All That Remains – This Darkened Heart (Prosthetic Records)
Oh yeah! Metalcore! Serious thrash mixed with serious hardcore influenced by some seriously wicked cool shit. This is awesome! Up there with Lamb of God’s “As the Palaces Burn”, God Forbid’s “Gone Forever”, and Shadows Fall’s “The Art of Balance” in terms of quality (and by the way, this is the old Shadows Fall vocalist). Awesome, awesome stuff, this has tons of growled vocals, a few clean choruses, acoustic guitars, pianos, as well as all the double-guitar attacks in the world, tons of double-bass drumming, ripping solos, shredding riffs, and neck-snapping breakdowns. Oh, and to give you an idea of how metal this is, they credit the solos in the booklet. Old-skool!

Tracks:
1) Starts with acoustic guitar noodling, and then launches into a jerky ride of hardcore riffs and choppy breakdowns.
2) More choppy riffs, and a pair of trade-off solos that are just so sweet. Fuckin’ rock!
3) Thrashy riffs, sound a little like Shadows Fall, and some more kick-ass solos.
4) Shorter song, sounds almost melo-death in construction. Last 30 seconds is just acoustic guitar, sounds cool.
5) Ooh, epic! Total hardcore themes (“If I persevere, I shall succeed, mine enemies cannot stop me, blah blah blah”), and some really neat and worthy clean vocals. Do I smell commercial success? Nah, although there is a gorgeous clean solo-type thing towards the end that precedes this killer, killer breakdown with clean guitar harmonies (think Byzantine).
6) Wow! Acoustic guitar strumming, piano, solos, and then a driving, mid-tempo instrumental that’s truly awesome and inspirational.
7) Riffs that wind up and down the fretboard and transform to awesome breakdowns. I dig.
8) Political hardcore with clean vocals that are emotional without being “emo”. Some spiffy trade-off riffing and breakdowns.
9) More standard metalcore with drawn-out breakdowns and great clean vocals.
10) Vicious song with a very NWOSDM main riff and total mosh madness breakdowns. Awesome!