Fozzy - All that Remains CD Review

What do you get when you mix a crappy metal band led by former Stuck Mojo band member Rich Ward with professional wrestler Chris Jericho on vocals? Answer: A band that is a joke. They initially started out as a Spinal Tap-esque band covering bad 80’s music, but now they try their hand at a more serious cd it seems, and in doing so they create an even bigger joke.

For anyone that listened to Stuck Mojo, the sound of this cd will be very familiar (except the vocals, of course). Everything sounds exactly like what the next release from Stuck Mojo would have sounded like, except for the lack of rapping and the addition of Jericho’s faux Ozzy styled voice. The simple, yet forceful drumming is still present, as well as the basic guitar playing, accentuated by the occasional solo or breakdown, and this worked in the past for Stuck Mojo, but not any more. I think it worked in the past, at least to a small extent, because of the multi-tiered vocal approach that was used. Here, however, Jericho is the only vocal force and he fails miserably at filing the lead vocalist’s role.

I keep trying to think of a good way to convey the sucktitude of this cd, and the best analogy I can think of is that Fozzy is like that one annoying guy you know who thinks he’s the shit, but in reality he’s just an annoying prick that continually pisses people off because he’s not nearly as cool as he wants everyone to think he is. I’m sure Fozzy think they’re the shit by combining wrestling and music and attempting to do something different, but it just falls on its face—hard. When I think about it, though, anyone who would think that combining a wrestler with a metal band might be a good idea has got to be pretty sketchy to begin with.

There is one shining gem out of the 10 tracks on this disc, however, and that is the last song—“Born of Anger”. In it Jericho’s vocals take a back seat to vicious growls and the music takes a decidedly heavy turn to create a killer song. If the entire cd took on the traits of this song, it would have been great, but it didn’t. Instead, they wallow in crappy, muddled metal that will really only interest people who are still stuck in the early 90’s or are obsessed with anything involving wrestling.