ReviewAlbum review: deathcore masters Suicide Silence keep it formulaic
Band’s Hong Kong date this month promises bludgeoning sonic assaults, as we await their imminent fifth album
You Can’t Stop Me
Nuclear Blast
With a fifth album imminent, Californian deathcore masters Suicide Silence will bring their “Straight Outta Hell” tour to Hidden Agenda, in Kwun Tong, on August 23, before completing the Asian leg in Beijing and Shanghai at the end of the month. The band’s most recent full-length album, 2014’s You Can’t Stop Me, was the first to feature All Shall Perish frontman Hernan “Eddie” Hermida, after original vocalist Mitch Lucker was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2012.
We don’t want to taint Lucker’s legacy, on what is obviously a cathartic and passionate album for the band (the somewhat ironic lyrics to the title track were written by the late singer), but Hermida’s varied guttural roars and throat-ripping yells certainly add a new and welcome dimension to the band’s bludgeoning assaults. The musicianship and songcraft is nothing we haven’t heard before from Suicide Silence; it’s still formulaic chugging riffage with a little nu-metal groove. While You Can’t Stop Me is hardly a spectacular leap forward, Hermida’s performance at least manages to drag plenty of the tracks out of the hardcore mire.