Frail Words Collapse

By early March 2003 As I Lay Dying had officially signed to Metal Blade Records, and they were in the middle of recording a twelve-song album called Frail Words Collapse, then expected in June. The sessions had been due to begin on 9 February, but a clash at the studio pushed them back to 21 February; the album was made at Big Fish Studio in Encinitas, California. Guitarist Evan White and singer Tim Lambesis produced it. The credits name Steve Russell as engineer and mixer and Brad Vance as mastering engineer, and give the band as Lambesis on vocals, White and Jasun Krebs on guitars, Aaron Kennedy on bass and Jordan Mancino on drums. Jacob Bannon handled the layout and artwork. Three of the songs, "Forever", "The Beginning" and "The Pain of Separation", are new recordings of songs the band had first released in 2002 on their split with American Tragedy. Track 6, "Behind Me Lies Another Fallen Soldier", had closed the 2001 debut, Beneath the Encasing of Ashes, and appears again on this album. In 2005, ahead of the next album, Lambesis recalled that the band had been rushed on this one and that, as a new band, money had always been tight. Frail Words Collapse was released on 1 July 2003. Ahead of it, "94 Hours" went up on mp3.com, where it became the site's most downloaded and most streamed metal track and was still at the top two months later. Videos were made for "94 Hours", directed by Dale Resteghini, and for "Forever", directed by Derek Dale. The album reached Billboard's charts half a year after its release, in January 2004, peaking at No. 30 on Independent Albums and No. 41 on Heatseekers Albums, and by April 2005 Nielsen SoundScan had counted more than 118,000 copies sold in the United States. Metal Blade reissued it on vinyl in 2018.