Album/EP

A Breach of Silence - Secrets (Album Review)

Kaydan Howison

/10

Feb 5, 2017

7 min read

A Breach of Silence – Secrets

Out: February 24^th, 2017

A Breach of Silence line up:

Mat Cosgrove | Guitar
Blair Layt | Bass/Vocals
Rhys Flannery | Lead Vocals
Kerrod Dabelstein | Guitar

A Breach of Silence online:

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A Breach of Silence have been known for their “powercore” take on the boring metalcore genre. Something which saw them standing ahead of the Australian metalcore pack. Regrettably, to say they dropped the ball with this one is an understatement. Yes; it’s sad to report the band haven’t so much dropped the ball but thrown their anchor into the ocean (yay ocean references) and drowned themselves.

Secrets begins with the best song on the album ‘Falling Away’ features almost rapped vocals alongside heavy screams with a half decent riff underneath all of the chaos. But that’s it. That’s about all it has and consistently throughout this album, the impact of the first song is diminished as songs like ‘Ride or Die’ and ‘Undefeated’ feature an underlying feeling of sameness which never goes away.

The title track on the album is one of the more memorable songs on the album, a great solo and a chorus which is quite capable of sticking around for a few seconds and half decent lyrics. But these moments of brilliance are few and far between and mostly serve as a reminder of the untapped potential this band could achieve. ‘Fair Weather Friends’ is again a reminder of what can happen when this band moves away from the boundaries they appear to have set themselves. Containing an amazing moment of power metal vocal over hard, extremely proficient metalcore guitars and a cool outro which reminds you of Iron Maiden. It snaps you out of the monotonous tone the record has set itself. From here songs such as ‘Buzz Killington’ and ‘The Revelator’ try their best to differentiate from the endless sameness of the overall package. But end up being only memorable for their song titles.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMYAS1Ye5I0&w=853&h=480]

Finally we get to the cover of The Weeknd’s ‘Shameless’ which to the band's credit, is the second best song on the album. Taking the slow ballad and turning it into a heavy hitting metal song works surprisingly well. Sadly if it wasn’t obvious by now, the worst crime this album commits is the underutilised vocals from Rhys Flannery who seems to be holding back as he maintains mostly the same vocal range throughout the album as a whole. It’s a shame as vocally speaking, when he bothers to try he is capable of amazing old school metal vocals which would help differentiate from the endless dirge of so-so metalcore bands which exist in the scene.

If only to highlight this, they manage to shove all the underutilised vocals in easily the worst song on the album. ‘Sugar and Spice’ tries desperately to mirror the cheesy love ballads of all those hair metal bands in the 80’s; but even Vince Neil would have thought twice about it before penning the lyric:

“Just one question, my face, your ass?”

Really? That’s the best you could come up with? Totally out of place and extremely lacking in quality. It’s hard to believe the band would end their serious album, with something which equates to nothing more than a throwaway Steel Panther song.

Secrets isn’t a terrible album, Secrets isn’t a good album. It’s just another banal metalcore album in the sea of derivative metalcore albums, from a band who are capable of so much better than this. Overall I wouldn’t recommend this to a friend, but you might play it if were drunk and wanted to mosh at a party and you never want to be THAT guy.

Still better than another Amity Affliction record?

4/10

By Kaydan Howison