Review Summary: This could have been an email.
Erra needs little to no introduction in the metalcore community. They've long since been among the trend of resident band members contributing to a driving factor in their sound, only to leave and replace themselves with a vacuum of talent that has led to ambitious pursuits of exploration that few bands dare to bother with. After all, if it isn't broken, why try and fix it? Why, indeed, is the question Erra asks themselves with their release of
silence outlives the earth. Get used to the word "earth" because boy is it a popular word for this band. As such is "spirit", "soul", "night", I honestly could go on with the band's attempt at a concept that will most assuredly go over everyone's heads. This is nothing new, mind you. Erra's lyrical design language has always been within the realm of ambiguity. It's anyone's guess as to what the hell this band is talking about, and if you do know all the nuances of the ideas this band tries to project onto their audience, I salute you. The words are fancy and flow together well with Jesse's safetysuit vocals and JT's arguably superior vocal presence, accompanied with grandiose heaviness from the rest of the ensemble. When it clicks, it just
clicks, and the sound is a refreshing change of pace from the more somber and focused sound of Cure. This release seems to try and combine the often personal and grounded approach to the sound Cure aimed to achieve, with a more aggressive and melodic execution, akin to their ST or even Augment I dare say. There still exists a strange fixation on vocal direction that Jesse seems to think is what fans of this gargantuan sound have been asking for, when really all we want are genre pushing moments we got with Impulse or ST.
The album opens with Stelliform, er, sorry, "stelliform", and right away we're greeted with a sound akin of Drift, with thoughtful chord progressions that almost immediately gives way to bombastic and fast paced heaviness led by JT. The chorus comes in unassumed and soft, Jesse's usual tenor replaced instead with a soft timbre, something we've grown used to hearing since Cure. It's here we're given an ensemble of sounds Erra has devised over several albums, really nothing new, but put together in a way that keeps your attention and never rests on its laurels. It ends gracefully and gives way to "further eden", arguably the catchiest song on the album. The chorus riff puts itself front and center, doesn't outstay its welcome, and makes me want to grab a guitar and learn it. JT has his usual rhythmic shouts that seem tailored for every moment, bouncing lyrically with Jesse, and the chorus is thoughtful, albeit carelessly executed. "Dive slow, shatter into the sun" is immediately overlapped with "Too close, pressure I can't outrun" without even taking a breath. It may be nitpicking, but how exactly they plan on executing this chorus live is something I really want to hear. Too often little moments like this in the production of metalcore seem to go under the radar, when the more seasoned ear will immediately scoff at its lack of thought to songwriting, and was only put together to sound good on the album. However, the song plays out well, has an enjoyable bright sound and a heavy harmonic gallop of a breakdown that gives a tasteful metallic edge to what could have been just another boring breakdown we've heard a thousand times. I often find myself with it in my head and itching to play it as a start to a metal playlist of the day.
"gore of being" is next, a surprisingly dark and pessimistic track on an otherwise positive runtime. The second single of the album, so I won't go into too much detail, but it's heavy, it's fun, and the breakdown is one of JT's highlights on the album, unapologetic in its approach to mortality, as if to say "we're all just sacks of meat that end up dying and leaving our loved ones with nothing but a memory." "black cloud" is where I start having issues with Jesse. The song is exclusively Jesse's vocals, and not very well. More of the same we've heard from him, but the relentlessness of his voice just permeates the track to the point where it drowns out the rest of the band. Jesse is a decent vocalist, but in this reviewers opinion, only in small doses, and only when those moments are calling for a soaring change of pace. "cicada siren" aims to balance out that bad taste with a heavy hitter, coming in with the gloves off, but lacking anything that resembles Erra's traditional heaviness, leaving it sounding like anything else we've heard. The sung vocals actually end up sounding like something Phil Labonte would do, it's quite jarring. The only redeeming moment is a polyrhythmic gallop that Jesse softly sings over, only to go back to a Spiritbox-esque groove that has injected itself into most modern metalcore. Moments like these are sprinkled throughout the runtime, and rarely work well here.
