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When a company invents a new technical product, the first people to buy it are the early adopters. How long a product lifecycle is, depends of the type of product. If the product is successful, the sales grow, stabilize and finally the sales decline. In my opinion, the metalcore style has moved past the maturity and is over the hill and sliding down. Personally I'm almost done with it too. Nevertheless this new AILD album, 'The Powerless Rise' isn't bad at all. It is the follow-up to 2007's Grammy-nominated 'An Ocean between Us'. With a nomination the expectations for a next album are high. Between these two albums singer Tim Lambesis has been busy with his Arnold Schwarzenegger's parody: Austrian Death Machine. For a part that can be traced back on this new album, besides the metalcore-style vocals, he uses more lower (grunting) ones. The band has become heavier and in some songs (e.g. "Anodyne Sea") the riffs are very thrash-oriented. The thrash parts remind me of bands like HateSphere and even Exodus. The melodic parts are again nice arranged and fit in correctly. The production is very tight, the guitars are more down-tuned and I don't think metalcore can progress much further. With this album I think the last drop has been squeezed out of this genre and everything to come has already been done. Fortunately for the metalcore acts there are enough fans left and they will be buying albums just because it is metalcore they like. This new album is a very logical follow-up, the biggest difference between 'Ocean' and this one, is that "The Powerless Rise" sounds heavier, tighter, extremer and is even worked out more in apple-pie order. For metalcore standards a good album that probably will not be topped this year.
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