Coming off the successful high of their reunion album Afterburner, Sinister unleash their eigth studio full-length recording, The Silent Howling, to a hungering mass of fans. The band continues to push their more technical Death Metal agenda further with this release, utilizing seven tracks to unless nearly fifty minutes of strong technical brutality on their new home, Massacre Records. While the band's previous effort found the group working well together with plenty of energy in the mix, the group brings in a new permanent bassist to the group, Bas Van Den Bogaard, which solidifies a fantastic line-up, but leads one to wonder how much of an impact this member had with how obvious a shift in the music exists.
While most of the atmospheres surround Sinister are those of brutality and hopelessness, The Silent Howling finds the group leaving these behind for a more crushing vibe through highly technical music that feels a little polished, yet retains a muddy sound thanks to some additional distortion on the instruments, primarily on the guitars. The music feels restrained a bit, but more in a controlled manner to suit the technical style, and often will jump from a faster paced approach with pounding drums and blast beats to swap out for a slower, almost reflective sounding random section or bridge in many tracks on here. "Republici of the Grave" does an excellent job of setting up the listener with what to expect, and jumps between the faster and slower styles well. "Summit of Sacrifice" does this well too, and typically has some distorted audio samples that play during some of the slower moments. You also hear some spoke word elements on a slower part of "Republic of the Grave", though they sound quite different and don't really seem to be connected, or the same kind of audio sample.
One of the more impressive aspects of this album is the title track, "The Silent Howling". The song takes on a much darker, almost horror-themed atmosphere to the song. One can't help but feel as if a cold atmosphere exists from inspirations stemming out of The Howling and other such atmospherically rich horror tales to make up the general cold and dark vibe of the song. "The Silent Howling" runs a touch over ten minutes in length, and for that amount of time, it's quite an impressive song given Sinister's musical past. However, it uses plenty of the same acousticc guitar bridges to bring together a flow to the album that would work since it does manage to change up in speed and technicality, coming off more like an Opeth inspired Progressive Technical Death Metal composition, but they do eventually start to beome repetitive after a while. A little less then a third of the way through, on this track as well, you get a small spoken word section warning "the Ice Man is coming", as well as more a little later on past them. While therse slower moments definitely feel colder and live up to the concept of the Ice Man, it does end up just sounding to be a little much after a while. But, about half way into the song, it does start to really feel drawn out and repetitive despite the atmosphere.
After "The Silent Howling", the album continues on it's merry way like the track had never happened. "The Kill to Come" is similar to "Republic of the Grave", being an intense track that feels a little sleek, yet kind of restrained for the sake of being technical. There's also "Palace of the Fates" which is far from a bad song, and it has some chords that bring up a slight Egyptian atmosphere to the track that works to break things up and give the track a little more of a unique approch when compared to the rest of the tracks. But that's the only genuine grupe about this album. The music is great and often quite fluid, but outside the over extended title track that gets repetitive and drawn out, the music almost always feels restrained. "If it Bleeds" is one of the very few songs on this album that really doesn't feel like the band was holding back for the sake of technical music, and when they do it really shows, and often can be painful to hear despite how good the song is in the first place. "Republic of the Grave" is the perfect of that, being too restrained that it hurts to listen to because you want it to erupt in an energetic frenzy, but never does. The self control is admirable, but in the end, admiration doesn't make a song kick ass.
| 2011 Reissue |
|
The Silent Howling is the ninth CD in the Altered Since Birth box set, and honestly, I don't hear much of a difference compared to the original. Maybe it's slightly sharper then the original version, but that's about it. This edition comes in a digipack, and again, no booklet, just the information from the booklet in the ninety six page book accompanying the box set. This edition also has no bonus tracks, so if you have no urge to buy the box set, then this one really doesn't matter to add to your collection. It just makes a nice closing piece to the box set either way, spanning pretty much the entire discography of the band up to the point this box set came together. |
The Silent Howling shows a nice progression to a stronger Technical Brutal Death approach, and it sounds a little more unique for the band. The music sounds more fluid because of it too. But there's no denying some of the songs feel restrained, and there's just some repetitive elements including slower moments with spoken word samples thrown in, as well as the overdrawn title track. It's not quite perfection, but it makes for a good step in the right direction for this recently reunited act. And, now with a solid line-up, the music direction seems to be progressing smoothly, the sound is getting tighter, and the overall vibe of the band shows great maturity from their varying atmospheres and sounds throughout the years in past albums and songs. It's a promising piece despite the issues it has, but it's one that definitely should be checked out. If you're expectng anything crazy with this one for the 2011 reissue, there's nothing much here except maybe some slightly sharper material. The remastering doesn't do much, but you can pick up on it regardless. Either way, if you're eyeballing the box set the reissue comes with, it's worth grabbing, but if not, either edition you happen on should suit your listening needs just fine.
|
