Originally written by Michael Roberts.
As a fan of All That Remains’ previous two albums I’m sad to report that Overcome is a bit of a letdown. Both This Darkened Heart and The Fall of Ideals were strong efforts that tastefully combined modern-day mosh with a smattering of traditional heavy metal-isms and a dynamic vocal performance. Overcome on the other hand is a far more polished affair that has smoothed out most of the band’s rough edges. A big plus is the monster production that gives ATR their best sound to date, while musically they’re as tight and well-tuned as you’d expect.
The main problem with Overcome is that it sees All That Remains moving further away from their extreme metal flourishes and edging ever closer to commercial soft-rock blandness. The clean vocals are more dominant than ever, and while Phil Labonte’s voice is still terrific, the majority of the sung lines here have considerably less power and charm than those on The Fall of Ideals. They do work on some tracks (“Two Weeks”, “Undone”), but really suck the life out of others (see “Forever In Your Hands” and “Do Not Obey”). The belated one-two of “Relinquish” and the title track brings the album back up a notch, with both recalling some of ATR’s former hardness and speed. Overcome ends on a soft note with a faithful but unexciting cover of Nevermore’s “Believe In Nothing” which does little to raise the album above average.
All That Remains are a better band than this and have already done enough to claim their spot in the upper echelon of metalcore/NWOAHM, so I’m willing to chalk up Overcome as a minor and temporary case of the wobbles. Perhaps if it ends up being a commercial flop the band will regain a bit of hunger and fury. As it stands this album isn’t a complete failure and there are moments worth hearing on it, but there’s no getting around the fact that Overcome is ATR’s weakest collection of songs to date.
