Review Summary: Dismantle. Revive.
Band breakups are a weird thing. Often they’re driven by creative differences or personal animosity, but when Anberlin announced that
Lowborn would be their final opus back in 2014, the general attitude seemed to be that it was an amicable breakup at the theoretical top of their game (depending on who you ask), with individual members seeking to pursue their own projects or other work entirely. The problem with such a decision is that Anberlin is what people will remember Anberlin for - and when the pandemic forced the band members to seek more stable work, Anberlin seemed to be exactly what Anberlin needed to pay the bills.
This, under other circumstances, shouldn’t work - and indeed, livestreams of previous Anberlin albums performed in their entirety indicated a band that was just trying to make a paycheck. But when snarling, assertive single “Two Graves” was introduced this year, it quickly became clear that Anberlin had a lot more blood to draw than just whatever they could get from the nostalgia vein.
“Two Graves” kicks off their latest release,
Silverline, with a foundation of detuned guitars supporting a concrete wall of aggressive noise rock. Vocalist and lyricist Stephen Christian delivers a career-best performance here, straining his aging but still silky, breathy tenor into a vicious, biting shriek at times. It’s not that Anberlin hasn’t gone heavy before; but “Two Graves” is an equivalent but very different auditory manifesto compared to 2003’s “Glass to the Arson” and 2007’s “Godspeed.” It’s lower, slower; simmering with equal parts rage and maturity; channeling a youthful energy with an older, experientially-compressed angst. This is no return of Anberlin; this is peak Anberlin.
Silverline never tries to reach the zenith that “Two Graves” scales, but it does not need to, either. “Nothing Lost” starts with a thick, fuzzy baseline and airy, spacious guitar melodies before transitioning into the kind of sterlingly-produced driving alternative-rock that elevated their albums
Vital or
Devotion to greatness. “Body Language” leans into both Stephen Christian’s and Christian McAlhaney’s more neo-80s, synth-wave influences, replete with the kind of subtly sultry lyrics befitting such a sound; but as the track progresses, the band’s more organic instrumentation creeps into the mix, adding body and complexity to a sound they’ve adopted previously but have always struggled to deliver interestingly. “Asking” continues musically where “Body Language” leaves off, but builds more quickly into the thick, energetic, and melodic ballad that defines late-era Anberlin, a la “Modern Age” or “Hearing Voices.”
Bookending the EP, “Circles” sees the band combining those melodic sensibilities of “Asking” with the agitating noise of “Two Graves.” It’s an epic closer marked with soaring falsettos, massive riffs, distorted drums, and notably, the haunting and repetitious out-of-tune singing of a small child. It’s a fairly extreme sound that took me several listens to “get” personally, but in the context of the EP at large, “Circles” is a suitably massive closer that signs, seals, and delivers the envelope that the first four tracks were pushing.
Silverline is an absolute masterwork of a short-form album from a band that could have cynically rolled out a third recording of “Feel Good Drag” and paid the bills. There are moments where the production - and it is, in fact, a glorious production - seems to override actual substance, but this is as nearly perfect an introduction to this new Anberlin as it could have possibly been. Dig only one grave for the old Anberlin - this new one has a lot of life in it.
