  
Rise to Remain are all over the UK metal scene
like a virus; they pop up as support on nearly
every tour, they gave away their EP for free with
Metal Hammer, they play near enough every festival
every year and now they’ve began spreading
all over the world. The band’s debut EP
is something that I still to this day cannot stop
listening to; some exceptionally brutal British
metalcore that is actually fresh rather than a
poor rip off from some of big boys of the genre
which is refreshing for once. Recently the guys
landed a huge deal with EMI records and have embarked
on some enormous tours around the world with the
likes of Iron Maiden and Bullet For My Valentine;
with their debut album right around the corner
we could be looking at global dominance.
My one concern for this album was not the possibility
of stylistic change, or ever about the quality
of Austin’s voice – as I’ve
stated recently he’s drastically improved
– no its none of that, it’s the re-recordings
of “Nothing Left” and “Bridges
Will Burn” from their debut EP. Let’s
discuss those tracks first; the original tracks
both had extremely crunchy guitars and “Bridges
Will Burn” was really sinister, the new
one is less crunchy but the vocals have undergone
drastic improvement and is a little less sinister
but there isn’t much in it but all in all
the new version was better, now “Nothing
Left” was my favourite track from the EP
it was heavy yet extremely beautiful, the newer
version has removed all the growling vocals and
even the clean vocals on the new version aren’t
as good, that was a pointless remake.
The fresher stuff now can range between quite
damn heavy and hardly at all which is weird bearing
in mind how the band has been up until now. “The
Serpent” was release on the bands personal
website for free download in March, it was exactly
the direction the band needed to go; the vocals
saw drastic improvement particularly the screams,
superb riff and all round tremendous guitar work
with high-octane tempo given off from the drumming
and one of the best chorus’s the band have
ever produced. All of Rise to Remain’s songs
should be like this, every single one of them
and a few of them do follow on from this example;
“This Day is Mine” follows on in exactly
the same way with a quick tempo and heavy edge
but retaining those melodic sections with a remarkable
chorus, “City of Vultures” too takes
up exactly the same structure and “Power
Through Fear” may possibly be my favourite
because not only is it heavy, fast and catchy
it’s a bouncy one too.
A heavy song that really doesn’t capture
the same addictive side that the others have is
“God Can Bleed”; it feels far too
overworked, it’s hard to follow as they’ve
tried to fit too much in one song and it hasn’t
paid off here. Not all the songs on the album
are really true to who the band are, these songs
are really light with little or no distortion
and screaming vocals, these songs aren’t
bad but that type of style really isn’t
why I listen to Rise to Remain. “Roads”
is a good example of what I’m talking about,
really light and quite slow, I’m not saying
it’s not a good style of music because it’s
not bad but Rise to Remain are a heavy metalcore
band so I really can’t see the appeal of
them writing in this way.
When it’s all said and done this has been
a decent debut album, but do I think it’s
the best stuff I’ve ever heard or even the
best I think the band is capable of? Not a chance.
I’m going to see them live this Sunday and
maybe after I’ve seen how the material favours
live then it may make more of an impression but
as it stands, nowhere near as addictive as their
debut EP was.
3.5/5
Review by James Webb
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