Madness (All That Remains album)


Madness is the eighth studio album by All That Remains. It was released on April 28, 2017, on Razor & Tie Records. Madness is the first studio album produced by Howard Benson, as well as the first album to feature bassist Aaron Patrick. While this is the band's next-to-last album with guitarist Oli Herbert, it is also their last album to be released in his lifetime.

Background

Vocalist Phil Labonte told Revolver magazine about band's approach on the new disc: "We wanted to mix it up a little bit and write from a vocal perspective this time. So I went to L.A. and came up with vocal ideas and melodies and then sent those chord progressions back to Oli Herbert and he wrote riffs in response to that. Doing it this way turned the record into a vocal album as opposed to a guitar album. And that affected some things. Like, there might be less intricacy in the riffs because they were written in response to my voice."

Musical style

Labonte added that the majority of the new songs features "significant programming and electronic sounds. And that's something we wanted to have flowing through the entire record. So you're gonna hear that kind of influence on most of the tracks."
Phil also stated: "On this record, there's five songs on the record that are exactly what you would expect from All That Remains. There's some songs where we kind of were, like, 'All right, let's push this and maybe change what we can do, or what All That Remains is allowed to do.' But it ain't like we're not heavy anymore. And if you're just, like, 'Oh, they're not heavy anymore,' then you're just not listening."

Reception

The album received mixed reviews. Aaron J. Marko of Exclaim! described the album as mediocre, generic and archaic. Christopher Di Carlo of Overdrive magazine, on the other hand, described the album as beautiful yet heavy.

Track listing

All lyrics written by Phil Labonte; all music composed by All That Remains.

Personnel

All That Remains