This is their first album with a major label. I can see alot of the big metal comunity not liking it because apparently there's alot more singing and less screaming/growling according to the 4 star allmusic.com review. With their last album "the War Within", you could tell they were going in the singing direction anyways, i just don't like it when a band abandons what made them popular in the community in order to make money or to broaden out (see Trivium)

I am looking forward to picking this up tomorrow, i need to try to find "the art of ballance". Might see them april 10 with lacuna coil and Stone Sour (although i prefer slipknot, Corey's actually not that bad a singer)

The Art of Balance is still my favorite album from them. It had more variety. Their last two albums kind of blended together and droned on after a while. More singing is fine with me, as I never really liked Brian's harsh voice.

I've sworn off of Shadows Fall after their atrocious DVD. Once I hear a few songs from the new album, I'll decide if I want to pick it up or not.

Actually the last album "fallout from the war" was essentially outtakes from "war within" sessions. It was the last contracted album from Century Media before they signed with Atlantic.

I'm going to that show on the 24th.

I just found out that Best Buy and FYE have exclusive tracks, I preordered it from the band website. I am sick of this crap, and this warrents that I download those exclusive tracks

try to get real close, cause Christina (lead singer of Lacuna Coil) is damn good looking.

I've liked what i have heard so far. Gimme a few hours and i'll try to review it.

Lacuna Coil kind of bored me on stage. Synchronized headbanging makes me laugh. They didn't sound too good live. Their albums are good, though.

I'm going to the show because of Stone Sour... and Cristina .

I got into Lacuna Coil this past year after my brother got all their albums and I made a mix cd in about 3 hours one day.

Haven't got into Shadows Fall, although I've seen them live once before [Slipknot tour 2005] and my brother has all their cd's by now, I'm sure.

Any chance your bro has "Somber Eyes To The Sky" which was their debut album and the only one with Philip Lebonte (now of All That Remains) on vocals

I have:

Fallout From The War
The Art of Balance
The War Within
Threads of Life

I went ahead and ordered Somber Eyes To The Sky and Of One Blood from Amazon just now

Are the exclusive tracks the same at each store? I read about exclusive tracks and was probably going to go out later and get the cd and just wanted to know what the difference (if there is any) is in the exclusive tracks.

Best Buy : "Fade Into Smoke"
FYE : "Stupid Crazy"

like I said:

I am really starting to hate EW Here's the opening quote
"The squiggly metalcore subgenere combinin guitar-geek precision wiht thrashy bellowing, is starting to convert the emo set."

I am sorry, but just because there's one slow song, and there's mainly clean singing, does not mean that emo kids (the one's that wear all black and wear eye liner) are going to start buying their records, if anything, it'll be the metalheads with their older stuff and people interested based on "Redemption"

I have all the Cds.

Instead of "Of One Blood" I'd recommend "Fear Will Drag You Down" It has the entire "Of One Blood" album plus the "Deadworld" EP and extra tracks on one disc

I went ahead and picked this up a few days ago, mainly because I had a free cd available at my record shop. Anyway, this disc is pretty good. I think I like the clean singing better, and the guitar work is still great.

Wonderful - now your chime in after they're scheduled for delivery on Monday!

I'll check out Fear will drag you down - I usually pick up all releases.

For twenty years I've cringed whenever a mainstream publication reviews a metal album.

Unless a critic is well-versed in metal, they have no business touching the genre when they clearly have no understanding of it.

I remember when Rolling Stone would review a metal album (and almost always trash it) it would come off as a way for the reviewer to attempt to be cute and snarky. I recall once they did a double review of a Slayer disc (SoH, IIRC) and a Stryper album.

That's one of the reasons I use allmusic.com for album reviews. I've agreed with most of them, and they seem to be conducted by someone familiar with the particular genre.

I heard the first tune and liked it.....and then each subsequent tune revealed itself to be in the same key almost all the time, and it all started sounding the same. Plus the lyrics to "Another Hero Lost" seemed too amateurish, to the point of distraction.

6/10 at best. At least they tried to go old school thrash in parts - I found myself thinking of Chuck Billy on more than one occasion.

MTV.com's "Metal File" has posted a "blind item" involving "one of the country's best-known metal acts [which] looks to be parting ways with its major label and plans to return to its original label home in the next few months." Speculation is that the band in question is the Massachusetts-based metal group SHADOWS FALL, whose last studio album — and Atlantic Records debut — "Threads of Life", has sold 93,000 copies in the United States since its April 2007 release — a fraction of the 301,000 sales total achieved by its predecessor, 2004's "The War Within", which was released by Century Media.

In a June 2006 interview with MTV.com, SHADOWS FALL singer Brian Fair spoke about jumping ship from Century Media Records to Atlantic for their most recent studio effort.

"We were friends with [the folks at Century Media] before we signed with the label, and they definitely went above and beyond what we thought an indie label could possibly do," he said. "They did offer us a great deal [to stay with the company before we signed with Atlantic], but we wanted to ... see if we could take it to another level.

"It was a tough decision [to sign with Atlantic], but one we felt we really needed to make. We've been together 10 years, so we came with a contract and we knew exactly what we wanted. If people weren't into that initial thing, we knew we could cut them off right away. We weren't settling. We were brutally honest right at the beginning, and it stopped a lot of those dinners right away.

"These labels knew they weren't signing BRITNEY SPEARS," Fair continued. "They were just getting a bunch of Masshole metalheads. We were just psyched to get some free pizza and beer."

took that from blabbermouth

Also they are rereleasing Of One Blood on april 15, remixed and remastered.

I liked Threads of Life more than The War Within. Interesting to see it do so terribly.

I thought it was a great album. shows how the record companies can kill a band due to lack of support.