Review Summary: This truly is a classic album, one found in probably fifty albums searching. It appeals to fans of all genres of metal including heavy, thrash, groove, speed, metal core and even the occasional death metal fan.
To kick this review off, may I recommend that no one listen to this album before any other chimaira album. I did just that and it did slaughter the experience for me. This chimaira album is really on another level, providing prime listening for any type of metal head. It kills each other album ever made by chimaira, and in my opinion, many other bands. This truly was a band in their prime.
The album and song structure are both well made. It appears that "Inside The Horror" was believed to be their best song. Personally I would put "Inside the Horror" as the album opener and "Salvation" as the third song. Second song "Left For Dead" and forth song would then be "Save Ourselves". With saying this, the way they have constructed it packs a huge punch. The song structure is a standard heavy metal structure, consisting of primarily;
Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Solo, Verse, Chorus.
This is a structure that only the best can pull off, but Chimaira have nailed it here.
Mark Hunter really did abandon any kind of melody on this album, which accounts hugely for why Pass Out Of Existence was such a huge disappointment. He worked primarily on his growling yell, providing the listener with a sense of mass power and rage. The only time Hunter does drop to a melodic tune is in the star track "Salvation". I found this to work extremely well and I can't see the song being such a hit if he had not tried this. One of the biggest positives of the vocals and album in general is the lyrical matter. Hunter writes fluently about his troubles with his father, this is shown clearly on "Everything You Love", "Left For Dead" and also "Pray For All". He also writes about his friend’s suicide on "Lazarus". Another huge positive of hunter’s vocals is the fact that he wasn't too keen to sing, that he interrupted the riffs. It may seem petty but there is nothing worse than when you are in the middle of a sweet, rage induced riff, and the vocals come in and ruin it.
Let’s put Rob Arnold under the spotlight now. After hearing this album over twenty times, i still cannot find a major flaw in the riffs used in this album. There are some of the most devastating riffs i have ever heard in this album, including the main riff to "Left For Dead" and the end riffs to both "Nothing Remains" and "Everything You Love". There are also some riffs that put you in place emotionally, including the opening riff to "Salvation" and the end riff to "Lazarus". This album also has some high energy, emotion induced guitar solos, this is most prominently shown on the tracks "Save Ourselves" and "Lazarus". There are some slight mistakes like on the track "Pray For All". The opening riff is clearly a doozy, meant to tempt you into the main riff, much like the riff opening "Left For Dead" or "Bloodlust". However, after the opening riff dies, the new riff sounds great, but can’t be expanded on or improved, leaving the song with no main riff. I find this to be devastating towards the song. On each song on the album, the main riff is repeated various times, but it can't be in "Pray For All", In my opinion, killing the song. This also nearly happens on "Comatose".
The constructor of this album has to be Kevin Talley. Despite this being his only album to be performed with Chimaira, Talley did a great job to get the best out of everyone to create this album. The album was a lot more darkly influenced than The Impossibility Of Reason, giving us reason to believe that Talley had some influence in the depth of the music, despite him being new to the band. He has one solo on the album at the start of "Save Ourselves". Despite it being minute, it is performed with extreme velocity and perfect timing. Some memorable drum riffs on the album include the "Nothing Remains" opening riff and ending riff, the main drum riff to "Everything You Love” and the opening drums to "Pray For All". There are a few sketchy stages of drumming in this album, where Talley does a bit more work than necessary. This is evident in the second last main riff of "Everything You Love". It’s may also be the case of the main drum riff of "Everything You Love", However one would would need to hear demos of other possible drum riffs that would fit before he would make a possibly unfair judgement, as it is generally a hard guitar riff to cover on drums.
The bass in this album is nothing special. It just gets what needs to be done, complete. Notable bass riffs on the album include "Inside The Horror" And "Nothing Remains".
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