by Jason D. TaylorCombining the raw intensity of Chimaira with the Swedish metal mentality of At the Gates, Dead to Fall's full-length album, Everything I Touch Falls to Pieces, is a destructive collection of intimidating hardcore/metal and perhaps one of the genre's most impressive debuts. These Chicago natives deliver 11 tremendous metalcore thrash-fests on Everything I Touch Falls to Pieces, and surprisingly avoid incorporating lethal doses of melody, unlike the multitude of bands who share the genre alongside them. Instead, Dead to Fall follows the path laid before them by fellow Victory artists Darkest Hour, combining technically proficient guitars with throaty vocals that skew toward the death metal crowd. "Memory," in fact, recalls Darkest Hour's "An Epitaph," yet, aside from the slight comparisons here, Dead to Fall manages to stand on their own two feet through this outing. One noteworthy achievement from this band is their keen sense of how to stitch a string of songs together to make a miraculously steady flow throughout. Each and every track offered here builds on its predecessor, constructing an impenetrable chain-mail cloak of intimidating metalcore. Dead to Fall's lyrical content is solid and well-written, picking up on subtle tendencies that make up human nature and capitalizing on said aspects to penetrate one's heart with testosterone-filled emotion. The beautifully brutal instrumental "Doraematu" allows the listener to focus on some magnificent classical guitar playing, and provides the album with a relaxing breather in which one can catch their breath before "Preying on the Helpless" and "The Balance Theory" conclude the album with earth-trembling results. Dead to Fall is without a doubt one of the better metalcore bands to emerge in 2002, detailing the exceptional brutality that comes to be when the intensity of hardcore collides with heavy metal's intrusive blast.