As I mentioned earlier this week, a little while back I got an e-mail from The Autumn Offering vocalist Matt McChesney to discuss an extremely negative review I’d given the band’s last album, Fear Will Cast No Shadow. McChesney could have been a total dick about the whole thing, but as it turns out, he’s a very even headed, intelligent, and cool dude. So what else was there to do but interview him about the band’s new album, Requiem, which will come out June 9 on Victory. McChesney was even good enough to let us debut the first single off of that album, “The Curtain Hits The Cast,” for which the band will shoot a video in the coming weeks.

I still haven’t heard the new album, but I do already like this song way, way more than anything from Fear Will Cast No Shadow; it’s catchy and it doesn’t sound overly processed, which, I think, is what The Autumn Offering were striving for. Check out the song below, and then my conversation with Matt McChesney after the jump! (FYI – for fear that this was all a set-up for Matt to have me murdered, the interview was conducted by e-mail.)

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“I’d hate to be in one of those bands where every song has screamed verses and sung choruses. We’re averse to writing songs with any kind of formula.”

-Phil Labonte, Decibel, October 2008

Ladies and gentlemen, seven of the eleven songs on All That Remains’ latest, Overcome, follow this exact formula.

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I know some people that are absolutely fuckin’ fanatical about All That Remains, the Masshole group fronted by former Shadows Fall front dude/devout Christian/self-professed porn addict Phil Labonte (who actually seems to have found a fairly stable line-up for the band after years of constant member changes). I’ve always had a lot of respect for the band, but never quite got to a point where I was as into them as some of their American New Wave peers; maybe that’s because, as much as I’ve enjoyed their albums (particularly 2004′s This Darkened Heart), I’ve seen them live a few times and they never exactly knocked my socks off. Still, I’ll take them over As I Lay Dying any day of the week.

ANYWAY, ATR have a new album, Overcome, coming out on Prosthetic on September 16, and now two new songs from said album, entitled “Before the Damned” and “Relinquish,” have made their way onto the band’s MySpace page.

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