All That Remains
The Order of Things
Razor & Tie
Release Date: Out Now
Review by Matthew Clewley
Massachussets metallers All That Remains have finally opened up and fired their new album The Order of Things into our beautiful world. It’s been a long three years since the 2012 release, A War You Cannot Win, a critical success. This band have been known for their prominent change in their musical direction, which has disgruntled their fans of their earlier music.
So, the album starts off very nicely on This Probably Wont End Well, with pianos and aquatic synth noises to start it up before the guitars slam themselves into the mix. The song has clean vocals throughout, there seems to be barely any vocal substance and that sadly makes this a stale introduction. No Knock is an improvement, it’s heavy both vocally and instrumentally – compared to the intro it has an admiring toughness to it. Divide takes the album back to being melodic and clean, with a surprising introduction to female cleans. Sadly, it just sounds generic along with the next track The Greater Generation, only being slightly catchy. For You has a gentle acoustic intro and probably makes the song stand out compared to the others for that reason. A Reason For Me To Fight has a great riff at the start with a superb solo.
Victory Lap is an improvement, the addition of growls on the second verse is sadly missed on some of these songs. Pernicious is on par with Victory Lap, with once again the addition of female vocals making this more appealable. Bite My Tongue seems to be the cheesiest song name on here, the sound and lyrics add to that, whilst Fiat Empire returns back to the breakdowns and cleans that are making this album a tedious affair. The BFMV-esque Tru-Kvlt-Metal turns up the tempo and becomes a surprising delight to listen to, with the nice balance of screams, cleans and pace. The final song mimcs the first song with the gentle intro with the instrumentals crashing in filled with solos and breakdowns pounding throughout the 7 minute duration.
The Order of Things is a mixed bag of songs, No Knock and Tru-Kvlt-Metal are decent listens, but it feels like you’re listening to an endless loop of the same song. All That Remains’ change of musical direction doesn’t affect me, but the way I see it, they’re like a sausage roll. Once you first buy it you have this fresh hot creation that you want to save until you’ve done your shopping, but it gets to the point where it’s so cold not even putting it in the microwave would revive what it should have been. This album has fantastic production, sadly the songs that are produced aren’t a satisfying listen.
