All Else Fails – The Oracle: What Was, Is and Could Have Been

All Else Fails have gathered a certain amount acclaim across Canada and around the globe. They have appeared on tour with the likes of Threat Signal, Fear Factory, and Suffocation, amongst others.
The band are front man and guitarist Barrett Klesko, bassist Seedy Mitchell, lead guitarist Mike Sands, and drummer Tom Wolf.
A bit of a mixed bag this, some run of the mill metalcore, and then it jumps into some sort of metalcore prog, with off timed placed riffs, the track “”Monster Eats The Pilot”” wouldn’t sound out of place on a folk metal cd
where this band could stand out, with the vocal parts, they don’t, the vocals are very average and neither compliment nor drive the songs along, but there are highlights.
Their cover of the alice in chains song, “Sludge Factory”, stay’s fairly faithful to the original song here while condensing it down to a little over four minutes. Barrett does an excellent job bringing back memories of the late Layne Staley with his vocals, and all in all, it is a very rewarding cover.
“Obsidian Walls” is a colossal song, easly the best song on here, and then they go all silly with the last song “Robots KOLTG”,

There are elements of judas priest style riffs in the song “Rebirth” before going into all out old school thrash, and here lies the problem, I feel they have yet to hit their stride, in terms of direction, its all a miss mash, with elements of thrash, metlacore,punk, and even folk metal thrown in for good measure.
I will have to revisit this cd at a later date, as im not sure whether I should give it 8/10 for its inventiveness, or 6/10 because it offers nothing new ?
[media-credit name=”all else fails” align=”aligncenter” width=”320″][/media-credit] Tracklisting
01 Overture 2:27
02 This World In Flames 4:04
03 The Twilight Of Mankind 4:29
04 This Burden Of Life 5:13
05 Fallen 4:50
06 The House At The End Of The World 3:46
07 Monster Eats The Pilot 5:30
08 The Oracle 2:28
09 Rebirth 3:55
10 Obsidian Walls 5:11
11 This World In Flames (Acoustic) 7:43
12 Robots!!! KOLTG 2:28
watch the video press kit on Youtube.
[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu3-ZqHYN-U[/youtube]

About David Farrell

General Manager and 'THE' competition guy at planetmosh.com. Manager of The Goddanm Electric www.thegde.co.uk, Tour manager for Serpentine, and ex-general Dogsbody at Hammerfest.co.uk. Media partner to numerous bands. Also takes photos, writes reviews and likes classic rock, with a touch of thrash to get the blood flowing.