As Silence Breaks « The RingMaster Review

The Architecture Of Truth, the second album from Australian metalers As Silence Breaks is a formidable and feisty beast of a release, an album with the surest intent to incite a riot within the senses with explosive yet carefully composed imagination. The album arguably does not offer anything strikingly new or ground breaking but uses and transforms the best of what already has emerged within melodic and extreme metal in a way not many others have imagined to date. This makes for a refreshing and absorbing release of muscle and destructive beauty.

The Sydney quintet of vocalist Sam Rilatt, guitarists Dan O’Brien and Ben Irwin, bassist Kiel Stanger, and Reece Kirby on drums, have become one of the emerging forces in Australian metal since forming over six years ago. Acclaimed and respected live with the band sharing stages with the likes of Darkest Hour, Carnifex, For The Fallen Dreams, Whitechapel, Periphery, TesseracT, Sybreed and The Red Shore, they have garnered a similar response with previous releases since signing with independent label New Justice Records in 2010. The new album can only accelerate their standing in world metal with its challenging and thrilling mix of metalcore, thrash, heavy metal, and melodic death metal. It is a thunder storm in the brain, intimidating, oppressive, and within the tempest elegantly stunning.

The release fries synapses from the off with Litany Of Fear. Its first breath is a solo guitar strumming a welcome with a brewing presence in the distance. Soon the track reaches its full height with an enveloping intense atmosphere giving way to a surging confrontation of picky guitars and rampant rhythms, bass and drums staking their claim on the senses as the guitars mesmerise with air scorching melodic invention. The vocals of Rilatt sear flesh with their coarse tone ably baked by an as abrasive assistance from Irwin. It all combines for an impressive opening fully and easily backed up by the following tracks.

Decimate continues the charge with more crushing riffs and demanding intensity to follow in a similar vein to its predecessor leaving the first full signs of variety to Freedom. The album is a nicely diverse animal and this song instantly ignites the appetite with its greedy tight grooves and electrifying melodic flames. Vocally clean additions expand the chorus and make a good contrast to the growling menace which is relatively standard through all songs. Less intensive and aggressive than the first pair it incites a purer addictive connection and shows the band as skilled and inventive as they are uncompromising.

Across its length the album has a high consistency with certain peaks coming with songs such as Purpose, Transcendence, and The Warning. These three are the heart of the album and the tracks which spark the strongest fires within. The first is a hungry insatiable brute of a song, its sinews continually shifting and offering unpredicted enterprise. At times it is a raging torrent in the ear and at others a caressing hulk of intense yet understanding power. Woven together the song is a towering inferno of violent invention and stakes a claim for best on album though that is snatched away by Transcendence.

The track bruises just as deeply as it mesmerises, its venom and violence corrupting every pore whilst lighting them with the keenest melodic pleasure. As it reaches its climax it adds some excellent hardcore anthemic touches to complete a riot of undeniable malevolence and satisfaction. The last of the trio The Warning simply rampages with unbridled destructive energy for the fullest pleasure. Within its demanding and merciless assault the band conjures melodies and grooves of excellence especially with some classic metal seeded guitar work, but the main attraction is in the pulsating hunger of the intensity.

From this point the album takes a slight dip but it is more to do with how great the songs leading up to the likes of Fire Borne Chaos and Redeemer are as these later tracks still have plenty to give and enjoy in sound and composition. The Architecture of Truth is a great album for anyone with a liking of As I Lay Dying, In Flames, and Unearth. It might not have enough to make As Silence Breaks yet distinct enough to stand apart from those bands but easily offers plenty to rival them.

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RingMaster 13/07/2012