All That Remains frontman Phil Labonte is known for his commanding presence both on and offstage. When Noisecreep got a chance to talk Labonte while All That Remains was on the Rock Allegiance tour he spoke about what made him want to front a band and what band got him into heavy metal when he was a kid.

Labonte told us. “I started playing guitar and the first time I ever played a show I was 16 years old. I played a couple shows and I guess I got the bug, I played guitar for a long time then I stopped for about a year.”

He continued, “To be honest with you I was in a death metal band and Korn came out and the band I was in was like, ‘We want to do stuff like that’ and I wanted to play metal so I quit. Then I started singing for Shadows Fall and then All That Remains became a thing and we started getting some momentum.”

Labonte also talked about the gradual success of All That Remains. He humbly explained, “The entire time I’m like ‘Really? This is my job? This is what I do for work really?’ When you’re in a metal band your highest aspirations are 200, 300 kids and we’ve headlined shows that have had 1,800 people that actually stuck around to watch us play.”

For the singer and for many metal fans, Iron Maiden started it all. “The first real metal record that I got into -- real metal not heavy, heavy metal or death metal but the actual metal record was ‘Seventh Son of a Seventh Son’ by Iron Maiden," recalls Labonte. "I was 12-years-old or something  and that was the one that really turned me into a metalhead.”

All That Remains have been touring in promotion of their latest record ‘A War You Cannot Win’ and have tour dates lined up with Soil and Motionless In White to round out the year.

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