Sylosis: Return Of The Kings
SYLOSIS were poised to claim the throne of the UK’s best metal band; they’d just returned from hiatus, played a rave-reviewed comeback show in London and released a stellar album in Cycle Of Suffering. In February 2020. Ah. It’s a pretty tired story what happened to the globe after that, so instead of touring the album like they wanted to, SYLOSIS just kept writing. The end result of that is this year’s phenomenal A Sign Of Things To Come, an album bristling with huge riffs, towering choruses and a surprising amount of melody; and it might be their best work yet.
Sitting down with frontman Josh Middleton over Zoom (what else) on release day, he’s in a good place with the overwhelming praise rolling in. “There’s a lot of people saying it could be our best record, some people have said it’s a contender for the album of the year,” he grins. “We’re not the biggest band in the world, but our fans are really invested. I think we’ve definitely got a cult following.” He’s not wrong; consistently listed as one of, if not the most underrated band in the UK metal scene, SYLOSIS are a force to be reckoned with.
It’s something that Josh himself sees crop up a fair bit, and recognises. “We’re not playing huge venues right now, and we haven’t had a spotlight on us for our career,” he muses, “but what we have got in terms of our success and fanbase is all through commitment, hard work, touring, just trying to write better music than we did before.” Considering that A Sign Of Things To Come ups the ante on its predecessor in every way, it’s easy to believe – even if you can’t quite believe why a band this good aren’t absolutely huge by now.
In many ways, this new album is something of a second beginning for them; a comeback after a comeback, it’s at a time when it’s now Josh’s main concern, and he’s keen to stress that this is very much a fresh page. “It does feel like a second debut,” he smiles, “there’s a rejuvenation in the music that really shines through. This record is the closest we’ve come to sounding like our roots when we started.” He doesn’t mean first album Conclusion Of An Age, either; “we were a band for four years before we ever released any music,” he states.
“We were 12, maybe 13, and we just wanted to be the heaviest, ugliest band in the world,” Josh laughs. “With this album, I wanted to recapture that feeling of being a kid, listening and discovering heavy music.” That ‘oh shit’ moment he describes, of the first time you hear a particularly gnarly riff, is all over A Sign Of Things To Come; opener Deadwood has groove and GOJIRA-esque pick scrapes, while Pariahs has pinch harmonics and a truly filthy stomp to it. Almost the whole album feels custom built to plaster the biggest shit-eating grin it can on your face.
It’s also deliberately more concise; previous SYLOSIS albums have been progressive, sprawling affairs that often surpassed the hour mark. While they’ve not lost those proggier tendencies, it was very much a deliberate choice to trim the length down to a more taut 45 minutes – partly because of Josh’s own attention span, as he admits. “Everyone’s attention span, myself included, in this day and age is just not what it used to be. People want instant gratification, so I really wanted to have more focus, make a record that you just want to listen to again and again.”
He’s careful to point out that the technicality isn’t gone, nor is the anthemic nature SYLOSIS albums are known for. In fact, there’s more emphasis on vocals now to, in his words, “connect with people, and put more of myself in there.” Coming from being a guitarist first, he laughs admitting “there was one part of me that said well it’s metal, as long as the riffs are sick you can just scream over it, and people will be cool with it.” It results in towering anthems like Descent, that flirts with melody and even a singalong chorus for good measure.
The biggest surprise is that the title isn’t a reference to the band’s return; “I actually wanted the record to be called Deadwood. It popped into my head one day – I was actually gardening,” he laughs. What became the title track was in fact the last song they wrote, and “lyrically, it’s about mid-pandemic when so much was going on. It was morbid anxiety of what the future holds and hoping that we can course correct.” He’s also very happy for people to take it as the band making a grand statement of intent on their return to the world, though.
That return, to him, fills a gap he sees in the metal world; for all the genre-smashing going on, he reckons there’s a hole where “just” metal exists. As he argues, “I don’t think many people are doing that any more,” of the LAMB OF GOD or SEPULTURA-esque metal that puts anthemic, heavy metal first. It’s not beholden to the past though; it’s an album very much written about the modern world, the ills of disconnect, personal tribulations and a desire for humanity and society to find a better way.
To Josh, metal – and by extension, SYLOSIS – is the one that can do everything. “If you’re pissed off, put on a heavy record, if you’re in a great mood jam something with riffs you love, or if you’re depressed… melancholic stuff comes quite naturally to me, and that’s inherent in my nature.” Ultimately, he wants people to connect to the album in some way; “as much as it’s heavy and quite an angry, pissed off sounding record, I never feel like you’ve got to be in that headspace to enjoy it, you can put something on and appreciate it whatever your mood. Sometimes, all you want is sick riffs!”
A Sign Of Things To Come is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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