From Autumn To Ashes



From Autumn To Ashes were formed in 2000 by, Benjamin Perri (Vocals) Mike Pilato (Bass) Brian Deneeve  (Guitar) Scott Gross (Guitar) and Mark Francis  (Drums). The band worked and toured underground a while before signing to lable Ferret and releasing their first album Too Bad You're Beautiful in 2001.

The band has ben labled as many genres in their time, Metal, Dark Punk, Hard Rock, Hard Metal, and it is probably best listeners listen to their record themselves before making a decision on the band. There is no doubt what the band play is "heavy", with two crunshing guitars, clicking bass and heavy bass based drum beats. All of this with the layered vocals of the screaming by Perri and ever so slightly softer singing of any of the other members who share vocal duties.

Too Bad You Are Beautiful was as good of a debut as you could get in a genre saturated by a thousand and one copies of Slipknot and Mushroomhead, the bands most people think of if you inform them of a band with screaming. Too Bad You're Beautiful was a good record with a mixture of hard thrashing tracks, such as Capeside Rock, a four minute blare of noise, and softer tracks suchas the fourty-nine second long Murcury Rising with two layers of spoken word lyrics over the top of a humming guitar. The album finishes with an epic near ten minute song Short Stories With Tragic Endings, which covers every style the band does, starting with thrashing guitars and angry screamings, and ending with the female vocals of Mellanie Wills (girlfriend of Pilato) over the top of soft drums, acoustic guitar and soft Violin.

They followed this up in 2002 with the Sin Sorrow Sadness Ep, containing only four tracks but still profiling the band well, with the usual mix of crunshing guitars and ripping vocals on A Lie Will Always Defeat The Truth and the softness of VI an ambient instrumental track with rounds out the record.

Sin Sorrow Sadness was a good record, but was always going to be a trasintional record, the well of screaming an heavy guitars was and is fast running out of good ideas and bands with potential diappearing never to be seen again. So when in 2003 the band released The Fiction We Live it was obvious that the band needed a change from what they had been doing up to then, fortunatly, the band did not deviate too far from its routes, but some tracks on the record are now more associable with say Thursday instead of Slipknot. Again the band employ Wills, but this time on a more meaningful basis. She gets her own song  Autumns Monologue in the middle of the record instead of been stuck on the end. The band does not loose all of its powerfullness with songs such as The After Dinner Payback transending back to the days of Too Bad... but a magority of the songs are somewhat softer, not in  a bad way, and also, alot beter lyrically.

What From Autumn To Ashes come up with next is to be seen, but it is obvious that should they stick the formula they are using now, they have the potential to be very influential band in the Hard Punk, Soft Metal, or whatever they eventually end up been pigeon-holed as.