RatPak Records – 2025
http://www.allsinnerscult.com
After three well-received EPs (their self-titled studio release, an acoustic live show and a live disc recorded at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles), the Massachusetts-based rockers ALL SINNERS take the next big step in their evolution with the release of their full-length debut album ‘We Own The Night’ via RatPak Records.
The band features singer/guitarist Mike Golarz, lead guitarist Nick Testone, drummer Roger Chouinard and bassist Bruce Morrison. They’ve been building a following over the last few years and that’s led them to opening for bands like DANGEROUS TOYS, DOKKEN, METAL CHURCH and L.A. GUNS to name just a few acts that they’ve shared stages with.
For this reviewer, I had kind of an inside look at the music as it was being recorded. I heard rough demos of tracks and then would get a taste of certain songs as they were refined and recorded. Heck, I was one of the first people who got to hear parts of the test pressing for the vinyl version of the album.
It’s not often that this kind of thing happens but on the rare occasion it does, I definitely like having the inside scoop to understand just how these songs came to be in their fully realized and finished versions.
And so when I was handed my promo copy of the disc, I was definitely looking forward to sitting down and digging into the music in full. So let’s dig into things here and now, shall we?
The album, which has a visually striking cover, opens with the instrumental piece “Embers Rising”. Reminding me of the short instrumental pieces that HELLOWEEN uses to kick off any number of their albums, the track gets you keyed up and leads into the song “Into The Flames”. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard “Into The Flames” because I saw ALL SINNERS performing it in their live set a couple of times when I saw the band play live. But hearing the studio version is something akin to hearing it for the first time. It kicks in pretty fast and hard-hitting right from the start. The drums and bass are pounding out a solid foundation underneath while the guitar work from Testone hits you, sonically speaking, in a relentless onslaught of fiery playing. Seriously, you might be reading that a lot in this review because it is not overstating matters that Nick Testone absolutely shreds on the album. Not a surprise for anyone who has seen the band live, but definitely worth mentioning here. You can check out the video for the song HERE!
While not quite as fast paced as “Into The Flames”, the song “The Wave” is an overall uptempo track and where I haven’t heard this one before now, I dug the song a lot. I think this one really shines the spotlight on singer Mike Golarz. There’s a subtlety to his vocal turn that caught my ear.
The album’s title track is a full burn rocker. Kicking off with the riff that powers the song throughout, there’s an unchecked burst of energy that comes shining through. And for my money, this song would make for a killer concert opener as it serves as a strong declaration of intent for the band.
I broke one of my reviewing rules ahead of writing my own review. I actually saw a couple of YouTube video reviews of the album and they both mentioned the song “Lead Me Into Darkness”. As it was another song that I had NOT heard before, the two people doing those reviews left me wanting to get my own impressions down. And man, they were so right. I don’t know if an album that I’ve been so highly anticipating can have a “sleeper” track or not, but if it does, “Lead Me Into Darkness” is it! It’s a monster track with a cool vocal take from Golarz and an absolute masterpiece solo from Testone. The music is coming at you fast and furious from start to finish. In the early part of the song, I thought I caught a bit of a dramatic bit of shading to the vocals. While it might’ve just been my own ears, I thought Golaraz was putting just a bit extra gravelly tone to how he was singing. I thought it sold the song that much more. This is definitely one of my personal favorite songs on ‘We Own The Night’.
For all their uptempo and relatively upbeat themes and thematic sensibilities, musically speaking, ALL SINNERS can pull a 180 degree turn when they want to do so. That is demonstrated amply with the song “So Evil”. It has a dark and menacing vibe going for it and it is further enhanced by its methodic pacing and pounding thumping beat from Chouinard’s drums. It’s a bit different than most of the other songs on the record but damn I love the cinematic feel I got as I listened to the song.
