The SilencioAnathema

It’s the follow-up to 2014’s double EP Upside/Down and The Silencio are really roughing out a name for themselves as grunge revivers from the Gold Coast with their debut album, Anathema.

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Dissonance is definitely the word to describe this release and is delightfully applicable to the duel guitar stylings of Jan Nicholas Blom and Dylan Brann. Their stylish scratchings in I Blame Myself hark back to early Deftones and is a welcome element of their performance any time they pull out the acoustic guitars. Cheeky little guitar licks in This Cannot Die followed with a discordant run on the piano shapes the song’s overall aesthetic of aggravation, solid snarls tickle away at you with a pleasant twistedness.

Where pensiveness and ambient grunge are explored, The Silencio make their best noise.

Where dissonance doesn’t really work for The Silencio is in the disparate vocals of Blom. The guy has a great voice and a wonderful tone from the Cobain-esqe strain in Done With You to the wonderful textures carried in ambient sections of the album’s title track, but the hopscotch nature of his style is as unsettling to hear as it must be to pen. If Blom dispensed with the forced punk undertones there would be absolutely no stopping The Silencio.

The choking grunge lyrics and insistent strings that meet the rabid strum of the acoustic guitar in Immunity are by far the best expose of the band’s strengths and cement one very important thing—where pensiveness and ambient grunge are explored, The Silencio make their best noise.

STANDOUT TRACKS: Done With You, To Kill For, Immunity
STICK THIS NEXT TO: Silverchair, Nirvana, Deftones