First of all I would like to say that Shadows Fall always consistently made good albums. The only thing that really bugged me were the screams of Brian, which sometimes, at their highest point, sound like some kind of monotone noise. Fortunately he started to sing more and more clean throughout the years which he is really good at.

 

The CD opens with the fantastic song ‘Eligy’. It starts as a regular Shadows Fall song, with a recognizable Metalcore riff. It’s at the chorus where we find out that they’ve taken the melodies and clean singing a step further with the new songs. A nice slow guitar melody supports awesome clean vocals without turning it into a pussy song, which is often the case with Metalcore bands. I wouldn’t exactly describe Shadows Fall as a true Metalcore band, mainly because in almost every song there can be find an awesome solo and the double bass isn’t hit at every note in a heavy riff. These facts give you a more traditional Metal feeling.

 

For the ones who now fear that Shadows Fall is turning into an entirely melodic band, I would say don’t worry. They still throw out heavy riffs as they’ve always did, but everything is now sounding too familiar; not taking the re-recorded songs in consideration. Except for some more clean vocals I don’t hear significant changes in the new songs. It says enough that the song ‘Dead World’ was already at an EP in 2001 and fits in well with the new material.  Too bad that these guys didn’t made some more progression; it’s an awesome band but we don’t want to hear the same concept over and over again. Let’s hope that they’ll let us hear something really new with their next album. Oh, and the covers are fun to hear, but don’t really add something to the CD, check the tracklist for which songs are covered.