Band:	Suicide Silence
Album:	You Can't Stop Me
Style:	Deathcore
Release date:	July 11, 2014
A review by:	Mattybu

01. M.A.L.
02. Inherit The Crown
03. Cease To Exist
04. Sacred Words
05. Control [feat. George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher]
06. Warrior
07. You Can't Stop Me
08. Monster Within [feat. Greg Puciato]
09. We Have All Had Enough
10. Ending Is The Beginning [re-recorded]
11. Don't Die
12. Ouroboros
13. Blue Haze [special edition bonus]
14. Last Breath [Hatebreed cover] [special edition bonus]

I have to give Suicide Silence credit. After the death of Mitch Lucker almost 2 years ago in late 2012, they picked up the pieces and put out another album. It's not always easy to keep on truckin' after a tragedy like that, so they get some respect from me in that sense. There's even more than that, though. You Can't Stop Me is not too shabby an album.

Granted, there are some areas in which Suicide Silence just can't seem to push forward. Deathcore is not a typically loved genre in metal, with the trademark breakdowns often being cited as a weak point of the genre, and there are some aimless breakdowns throughout You Can't Stop Me. The problem with breakdowns is when you don't inject any sort of creativity into them, it's painfully boring to listen to them, and it can detract from the quality and flow of a song if they aren't done well. On top of the songwriting at times being unable to escape mediocrity, the higher pitched screaming-type vocals are pretty grating at times. And of course, the lyrics are not just metal-in-general bad, they are cringe-worthy bad. I found myself trying to tune them out at times in an attempt to enjoy some of these songs.

However, despite a myriad of flaws, You Can't Stop Me does have quite a bit going for it. Opposite to the higher register vocal style, the deeper guttural style Hernan Hermida uses is much stronger and I found the parts of the songs with these deeper vocals more enjoyable. The production is well-balanced and the general sound isn't the kind that falls flat as a result of trying way too hard to be heavy. In addition, when the flow of the songs isn't being chopped up by a bad breakdown, there is some nice guitar playing on display and an efficient pace to the album - meaning the songs don't drag on too long and meander into stretches of boredom long enough to hurt the overall experience.

The icing on the cake is when George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher (vocalist of Cannibal Corpse) comes in on "Control". GCF always goes hard in the paint, so my expectations for this track were that it would be the best on the album. They were met, and I sat there like a giddy schoolgirl waiting for him to show up in the track and subsequently enjoying it once he was there.

At the end of the day, we have an album here that doesn't push any boundaries, and still has some of the trappings of deathcore that many people have come to hate, but nevertheless is pretty decent. Suicide Silence are capable of writing fragments of songs with good guitar work, good vocals, and engaging rhythm, but there are too many moments where the album takes a u-turn into Breakdownville and the hope for an album enjoyable in full fades away.