It's here, however, the album peaks. "echo sonata" was the first single from this album, so again, I'll try not and dwell on it, but I'll be damned if this isn't one of the best tracks here. It's got the signature bright and melodic sound this band's greatest catalogue has to offer, uplifting yet brow-furrowing in its majestic string-tapping and polyrhythmic heaviness. Here is where JT seems to have a lot of fun with the heavy moments on this album, belting "YEAH" as a slow and sludgy breakdown accompanied with a worrying and frantic harmony, ending abruptly to a spoken word interlude led by Jesse, and then sails off into the sunset with a ghostly and bluesy solo over a fast paced groove, into a crescendo of the chorus that Jesse actually performs well, and ends with a calming and mournful piano and a variation of the intro string-tapping. This goes into "lucid threshold", my personal favorite here. A lyrically simple song, about the desire to escape reality with a loved one through lucid dreaming(?). It has bravado and an interesting repetition, slow and groovy, with elegant chord progressions on top of a thoughtful machine-gun start-stop rhythm. Jesse's vocals here are at their best, balanced very well with JT's shouts, both layered and executed appropriately with the band, beautiful rhythm guitar under Jesse's chorus and fast-paced gallops under JT's shouts that give way to sustained chords and unrelenting drums. The subtle fills from the rhythm guitar and drums between the measures are so well thought out, it's ridiculous to me that the first half of this album doesn't seem nearly as well done as this singular track, and it unfortunately loses its momentum with "spiral (of liminal infinity)". The instruments are well thought out, but ultimately it's a bore, failing to keep my attention and seemingly building up to a moment that never comes.
Perhaps that moment is the first of a "trilogy" of sorts that sends out the album, an 11 minute chronicle that begins with "i. the many names of god", a Spiritbox worship song that is exclusively JT's. Not a peep from Jesse here, a fun romp of heavy little tricks, even if these tricks again aren't anything new. The standout moment for me is a certain drum pattern that immediately invokes John Dolmayan or Sam Applebaum, and unfortunately is the only standout moment on this entire runtime that drummer Alex Ballew seems to have some kind of creative input in his, well,
input. This goes directly into "ii. in the gut of the wolf", a solid and relentless festival of riffs that starts out like a freight train of rhythm guitar chugs and last second fills of hammer-ons and pull-offs, ending the measure with a synth you would be forgiven for thinking was a guitar, but unfortunately isn't. The track is JT's moment, the "chorus" consisting of a low growl of a chant, slow and smooth, only to return to the chugs. Rhythmic stops to open low string sustain, again akin to Spiritbox, with a surprising and awesome "step the *** off the ledge, find me" by JT, a highlight here, as its execution is new for this band, and tastefully accentuates the atmosphere of the track. However, it ends with a piercing and mosquito tenor from Jesse as it drones on, and I honestly despise how it layers with the song. It induces a face of disgust from me as it gets to this point, but thankfully it ends softly with Jesse softly bringing the track to a close with a name drop of the album, "silence outlives the earth." The band could have dusted off their hands and called it day after this, but *someone* wasn't quite satisfied with that, and we get "iii. twilight in the reflection of dreams", probably the worst closer I've ever heard from this band. It aims to bring everything prior into one proggy track, but it feels disjointed and exclusively Jesse's, even tries to build to a crescendo of instruments only to be woefully droned over by Jesse, and ends up being a write-off, something I hoped I would never consider a closer from this band. Utterly forgettable and achieves little to nothing in the context of the rest of the album, even lyrically.
I'm exacerbated with the choices this band made with this album. At times it's glorious and exceeds my expectations after Cure, a daring and thoughtful direction for the band, albeit pivotal and divisive. Much fat could have been trimmed, hell, this could have just been an EP with 6 songs and I would've been happy. For the TL;DR this album shines with the following:
1. further eden
2. gore of being
3. echo sonata
4. lucid threshold
5. i. the many names of god
6. ii. in the gut of the wolf
And I would have absolutely given this a higher score, without hesitation. This long meeting could have been an email. I'm glad they went back their more bombastic and technical work as metalcore legends that most certainly stand out in a sea of mediocrity, but this album ultimately fails to keep my attention from start to finish. I'll continue to look forward to future endeavors, but I hope they bring more cohesion to the overall theme of an album, as they did with Cure, in this reviewer's humble opinion.
