All Out War - For Those Who Were Crucified (1998)^{Release ID: 15262}

I fucking love this album. With the perfect mix of pre-metalcore rebellion and groovy instrumentation, beatdown's aggression and breakdown heavy structure, and just a dash of death metal drumming and vocals, you get this gem of an album.

This is summarized best in the first song "Soaked Torment." After 30 seconds worth of primal chugs and drums that seem to last forever, we are immediately hit with Mike Score's wailing musings of anti-humanism and radical individualism, backed by epic crossover thrash breakdown with a sick double kick drums in between vocal tracks. The song itself transitions from mid tempo groove metal riffs to high energy breakdowns with ease and grace, before ending with a burst of slam-esque guitars for a final surprise.

From here, the album is consistently aggressive all the way through, maintain the energy of the first track with thrash and groove influences switching song by song. Occasionally, the band will try to incorporate some outside influences (such as the doom-esque openings of "For Those Who Were Crucified" and "Into The Flame Of Progress," or the lead in thrash riff of "Enemies of Creations" that sounds like they are trying too hard to sound like mid 80s era Slayer), and there are very minor rap metal influences (such as in "Resist"), but overall the album stays with this groove inspired, brackdown hardcore.

Of course, it isn't prefect by any means. For one, I think as an album, the songs get old quick. Many albums like this, geared for live performances, make up for there repetition with either dynamic themes or a short length. This album has neither Instead, we are stuck with Mike's apocalyptical wails for whar feels ages in Metalcore terms. This leads you to feel tired by the end of it. This isn't helped by the ending song "Apocalyptic Terror," which is almost 10 minutes long, and almost 3 minutes of it is full silence. The other 1 minute is a boring movie sample, and the riffs on the song feel particularly overplayed. Plus, the ending section, though epic, is ruined by the most noticeable inclusion of death metal grunts, and its bad.

Regardless of my grips, I still really love this album. It has everything I love about metalcore rolled into one: rebellious yet aggressive, technically yet emotional, crushing yet melodic, and fast paced yet full of breakdowns.