“Dead To Rights” is another song that I’ve heard ALL SINNERS perform live before. In fact, they opened their set with it the last time I saw them in concert and I remarked in the review I wrote that they hit the stage in heavy rocking fashion with the song. It got the crowd going and had their fists in the air. That feeling remains true with the studio version of the song. Briefly kicked off with a drum intro from Chouinard, there’s an undercurrent of menace running throughout the song, seemingly waiting to burst through at any time. The way the band brings the “THUMP” in the main portions of the song and then kicks things into a much faster and heavier tone from the frenzied guitar solo gives you ample insight into both sides of their musical style. As Golarz intones, “I got you Dead To Rights”, it’s clear that this song will just nail you to the wall each and every time you listen to it..
The track “Deaf From The Echoes” is a solidly hard rocking number. Oddly, for just a brief moment, I thought the musical intro reminded me of a QUEENSRYCHE song (whose title escapes my memory at the moment). It was just a few seconds and likely was just my ears playing tricks on me again so I’m probably wrong. The first half of the song is in a slightly slower gear but with the one-two punch of a Golarz scream and flick of the switch guitar solo, the pacing picks up into a more intense rocking delivery. As you get back into the vocal, the pacing slows back down JUST A BIT, before the song comes to a crashing end.
True confession time: I would NOT wanted to have anyone see me as I was listening to the song “World That’s Burning”. It would be very embarrassing. Nothing to do with the song itself, but rather my reaction to it. During the faster portions of the song, I caught myself singing along to it like it was me performing it. And since I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, that’s where the embarrassment factor hit 10 for me.
As for the song itself, I freaking LOVE this one! Alternating between a slight mid-tempo tone leading into the song’s chorus, where it explodes forth from your speaker in the kind of furious blaze of rocking fury that causes your reviewer to badly sing along, this song just caught lightning in a bottle for me.
I wasn’t singing along to “Wake Up and Stay” (thankfully), but my head was nodding along to the music’s tempo for sure. The song switches back and forth between measured delivery and that more kinetic explosiveness that fuels the faster portions of the song.
“The Reason” is the last regular track on the album. You can tell right from the start that it is going to be a much slower track. Not really a ballad or anything, but in the main lyrical passages, the song is keyed more by the emotive vocal take from Mike Golarz and an understated musical backing soundtrack. But as you might expect, the bridge and the chorus portions of the song see a measurable increase in both the intensity of the delivery and an increasingly heavy musical score. If ALL SINNERS has a “softer” side, this track shows it off nicely. It’s a cool track that doesn’t flirt with being the kind of sappy slow song that would drive you into a diabetic coma. Instead, you get a smoking hot slow burning number that has a great vocal and yet another tasty killer guitar solo. I also like that this song had a slow fade out at the end that kind of allowed you to live with the song for those few extra seconds. Chalk this one up as a rather unexpectedly cool highlight track for me.
The last two tracks on ‘We Own The Night’ are bonus tracks. The song “The Hunted” and “Believer” were originally on the band’s debut EP. The versions of the song on ‘We Own The Night’ feature remixed or “revisited” vocals, so there’s a slight twist from the original versions. But both of these tracks are signature tunes for ALL SINNERS so the fact that I liked them both comes as little surprise. Their inclusion here works best for anyone who has yet to discover ALL SINNERS for themselves. “The Hunted” was their first track to get radio airplay but both it and “Believer” have helped raise the band’s profile for a good long while now. When new listeners check these two songs out, they are going to be as immensely impressed as established ALL SINNERS fans have long been.
In their 1991 song “Call It What You Want”, TESLA sang, “Heavy metal, hard-core, pop, punk, or thrash / You can call it anything, it don’t matter to me / Call it what you want /It’s all music to me”. I thought of that lyric in listening to the ‘We Own The Night’ album and reading the line on the album’s promo sheet about how ALL SINNERS blends classic metal influences with modern hard rock. It is easy to say but not necessarily as easy to prove. But these thirteen tracks show that regardless of what genre you identify ALL SINNERS with, their music is just some damn fine, high quality rock ‘n’ roll!
To quote George Peppard’s famous line from The A-Team TV series, “I love it when a plan comes together”. In this case, the plan was to put forth an album that captures the audience’s ear and never lets go. Well, mission accomplished because ‘We Own The Night’ is a ripping rock record that serves as a bold statement of intent as ALL SINNERS has raised the bar on what makes for a great record!
5.0 out of 5.0