ALBUM REVIEW: Misery Made Me – Silverstein
As a 30-something year-old millennial it’s too easy to keep going back to the same old playlist and dismissing anything that threatens to encroach on the emo heritage (or should that be habit?) that is by now so engrained. But after 22 years as a band that has remained true to fans and themselves, SILVERSTEIN know what they’re doing when they put out new music. After the successful reception of A Beautiful Place To Drown in 2020, Misery Made Me is somehow bigger, better, and just all round more.
The album opens with a classic modern anthem for the five-piece: Our Song. Using their unwavering tried and test format, the track is very reminiscent of the previous album in terms of the genre they’ve carved themselves into, the topic, the enthusiasm even, while also prepping the listener for what’s to come in the following 10 tracks of them accepting the reality of their misery.
But as we listen to the ending of Our Song and might form some sort of assumption as to what kind of song might come next, we are then thrown the album’s third single, Die Alone. Not only does lead vocalist Shane Told remind us how much of a classic punk he really is, it also gives an excellent platform for the band to team up with Andrew Neufeld of COMEBACK KID – a band who have the same longevity as SILVERSTEIN as well as pedigree in their genre, making this track a change of pace for the album, but a seamless one at that.
While this entire offering is born from positivity and enthusiasm between the band, lead single Ultraviolet tackles their greatest nemeses: frustration and anxiety. Laying it all out there for the world to see, or even relate to, Ultraviolet tells of the struggle to control the chemicals in the brain. Guitarist Paul Marc explains: “Ultraviolet being invisible felt like the right way to describe it – to get lost in this unseeable thing. Ultraviolet light also causes physical damage to our skin, so it serves as a sort of ‘proof’ that something invisible like anxiety can hurt us.”
Following the poppier and somewhat arena rock-type track Cold Blood, featuring Trevor Daniel, and previously released single It’s Over, comes The Altar / Mary; a tale of two halves. The first a mixture of hardcore punk, emo, metalcore, and some introduction to synth, and the second continuing the use of synth but with more emotion pushing through and giving the listener a complete change to something SLEEP TOKEN would put out while still managing to still feel like part of the same song.
The album then springboards the rest of the tracks off each other, from Slow Motion, featuring the unmistakable vocal talents of Mike Hranica of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, to penultimate track and latest single Live Like This, featuring NOTHING, NOWHERE, which again reminds the listener what SILVERSTEIN have been facing with this record; the struggle of the world’s turmoil, including disassociation, doomscrolling, and, of course, angst.
The album concludes with acoustic track, Misery. While the very unsubtle depressive lyrics are the same throughout the record, the expressively emotive four minutes of this track really makes them hit home, even referencing milligrams of what you can only assume is antidepressants; if it doesn’t help someone recognise their own depression or how deep of a hole they are currently in, nothing will.
Misery Made Me is the ultimate triumph for a band that has been at the centre of the emo culture for over 20 years. And while maybe we can thank the resurgence of the genre with the popularity of it over on the likes of TikTok and festivals like When We Were Young and Matt Cutshall’s Emo’s Not Dead cruise, both of which the band will be playing as part of their US, EU, and UK tour this summer and autumn, maybe the success of the band is because they are still relevant. They are tackling topics at the forefront of the listener’s mind, and they’re including not only their influences, but the older listener’s old favourites like CANNIBAL CORPSE, DESCENDENTS, and even their earlier music heavily throughout. Whatever the reason, SILVERSTEIN have smashed it with Misery Made Me, and while this author may have middle-named her daughter after the band, this is definitely not a biased review.
Rating: 10/10
Misery Made Me is out now via UNFD.
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