I think everyone in the music community, regardless of the genre, can collectively agree that waiting on an album to drop is one of the most excruciatingly painful things a person can do. Every day feels like a week, every week feels like a month, and so on and so forth. This particular band had me waiting for what felt like ages and to finally have it blasting in my ears is one of the sweetest feelings I’ve ever felt. So what band had me on the edge of my seat eagerly awaiting their new full-length release? Why, it’s none other than Silence!
Silence, the simply named deathcore band from Daytona Beach, Florida has been repping the Sunshine Coast’s scene longer than a majority of the bands that come out of there as far as I see it. Having been around for approximately five years now, Silence has really started to create a name for themselves in the deathcore scene. I knew so many people that were patiently waiting for this release to come out, and now that it’s passed the release date of November 20th, I haven’t heard a single negative thing about it; there’s a reason for that. Silence originally started out with a straight up, in your face and increasingly angry deathcore style on their debut release entitled There’s No Place Like Home that came out in 2010 but, surprisingly, they decided to take a little bit of a different approach on Dead Presidents.
With Dead Presidents, Silence took a different approach and by that I mean that they really harnessed their inner Bermuda. I found a lot of the tracks to be really bouncy with progressive and technical elements in some of the songs as well. The bouncy aspect really reminded me of Bermuda, which, for them, is a great thing because they have been tearing up the scene for the past couple of years, so to take aim at their style and use it as your own is a smart move on Silence’s part. Also, I really liked how there were a lot of slower screamed parts that weren’t necessarily really heavy on the low vocals part but progressively turned into the really deep and low screams and growls.
The guest spots from Matt of Kubai Khan as well as Adam & Dylan of Playing for Keeps were smart choices. The vocals from all three vocalists mixed perfectly with the style Silence was working with and neither of them were weird or off-putting. I found it a nice gesture that Silence’s vocalist, Hunter Young, asked Adam & Dylan of Playing for Keeps to put guest vocals down considering Hunter used to be in Playing for Keeps. From the beginning till the ending, Dead Presidents was some damn heavy deathcore and not even on the aspect of it musically, the entire album was so well produced that everything sounded so top notch and I really had zero complaints about the sound and how every instrument mixed perfectly together and only enhanced the vocals and the other instruments respectively.
Lyrically, I was also impressed because the band didn’t follow the typical deathcore style and write about blatantly ripping people to shreds or killing males or females. Instead, I found it to be poetic and focusing more of using metaphors and true emotion when it came to angrier or sadder parts. With an album name like Dead Presidents it may seem a tad obvious what the lyrical content would be like, but I was definitely surprised that it wasn’t a totally political album. Overall, though this release has easily been one of my favorites of the past month and a bit disregarding the new Thy Art is Murder, because I highly doubt anything for the next little while will be able to top that. Silence came close, though, and I was genuinely impressed with everything this release had to offer. I’m definitely going to be spinning it for the next little while and so should you!
Links: Facebook – Bandcamp – Merch
