As the Sun Sets
Each Individual Voice Is Dead in the Silence

Release Date: 1999 | Tracklist

As The Sun Sets formed in 1998 and featured Alexis Marshall on vocals, who later moved on to the band Daughters; which are now almost legendary. ‘Each Individual Voice Is Dead In Silence’ is ATTS first full length. It is a fusion of hardcore, grind, thrash, and metal into a perfect homogenous mix. If you only ever heard Daughters before hearing this band you would not even recognize the vocals as Alexis Marshall. They are very different from the ‘Elvis preaching in a Pentecostal church while tripping on LSD’ type vocals from Daughter’s S/T and ‘Hell Songs’. They are a blisteringly high screech that literary sounds like a bat flying out of hell. Occasionally there are some gutturals to accompany the low-end chugging parts in between the spastic grind outbursts. The guitars play very dissonant speed picking while the drummer churns out a whirlwind of blast beats. There are the occasional breaks from the madness, such as the creepy acoustic section in the middle of ‘Such Words Upon The Tongues of Demons’ or the spoken word build-up towards the end of the last song on the album ‘Everything’.

The album opens with sample from a horror movie with a man who unknowingly dies and wakes up not knowing where he is. A man then tells him that he is in hell and he lets out a terrible scream just before the barrage grind begins. ‘Searching For A Reason To Carry On’ starts things off giving a perfect example of what’s to come on the album. There is lots of catchy but dissonant speed picking with slow chug parts in-between; that pretty much sums up this album. Marshall’s hellish growl is one of kind and fits perfectly over the music. One his best highlights on the album is on the song ‘Everything’ where he morphs angst filled speaking into raging growls.

The production on this album is surprisingly well for grind bands of the era. It’s very easy to listen to because every note comes through perfectly and the mix is well balanced; allowing you to hear each instrument equally. ATTS were very ahead of their time on this album. It was released in 1999 and bands like Converge, BTBAM, The Red Chord, Into The Moat, won’t be playing a style like this for another 2-3 years. They were one the first bands to combine hardcore and grind and they did it perfectly here.

If you are into grind at all then I highly suggest you listen to this album. It is rather short with only 9 songs; most of which not much longer than 2 minutes. But what you do get here is some very well executed grind that is way before it’s time. No other ATTS album is quite like this; they moved onto a sound more akin to Daughter’s ‘Canada Songs’. If you liked Daughter’s old sound then get this album; it’s mind-blowing.

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3.7 great

Rank: #0 for 1999