Album review: Silverstein – Antibloom

To celebrate a quarter of a century as a band, Silverstein are going both large and small. Their recording sessions in the baking hot plains of the California desert yielded a double-album, but the Canadian post-hardcore merchants have chopped it in two, giving us the first instalment now and the second, Pink Moon, later in the year.

As a result, Antibloom is but a brief blast of riffs and melody at just eight tracks and 25 minutes long, but in reality it’s an inspired choice. Every song gets its space and there’s no room for ear fatigue – or for filler.

Following 2020’s catchy yet overly glossy A Beautiful Place To Drown, and 2022’s rugged return to form Misery Made Me, Antibloom is a demonstration of Silverstein’s strengths but still finds them stretching their limits.

Opener Mercy Mercy – a tirade against doomscrolling – thunders along at the pace of a panicked heartbeat, but its coup de grace is a delicious end section where the riffs drop like the ominous chime of the doomsday clock. Later, the similarly raging Skin & Bones is a brutally blunt portrait of the fragility of life that frontman Shane Told contemplates after the murder of his ex-girlfriend – 'Life is going to leave you faster than you know,' begins its unsparing chorus. I Will Destroy This, meanwhile, siphons their sense of ferocity into a catchier mould.

If there’s any slip-ups, it’s on Don’t Let Me Get Too Low, a slightly boilerplate cut whose emotional heft becomes tepid thanks to some hackneyed lyrics about spiralling, being dragged down by gravity, etc. Confession better showcases their melodic side, lacing together arcing pop melodies with textured strings and pounding drums. Cherry Coke wraps things up pleasantly, slimming down their sound to a more skeletal, vulnerable form – 'Four am, wishing I was dead / Something I do when I forget / How I got here, why and when did I want this?' Shane questions.

Antibloom is another solid addition to Silverstein's already stacked discography, dependable in the absence of anything overwhelmingly exciting. Even so, they’ve consciously futureproofed themselves, proving they’re not about to get washed away with the changing times.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Trash Boat, Underoath, Senses Fail

Antibloom is released on February 21 via UNFD