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Album Reviews : Suicide Silence – Suicide Silence

By on February 15, 2017

Suicide-Silence-album-cover-2017I’m going to keep this review brief, and as negativity-free as I can manage, and this isn’t because I’m a fan boy, or because I’m uncomfortable laying into a band (check out my review of Love Cream which HA HA means cum).

I’m taking a step back from this review because I have genuinely never heard an album so atrocious it goes from “horrible” to “troubling”. There are guilty pleasure records, there are “so bad, it’s good” CDs, and there are just plain averages releases that make you go “eh, ah well.” But this self-titled is different. It’s uncomfortable to listen to, in the same way a distraught relative crying on your shoulder is difficult to listen to.

99% of every other album ever released, ever, in the history of the world (maybe, I don’t know, I’m not a fucking statistician) had a point. Somewhere along the line there is at least one person who wanted the record to sound a certain way, to exist in a certain state. Suicide Silence, one the other hand, is the sound of nobody caring.

The songwriting is fucking woeful, the vocals are out of key and lame, the drums are out of time, the guitar tone is cat vomit, the mix is weak and the master is rotten. But I’ve heard other CDs that tick those boxes before, but they also at least had purpose, or at least someone with a burning desire for the world to hear their music, no matter how misguided. But the sum of all these parts on the new Suicide Silence release, without a unifying reason for existing, makes me genuinely worried about the mental and/or physical state of the members of the band.

Usually I’d use metaphors like “this is the sound of your dad ignoring you” to convey the feeling the music invokes. But for this next section, I want to be clear – I am not using metaphors. I am being literal when I say that this CD sounds like a band going through a collapse, with no hope or desire to get themselves out of it.

This sounds like a band drowning in sorrow, or apathy, or both, surrounded by money-men more concerned with pushing a CD out to make a quick buck than telling the band “no, get your act together, this is unacceptable and you need help.” I feel for them. Their last album, which didn’t exactly revolutionise deathcore, was still an acceptable release that had most of their original sound intact. But between then and now, something has happened to Suicide Silence, and I hope they know what it is and can fix it. Because if they don’t, I can guarantee they simply won’t release another album after this, and it would be a shame to end an otherwise stellar career on this rambling mess of a car crash. They can do better, so they should at least fucking try.

Band: Suicide Silence
Album: Suicide Silence
Year: 2017
Genre: Deathcore
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Origin: United States

About

Mitch is a 26 year old vegan, socialist, atheist, utilitarian, reductionist metalhead, stand up comedian and philosophy major that hates labels. When he isn't being politely ignored at dinner parties he's being politely ignored on comedy nights around the country.