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By RYAN MAVITY
The Cleansing is an appropriate title for the new album by Riverside, Calif., band Suicide Silence. The album is a brutal, thrashing, holocaust of an album that rampages its way through its 12 tracks. The title is also an apt description because the album dabbles in every conceivable subgenre of metal: gore, grind metal, thrash, noisecore, doom, you name it.
The first thing you notice about The Cleansing is the versatility of singer Mitch Lucker. The guy can go from a high-pitched scream to a death metal growl in a millisecond. A good example is the song that also could sum up the band’s musical philosophy, “No Pity for a Coward,” with its ominous “Pull the trigger, bitch” chorus. The song is probably the best one on the album. Another good example of Lucker’s ability to frequently change styles is another great song title, “Bludgeoned to Death.” The band backs their singer with a mix of downtuned guitars and gymnastic drumming. Tempos can change in the blink of an eye and no matter what style they are dabbling in, the band keeps things intense.
I guess if there is a complaint about the record it’s that the band doesn’t vary its attack enough. While the song tempos change frequently, taken as a whole, an awful lot of them sound alike, a not too uncommon thing among grind-oriented bands. This is a band that probably works better live, when their energy can overwhelm an audience, as opposed to in the confines of the recording studio.
These are fairly small quibbles. The Cleansing starts at Mach 5 and doesn’t let up until the end. This is a solid hardcore metal album.
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