August Burns RedFive albums into their career (that's if you exclude the Christmas/instrumental album Sleddin' Hill), and metalcore giants August Burns Red show absolutely zero signs of growing stale. Their latest effort, Restore & Rescue, sees them pushing the envelope through and through, reinventing the genre and redefining their own sound. Riddled with the same hard-hitting and thought-provoking lyrical content of albums past, August Burns Red have upped the ante in terms of musical exploration, creating what is easily their most innovative album to date.
It almost feels somewhat hyperbolic to throw in the term 'game changer', but with so much experimentation neatly embedded in amongst all the familiar breakdowns and sections of pure chaos, it's fairly safe to say that there is no metalcore album quite like it. Following the carefully placed breakdown in Count It All As Lost, the guitars are softened and a neatly integrated piano piece is tidily merged into the obscurely reverberated drums. These moments of avant-garde musicality are in no way ostentatious; Creative Capacity is pieced together with a predominately atmospheric and somewhat unusual tempo, coupled with a collection of some unexpected instrumentation, yet the integrity and strength that is synonymous with August Burns Red's back catalogue remains just as strong – if not more so.
Whether or not you're a fan of the metalcore genre means nothing here. Restore & Rescue avoids the typically formulaic structure that so many other artists of the genre fall into the trap of replicating. August Burns Red have set themselves apart from the pack with this highly inventive release.
