“I built a castle to hide away from everything that cut so deep.”
Crabcore’s meteoric comeback is on the cusp of surpassing the days of Myspace to a degree that very few saw coming. Nevertheless, saturated mysticisms that have become antiquated across the modern landscape are being pushed aside for what seems to be an endless swath of quality bands sprouting up on a weekly basis. It may be overly pedantic to the point of presenting the notion of fatigue, but even in all their glory, many revival acts stick to a singular gun from an inspirational standpoint. As the pool of genesis-sympathetic outfits grows, an expansive palette is all the more pivotal, and maybe even an implied requirement, to separate from the pack. If you’re seething for a group that has dared to brave an influential odyssey to cover every sonic corner of the past twenty years, and in turn establish a standard of their own, look no further than Ashes At Last.
Debut EP and album, You Can’t Stop The Sunset and This Is How Silence Dies, were merely the tip of the iceberg for Ashes At Last. Leaning heavily into the style of core that defined an entire generation of angst-filled youth, this tandem of projects stood as a rejuvenating one-two punch and set a precedent for something much more grand for the LA-based quartet. Ashes At Last could have stayed the course with a dynamic canvas of tastefully integrated synths, chugs, choruses, and vocal range, and no one would’ve blamed them. Instead, they have ventured far beyond their initial bids at claiming a stake amongst their peers and derive every fundamental sensibility of the late 2000s and early 2010s on All In The Name Of Entertainment. Of Mice and Men, Emmure, I See Stars, Chelsea Grin, Attack Attack!, Asking Alexandria, and Motionless In White may never return to their early sound, but Ashes At Last, thankfully, stand to be the collective melding of those influences. All In The Name Of Entertainment could very well trigger a considerable shift that drives Ashes At Last’s constituents to take calculated gambles outside of their comfort zone and, hopefully, create something truly memorable.
Ashes At Last not only pull off the technicalities of crabcore to a tee, but by extension elucidates every fiber of adolescence that we’ve lamented for a good while. Those long nights with friends, minimal responsibility, and the beginning of wrestling with one’s emotions are prevalent on All In The Name Of Entertainment’s more metalcore-adjacent tracks. “Here’s The Kicker”, “Mythology For The Desperate”, and “Aftermath” are rife with breakdowns and chants that will make you feel like you’ve just gotten home from school and are ready to spend the night raiding villages in World of Warcraft after crushing a Red Bull, and may compel a bit of self-introspection as the its emotive choruses kick in. Step-for-step, All In The Name Of Entertainment encapsulates the very condition of coming of age.
Refusing any semblance of one-dimensional execution on All In The Name Of Entertainment, Ashes At Last have also leaned into the annals of deathcore on “Kool-Aid In The Vodka?!” with a bone-crushing feature from the great and powerful Josh Guard of Rev3rent. In what could pass as an unreleased track from Emmure’s Goodbye To The Gallows, Ashes At Last appear hellbent on cementing a highly varied approach to touching every juncture of the Warped Tour era. Blast beats ala bass drops are forefront and relentless, which is further indicative of Ashes At Last’s songwriting prowess. As sporadic, comparative sections are heard on “Johnnie Guilbert Stole My Flow” and “Gunzablazin”, one would be remiss not to emphasize how seamless Ashes At Last manage to combine inter-genre elements. There are very few groups this young and green that give as much care to pure musicianship as Ashes At Last, and conventional wisdom would leave one wagering to guess they will only continue to hone an otherwise already mastered craft.
An ode to the scene’s primordial roots wouldn’t be complete without a healthy influx of post-hardcore, and as it’s almost certainly been surmised to this point, All In The Name Of Entertainment provides. “Down With The Ship” spares no expense with what sounds like a fully fleshed-out tribute to Funeral For A Friend. Emotionally charged and coated in riding-the-bus-home riffs, Ashes At Last delve into another partition of uncharted territory and deliver, whilst taking on a jack of all trades, master of absolutely everything persona. Some bands spend their entire career figuring out a singular creative avenue; Ashes At Last have cracked the code for every quintessential subdivision of core in a few short years.
As is always the case with revival projects, production and mixing remain an eternal point of contention. In the case of All In The Name Of Entertainment, there’s hardly anything to worry about. There’s a perfectly imperfect balance between the rugged scratchiness of the album and its capacity to sound immaculate all at once. There will always be purists in terms of preferring one methodology over the other, but Ashes At Last struck a true equilibrium that should keep both sides of the engineering preference aisle more than happy.
It seems customary to draw a noticeable amount of attention towards the closer of a record, yet “Building Castles On Sand” is worthy of every ounce of attention it will ultimately receive upon release. At just over six minutes, there’s a poignantly somber mystique to not only one of the softest tracks Ashes At Last have delivered thus far in their condensed but impressive tenure, but also grounds for a true pull at the heartstrings of listeners. Vulnerable yet defensive all the same, All In The Name Of Entertainment closes with a culmination of nostalgic apprehension without sacrificing any audible weight.
All In The Name Of Entertainment, external to its melodious aptitude, thematically stands for a period of our lives that we’ll never get back. When Signal the Firing Squad, Upon This Dawning, and Finch were blaring over our shitty Skull Candy headphones, we were all young, dumb, idealistic, and ready to change the world. All these years later, none of those characteristics have waivered, and our existence remains important no matter how abysmal or insignificant it may seem at times. Ashes At Last, regardless of intention or not, have reminded us of that through a slew of carefully crafted songs. The intervals may be long, but every once in a while, there comes an act that figures it out both lyrically and euphoniously right out of the gate. Ashes At Last are one such group that share the same optimism passively burning inside of us all. Nikolas Guevara, Jude Robledo, Cesar Robles, and Michael De Vos; remember the names. All In The Name Of Entertainment will end up being a generational stepping stone for a band with everything and more in front of them, and however far this goes is ultimately up to Ashes At Last. That being said, chances are a safe bet on sustained longevity can be placed with no worries at all.
9.5/10
All In The Name Of Entertainment independently releases on February 20th and will be available on all streaming platforms.