After The Burial have always been one of my personal favorites because of their unique blend of heaviness, groove, thrash and melody all of which have been honed to perfection on In Dreams. Older ATB albums were more like wearing their influences on their sleeve where as now they have had two years to grow since the last release “Rareform” and it shows with top notch musicianship and song composition.

They also got a little brave and did some things fans may be thrown off by such as not so heavy melody driven songs such as “Pendulum” and more prevalent clean vocal parts and choruses as well are present.

The only real flaw this album has is its too short. 8 tracks is acceptable granted a few of them are lengthy but the album only clocks in at 34 minutes and change. I prefer albums that are more in the 40-45 minute range but thats just me so I’ll stfu about that.

Overall this album is just superb! I highly recomend it for anybody especially if you haven’t heard of ATB before, it’s a good introduction album to the band as it seems this is their defining album and adds more elements of accessibility.

Thus concludes my review, and I leave you with a word of advice: When listening to the album closer “Encased In Ice” have a fresh pair of gitch handy. Trust Me.

My first impression was “soft”. The heaviness was brought back a bit in the new mixing which I felt made this album lose its punch that the original release had. The band as a whole sounds much tighter and their new vocalist has a very impressive range that doesn’t sound as layered which is nice. Essentially it’s the same album, nothing new. No new fills or solos which could be good or bad but I think it was a wise decision. At times throughout the album it seems that there were additions – a little drum part here, guitar widdley-woo there. But when I was flipping from original to re-released versions of the songs it’s all already there, just brought forward in the new mixing. This re-issue gives the listener a different perspective on the songs altogether. As for the accompanying DVD with live footage from the Crush ‘Em All tour at Station 4 in St. Paul, Minnesota, it shows this band is just as tight live as they are on the album. Most times I personally find bands of this calibre to lack in the live performance but such is not the case with ATB.

There’s nothing really special about this release. To be honest, if you already have Rareform I wouldn’t recommend buying this re-issue, even with the impressive new vocalist and production, it just lacks the punch that Rareform originally had. I feel the band’s time could have been better spent writing a new record.

Overall rating: 5/10