ALBUM REVIEW: Silicon Nitride – Sydney Fate

Cardiff is one of the up and coming places for bands and musicians to flourish and hone in their musical craft. The music scene is thriving in this city and one example of that is SYDNEY FATE, having performed around the country and at South Wales’ Metal 2 The Masses competition. With their debut record, Silicon Nitride, how did the band do the first time out of the gate with a studio release?

Pretty well done actually, The music across the entirety of Silicon Nitride is beautifully well written – the guitars especially are stunning to listen to. It’s very atmospheric with solid riffs and just the right heaviness to lift it into that metal sound. There’s a lot of strength within its music and its thanks to both the powerful instrumentation and the top-notch production. Songs like Falling Forward, Courthouse Problematic, Home and Sweet Anticipation exhibit how much SYDNEY FATE have developed and improved in their musicianship. There’s also a lot of impressive lyric writing that shows the band’s intelligence and combining it with the music makes for a fantastic listening experience. 

The only critique is the clean vocals. Unclean vocals are harsh and shoot through clearly and add to that aggressiveness, but the clean vocals are the hardest to listen to element on Silicon Nitride. The tone of this vocalist is overly nasal, sounding like a poor imitation of FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH‘s Ivan Moody or BAD WOLVES‘ Tommy Vext when instead, he should just sound naturally himself. It’s a distracting tone, especially in the slower ballad, Chelsey Grin, where the clean vocals and the guitars lead the track. 

There are plenty of strong songs across Silicon Nitride, and the talent on display within this record is undeniable, but those clean vocals make it an unusual and at some points unlistenable, experience. It’s not bad for the first time out of the gate, but there’s a lot of room for improvement for SYDNEY FATE and if the work on their strong foundation the only way that these guys can go is up. 

Rating: 6/10

Silicon Nitride is out now via Eclipse Records. 

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