“I had to suffocate to stop the suffering.”
Staying relevant in modern metalcore is a feat that many veteran bands nowadays seem to struggle with. In a modern scene where many bands have sanitized their once-heavy sound into something more akin to heavy pop rock with a breakdown thrown in to keep listeners’ attention, it is refreshing to see a band such as August Burns Red maintain relevance while keeping their sound intact. Whether it is the more straightforward melodic metalcore of their early albums or the more prog-inspired compositions of their latest album, Death Below, August Burns Red has managed to retain its popularity by cultivating a sound that stays true to what made the band so popular in the first place, while melding it with new elements every so often to keep things fresh. Today, they return with their newest album, Season of Surrender, to see if they can still be the titans of metalcore they have already proven themselves to be.
Season of Surrender is an album that many people may not be expecting from August Burns Red. Instead of conforming to the modern trends currently dominating metalcore, Season of Surrender largely sees the band taking a back-to-basics approach. The album refocuses on the old-school melocore heaviness that made early albums such as Constellations and Messengers resonate so strongly with fans and helped popularize metalcore as a whole.
Throughout Season of Surrender, there are copious examples of the band’s renewed focus on the old-school heaviness that gave August Burns Red major success very early in their career. There is perhaps no purer example of this goal than the album’s opening track, “Legions”. After a satisfyingly brief set of chunky riffs to start the album, less than twenty seconds in, we are thrust into the first of many crushing breakdowns the album has to offer. It immediately shows that the band truly meant it when it was revealed that the album would be full of the old-school heaviness they were previously known for. After such a momentous start, this adrenaline continues triumphantly throughout the rest of the song without wavering or becoming stale. The track even manages to set up another breakdown featuring Mike Hranica of The Devil Wears Prada, whose distinct scream drives the intensity even higher before the song switches back to the technical riffs August Burns Red is known for. Eventually, the song ends on the album’s heaviest breakdown, featuring the recording debut of vocalist Jake Luhrs’ gutturals, which would no doubt make even the most seasoned deathcore vocalists blush.
Speaking of deathcore, many of the tracks on the album, in one way or another, manage to incorporate the melodic death metal-inspired riffs that influenced the aforementioned genre, as well as other styles similar to it, including August Burns Red’s own brand of melodic metalcore. However, no track displays this better than “Den of Thieves”, which sees the band putting their own spin on many of these riffing styles to show off just how technically proficient they are as songwriters, and just how heavy the album becomes as a result of their incorporation.
While much of the album shows off August Burns Red’s renewed heaviness in a variety of straightforward and satisfying ways, there are also a few examples of the band incorporating this heaviness into songs that feature the more prog and tech-influenced sound that stood front and center on their last few releases, enhancing their edge to new heights. One of the more straightforward examples of this appears on “Cerebral Malfunction”, where the band’s more technical riffs from Phantom Anthem fuse with Season of Surrender’s bone-crushing heaviness. This brings a newfound sense of scale to the song, making its crushing breakdown midway through feel more varied and making the album’s feature from both vocalists of Make Them Suffer hit even harder. This is true whether it is the more modern-sounding djent-like bridge or the song’s clean-sung melodic outro.
Those looking for a succinct example of the album’s heaviness impacting a prog-minded song need look no further than the album’s closing track, “Forged by Failure”. The track sees the band perfectly melding the more moody prog-metalcore side they honed on their previous album, Death Below, with the straightforward heavy side they are expertly crafting on Season of Surrender. The result is a closing track that is as deeply emotional as it is crushingly heavy.
Season of Surrender is no doubt going to be a significant album for a band as legendary as August Burns Red. While many people likely expected the band to slow down twenty years into their career and conform to the more radio-friendly sound that dominates much of modern metalcore, Season of Surrender successfully and excitingly bucks those trends. It shows that the band has no plans to sanitize their sound in any way. Instead, they take the skills they have picked up and expertly honed throughout their long career and meld them with the sound that made them legends in the first place. The result is not only one of the best albums of their career but also one of the best modern metalcore albums in quite a while.
