FOZZY: All That Remains

Produced by Andy Sneap

Released: 2005

Fozzy started out as a fun-time cover band project for Rich Ward and Chris Jericho but over the years the band has striven to develop a legitimacy as a serious act. Prior to this album, Fozzy was still covering old 80s metal standards, using silly pseudonyms and pretending they were a forgotten early American rock band trapped in Japan for 15 years after a record deal gone wrong. Having now dropped all of these pretences, after almost three years of silence Fozzy returned with its first complete album of original material.

All That Remains features a raft of guests that include Marty Friedman, Zakk Wylde, rapper Bonecrusher, Derek Bonner from Lilitu and two of the guys from Alter Bridge (the band formerly known as Creed) but, sadly, little of the mischievous sparkle of the previous albums. While the originals on Happenstance weren’t too bad, it was the spot-on versions of Scorps, Maiden, Priest, Sabbath and Accept classics that really made the album what it was. This time around, it’s all originals and something just seems to be missing.

That isn’t to say this is a bad album, because it isn’t, and is, in fact, rather a diverse little outing with a mixture of straight up heavy metal and hints of old-school American power metal and even a thrash element cropping up towards the end, where Friedman chimes in for a guest spot in “Born of Anger”. Jericho once again proves himself to be quite a noteworthy vocalist and Ward, as always, wrangles out some truly quality riffage, but All That Remains just somehow lacks the entertainment factor that a band called Fozzy with a wrestler as a singer should possess. “Enemy”, “The Way I Am” and “Lazarus” are actually pretty good songs, but the rest doesn’t hold that well together, especially the rap-metal tune, which is rather surprising when most of this band were in Stuck Mojo.

1. Nameless Faceless


2. Enemy


3. Wanderlust


4. All That Remains


5. The Test


6. It's a Lie


7. Daze of the Weak


8. The Way I Am


9. Lazarus


10. Born of Anger

Rating: 62%