On Friday 17th April, the Pennsylvanian nu-metal / rap rock band From Ashes To New released their fifth studio album Reflections viaBetter Noise Music. The album releases just in time for their upcoming North American Tour, where they will be supporting headliners Black Veil Brides. The tour kicks off on the 25th of April, so fans are set to be treated to some likely live debuts for the new music when they see them on tour.
From Ashes To New are made up of: Danny Case (vocals), Matt Brandyberry (vocals), Lance Dowdle (guitar), Maty Madiro (drums) and Jimmy Bennett (guitar). For the brand new album Reflections the band has shared:“It’s not a concept album by design, but there’s a common theme running through it – that feeling of being stuck in a kind of purgatory, where you can almost see something better ahead of you, but there’s always something dragging you back down”.
The band also adds: “This record is a reflection of who we were while making it, but even more than that, it’s a statement of who we’re becoming. Every song helped shape a sound that feels honest to where we’re headed not where we’ve been. We didn’t hold anything back, and you can hear that in every moment”.
My first highlight track from Reflections is ‘Drag Me’ which is also the album opener. To me, this track brings a a strong resemblance to Linkin Park, who the band cite as a major influence on them. Much of track represents the classic nu-metal style, but I would also add that the intro to this track breaks from this style a little, also reminding me of the new Black Veil Brides song ‘Certainty’ with how it has a robotic voice introducing the track before the song kicks off. I can imagine ‘Drag Me’ will go seriously hard live and soon become a fan favourite.
The whole feeling that I personally get from this album is one of maybe regret mixed with wonder as to what could have been if things followed a different path. The second highlight track for me has to be ‘Villain’ and that’s because even though it’s really catchy and you can quite easily associate with the message within it; it also offers huge atmospheric Bad Omens parallels with ‘The Death Peace Of mind’ mixed up with ‘Just Pretend’. The third highlight track for me is ‘Black Hearts’ because within seconds it got my head going swaying side to side with a few little head bangs. I noticed that the style of singing during the chorus and throughout the song is quite similar to Ronnie Radke from Falling In Reverse, which I found pretty neat as Ronnie Radke has quite a unique style and voice.
My fourth standout track is ‘(Not) Psycho’ which I think is because you can really feel all the hate and anger in Danny Case’s voice throughout the song which, mixed with the powerful instruments in the background, makes for an intense feeling piece of music; this really does represent the sheer emotional weight that the band described for this new album and how it all came about. I’ve had to add a cheeky extra highlight track onto my list, just because this is such a strong song that reminds me even of other songs that aren’t in the same genre; this song is called ‘Darkside’. ‘Darkside’ has such visceral and brutal screams and bleghs that make the metal-head in me extremely happy. Alongside this intensity however, there’s a small part in the song that to me has a similar guitar riff to the one in ‘All The Things She Said’ by t.A.T.u (Russian Pop Duo), which, for me, was very unexpected but also a surprising nod back to my childhood.
All in all, I think that Reflections is a great album; even though this was my first time actually sitting down and listening to From Ashes To New, I’ve heard a huge amount about them but never made the time to actually give them a proper listen through. I’m glad I finally did give them a shot, as there wasn’t a single song out of the 12 tracks that I didn’t enjoy. It’s often tough to find an album that you genuinely like from start to finish, and I really appreciated how there were clear elements of other bands and genres that I could hear through out the album too, just to keep things fresh. I massively respect how From Ashes To New weren’t afraid at all of putting their raw feelings out there for the whole world to hear, with this album carrying some serious emotional baggage, but that openness to me makes them a pretty sick band!
