Suicide Silence - Suicide Silence (2017)

From what I've noticed, albums that actually feature the band as the album cover tend to be pretty bad, and it's rare that I even see them nowadays. I don't know what inspired Suicide Silence to pick -this- album not only make a self-titled, but to go as far as to put their faces on as if to say "this is our best work and we're standing by it, this is who we are" when the album sounds like everything they're not.

You ever meet someone who's just immune to the smell of their own farts? Like maybe it's your dad who'll get in the car with you, roll the windows up, and let loose the deadliest fucking fart he can while you can't roll down the windows, and he thinks it's hilarious, partly because he's so used to the smell of his own farts that he's not affected by them negatively, but rather, almost impressed with how fucking nasty he can get them to smell. Well, that's essentially this band this time around. On this album, the band has chosen to mostly tell deathcore to fuck the hell off as they embrace nu-metal and clean vocals, but here's the thing: They range from awful to mediocre at best. The entire album, save for the first minute and a half of "Don't Be Careful, You Might Hurt Yourself" sounds like a Korn album, and I don't mean "they took influence from Korn", I mean this legitimately could fool me as being new Korn songs at points, and the band thinks the negative reception has been that their fans are just uneducated swine who can't fathom the idea of clean vocals, when in all actuality, the clean vocals on this album can be fucking TRASH. If you listen to "Doris", it starts out promising enough (please, for the love of fuck, do NOT look up the lyrics) but then it has an awkward falsetto part leading into Jonathan Davis-esque vocals and the disappointment doesn't stop there, because that's just the first track. This disappointment isn't because it's different for them, it's because it's BAD, and I'd think the exact same if it was a new, different band full of members I had never even heard of.

If I could say just one positive thing about this album, it'd be that vocalist Eddie Hermida sounds fucking great when he's screaming, I really mean that, the dude is a fucking beast when it comes to harsh vocals, and there are a few moments on this album that shine before being promptly sprayed with shit via a fire hose, although "Dying in a Red Room" does succeed as a decent moody, reverb-drenched nu-metal ballad that reminds me of listening to moodier Drowning Pool songs when I was 15, and "Hold Me Up, Hold Me Down" (did they sample Mitch Lucker's vocals at 4:17??) sounds like a step in a better direction, to the point where if the entire album was like that, I'd probably fuck with it. The songs sound so fucking sluggish and muddy for the most part, like they couldn't figure out how to -be- Suicide Silence anymore, but along with that, they wanted to make an album that sounds even shittier production-wise than "The Cleansing" because at least that album had some bite to it. Sure, that album may have been missing a few teeth, but it bit, whereas this album kind of has a coffee-stained smile while thinking it's the most beautiful motherfucker that's ever existed, when in actuality it just sounds like if you took every single nu-metal trope possible from the whispery "don't fuck with me, I might SNAP" moments to the "haha we're CRAZY and OUT OF OUR MINDS" (just wait 'til the last minute of the album) moments reminiscent of "man, this is what I wanted to do with my would-be-but-never-was band when I was 14" thrown into one big pot and melted down until the only thing that remains is a teenager that leaves "THUMB UP this comment if you're still listening to this in 2017" in YouTube comment sections for Korn's "Freak on a Leash". This album, by all means, is the audible equivalent of JNCO jeans your older sibling wore in 1998, but the fact that it was made completely unironically in 2017, nearly 20 years after this sound was new and exciting, it's just almost fucking hilarious, especially when 2011's "The Black Crown" accomplishes nearly everything this album wanted to but in a much more interesting way. I'll bet my entire fucking bank account that the band's next album is just a convenient "return to roots" album that wasn't at all influenced by the negative reception to this album (wink wink, sarcasm) but just part of their artistic vision after this album sells an underwhelming amount of units in its first week. Yeah.. Right.

4/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!