August 2025 Featured Release - The Revolution Edition

First Post August 01, 2025 12:35 AM

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

This month's feature release for The Revolution, nominated by me (Shadowdoom9 (Andi)), is the 2023 new album by Pennsylvania-based melodic metalcore masters August Burns Red, Death Below. Very obvious choice for the month of August, but I couldn't resist. This album is their best one since their earlier era, unleashing melody and heaviness all at once alongside a few guest vocalists and two 8-minute epics bookending the album. August Burns Red is far from dead, and this masterpiece proves it!

https://metal.academy/releases/43389


August 01, 2025 12:48 AM

Here's my review summary:

August Burns Red has one of the most solid discographies to come from a metalcore band. They've made great albums in their career, including the perfect Constellations. I've always wondered if there would ever be another August Burns Red that as much of a masterpiece as Constellations. Well I shall wonder no more with their new offering Death Below! The album is a much further throwback with their fast pacing in songs that I can consider total bangers. Plus a few songs each have a guest appearance from a vocalist or guitarist of another well-known metalcore band, and that's often a grand treat. Those guests includes Killswitch Engage vocalist Jesse Leach, guitarist Jason Richardson (known for his work with All That Remains, All Shall Perish, Born of Osiris, and Chelsea Grin), Erra's JT Cavey, and Underoath vocalist Spencer Chamberlain. An alternate version of "The Cleansing" also includes the one and only Will Ramos of Lorna Shore. Oh yeah, "The Cleansing" and "Reckoning" are two of the greatest highlights here, two nearly 8-minute epics that are the band's longest, not including the closing epic of their 2005 debut, all full of stylistic transcendence. All in all, Death Below can show you how to overcome the dark struggles of this decade and look into the light, through heaviness and despair. August Burns Red's 10th album can very well be their greatest, most ambitious work yet!

5/5

Recommended tracks: "The Cleansing", "Ancestry", "Backfire", "Revival", "Dark Divide", "Reckoning"

For fans of: All That Remains, Erra, Killswitch Engage