PHIL LABONTE REALLY THINKS GUNS ARE KEWL, HUH?

All That Remains have unveiled the album art for their forthcoming release, A War You Cannot Win, and, yeah, I find it pretty disturbing. It’s not that I’m opposed, necessarily, to the use of guns for recreational purposes; and, obviously, I have no problem with the use of violent imagery in metal, so long as it’s part of a fantasy that serves as an outlet for such emotions, not an endorsement of those emotions. In other words, whereas, for example, Chris Barnes has never actually endorsed horrible acts of murder, Phil Labonte is running around telling anyone who will listen that guns — even automatic machine guns, which are really not needed for, say, legitimate hunting  — are peachy.

And as if that weren’t enough, yesterday Vince pointed out that Labonte’s current Twitter icon is a poster that reads “Make Love Loudly, Make War Silently,” with a picture of a massive gun with a silencer on it. Now, this website says that Labonte served in the U.S. military, so, to some extent, at least, Labonte has put his money where his mouth is. But that doesn’t negate the fact that the message the metalcore singer is sending over and over again isn’t really “It’s every American’s right to own a weapon” — it’s “Weapons are cool.” Which is the way a ten year-old who doesn’t understand the horrible things of which weapons are capable thinks, not the way I’d hope someone who has actually been in the armed forces thinks.

Anyway, that’s my rant. And in case you’re wondering, no, we will not be running the above album art anymore. We prefer this one instead:

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, really, only it’s not fish, it’s an incredibly untalented “singer.”

-AR