SILVERSTEIN „Discovering The Waterfront”

Music: Emo/Hardcore
Country: USA
Website: www.silversteinmusic.com
Duration: 39.29
Cool Songs: Defend You, Your Sword vs My Dagger, My Heroine, Always & Never

Just like any other style of heavy, guitar drive music, the emo/hardcore scene also has its bottomless well. There’s the impressive (Eighteen Visions, Anberlin), the ordinary (Hopesfall, Roses are Red) and the countless others that fall somewhere in the middle. To that ever growing list you can add Canadian quintet ‘Silverstein’.

Formed in 2000 in Burlington on the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario Silverstein have already released 2 DYI EP’s and after clinching a contract with the ubiquitous Victory label they released their first album ;When Broken is Easily Fixed’. Apparently it has sold in excess of 200,000 copies. Oh yes doubting Thomas, this shit sells. It doesn’t necessarily mean that what Silverstein does is any good, but it does show that the market for well conceived melodic emo/core is maaaasssssiiivvveeee!! I’ve no doubt that this new sophomore effort ‘Discovering the Waterfront’ will be just as profitable for the band (and label for that matter).

At this point it is important to note that ‘Silverstein’ does absolutely nothing new in terms of emo/hardcore. They simply do it pretty well. Of course, you need to be fan of this style to appreciate the overtly melodic and blatant commercial appeal of this album. ‘Discovering..’ via the production hands of Cameron Webb (Motorheard. Social Distortion etc) is very much aimed at gaining its fair share of the radio market. Certainly, it is far less screamo oriented than the debut, and whilst vocalist Shane Told employs said style throughout this disc it’s much more sporadic. Told spends much of his time in the ‘cleaner’ register and as such there is a real air of ‘listener friendliness’ associated with many of their compositions. Silverstein are nowhere near as ‘light’ as ‘Hawthorn Heights’ and certainly the more up tempo numbers like ‘Defend You, Your Sword vs My Dagger, My Heroine and ‘Always & Never’ exude a most appreciative line of energy and feigned aggression. Sadly, there’s not enough of it.

The big problem with this is that it doesn’t really have any overwhelming identity to set it apart from their peers. Play this to the unsuspecting punter and he’d be hard pressed to tell you who it was. Granted, ‘Discovering..’ offers itself up as a fairly mature and well constructed emo/hardcore album – yet, it just doesn’t have the song writing depth to be anything more than solid. As much as ‘Silverstein’ aim to blur the lines between emo/melodic punk and Hardcore, in the end ‘Discovering…’ actually sounds rather generic. For fans of the emo/hardcore style, there’s probably a heap to like about ‘Silverstein’, unfortunately I need a little more convincing.

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note: 6/10

Tracklist

1. My Sword Versus Your Dagger
2. Smile In Your Sleep
3. Ides Of March, The
4. Fist Wrapped In Blood
5. Discovering The Waterfront
6. Defend You
7. My Heroine
8. Always And Never
9. Already Dead
10. Three Hours Back
11. Call It Karma