Rescue & Restore is simultaneously the most experimental and straight-up heavy material August Burns Red has ever created. The heavy use of breakdowns from their early material and their recently developed flair for oddball, progressive instrumentation converge beautifully throughout Rescue & Restore. There's everything from strings to hardcore-style gang vocals to haunting spoken word sections to middle-eastern inspired guitars that are seamlessly integrated into their style of metalcore. The growth the whole band has gone through on a record-to-record basis is very impressive. They are always open to new ideas and playing around with vastly different elements while keep their core sound intact. Few bands in the genre challenge the rules like August Burns Red and it's refreshing to hear a band that advances their sound on each and every release they put out.
Naturally with the amount of experimentation going on this record, the entire band has become even stronger musicians. Vocalist Jake Luhrs gives his strongest vocal performance to-date. He has added more of a death metal-esque scream to his repertoire giving him even more range and his vocals are loaded with genuine emotion. Tracks like "Spirit Breaker" and "Creative Captivity" are made extremely powerful just from the raw emotional power Luhrs delivers in his vocals. There are very few vocalists in the genre that I can think of that continuously step their game up consistently on every record like Luhrs does. JB Brubaker also delivers the most challenging and exciting guitarwork that he's ever done. For the first time in their career, Brubaker is actually playing solos. Brubaker has always been a great player with impressive chops, but hearing him actually play legitmate solos on this record was awesome and finally put his underrated playing in the forefront of the music. Brubaker also got more adventurous with the riffing incorporating a lot more melody and non-traditional influences into his playing (the aforementioned middle-eastern inspired guitarwork on "Animals" is one of the best parts of the entire album) and adding more beef and groove to the breakdown sections ("Count It All as Lost" in particular has a breakdown for the ages.) As for the rest of the band, Matt Greiner is his usual manic self on the kit and bassist Dustin Davidson gets some time to shine as well (which is always cool since bassists are normally buried in the background.)
Rescue & Restore is the most mature, well-written and probably best record August Burns Red has made to-date. These guys continue to progress as a band and each record they put out brings something new to the table while preserving what was great about their previous material. The world needs more metalcore bands that are as consistent and willing to change things up as August Burns Red. Rescue & Restore is undoubtedly one of the finest records of this year so far and I'd be willing to bet it will be high up on my own (and many other) year-end best of lists.
4/5 Stars
Standout Tracks
1.Count It All as Lost
2.Creative Captivity
3.Animals
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