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Album Details

• Artist: All That Remains
• Album: Behind Silence And Solitude
• Label: Metal Blade
• Year of Release: 2002
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: sinist3r-punk on 2011-03-14

Metal is one of those special genres that seem easy to classify on the surface, but the deeper you dig, the more you realize there's more to this than angry sounds and long hair. All That Remains is doing everything it can to revitalize interest in the once proud genre, by featuring a lead singer with short hair and some not so angry but still aggressive sounds. There are some obvious influences afoot in Behind Silence and Solitude, but to focus on those would be missing the point of the album. All That Remains have made the bold effort to re-ignite the classic genre that so many people grew up with by including heavy, thunderous guitars and the sheer manliness of a double bass pedal being played faster than humanly possible.

I'll get the bad out of the way quickly. The tempo seems to jump from time to time, especially in the middle of some brutal guitar solos. I don't fault the guitarists for that, but it is quite noticeable in some songs. Philip Labonte doesn't flex his vocal range at all in Behind Silence and Solitude. I understand that sometimes that goes with the overall theme of the album, but you could try to mix it up a little between songs. Lastly, the songs kind of blend together between intros and outros. There were times where I had to listen to the same two or three songs over and over again to figure out precisely where one ended and another began, which took me out of the experience some what.

Now with that over, let's talk awesomeness. I don't know what possessed All That Remains to take a classic melodic approach when recording this album, but it works crazy well. This is perhaps the best example of classic thrash/melodic metal you'll find in the market today. Everyone in the band understands what made melodic metal so...well, melodic. Just like a good horror movie, pacing can make or break you. Behind Silence and Solitude will be a great addition to many metal maniacs' collections, if they are willing to look past some newbie mistakes. Oh, I almost forgot, this was All That Remains debut album. Not too shabby.

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