Sound Of Silence
La Casa De Los Lamentos
6.5
Synopsis:
Much like obscure, foreign metalcore acts like Amok and Faust Again, Spain’s Sound of Silence have listened to a lot of early Darkest Hour, The Black Dahlia Murder, and maybe some As Hope Dies also.
Review:
If you can get your head around the all-Spanish lyrics and the fact they completely idolize Darkest Hour’s more extreme earlier work, Sound of Silence isn’t a bad little slab of rough and ready high octane Swede-core. Generally faster paced and slightly blacker in the vocal delivery, La Casa De Los Lamentos is at times pretty good, but also at times such an undeniable Darkest Hour rip off that it can be a bit offsetting.
Still, the band puts forward an honest and generally pretty raw type of cliché free metalcore that rages pretty hard from beginning to end and is free from clean vocals or any form of softer moments, and that works as a double edged sword because the album is so fierce at times it actually needs a little breather, as the tracks often run into each other. Also Nefta’s screech does tend to grate after a while.
Still though, if you are a fan of Darkest Hour, you will enjoy bitter, seething tracks like “Nunca Seré Feliz”, “Delirios Silenciosos,” the almost pure black furor opening of “Mas Allá De Mi,” and “Poesía Para Un Sueño Eterno,” where the band really bares their teeth in cliché free form of vitriol.
On the whole though, this along with Vidres A La Sang’s Endins, has given Spain two surprisingly good releases this year, though I imagine neither will get too much attention outside of there.
