Silverstein - DiscoveringThe Waterfront

Wed 17th Aug, 2005 in Music Reviews

A refreshing take on a genre that is crammed full of same-old, same-old, Silverstein’s Discovering The Waterfront is lyrical and hard-rocking, hardcore and catchy. Although they don’t really cover any new ground, they manage to carve out enough of an individual sound to create a great basis for this album.

Silverstein are a hybrid punk/emo/hardcore group from a suburb of Toronto, Canada. Following their debut album When Broken Is Easily Fixed, Discovering The Waterfront seems to be trying to solidify their sound and adding a matured approach to instrumentation, showing one of the ways that they have grown since the last album.

Your Sword Vs My Dagger is the opening track and sets the pace for the album. The guitar track is simple but works well against the offbeat of the drums. The vocalist Shane Told, has a melodic, well-toned voice that sits against the harshness of the instruments well but is still able to get the necessary ear-piercing scream so at home in hardcore/emo. The bridge in the middle is an interesting link to the final burst of chorus, building some intensity before tying the whole piece up.

Smile In Your Sleep starts as a slower, softer song with a Footloose-esque backbeat before launching into a solid rock beat in the chorus. The best part of the song is a slowed, intense section in the middle in which the singer seems to scream the lyrics as though he is wading through maple syrup to get to the chorus on the other side. The Ides Of March is a slightly vanilla track but it is still catchy but could be an Alexisonfire b-side, fortunately I love Alexisonfire, another Toronto alumnus.

The title of the fourth song, Fist Wrapped In Blood may lead you to think that it was going to be a full-on angry, thrashing, screech-fest. No. It was a bit soft for the type of song you would expect to have such an impacting title so I was a bit disappointed in this track, it wasn’t terrible but I was hoping that it would tear it up and unfortunately it didn’t.

The title track Discovering The Waterfront is a ballad, hardcore style. It is quite a great sing-along tune. It suits Shane’s voice and the percussion subtly drives the emotion of the song without overpowering the lyrics. Even further in the background is a searing guitar melody, a cello and a viola that adds to the plaintive wails of the singer, creating a suitably mournful ballad about love gone bad. Just what the world needs but what would the world be without it!

To offset this melancholy is Defend You, a screamfest that makes your throat scratchy just listening to it! It falls back on to a formulaic verse-chorus-bridge-chorus which lets the song down. Each of the songs on the album are stand-alone great however if you run them one after the other they seem to be slightly repetitive, particularly in this genre. I would love to see some experimentation with phrasing and formatting of songs. My Heroine starts with a nice acoustic intro underpinning the serious topic of the song before launching into a really heavy core for the body of the song.

Always and Never sounds a bit different to the rest of the album and the intro sounds quite interesting. The vocals on this are beautifully contrasted with the screaming of bassist Billy Hamilton. Already Dead has a different rhythm than the rest, has a bit more pop running through it and I hate to say it, a little bit of Bryan Adams when he does his rock thing. It is as radio-friendly as Silverstein get and would probably do quite well on the airwaves.

Three Hours Back has a great opening and it is one of the best songs on the disc. It has a great energy and you can imagine being in the crowd for this one, singing along with the rest of the crowd. It leads in perfectly to the last song on the album, Call It Karma. This is a great song to finish up on, it is completely in line with the rest of the album and it allows each member of the band to do their thing.

A youthful, energy packed album that highlights the ability of a great live act to put together a strong album. It will be interesting to see what they have in store for hardcore fans next.