HOLD THE SPINESHANK, MAKE IT SILENT CIVILIAN

Silent Civilian’s 2006 debut Rebirth of the Temple was a really fucking solid record, a shining example of metalcore done right at the peak of the genre’s popularity. The riffs crushed, melding American core and Swedish shred with the now infamous Decibel-named “good cop / bad cop” vocal style, only at the time it hadn’t been beaten to death yet. Who woulda thunk that any member of Spineshank could shred so hard? Rebirth also benefitted from ginoromous Logan Mader production (Gojira, Psycroptic, Cavalera Conspiracy). I remember really digging the record at the time, so I was elated to hear that from a press release that Silent Civilian are working on a new record, Ghost Stories, for release this October.

The band has a new song from the upcoming record entitled “The Last One Standing” streaming on their MySpace page. It’s… a little bit meh. It ain’t bad by any means, but it doesn’t seem to have the same power or hooks as anything on Ghost Stories, and this time around the clean-singing feels forced. After hearing the song I questioned whether perhaps my musical tastes had evolved that much since 2006, but I continued listening to the rest of the songs on the MySpace page and those are still pretty awesome. I guess the new song just isn’t all that, but there’s still hope; it’s just one song, and bands rarely release their best one 6 months ahead of an album release.

In any case, another Silent Civilian record is at the very least good news in that it’ll keep Spineshank from polluting the ears of metalheads until 2011 at the earliest.

-VN