Thanks to a strong first album for Century Media (2007's
The Cleansing) and to possessing one of the scene's most powerful and dynamic stage shows, California's
Suicide Silence quickly managed to distance themselves somewhat from the teeming mass of deathcore bands that began crowding America's every rehearsal space, record store, and concert venue in the late '00s. Yes, detractors of the style as a whole still wondered what all the fuss was about, but the quintet's second full-length album, 2009's
No Time to Bleed, may help to answer some of their questions with the corroborating evidence of an even better set of songs than their debut's. In a nutshell, the album proves that
Suicide Silence are one of the only bands of their ilk to have cracked the admittedly limited, if contradiction-happy, deathcore template (which goes something like this: scream, growl, blast, doom, grind, grind, and grind some more) by incorporating foreign heavy metal objects, and -- here lies the key -- making them integral elements of each song, rather than forced displays of reckless eclecticism. Consequently, notable new offerings like "Lifted," "Wasted," and "Disengage" jump off the note-blackened music sheet via illuminating glimpses of thrash, doom, classic metal -- you name it; screaming pinch harmonics and fluid solos (see "Smoke," "Genocide"); and a surprisingly varied array of guitar riff textures, liable to impress the likes of
Dimebag Darrell (RIP) or
Tool's Adam Jones. Cap this off with an instinctive nose for songwriting economy (no overlabored epics for this band) and lyrics that, while simplistic and even repetitive, at times (e.g. "Wake Up" and the title track), are also both refreshingly direct and intelligible, for the most part, and you get a real sense of -- dare we say it -- accessibility?! Even the album's singular full-on departure from deathcore expectations, the horror music soundtrack that isn't, "...And Then She Bled," is handled with aplomb, where, for most other bands, it might have felt like a leftover indulgence, adapted from some bandmember's home demos. Deathcore neophytes may still require a few additional listens of
No Time to Bleed before they'll be able to pick these nuances out of the ever prevailing din and hysteria, but they're in there, just waiting to be revealed, and hopefully becoming increasingly clear to longtime genre converts, looking to separate the wheat from the chaff. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia