There is some fashion core at it's finest on the cover of this album which features some sweet looking dudes in Civil War gear crisis. I was worried when I saw this, but was later relieved to hear that From Autumn To Ashes' third LP Abandon Your Friends was not as gay as the cover art would lead one to expect. FATA is true, gritty, damp, balls-out sonic rage with coal colored melodies. This is New England dark screamo. It's like comparing normal metal to Norwegian dark metal. This is also true screamo hardcore not like Silverstein and Chiodos; those guys have some serious personal issues they need to work out before they start bands. Abandon Your Friends is more collected and thorough than their previous works, which have shown flashes of greatness though terribly uneven.

One thing I can't really stand about this band is their label, Vagrant Records. This is the same label that employs that diary-a ass-wipe Dashboard Confessional. This is the same Dashboard Confessional that is touring with the super-dooper indie act U-fucking-2. Yeah, great way to keep it core and underground guys. Whatever it takes to get paid I guess.

Anyways since their last album, The Fiction We Live, FATA has undergone an extreme makeover of sorts by losing and gaining band members. Now they got some guy named Jon Cox on Guitar and Reggie and the Full Effect's Josh Newton for bass duties. Even though the band has retooled the lineup, it's still the same old black hoodie gangster yellcore they've always been.

Unfortunately Abandon Your Friends doesn't find the band abandoning their regrettable habit of letting their drummer (Francis Mark) do his little solo ditties where he talks about how much he loves his girlfriend and how he truly cherishes their cuddle time. Yeah, all right, whatever, that's cool, but the only thing on my mind is where the hell is the "singer" during all this, taking a shit break? Also how do you ask your singer dude (Benjamin Perry) to "sit this one out because I really don't think you can envision what I'm thinking?"

My roomate "Badass guitar dude" says, "Whoa that was like twelve notes" and "Whoa that was fucking tight!" when he heard the guitar work on "The Funny Thing About Getting Pistol Whipped Is…" These remarks suggest to me that I'm onto something here, because "Badass guitar dude" never throws out props without fucking meaning it. In my opinion this is the best hardcore album of the year - right up there with Comeback Kid. I know these two are really different and you're probably saying that FATA is screamo and not hardcore, but hey fuck you alright - get over it; they're a good band. How can you not love an album with a song entitled "The Funny Thing About Getting Pistol Whipped Is…"