Since forming in San Diego, As I Lay Dying built its name on a fast, technical brand of metalcore, cut from the sharp riffs and precise rhythms of records like Shadows Are Security and An Ocean Between Us. Through Storms Ahead lands amid genuine internal turmoil, and its title feels almost prophetic given the band’s state at the time of release: a lineup in the middle of reshuffling, torn between honoring its past and dealing with an unstable present.
Musically, the record does not betray the band’s core identity. Frontman Tim Lambesis still trades raw screams for measured growls over a jittery rhythm section and tightly snapped blast beats. Burden opens things with a jagged, effective riff, while The Cave We Fear to Enter leans into heavier, almost deathcore-adjacent breakdowns. The guitar work from Ken Susi and Phil Sgrosso weaves melodic harmonies reminiscent of the band’s golden era, though it never fully recaptures that old urgency: the smoother production sometimes files down the rough edges that used to define their sound.
A lineup that lasted exactly one record
What stands out most is the fragility of the moment captured here. Bassist and clean vocalist Ryan Neff, guitarist Ken Susi and drummer Nick Pierce only ever left their mark on this single album, departing alongside Phil Sgrosso shortly before its release. In hindsight, it is hard not to hear Through Storms Ahead as an already dated snapshot, the portrait of a lineup that never got to bring this material to the stage together. That instability bleeds into the songwriting at times, which feels more scattered than on earlier records, as if each track were searching for its own identity without the whole ever quite cohering, some songs blurring into one another as familiar formulas repeat.
We Are the Dead, a collective jolt
The standout track is undoubtedly We Are the Dead, where guest vocals from Tom Barber (Chelsea Grin, Darko US) and Alex Terrible (Slaughter to Prevail) thicken an already heavy cut. More brutal and direct than anything else here, it almost feels like a bolted-on outlier within the tracklist, but it does the job of jolting an album that otherwise plays it a bit too safe, proving the band can still hit hard when it commits fully.
The riff as the only certainty
In the end, Through Storms Ahead rests on what As I Lay Dying has always done well: sturdy riffs, hooks that stick, and a breakdown craft they never abandoned. But the record lacks the cohesion and spontaneity that defined the band at its peak, as though caught up in the chaos surrounding its own making. It plays as an honest, occasionally effective transitional record, one that struggles to be more than a sonic document of a genuinely turbulent chapter for the band.
