All That Remains

About All That Remains

All That Remains came out of Springfield, Massachusetts in 1998, right when metalcore was starting to crystallize into something you could actually call a genre. Philip Labonte handled vocals, Oli Herbert and Mike Martin took guitar duties, and they went through the usual early lineup shuffling that every metal band seems required to endure.

Their first album, "Behind Silence and Solitude," dropped in 2002 on Prosthetic Records. It was solid melodic death metal with metalcore leanings, heavy on the Gothenburg influence. You could hear the In Flames and Dark Tranquillity worship pretty clearly, but they had enough Massachusetts grit to make it their own. The album didn't set the world on fire, but it got them noticed in the underground.

"This Darkened Heart" followed in 2004 and pushed things further. The production was heavier, the riffs were tighter, and Labonte's vocals had more range. They were still firmly in melodeath territory, but you could hear them figuring out how to write an actual hook. The title track got some traction, and suddenly they weren't just another New England metal band.

Then came "The Fall of Ideals" in 2006, and everything changed. "This Calling" became an unexpected radio hit, somehow bridging the gap between metalcore brutality and hard rock accessibility. MTV2 played the video. Rock radio picked it up. "Not Alone" and "Six" followed as singles, and suddenly they were touring with much bigger bands. The album went on to move over 500,000 copies, which in the mid-2000s metal world was legitimately impressive.

The tricky part was what came next. Each subsequent album saw them leaning harder into the melodic, radio-friendly elements that made "The Fall of Ideals" successful. "Overcome" in 2008 had "Two Weeks," another rock radio staple. By the time "A War You Cannot Win" rolled around in 2012, they were basically a hard rock band that occasionally remembered it used to play metalcore. Longtime fans had opinions about this, as longtime fans tend to do.

They kept releasing albums through the 2010s—"The Order of Things," "Madness," "Victim of the New Disease"—with varying degrees of commercial success and critical reception. The sound stayed in that accessible hard rock zone with occasional heavy moments.

The band took a devastating hit in 2018 when Oli Herbert died unexpectedly at 44. He'd been with them since the beginning and was integral to their sound. They continued on, because that's what bands do, but it wasn't the same.

Labonte remains the constant, still fronting the band and navigating the impossible task of keeping a legacy act relevant while not abandoning whatever made them notable in the first place. They tour regularly, playing festivals and clubs, splitting setlists between the early metalcore material and the later rock stuff. Two different crowds, same room.

Their shows are loud and relentless. Labonte's presence dominates the stage—he's an aggressive frontman who clearly means it. The crowd responds in kind, lots of aggressive dancing and circle pits during the heavier tracks. They don't do much banter, just business.

Known for Two Weeks, It Dwells in Me, What If I Was Nothing, The Last Hero, Overcome

See All That Remains Live