Overcome - Dark Publications

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Customer Reviews: Read 41 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars

Mediocre at Best :-( September 16, 2008
9 out of 11 found this review helpful

I was going to give this album 4 stars until I went back and listened to The Fall of Ideals. I then realized I was being nice because I love ATR so much. These two albums simply don't compare. The instrumentation on this album is excellent as usual but Labonte has lost his awesome metalcore voice. In Fall of Ideals we see Labonte having a crazy hardcore scream followed by a beautiful voice. On this album I feel that voice has been engineered into an average regular old voice. It is apparent that Adam Dutkiewicz (Killswitch Engage) did not produce this album as he has with all their previous albums. Labonte seems to take a background to the music with his new robotic voice. ATR is obviously trying to go mainstream with this release and in turn killing most of what I loved about them so much.
This album is by no means terrible but if you've been a fan of ATR since it's beginnings I feel you will be disappointed like I was with this new direction the band is taking. There are a few tracks sandwiched in the middle that are similar to Fall of Ideals but this album as a whole is a new sound for the band due mainly to Labonte's new prosthetic voice. Hardcore ATR fans looking for ATR's known sound may want to purchase tracks individually rather than buying the whole album. This album is definately mediocre as a whole in my book. :-(

3 out of 5 stars

Excellent Musicianship.. but.. September 18, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful

Let's start this out with how much I love this band. This is actually my first review on Amazon, because I feel it is so important that other people know that this is not at all ATR's finest work.

The lyrics actually reminded me a bit of 'This Darkened Heart,' which is my favorite ATR album. 'The Fall of Ideals' was a GREAT album, however I could it was beginning to head in a direction I wasn't too fond of; being far too polished. The thing I loved about 'This Darkened Heart' was that it had great musicianship, and it was pretty technical, but the guitar lines just dripped with passion (Ex. The solo's, the leads, the twin harmony..)

This album has great things about it, for example the awesome sweep picking solo's. Phenomenal. However, one thing just RUINS this CD for me; the vocals. Absolutely. Listen to the clean vocals on "The Deepest Grey," they are just chilling to hear the growling underlying them. The clean vocals in themselves on Overcome aren't terrible, but they seem so generic and worthless. They lack the energy of the previous albums beyond belief.

I was really looking forward to this CD, and I never thought I'd be giving this band a Three Star review on anything. This album reminds me a lot of a Killswitch Engage album actually, and there's nothing wrong with KSE (I love them), but the problem is that ATR ISN'T KSE. If I want to listen to Killswitch, I'll listen to Killswitch. I don't need All That Remains to fulfill that.

2 out of 5 stars

Oh how the mighty have fallen... September 22, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

One of the worst things that can happen to a band is to put out multiple albums that get progressively better only to then drop one that take ten steps back.

What All That Remains has going for them is that where this album falls short isn't the lyrics or the music, but the production (note: they had a new producer for this album). I am a huge fan of metal with actual vocals mixed with great screaming like In Flames, Killswitch Engage, and Nothingface (who also suffered on their fourth release), but the clean vocals on the entire album are just too clean. While it's clearly still Phil screaming, the clean portions sound generic and more suitable for modern pop-rock radio music, and while voice layering is nothing new here it's over used and very distracting. Additionally there are many, many places where it's obvious that instead of just letting Phil sing the entire song, he instead often recorded individual lines that were then laced together (as opposed to past albums where you can often hear him taking a breath which adds to the vocal passion).

But while the vocals are the most distracting disappointment the music suffers as well. From the beginning, even before I heard the first scream from Before the Damned I couldn't help but notice that the drums sounded like they were synthesized, and once everything kicked in fully it felt like it was all synthesized. To make things worse the levels of all the instruments feel like they're all being pushed to the limits all the time instead of balancing them out so it actually sounds like a band instead of a computer.

You can still tell that their music and song writing abilities are still there making this album all the more tragic. I'm sure that all of these songs will actually sound better live, but as of now the album sounds more like a band trying to sound like All That Remains. And if this indeed were a new band and this their first album I would have written them off before the end of the second track.

Added Note - For all the reviewers who say they're metal fans but then point out that they like the vocals and openly call them radio friendly: you're not metal fans, you're hard rock fans. Nothing wrong with that, just pointing out the difference.

3 out of 5 stars

Can they live up to the hype? September 19, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

'All That Remains' previous two albums were fantastic in their own rights, with technical achievements from lead guitarist Oli Herbert and an excellent mixing of styles from the vocalist, Philip Labonte. Any fan of the group has their preference between the two, whether it be the rebellious passion of "This Darkened Heart" or the intense, clean-cut work of the group in "The fall of Ideals." There's been a lot of hype surrounding their new release, and some questions remain: Does it go in a new direction and bring creativity to the table? And if someone has never owned an ATR album before, is this where he/she should start?

The fact of the matter is, this is not where any new listener should start. In "Overcome," the group has switched producers, a vital component to the sound and style of the recording you buy in stores. Labonte must be unsatisfied with his vocals in the past, because he experiments with a touched-up version of clean vocals that ends up sounded more tough than authentic or passionate. Herbert has done a great job of extending his solos, which a new step that will certainly please many fans - let it be known that are certainly some very heavy songs, notably Chiron - but in the end, the band has chosen to tone down the guitars and put the focus more on catchy melodies and this new type of singing. Still, it's fun to listen to a lot of these songs because the choruses often hang in the back of your mind. The main problem with the changes aren't that they are bad: they were simply changed poorly.

In an attempt to become more appealing to the masses and hopefully sell more albums, ATR has found themselves with a hybrid album that will prove difficult to satisfy either hardcore metal fans or alternative rock fans. "Two weeks" is clearly an attempt at radio-friendly metal (thus losing it's metal touch) and "Forever in your Hands" is an emotional song that doesn't belong with the rest of the album. In fact, when ripping the cd, the default genre is rock, not metal.

In the end, this album is a decent hard rock album by itself, but when compared to the previous work of what I consider a fantastic and enjoyable metalcore band, it is a little bit of a dissapointment. If you're looking for a standalone mainstream heavy metal album that is enjoyable, give "Overcome" a try. If you are more a of a hardcore fan that likes intense guitar riffs and a combination of growling and clear singing, check out their older albums first.

5 out of 5 stars

The 'Exile on Main St" of Metal October 4, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful

When the Stones 'Exile on Main St' first was released my take on it was that it was ok but nothing great. But subsequent listening revealed more and more intricacies in the lyrics, chord structures, melodies and etc until finally Exile was considered to be a virtual masterpiece of rock music. With Overcome you will have the inevitable complaints from the mall rats who demand that their every vocal be a cookie monster growl. They fail to realize that the essence of metal encompasses far more than growling.
Overcome is a fantastic album that grows on you the more you play it. Countless subtle, almost hidden melodies and rhythms become more and more apparent. I DO believe it is similar to Atreyu's last work, not in tone but in representing the maturation of a band. All That Remains has grown up and released a fantastic work.

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