Remember when “deathcore” was a dirty word, a term that became associated more with neck tattoos and machismo, rather than actual music? Thankfully, times have moved on and now the dust has settled we find a scene populated by a bunch of talented musicians who make truly heavy music and indicative of this is Suicide Silence. Formed in California in 2002, they ploughed through all the negative publicity, leaving a trail of albums that smoke like fresh roadkill. With a genre-bending sound, latest album Graceless will sate their growing army of fans and will appeal to those with a fondness for heavy music (and an open mind).
The five souls who comprise Suicide Silence have eclectic tastes in music, citing bands from disparate genres as influences, everyone from Meshuggah to Korn, taking these inspirations and then beating them into their own twisted form. The result is an album that rips up the rulebook and whilst deathcore is the totem around which their sound swirls, it is anything but generic. However, what stitches these eleven tracks together is a heaviness, and they don’t come much more weighty than opening shot ‘Graceless’, 115 seconds of pure brutality, it is akin to being locked in a room with the world’s most depraved serial killer as saw cuts bone and blood splatters the walls. From the pig squeal vocals to the Ouija board drums via the razor sharp guitars, it becomes apparent that this is a band doubling down on their brutality. As they race towards their twenty-fifth anniversary there’s no signs of the band mellowing out, if anything they are tightening the screws. With none of these songs breaking the three-and-a-half minute barrier, there’s a wonderful reductionistic aesthetic going on; Suicide Silence don’t use two notes when one will suffice, yet songs such as ‘Make Your Exit’ are full and dense and cram more into one song than many bands pack into an entire career.
Whilst Graceless finds the band returning to their deathcore roots, it doesn’t feel like a backward step at all, rather the band are harking back aesthetically and the freedom that era offered. Thus, when a Slayer-style solo is thrown in the middle of ‘Rotting Inside’ it makes perfect sense, the band plucking fruit from the heaviest branches of the metal tree. It all conspires to make Graceless their most adroit effort.
- Graceless is released via Century Media Records on 20th November 2026.
- Suicide Silence Official Store
Track List:
1. Graceless
2. Unenlightened
3. Make Your Exit
4. Rotting Inside
5. Cursed Since Birth
6. Incisions
7. Parasitic
8. Reminders of Hell
9. NVRFXLD
10. Devoured Dreams
11. Sour
