There is nothing like a healthy dose of metalcore to kickstart moments of the day. Drown out the drivel, bring out this artist on Spotify & prepare for mental anarchy. A Hero To Fall bring you their latest album, Ambivalence. In a time & place where nothing is certain, it helps to hibernate towards a void of apparent confusion. Embrace the chaos.
Sandstorm is what the album starts with, so it can only plateau to this level of excellence or get better. With caged rage fueled by aggressive guitar riffs, this is a signature moment for this band in finding their own sound. Whether you choose this or the darker, more sinister sound of Bloodlines is up to you. Turn of your shuffle and follow this journey, its going to be a mighty good time.
The musicality must be acknowledged. With strong, prolific lyrics A Hero To Fall have created a floor on the foundation they made. The riffs are darker, the lyrics align with this theme and question the moment & our reactions to it. I had the pleasure of asking A Hero To Fall questions about this album and their song making process:
Exploring the duality of a theme
1) You explore significant duality in this album. What made you choose this theme?
Dustin – First of all, thank you for your interest in the band and thank you for noticing some of the themes! Lyrically, there is a duality explored through the album thanks to a number of events in my life that have pushed me to grow as a person. Ambivalence directly translates to being stuck in a place where you don’t know what to do next- because you feel equally as strongly or weakly about all of your options.
Specifically, there was a time in my life where I felt worthless; depressed that I couldn’t do anything right. These thoughts were put in my mind by someone close to me, and it took me years to grow enough as a person to realize how wrong these thoughts are.
Sandstorm explores this idea: “smokescreens that paralyze, are the words you spoke. You say that I deserve this, I say you’re blind… you see the world in black and white, I see the color you’ve left behind…” State of mind refers to being stuck in a mindset of depression, Grey documents growing out of it, and Withered goes back to touch on some of my darkest moments in life (and part of the journey of moving through them).
Realistically, I could go through and tie the lyrics of every song except Embers, Ghost, and Perfidious to this theme, and that’s why we thought “Ambivalence” was a good, all encompassing, name for the album.
The signature riff that demands
Now that’s what I call a riff. Instantly imprint to the memory, nerve-wracking, colossal damage foreshadowing riff. Ghost is supposedly a fan favorite, and I don’t know about others, but I love that intro. In many ways, they honor the metalcore code yet this is a sound that is their own. August Burns Red, Killswitch & even Trvium have sounds that are truly metalcore but instrumentality like this in an album is worth a standing ovation. Believe me.
Masked brings out the beats within the drummer. With intense coordination, the rhythm section unites without juxtaposition to create a vicious, in-depth sound. These are the songs nightmares are made of, yet if I was having a terrifying nightmare I’d rather headbang myself to my doom. The melodic chorus section is a very nice yet statement making change. Exciting song to listen to.
Where mind doesn’t matter
2) Riffs like your popular song Ghost dominate some tracks. Are there certain tracks that carry energy via instrument that you particularly love?
John – All in all, we feel that each track on the album carries a unique kind of energy to go along with it. For example, songs like Ghost, Perfidious, and Bloodlines are incredibly heavy and energetic; we wanted them to be that way so the crowd can really get into moshing around the venue.
Overall, I feel that the song that has both a melodic and heavy vibe to it is Masked. It’s definitely one of my favorites. It’s blended together with a combo of everything that we as a band bring to the table. As a drummer, the bridge and last chorus of that song both took entirely different processes for me to create/write. It was definitely challenging, but it was worth it.
With a vibe drawn from the vocals of a church choir, this next track Embers Hallowed takes prog influences and executes it with crystal finesse. Instead of taking away from the fantastic melody composed, the detailed work ensures the guitar stands out. The time signature encourages you to forget your spine, so dive into the mayhem. The alternate nature between the melodic and heavy is truly worth witnessing and commending. With a Linkin Park like vibe, Elysium comes next. The metalcore rockers provide enough buffer space between launching into an all out riff attack. The instrumental is a good wrap up after Embers Hallowed.
A new face to AHTF
3) Tell me how much has changed for you since Past Lives, Current Lies.
Ha! To sum it all up into a few words; A LOT. Honestly, there have been countless changes to us as a band and us as individuals. The AHTF line up has changed very significantly since the release of that particular album. Our drummer, John Benitez, is the only original founding member of the band left. Both founding members, Michael Guerrero and Andrew Gonzales have left the band to pursue other personal matters of theirs. This in turn led AHTF to find other members and is reflected in our current line up with Dustin Moore (vox), Matthew Wells (guitar), Anthony Guzman (bass/vox), and Bo Brantley (guitar).
The line up change dramatically altered our sound (in a great way) into what is heard on the current album.
Another intense riff delivered with poignant composure with State of Mind. The signatures are a staple of metalcore and this brand of rock, yet A Hero To Fall add their own little flourishes that make the song better. This song with Perfidious sounds just insane. The two back to back heavy songs hardly leave any space for breathing. Like walls closing in, you feel the emotion that Dustin was talking about. The rhythm section and time changes within the track make sure they highlight every bit of the moment & lyrics spat out with the intensity of a rabid sabretooth.
Performing live-a track that hooks
4) Is there a song you’d imagine being a unanimous favorite with a live crowd?
Ghost is by far a fan favorite on the album. We released it as our first single because we thought that people would connect to it and that it showed off the different aspects of our music. It’s a driving song, has some fun little melodic parts, Matt gets to show off some technical guitar playing, and it’s got the biggest breakdown on the album. Honestly, it’s always so much fun to play that song live.
We approach Grey as the penultimate track. Dustin has done a highly impressive routine of switching between screams and melodic vocals. There is a palpable sphere of energy this group carries going into a song, and it will be worthwhile watching them do the honors live. At 2:20, we see them flatten out the waves again before pulsating to the tides and the eventual tsunami. You could feel a live crowd clamoring for the buildup and eventual mosh-pit.
Withered is the puzzle piece that completes this beautiful image. It is a comprehensive condensation of this intense emotional ride they’ve taken you through. A Hero To Fall has not only deciphered a disruptive set of emotions we felt, they’ve been able to channel it with the same zeal you would have felt it inside.
Recording & inspirations
5) What’s next for A Hero To Fall? Where do you go from here, performance and content-wise?
This is our first full-length release so we learned a lot during this process. We got to experiment on the album with different styles of metalcore; touching into hardcore and melodic hardcore roots, while also writing songs that have musical influence from bands like Killswitch and Lamb of God. It really feels like an early 2000’s metalcore album in some ways, and I think listeners can feel that too. With that said, we’re already talking about the feedback we are getting. We’re asking questions like “what songs are people relating the most to?” and “How do we write more choruses like Masked?” If anything, this release tells us how people are responding to our music as a whole; we want to keep the momentum going.
Nobody knows what the future will hold for us, but we’ll keep writing music and playing shows regardless.
Listen to their album here:
Check out our playlists here!
Discovered via http://musosoup.com
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Self professed metalhead, moderately well read. If the music has soul, it's whole to me. The fact that my bio could have ended on a rhyme and doesn't should tell you a lot about my personality.
