After undergoing several lineup changes, including a new vocalist (Hernan Hermida), Oakland's All Shall Perish have emerged with The Price of Existence, an album that puts the extreme into extreme. The band toured with the likes of Six Feet Under, Bleeding Through and Hate Eternal among others, on their way to selling in excess of 10,000 units of their debut, Hate Malice Revenge.

Combining the blast beats of grind with the technical aspects and guitar work of death metal, the new album breathes memorable new life into the underground. In the span of thirty seconds, All Shall Perish transition from death metal to a menacing breakdown to straight up grind. This is the kind of stuff that a pit was made for. This is in addition to sinister guitar sounds courtesy of new guitarist Chris Storey and an impressive extreme metal vocal performance by Hermida. Hermida is not your proto-typical death metal vocalist. This is the new breed, adapting the right style vocal to fit each part of the album: painful screeches, Glen Benton like barks, screams a la Swedish death metal and even some hardcore influenced gang type vocal parts.

Underneath the exterior sound of The Price of Existence, there are actual songs here and not just mindless noise played at maximum velocity. There's even a small amount of melody present (gulp). All Shall Perish are indeed a new breed of hybrid metal, a total extreme package. Think what it would sound like if members of Deicide, Bleeding Through and At The Gates formed a band. Ok, so maybe that gets you about halfway to All Shall Perish.