of Ideals, which I found to be an extremely contrived and boring affair, and apparently I was in the minority on that one. I didn't end up checking out their first two albums until years after first hearing their 2006-2012 stuff and had trouble believing it was the same band. The eventual album that will follow this will undoubtedly be middling, but I'll give it a chance before jumping on the All That Remains still completely sucks train.

As far as SanPeron's post goes, I'll just echo HeavenDuff, the constant bemoaning metal as a stalled out art form is both annoying and blatantly untrue. The problem is I'm just too bored to add anything beyond that, it's getting old.

Just popping in to say chillax metals doin just fine.

And while I'm here I'll just say All That Remains fuckin sucks.

Arguing about -core bands and whether they are too hardcore to be metal or not is not an "incredibly specific definition of metal". It's hard to have actual discussions about the topic if your argument is absurd exaggerations.
Nobody except SanPeron decries losing a generation to "false metal" because most of use realize it's the younger generation that's currently behind the absolutely massive resurgence of traditional metal.

I'm not sure I get your argument anyway. Are you saying you started listening to -core and "gatekeepers" said "core isn't metal" so you left the whole scene and said "fine I'll listen to -core even harder?" I don't get your logic.