ALL THAT REMAINS Drummer Is 'Absolutely In Love' With Band's Just-Completed New Album

Massachusetts metallers ALL THAT REMAINS recently completed recording their new album at a California studio for a tentative early 2015 release via Razor & Tie. The follow-up to 2012's "A War You Cannot Win" was helmed by producer Josh Wilbur, who has previously worked with LAMB OF GOD and GOJIRA.

Speaking to Josh Rundquist (a.k.a. That Drummer Guy) on September 16 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, ALL THAT REMAINS drummer Jason Costa stated about the band's forthcoming CD (hear audio below): "Our label [has gone] through a lot of changes, as far as people who work there. And some of the new people that are just coming in, I don't know what they think that they expect from us. But we wrote a great album, and the guy who recorded our album, he absolutely loves it. And he's a Grammy-nominated dude. And he loves it and everything's fine. But the label kind of wants us to maybe write two more songs or so that are more quote-unquote radio oriented. So we'll see what's gonna happen. I think we already have enough of what we need for the album... Maybe they're right. Who knows? Maybe we go and we write two more songs and the songs end up being great. And it can't be a bad thing, right?!"

Regarding the musical direction of the new ALL THAT REMAINS material, Costa said: "The 13 songs that we have for the album, those are done, and they sound fantastic. I'm absolutely in love with this album. Usually there's a few songs on every album that we record that I'm, like, 'Eh, it could be better. Blah blah blah.' This one, not one song do I have any, like, 'Oh, it could have been better.' I mean, everything can always be better — it's kind of subjective — but I don't have any misgivings at all about... I love every song on this album."

He continued: "It definitely still sounds like us. But the heavy stuff is heavier, and the faster stuf is faster. We all really challenged ourselves on this album. And the radio stuff is more… not more radio, but there's definitely more singing, there's more melody and stuff like that. But the songs are fast; we have a lot of fast burners on this album. And the double-bass stuff for the heavier songs is really challenging for me this time. The patterns are super-hard, some of them."

ALL THAT REMAINS singer Phil Labonte commented on the recent dissolution of a number of metal acts that came up at the same time as his band, such as BLEEDING THROUGH and GOD FORBID. He remarked, "I’m so glad ATR have transcended 'metal' and have become 'musicians.' Labonte later walked back his comments after some negative backlash online, saying, "That last post was about 'metal' and it wasn’t about the quality of the bands mentioned. It was a reflection on how arbitrary and fickle 'metal' fans are. Stop lookin for hate."

ALL THAT REMAINS had a No. 2 single on the rock radio chart earlier this year with "What If I Was Nothing", which marked a stylistic departure for the band.
A previous single from "A War You Cannot Win", "Stand Up", spent three weeks at NO. 1, making it the band's first -ever chart-topper fifth consecutive Top 10 rock single.

"A War You Cannot Win" debuted at No. 13 on the Billboard album chart and has sold over 115,000 copies to date.