Things have not always been smooth throughout the career of Suicide Silence, with the death of their original frontman Mitch Lucker being a clear point of division of the pre- and post- era of the band. Even while being one of the most influential names in the deathcore scene, their discography always floats around the average mark with some extremely weak points and only a handful of notable moments.
The new record Remember… You Must Die comes after a couple of generally skippable (or worse) previous releases of the last five years and finds the band still deep in the struggle. Tracks feast on constantly ongoing chugging, down-tuned grooves, with an actual riff making an appearance here and there throughout a streamline of breakdown after breakdown as if the band is on complete autopilot and doesn’t have to think anymore for new material. It amazes me how the current singer Hernan Hermida, always sounds much worse than the times when he was in All Shall Perish, a fairly respectable deathcore band.
As the vocals in Remember… You Must Die are mediocre, it is painfully annoying in terms of it textual work. This album title, most of the track titles, as well as the lyrics are dull, superficial and of seriously low quality, as are bits and bytes of the compositions too, apart from the obvious breakdown abuse. Slightly interesting is the middle paced, baleful part of “God Be Damned” which gives a slightly different note but unfortunately only last some seconds. Other than that, all the rest of the music in the record is poorly made, unimaginative, it fails to achieve essential heaviness even when the band tries to be even more intense (for example in “Endless Dark”).
It might just be that the fate of Suicide Silence is like that, and coming from someone who once listened to the band a lot, I enjoy some of their work while acknowledging that it can’t reach the bar compared to serious-minded extreme metal artists. Remember… You Must Die doesn’t have tracks even to serve as guilty pleasures, it carries all the sins of its genre and can’t seem to escape its own formula, by now re-chewed and served to you as fresh. The last song this band wrote was “Human Violence”, and that remains true for now.
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DAMAGE: 1.5/5 [Bad]
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Release date: 10 Mar 2023
Release label: Napalm Records
Listen: Spotify
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