”Fire from the sky” is the seventh studio album from Massachusetts band Shadows Fall. Over the last seventeen years they’ve been very consistent, releasing a new album every 2-3 years. In the past they’ve finished a tour and then written and recorded the next album to meet specific deadlines, but for this album they chose to spend longer on the album and not work to a specific deadline. The result is a great album with the band sounding to be back at the top of their game.
It’s a great album – it’s heavy and powerful, it’s got fast yet highly intricate guitar work, great guitar solos, powerful screaming vocals, and they’re not afraid to slow things down when it can add to the music. Too often bands think they should play as fast and heavy as possible for the whole album and they lose a lot of the impact, but here the slower parts and softer parts actually reinforce the impact of the heavier sections. Clean vocals are used too at times as well as the screaming vocals and that adds diversity and again gives a change of pace and power which helps make this album so interesting – there’s always something good happening and it never starts to feel boring.
”Fire from the sky” is out now via Spinefarm records
Shadows Fall are:
Brian Fair – lead vocals
Matt Bachand – guitar / vocals
Jon Donais – lead guitar
Paul Romanko – bass
Jason Bittner – drums
Track listing:
1. The unknown
2. Divide and conquer
3. Weight of the world
4. Nothing remains
5. Fire from the sky
6. Save your soul
7. Blind faith
8. Lost within
9. Walk the edge
10. The wasteland
11. Eternal life
12. A death worth dying
13. Failure of the devout (live)
14. The light that blinds (live)
