Review Summary: An aggressive resume-to-date that will hold fans over, but ultimately leave them hungry for more.
Greyhaven’s greatest gift has always been their ability to inject huge hooks and addicting choruses into their music without figuratively dulling the blade. They’ve never taken their foot off the gas - it’s always been a full-speed ahead operation, brimming with explosive energy and dynamic creativity. 2022’s LP
This Bright and Beautiful World and 2024’s EP
Stereo Grief were arguably the best metalcore/post-hardcore releases of their respective years, which helped to establish Greyhaven as one of the most talented acts in either genre. How long they could continue to capture lighting in a bottle remained to be seen, but it felt like nothing could slow them down.
Contrary to its title,
Keep It Quiet is another album that functions at a breakneck pace, channeling anger and aggression while fusing it with just enough melody to stick. Lead single ‘Burn a Miracle’ - a song about vulnerability at its core (“step inside my mind and take a picture of it”) - serves as something of a stylistic overture for what can be expected throughout
Keep It Quiet; it’s an album about opening up to others, revealing secrets, and expelling inner demons. It was the perfect lead single not only because it was an accurate depiction of the record as a whole, but also because it’s the most memorable track on the LP. If there were to be a quintessential Greyhaven song that one could use to represent the band’s overarching sound, ‘Burn a Miracle’ just might be it.
While ‘Burn a Miracle’ serves as the catchiest song here, ‘Where The Light Leaves Us’ is arguably the
best. It absolutely combusts with affecting screams from Mills, a beautifully executed time signature change, and a spine-tingling clean vocal passage to close things out. Stylistically, it feels like this song would have fit in seamlessly on
Stereo Grief, which is about as high of a compliment as can be paid. The penultimate ‘Diamond to Diamond’ is another highlight, blending atmospheric verses with a shouted refrain that cuts through the reverberating guitars. Even when the atmosphere takes a turn for haunting, moodier aesthetics - as it does on the midsection duo ‘Night In October’ and ‘Technicolor Blues’ - Greyhaven still deliver searing, volatile guitars and perfectly-timed emotional screams. From front to end, this band’s passion is never in question.
Still, when held up against Greyhaven’s most recent output,
Keep it Quiet doesn’t seem to pack
quite the same punch. It’s perhaps a frustrating criticism given the fact that the record largely adopts a similar approach, but there’s something borderline intangible that’s missing. The record leans
slightly more towards a straightforward metalcore approach, and there’s just a
little less happening in terms of unpredictable turns and wrinkles. When rolled together, it makes Greyhaven’s fourth full-length release feel a tad generic, and secondary to all of their prior works save for perhaps their debut. It’s very much a well-composed album in all facets, but the instinctive urge to continue returning to this one isn’t as strong as it’s been in the past.
Keep it Quiet almost feels like a resume-to-date for Greyhaven. It’s unmistakably
them, and the band’s core identity can be felt across the record’s entire runtime. There are no subpar tracks, but also fewer absolutely essential highlights. If it’s a Greyhaven album you’re looking for, you’ll certainly find one here - it just doesn’t ring out with the same creativity or imagination compared to what fans have been spoiled with going all the way back to 2018’s
Empty Black. Perhaps more than anything, that's just a glowing endorsement of how strong their discography has been.
Keep It Quiet will satisfy its audience’s craving for aggressive, well-executed core music, even if it feels like a temporary pumping of the brakes in Greyhaven's once ceaseless momentum as one of the very best artists within their scene.
