Suicide Silence • The Cleansing
So far California’s Suicide Silence have had a great deal of hype surrounding them, they’ve toured America with Unearth and Darkest Hour, entered the Billboard top 200 chart at number 94 and are now about to tour the UK with another up and coming talent, Epitaph’s newest signing Parkway Drive.
It seems that Suicide Silence have a lot going for them, but does their music really deserve all this attention, I’m not so sure.
‘The Cleansing’ marks the band’s debut with Century Media and it is one seriously heavy piece of work. It incorporates all the usual elements of metalcore, death metal, hardcore and doom with breakdowns and riffs a plenty. There are no melodic choruses, no epic moments and no sing along vocal passages. Instead it’s just intense and brutal as hell. But this is not a good thing. The album’s major flaw is the fact that it’s somewhat monotonous. The speed never lets up, the drumming feels like an endurance test and the blood thirsty growls feel as if they’re put on for show. There really is no originality whatsoever. I must add however that I only got through 4 songs before I couldn’t take any more, so if the rest of the album offers something more then I do apologise, for some reason though I doubt this.
Judging by these factors it’s not easy to see why they’ve been receiving so much praise. Perhaps it’s because this genre is saturated and the bands are easily marketable, or perhaps they really are the next best thing in death metal and hardcore.
To be brutally honest I’m not so convinced they are. ‘The Cleansing’ looks like Suicide Silence has read the rule book on new subgenre ‘deathcore’ but they’ve forgotten to include any thing that sets them apart from the crowd. This is all well and good if they want to be listened to and liked for all of 5 minutes, but if they want some longevity it probably won’t be good enough. The problem is that everyone is bored. They’re bored of a genre that spurts out band after band which all sound the same. Suicide Silence will only ever join the queue and if they want to skip to the front they’ll have to do better than this.
Those that like death metal interspersed with hardcore, here’s another band to add to your collection. Anyone else, don’t bother, after 4 songs you’ll be wondering why they’re still at it.