ALBUM REVIEW: People Watching – 156/Silence
Currently, there’s a beautiful chaos being imbued into metalcore. From BOUNDARIES to THE GOD AWFUL TRUTH, many bands are letting a plethora of other influences take the genre’s sound to incredibly fun new places. Does it always work? No, it doesn’t, but that’s the fun in throwing darts at the balloon of creativity. Eventually one will pop it and you’ll reap the rewards.
156/SILENCE are a band who have been interesting to watch over their career. Not content with allowing themselves to settle into a space, each album has been sonically different, albeit within metalcore’s confines, and especially since 2020’s Irrational Pull, they’ve been on a hot streak few others can touch. With the aforementioned 2020 effort bringing to mind the chaos of CONVERGE and early THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, as of late there’s been more of a nu-metal sound (complimentary) in their output and, particularly on this album, People Watching, more than a tinge of the heavier end of post-hardcore.
A quick mention for the artwork, which looks like Woody from Toy Story if he was in the movie Smile. It’s something you expect to see in a fun-house and see its eyes follow you across the room. It fits the album though, which possesses a similar, oddly possessed vibe. Aside from the more classic bands whose influence is on show, VEIN.FM‘s insidious, uneasy tendrils from their second album run through this whole record. None of 156/SILENCE‘s albums have been cheerful or sunny by any stretch, but this takes things to a darker level.
Opener Character Development (Cold Start) characterizes (heh) this perfectly. Brooding instrumentals give way to bellowing, ear-scraping vocals that raise a smile, before things slow down and it all begins to sound a lot like the voices in your head you try to ignore. It’s a trend that continues throughout, lending itself to some great moments of dynamics and demonstrating a maturing of the band’s sound. Vocalist Jack Murray puts on the performance of his life here, even holding his own against two of modern heavy music’s best and most distinctive voices (more on the guest spots later), and his bug eyed declaration of “I just want to watch you die” at the end of the opener simultaneously sends goosebumps down your arm and adrenaline to your heart.
Indeed, his clean vocals first really make their mark on Better Written Villain, which opens with some soaring melodies which are balanced by some shrieking barks throughout. If he can pull these off live then he really has a chance of ascending to the top of the rankings on this album cycle because these are some of the best that modern metalcore has heard for a long time. That’s not to say the rest of the band don’t hold their own, as they do. Across the record there are many moments of descending into post-hardcore or even pop, handled so effortlessly as they all move as one, multi-faceted unit.
Now, the guests. At this moment in time it doesn’t seem possible that anybody could match Carson Pace for sheer intensity and brooding charisma, but Murray manages it. The track Blood Loss starts with some fuzzy, almost sexy electronica that allows for some spoken word evoking the opener. When Pace comes in it’s a shot to the system and he works so well with Murray to create a true, stomping, unhinged piece of music. Craigery Owens of D.R.U.G.S. and CHIODOS also puts in a hell of a performance, though his vocals do seem a tad out of place register wise for this record, but that’s not something you can say about MOUTH FOR WAR frontman Trae Roberts, whose spell on Change Agent gives the album its heavy, ass-beating highlight.
At 14 tracks (three of which are instrumentals which, while cool, don’t particularly add that much) it never gets too stale, with there being enough in the band’s repertoire to not only keep you entertained, but also keep you guessing. It’s taken a while for 156/SILENCE to truly reach this level, but now they have, you can’t really see a way back for them.
Rating: 9/10
People Watching is out now via SharpTone Records.
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