The on-again off-again career of Philadelphia metalcore vets
All Else Failed has been marked with lineup trouble, label difficulties, and all of the other problems that befall struggling bands, with the result that in a 12-year career, they've managed to release exactly three full-length albums. Not quite their fourth proper album,
Good Enough for the Girls We Roll With is neither fish nor fowl: one-quarter of the 20 tracks are all-new material by the current lineup, while the remainder gather up unreleased sessions and out of print tracks from the rest of the band's history. The disturbing fact about
Good Enough for the Girls We Roll With is its strange consistency: odds and sods compilations of this type are supposed to chart the progress and evolution of a band, but without the liner notes, the average person would likely assume that the album was the result of a single lengthy studio session. On the one hand, yay for
All Else Failed's purity of vision, but on the other hand, when you get right down to it, it must be said: all these songs sound pretty much the same. Like, even more so than usual for this brand of grindcore. As a result,
Good Enough for the Girls We Roll With is strictly for long-standing
All Else Failed fans, as few others will be impressed enough with it to explore the band further. ~ Stewart Mason