You Can’t Stop Me

Author: Primož Novak

Artist: Suicide Silence
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: year_month
Running time: 39:10
Rating: 3.5/5

Suicide Silence, currently one of the loudest names in deathcore, have had a rough few years since charismatic vocalist Mitch Lucker, the man who made the band so well known, died tragically in a road accident. They decided to carry on anyway. They kept the name and brought in Hernan »Eddie« Hermida, a seasoned vocalist who had already proven himself in the deathcore outfit All Shall Perish.

The title You Can’t Stop Me comes from a lyric Mitch Lucker wrote before he died. It’s the band’s way of paying tribute to him and showing that his legacy lives on. The music itself hasn’t changed. You Can’t Stop Me is packed with aggressive, hard-hitting, groovy tracks. Hermida does more than a decent job on vocals: the screams are powerful, and the growls are just as pronounced and deep. His experience really shows here.

The songwriting recipe is the same, too. The band still serve up fast death metal and grind riffs that flirt with old-school death metal, and the breakdowns are of course a constant, though they’re not overdone like before. For a bit more variety, Suicide Silence also throw in the odd dreamier track, like the closer Ouroboros.

The whole thing stumbles a bit because Suicide Silence are a pretty stagnant band. There’s nothing surprising on the album, nothing to suggest the band experimented at all. The same goes for the rhythm section, which is solid but nothing special. The lead guitar also falls into some pretty obvious patterns. At times it all feels clichéd and generic.

The sound, though, is definitely interesting. Thanks to the same producer, it’s similar to the last record. The whole thing sounds a lot more natural and isn’t as polished as many deathcore releases these days.

You Can’t Stop Me has a few hits, like Cease To Exist, Inherit The Crown and of course You Can’t Stop, but as a whole it isn’t interesting enough to stand out above average in the flood of trendy releases. Fans shouldn’t be disappointed, since it delivers everything you’d expect from the band. The only problem is a lack of imagination in the songwriting, which leaves too many tracks sounding alike. Until the next record, all we can do is hope that Suicide Silence start writing with more thought, or just swap out the producer.

Lineup

Production

Steve Evetts

Tracklist