Band:	All Else Fails
Album:	The Oracle: What Was, Is And Could Have Been
Style:	Rock
Release date:	August 19, 2011
A review by:	Doc G.

01. Overture
02. This World In Flames
03. The Twilight Of Mankind
04. Fallen
05. The House At The End Of The World
06. Monster Eats The Pilot
07. The Oracle
08. Rebirth
09. Sludge Factory
10. Obsidian Walls
11. This World In Flames [acoustic version]
12. Robots KOLTG

Damn, I pretty much had an entire review written up based off the first couple of tracks. For those of you not present to hear my ever-so-witty monologues muttered to myself in front of the keyboard, I was basically going off on how this band frequently sounds like some whack-ass As I Lay Dying clone...

...Then some good things happened in the music and my review got ruined. There goes 3 dozen perfectly good jokes that could have been applied to a name like "All Else Fails".

The good news is, there is some cringe worthy aspects to this music that I'll get to later. The bad news is this album isn't terrible.

All Else Fails seem to be playing a very schizophrenic form of metal here. It jumps from some pretty forgettable metalcore, to some interesting prog bits with a few tastefully out of place riffs. For example, the main riff in the track "Monster Eats The Pilot" seems like something that would gel nicely in a folk metal track. There's a handful bits here and there that sound as if the band has been enjoying their fair share of Riverside, Opeth, and perhaps a few bites of Dream Theater. Then the metalcore spine of the music reasserts itself again to bring things back to a nice, comfortable couch made out of cliche and mediocrity.

The cringe worthy parts? Well, they're scattered, luckily. First of all, this vocalist is horrifically plain sounding regardless of what he's attempting to do; the clean vocals rarely soar or grab you, the harsh vocals are of the generic factory-line made half-shout-half-growl deathcore brand. Hell, if All Else Fails perhaps put as much time diversifying the vocals as they have with many of their riffs, they might be catching onto something. The vocals seem to pronounce everything that's wrong with this album. Secondly, and slightly more accepted is the lack of direction with a lot of the guitar work. Yes, yes, we've went over the fact that they can and do frequently stand out, but when they're not exploring the different corners of metal, they join the vocals in their aimless meandering.

It's another album that starts off pretty unassuming, but does show some signs of reasserting itself before the end. It's just a little too late off the launch pad to really hit it as home-run of any kind. Not a bad listen, though.