Source: official album artwork
When it was announced that Eddie Hermida would be fronting Suicide Silence after Mitch Lucker‘s untimely death, it felt like even more goodwill went towards them. All Shall Perish were a well-respected band from the frontman to come from, and Eddie was certainly considered to be one of the best screamers around fit for the role. This goodwill increased when they released You Can’t Stop Me – a blisteringly good deathcore album that hinted at a bright future for Suicide Silence after a tragedy that some bands have broken up after suffering.
How quickly that goodwill turned sour in the months preceding this album. All it took was the release of ‘Doris‘, the first song to be released off of Suicide Silence and the album opener, for some to even call for the album to not be released at all (the creation of this petition was widely dubbed to be one of the most pathetic and childish things to have happened in rock music, and we agree). ‘Doris‘ is also one of the better songs on the album.
Suicide Silence is an album of “nearly-s”. It’s nearly passable. The clean singing is nearly good. ‘Hold Me Up Hold Me Down‘ is nearly a decent deathcore song. As it stands though, the album falls far short of the mark. It’s also nearly similar enough to the first Korn album for it to sound like Korn had a hand in writing it – there’s the moody, pained clean vocals, the shitty 90’s production, the heavy angry bits mixed with the clean sad bits, but where as that is hailed as a genre-defining album, this is being hailed as an unforgettable career misstep. A spilt glass of red wine on an otherwise brilliantly white table cloth.
With each song clocking in at over 4 minutes, and some over 5, Suicide Silence does not have enough ideas to be worth the length that it is. There’s at least a minute and a half that could be cut out of ‘Listen‘ and ‘Dying In A Red Room‘ that comes right after it may as well not be on the album at all – it’s two ideas spanning just shy of 5 minutes long, goes nowhere and adds nothing to the listening experience or the album.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. ‘Conformity‘ is very close to being 6 minutes long, and though Eddie’s clean vocals are better here than elsewhere on the album, 6 minutes of him wailing the word “conformity” gets very annoying very fast. When Lamb Of God introduced clean vocals there was some umm-ing and ahh-ing but then they released ‘Overlord‘ and everyone shut up. If ‘Overlord‘ had been on this album it would be like finding a lump of diamond in a poo and mud curry.
Suicide Silence is nearly acceptable. You can see what they’re trying to achieve, they’ve just done it badly and recorded in on what sounds like a guitar with 20 year-old strings, a rake with one string nailed to it for the bass and a collection of old kitchen implements including a rusty sieve.
One thing is abundantly clear though, this album is nowhere near the level of talent and craft that the men who produced it have shown in the past.
