City of Champions

All the Way Rider

Rocks Like: Foo Fighters

Grade: B

All the Way… City of Champions

All the Way Rider

Rocks Like: Foo Fighters

Grade: B

All the Way Rider’s newest album has at least one thing going for it. The title, which the band found scrawled on a brick wall outside a pub, is an homage to the Steel City.

Naturally, a decent album follows. With 11 tracks, City of Champions is full of loud guitars, pounding drums and forceful singing, periodically filled with throaty screams.

All the Way Rider is from Minneapolis and has an EP and two previous albums already under its belt. The three-person band consists of Jeremy Jessen, Rocky De Vries and Scott Walters.

Though the band balks at placing itself within a single genre, it is clear that All the Way Rider involves traditional rock instrumentation, as well as more alternative, modern signatures, which resonate a harder sound. Its “non-genre” is easily distinguishable in other contemporary bands.

Unfortunately, much of the album comes off as a mediocre emulation of the Foo Fighters — City of Champions has a homogenous hard-rock sound, with each track almost indistinguishable from the next.

Thankfully, what Champions lacks in nuance it makes up for in volume — each song is packed with more than enough noise for the entire album.