Band:	Silent Planet
Album:	The Night God Slept
Style:	Metalcore
Release date:	November 10, 2014
A review by:	Ilham

01. The Well
02. XX (City Grave)
03. I Drowned In The Desert
04. Native
05. Tiny Hands (Au Revoir) [feat. Natalie Nicoles]
06. Firstwake [feat. Joel Quartuccio]
07. Darkstrand (Hibakusha) [feat. Sean McCulloch]
08. First Mother (Lilith) [feat. Rory Rodrigues]
09. To Thirst For The Sea
10. Wasteland (Vechnost) [feat. Nathan Mead]
11. Depths II

The best thing about growing older is not knowing yourself better, but coming to the realisation you actually don't know that much. I never would have thought an album by a Christian metalcore band could actually move the doubtful heart of a hardened atheist such as mine. Silent Planet tamed the cold bitch in me for the short while I needed to write this review. I'll proceed to tell you how.


Silent Planet are a bunch of young Californians who perfectly understood how to build a coherent album incorporating all the styles that seem to have inspired them. Metalcore is just the big umbrella under which I spot some emo post-hardcore, the technical prowess and breakdowns you could find in deathcore, atmospheric post-rock build-ups, as well as even Gothenburg-influenced passages reminding me of Dark Tranquillity's Character. I find it admirable how The Night God Slept perfectly embodies the contradictory nature of melodic, emotional and yet truly passionate and aggressive music, without making themselves sound like acne-riddled angsty teenagers. And all of that in just a little more than thirty minutes.

Indeed, being able to pack so much into so little material shows a precocious understanding of songwriting and the level of musicianship needed to exalt it, without ever losing the listener in guitar-noodling or overly-meandering passages. Seamlessly arranged, the songs and ethereal instrumental pauses accompany the listener until the end, where I always find myself wishing for more. Which is precisely the only flaw I found: a little more time to develop those epic but short build-ups would have been a huge bonus. Fortunately, a balanced and clear production made it easy for me to enjoy each layer of this dense album, and I had the utmost pleasure of discovering news ones with every spin of the record. My addictive personality isn't a valid enough explanation for the fact I listened to Silent Planet's début six times in a row and a few more times the following day. It's just that good, varied, and complex enough.

However, this opus would be nothing without the impressive vocal work by Garett Russell and Thomas Freckleton whose both clean and harsh vocals always feel genuine and on point. Their delivery ranges from the softest clean whisper to rappy or long drawn-out screams of the highest level. As a result, both the instrumentation and vocals drive that despair and anger you could hear in those intelligible lyrics right through the middle of the listener's heart. Without ever preaching, Russell tells this tale of our fallen human race through the poetic depiction of its darkest moments in history. So thought-provoking and so full of hope it touched the sad cynic, grinding egotistical hipster that I am.


I very rarely felt the need to get myself involved on a deeper level with a band's aesthetic and ideologies, but after such an impressive first album, I found myself driven towards their official blog in which they respectfully and subtly display their beliefs in the form of (hipster-filter-covered) pictures, works of art, lyrics, quotations and messages to their fans. Such consistency in content as well as in form confirmed the impression of professionalism, commitment, and depth that sole first spin gave me. I have no doubt that this début will put Silent Planet on a path of exponential growth: I have a feeling their future work will be just as well thought-out and mature, even if they take another musical direction.

I can simply conclude that The Night God Slept is one of the best records I have heard this year and I don't mind exposing my sensitive side so as to praise it better. Here, listen, take this right in the feels, sucker.