I will say, without hesitation, that these guys have talent. They proved it on their first album When it Rains, and the single before this album was released “The Way We Were”. I was looking forward to this album after I heard the first single released “eightysix”. Generic, yes, however the cleans were used in a way that they should be. The whole song was building toward the melodic chorus towards the end. After listening to the entire album twice, it left me disappointed, so I will say it again: These guys have potential. The only question is will they ever reach it and create something that separates them from the ocean of high vocal-low guttural metalcore bands?
First things first, this alum is incredibly short. Clocking in at 32:37, this is one of the shortest albums I’ve listened to all year. Half the songs fail to be three complete minutes. Note that my favorite song on the album is “Guiding Light” is second to last on the album. On my second play-through I was surprised by how quickly it came. It almost seems as though Silent Screams threw in the towel and told themselves they couldn’t come up with anymore material.
With that said, I’ll start with the guitars. Production is solid; there is even a little bit of bass in the mix, which is a nice change from everything else that’s being put out currently. Songwriting on guitars has improved very slightly. In When it Rains riffs were not fluid. It went from one riff to another and sometimes it worked out, and other times it didn’t. Luckily for them, they picked up on this and it shows maturity, but not enough to overlook the fact that they were rarely used to highlight Tom Craig’s vocals. Lyrics focus on the most generic metalcore subjects: having love and losing it, being on the ground and needing help, being “hopeful” etc.
This band’s strong point lays writing songwriting that is written around Tom Craig and Joey Heywood’s vocals if they can pick up on it. That doesn’t mean sacrificing certain instrumental aspects, but knowing how to appropriately organize a song. “The Way We Were” is an amazing song. If Silent Screams can find a way to write songs the way they did that, they would be golden. The riffs seamlessly flowed one after another just to reach a pinnacle at the very end. The vocal duo in this alum is present and strong in this album, but sometimes the instruments lose their poise and the song begins to sound haphazard and disorganized.
While I enjoyed this album more holistically than the first, there is still room for a lot of improvement. This is by no means a bad album; it is just so painfully average. I hope this band can pull themselves out from mediocrity because if they can write an album that accents the vocals while providing the listener with a interesting instrumental section I have no doubt they will rise above a lot of their peers.
