Review Summary: Rising from the dead. Kind of…
Silverstein are almost like the cockroaches of post-mallcore—they just absolutely refuse to die. The band continues to churn out albums every couple of years like clockwork and have one of the most extensive discographies of any of their peers. Furthermore, right up until about 2020, they were also one of the more consistent acts in that whole genre. Maybe they weren’t always the most brilliant or the most original, but I can’t recall listening to their music and ever not at least enjoying it. As I grew older, I kept waiting for that moment when Silverstein would totally change direction and I would be able to declare them as bygones of a past era and somehow they kept defying my expectations.
Then
A Beautiful Place to Drown happened and I (along with everyone else) confidently did declare Silverstein to be bygones of a past era. That album was supposed to be the agonized swan song of a band that had fully abandoned their former leanings and embraced the warm, sugary world of pop-rock.
Misery Made Me, while having flashes of their previous songwriting chops, still kept that trend going. But despite wanting to store Silverstein away in my mind as a fond memory, something in me couldn’t just let them go.
So it was out of a somewhat morbid curiosity that I put on
Antibloom. Would it be good? Would it be bad? To be completely honest, I was expecting to write a review that would completely sh*t all over their entire record (or half-record or whatever it is). I was expecting this to be the final nail in Silverstein’s coffin, the drop that would finally end it all and allow us all to move the hell on. Somehow though (and this is where a come full circle to my cockroach references), Silverstein refuse to die! They just can’t let it go! Despite all odds and against all expectations, not only does
Antibloom not entirely suck, it’s actually pretty damned fun.
I already know that this is going to be one of the more divisive releases of Q1 2025. I already know that my opinion concerning this record will not be agreed with by some (or many, I really don’t give a ***). It’s just that within the first five seconds of “Mercy Mercy” (which is one of the best opening tracks they’ve probably written) I got hit with an instant rush of nostalgic bliss that carried me through this bite-sized quasi-album.
I’m not an idiot; I know that this is not as good as any of their best (or even better) work. I also don’t know if they are ever going to write music that hits the same way as
Discovering the Waterfront or
This Is How the Wind Shifts again. That being said, I can’t help but get a kick out of the way “Mercy Mercy” roars out of the gate, or how catchy “Confession” is, or how “Skin & Bones” manages to
actually strike a balance between their heavier songwriting with an absolutely killer hook, or that sludgy breakdown in “I Will Destroy This.” Even the closing ballad, “Cherry Coke,” contains just enough melancholy and honesty to save it from being a complete train wreck of a track (except the title, that’s just poor decision making). It feels like Silverstein have realized that their path to radio-rock stardom might just be a dead end, and they are rediscovering how to do what they did best.
Again, it’s far from perfect. “A Little Fight” is an utterly unnecessary interlude that is annoyingly saccharine. Remember that breakdown in “I Will Destroy This?” It’s great. The rest of the song is unfortunately about as forgettable as a bad Amazon Prime movie. I think the best way to describe it would be that the album is safe or shallow. There still seems to be an obsession with adding in unnecessary poppier elements that derail the momentum of the record, and while Silverstein seem to have regained some of their confidence in how to write acceptable music, they don’t ever fully embrace their strengths.
Ultimately though, while
Antibloom is not the full return to form that could be hoped for, it is a symbol of significant progress. I suppose that could all completely collapse with the second half of this particular venture, but it appears that (at least with
Antibloom) Silverstein are actually trying to put quality before mass appeal. There’s nothing even wrong with wanting to have mass appeal, but unfortunately this band hasn’t figured out how to do that without it being awful. In the meantime—and as stupid as it may sound—I’ll take the shreds of gritty vintage Silverstein any day, and it’s honestly kind of nice to know that they’ve still got it in them.
