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The Black Crown is Suicide Silence’s third studio album which was released by Century Media Records. Suicide Silence is arguable the biggest, badest deathcore band in the world today taking the “core” scene by storm when they released their debut album The Cleansing. After The Cleansing was released in 2007, Suicide Silence turned into what can only be described as a deathcore Juggernaut. Their next album, No Time to Bleed might have had a little less success because of some of the new elements they have introduced into their music (the atmosphere is a big one) which didn’t really suit their style. But It was still a very respectable album. Now, all the fans were waiting for this to come out and the long wait ended with… a little disappointment.

From their last album No Time to Bleed, Suicide Silence have progressed a little bit from their last album. With the atmosphere and their style of music. The thing is that they must have forgotten what made themselves so famous and that was The Cleansing. Except The Cleansing had little to no atmosphere to their music at all, so I have no clue why they introduced it. Not only that, but why did they kept utilizing it in this album. It’s just not them, Suicide Silence isn’t suppose to be the darkest band out there. And I think that the introduction of this darkish atmosphere doesn’t work well with their music anyway. It worked for Whitechapel and Chelsea Grin, but not Suicide Silence. In fact, it makes their music sound even more juvenile than what it was suppose to.

Prior to the release of this album, Mitch Lurker (the lead singer) vowed and promised that this album was going to be more serious mature then their previous releases. I think not, unless you consider adding some nu metal influences into your music, more mature. And I don’t think having big names featuring in The Black Crown make it more mature and serious either. I mean they have Frank Mullen (Suffocation) and Jonathan Davis (KoRn) which some people might welcome. But just because you have these guys in their music, doesn’t it’s going to be any better. I don’t care if they have the queen of England in there, it won’t make it any better. I think the whole thing about The Black Crown being “mature” was propaganda from the very beginning.

The next thing that has suffered in this album is their song structure, now some people might think that deathcore has no structure. But it does, not matter what others say, it does (even though it’s very messy and obscure). But the song structure and layout in The Black Crown is absolutely atrocious. They have tried to combine the deathcore style of song writing and structure with nu metal elements. This has ultimately failed and lead to the collapse of the whole framework with made up their songs. I’m not even sure if these guys put thought into their music, because it is that obscure and messy. The transitions aren’t smooth and their music no longer makes sense, what a shame.

Even musically I don’t think that they are anything special anymore, they are still extremely repetitive. Hell, they still have the same style of drumming that we saw in The Cleansing, which was far repetitive back then. So if they drumming wasn’t anything special back then what makes people think that it will be anything special now? Also the guitar solos aren’t anything special either. I don’t want to sound mean or anything, but if people can’t do a decent guitar solo, why do them at all. There is no point and I preferred their old ways when they tried to keep the terrible guitar solos to a minimum. And the vocals, the vocals… hmmm, I cannot put my finger on it, but there is something about the vocals that doesn’t seem as seducing as what we saw from The Cleansing. I think that back in The Cleansing the words were dragged on longer and this suited the style of Mitch’s vocals better. I don’t even think he is able to go as high or as low as before. Also, his voice was smoother back in the old days.

The last think, I’d like to say about this album, is that they have thrown all creativity out the window for this album. There are absolutely nothing about this album that makes me want to stand back and just say “wow, these guys have done an excellent job”. It just seems like they have taken steps backwards and I would have to say that they aren’t as good as many deathcore bands in the underground scene out there. There is absolutely nothing original about this album, nothing, nothing at all! The music is highly repetitive and I was bored with the music before I even got though half the album. Even their breakdowns have taken a beating. Do you remember the breakdowns in “Destruction of a Statue” and “Bludgeoned to Death”? Do you remember how heavy and how seductive they were? Yeah, they are gone now, so don’t even bother with this album if you are expecting to hear those types of breakdowns again.

Overall, this album was a disappointment. There were absolutely no indications of progression in their music since No Time to Bleed. Everything we loved from The Cleansing is now gone and everything we didn’t like from No Time to Bleed has been emphasised further. Now look what we are left with, rubbish. I think I only got through less than half of the album until I have had enough of repetiveness of this album. And, the rest of the album was no different. I mean yeah sure, the clean vocals in “Witness The Addiction” but what the fuck are clean vocals doing in Suicide Silence? I really think that this album was a rushed job from the very beginning and I don’t think that these guys will accumulate any newer fans with The Black Crown.

I’m not even going to recommend this album to anyone because why should people settle for this when replaying The Cleansing will give you more pleasure. But Ultimately, it is your decision to do so. So, I recommend to all the diehard Suicide Silence fans out there because you might like it (even though there is only a small chance). To get a good idea of what this album is all about, check out the track “Fuck Everything”. But be warned, if anyone is expecting anything like their older stuff, prepare to be disappointed because you are not going to get it. I give Suicide Silence’s 2011 album The Black Crown a 5/20.