Suicide Silence return to heavier roots with 'Meltdown' & 'Love Me To Death'

Yet heavy doesn't always equal good.

After the incredibly negative and divisive response to their disastrous 2017 self-titled album, Suicide Silence sure haven't had a stress-free time over the last two years. From the "tee-hee" memes, to Eddie Hermida's sexual misconduct controversy with an underage fan that same year (which resulted in them missing out on having a song in Devil May Cry 5), to just the general awful nature of that LP itself, among various other public messes. When people look back on their career when Suicide Silence finish up, that whole period will look like their mid-life crisis years, overall.

Yet now its time for them to try and move forward, as the band returned this week to their heavier, older deathcore roots with two new songs, 'Meltdown' and 'Love Me To Death.' 'Meltdown' is part one, an instrumental death metal song with some choral vocals added in near the end. It's an odd choice for a single and is honestly a bit of a nothing song, too. Part two is 'Love Me To Death,' the full, proper track here; a generic, chug-happy and blasting death metal/deathcore number for the American band, with ad nauseam repetitive high-pitched screams of "love me to death" in the choruses. Of course, no one is coming to Suicide Silence for subtly, and that's basically confirmed with this goofy, silly little line: "Let’s turn this room into a motherfucking crime scene."

Both songs, whilst heavy and brutal (for those who care about that kind of minutia), are a shallow & disingenuous return to the pre-self-titled sound for Suicide Silence. It seems like them caving to those who didn't like their last record. While I would rank their latest LP as one of the worst metal albums of this soon-ending decade, I'd also never want the band to embark upon a safer trip by lazily going back to their early days. With their last record, the band made comments about how it was "the record we were born to make" and made a big deal about how it was a "real" album and was tracked to tape. (Fun fact: whether your music is cut to tape or not, you still need to have good songs.) This all shows a lack of confidence in what they create, despite the big talk from the last release cycle, seeing them pandering to their original audiences in hopes of restoring favour. A similar mindset that seemingly sat behind Machine Head's latest song, 'Do or Die,' following 2018's 'Catharsis' LP.

Anyway, check out the slasher/horror-movie inspired videos for both songs below (the latter of which features a Jared Dines "tee-hee" came near the end). Suicide Silence's next LP, 'Become The Hunter,' arrives February 14th, 2020.