Silence the Foe
Sweet Sweet Suicide (2005)
Brian Shultz
With influences culled from Fugazi's rhythms and Refused's angular intensity (the press release doesn't lie here), Norway's Silence the Foe offers the U.S. issue of Sweet Sweet Suicide, a bit underdeveloped but filled-to-the-brim-with potential EP that proves to be another diamond-in-the-rough finding for Lujo Records.
Throat-shredding screams make up the majority of the vocals here, but against a highly jazz and soul-influenced, fuzzy backdrop. It's a mildly haunting effort with cuts like "Penny for Your Lies" that exhibit just the right amount of raw dynamics and rough-edged, mid-tempoed aggressiveness. The band usually manages to avoid wearing their influences on their respective sleeves too blatantly, but when "Playing With the Old Me" dips into its light, jazzy part with the pronounced, patterned guitar stroke and softly spoken lines only to break into full-fledged screams (twice, in fact), it's biting Refused's "Deadly Rhythm" fairly hard. Nonetheless, it's the band executing the soft/loud dynamic at its finest.
Sweet Sweet Suicide is a rather revolutionary-sounding release, and while mentions of a Fugazi/Refused hybrid should get plenty weak in the knees, this is the just the tip of the iceberg, seemingly.