Review Summary: Suicide Silence release an album that is stellar for its genre but still suffers from the same drawbacks of nearly every album in the deathcore genre, despite an overall tighter feel to the instrumental work and a fantastic vocal performance, this is Mitc
Suicide Silence are a band that has forever been cursed with the labels "generic", "dull" and "uninspired" due to the fact they are about as stereotypical of the deathcore genre as it gets. Their debut album, The Cleansing, showcased a good degree of talent on both the instrumental and the vocal frontier, with some hard hitting riffs and demented shrieks, but was held back by lack of originality and a production job that undermined every second of its running time. The Californian act then proceeded to release a follow up album that ditched a little of the supposedly more "brutal" edge to their music and streamlined their sound a little, and their third album The Black Crown could be seen as a progression of this, and may have hinted at an even more commercial look for them had Mitch Lucker not tragically passed away in 2012.
The third outing from this band is decidedly more straightforward in its relentless assault on the ears than anything they had put out beforehand. It clocks in just shy of forty minutes, and each of the eleven songs here could essentially be viewed as a session getting inside the mind of Mitch Lucker. In place of the anti-religious sentiments that had been contained on their past two releases, each track here speaks of something that is deeply personal to Mitch Lucker, be it relationships gone wrong or the idea of living life to the full. The overall soundscape of The Black Clown has been toned down in complexity from the furious, out of control nature of their first release to far more of a groove-oriented style of playing. At its absolute core, however, The Black Crown is best heard as just a sub-forty minute attack on your ears with considerably more melody than the band had ever featured before.
The tremolo picked guitar lines and frenzy of notes that were played on The Cleansing and the follow-up, albeit to a lesser degree, have been replaced here with much more of a catchy sound. Whilst the riffs are still heavy as the galloping riff at the end of Human Violence shows, this is an album which will be remaining in your head for all the right reasons. You Only Live Once opens with a surprisingly clean and melodic riff for Suicide Silence and marks a huge step in the right direction for a band that previously only knew how to write one-dimensional garbage that wasn't fit for a mouse's ears. The drumming is also restrained in comparison with what came before but this really is no problem as Alex Lopez lays down some great beats such as on Smashed, which opens up with a thrashing beat that hits really hard and never lets up. This is certainly an intense, scintillating performance from the musicians.
Vocally, this is arguably Mitch's finest hour, and is a fitting swansong for his untimely demise. His characteristic jumps between highs and lows are here, but this time he has some more tricks in his vocal arsenal. Occasionally here there are some moments of clean vocals such as in the introduction of the aforementioned You Only Live Once, and a mass of spoken word sections found throughout. When these are combined with the demonic high pitched wails that are used more heavily than ever before and some brutal low growls, Mitch pretty much puts in the ideal and fitting vocal performance for an album such as this. If you are growing tired of his vocals by the time you are a few tracks in then fear not as both Jonathan Davis from Korn and Frank Mullen of Suffocation feature here, on Witness The Addiction and Smashed respectively. The former adds some quite nice melodic, harrowing vocals to the chorus of his song, whereas the latter adds the the heavy tones of the track he features on, and this gives for some nice variety.
Of the numerous tracks here, The Only Thing That Sets Us Apart is the most interesting one. This track is more mid-paced than many of them here, and is content to storm ahead with some bludgeoning riffs and one of the more creative drumming performances here. There is even a cool semi-clean break around half way through the song that lasts for about fifteen seconds before the song turns heavy and aggressive again, which would not have worked better on any other song, and another one situated before the end of the song. Album opener Slaves To Substance is another masterclass in deathcore that sets the dark tone of the album in its opening seconds and makes great use of pinched harmonics during the first verse, before the song kicks in for real. The "That makes you a slave... To Substance" refrain in the latter half of the song is one of the most finely executed moments on the album and it is sections such as this that really boost this album above the usual generic, insipid performances of most deathcore bands.
Another massive bonus here is a razor-sharp production job. The guitars sound fresh out of the cast-iron forges of Hell, whilst the drum tones are clean and each beat feels like a punch directly to the gut. The bass is completely buried in the mix, but when the album calms down from time to time it seeps through and lays down a nice backdrop that anchors the album together, as F*ck Everything shows during its breakdown. The vocals are loud in the mix, but not so loud that they overbear the listener and ruin the experience and, overall, this album boasts one hell of an atmosphere right from the word go due to the fact that everything has such a low-end feel to it with some sinister guitar tones. This is definitely a cut above the average modern mainstream deathcore album production, and shows many of this band's contempories how a clean production job should be done properly.
This band did not get everything correct on The Black Crown, however, and no amount of solid songs and crunchier production values will mask the generic formula the band works off. All of these tracks have at least one thing wrong with them aside from the aforementioned two standouts. The breakdowns are no less annoying than on any of the other deathcore albums out there, although none quite stoop to the level of some of this band's past material. There is also the fact that some of the lyrics are absolutely ridiculous, despite the obvious emotional context to them provided by the fact that Mitch Lucker is pouring his heart into this album, they do nothing to boost this band's credibility. Again, nothing quite hits the lows of "the doctors won't be able to recognize your f*cking face", but they come damn close. The final problem with The Black Crown is the ninety second interlude track that is supposed to sound creepy and build up with the tremolo picked guitar lines that kick it off, but it really fails due to the weird vocal effect added to Mitch's voice.
Overall, The Black Crown is a more than solid third attempt for Suicide Silence and stands out as a landmark in the deathcore genre. For those who doubt this band, listen to Slaves To Substance, as it is probably the band's best song to date, and know that not once does this album ever hit the lows the band themselves set with some of their past material. If you are a fan of heavy music in general, check this out, regardless of genre, as it is one Hell of an album.
