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Sometimes the impending drop of an album is something that you look forward to like a wide eyed kid on Christmas morning, your heart filled with hope that all your materialistic prayers will be answered.

The again, sometimes you look forward to an album the way you morbidly anticipate the carnage that’s foretold by the flashing of emergency lights and a puff of black smoke up ahead that you’re managing to slowly inch closer and closer too.

The latter is the way I felt as the release date for Silverstein’s A Shipwreck in the Sand grew closer. I say this as someone who once had Red Light Pledge as a ringtone and who relentlessly killed both 2003’s When Broken Is Easily Fixed and 2005’s Discovering the Waterfront. I say this as someone who remained at L3 in St. Catharines despite being concussed during Protest The Hero’s opening set, just to see Silverstein.

However I also say this as someone who waited like that afore mentioned kid on Christmas for 2007’s train wreck of an album Arrivals and Departures, an album that I’d like to rip in detail, if only it had been good enough to warrant more than one or two pity spins.

The fact that one must keep in mind about Silverstein is that they’ve been incorrectly labeled as Screamo for most of their career, due to their use of the scream-sing-scream formula and vocalist Shane Told’s nasally sweet vocals. Truth be told, the line between Post-hardcore and Screamo has long been blurred like tear soaked mascara, and Silverstein as been stuck in the middle. The fact that not one member of Silverstein could be confused, appearance wise, with any of the members of From First To Last, or any other make-up wearing, unfortunately pierced a-sexual Gerard Way disciple, is a definite clue to their improper inclusion into the ranks of Screamo.

Their guitars, helmed by Niel Boshart and Josh Bradford have always smacked of metal and Paul Koehler’s drumming has always observed time changes at a pace similar to the heart beat of a hummingbird, and Shipwreck is no different.

Let’s get the obligatory out of the way. A post hardcore concept album about being shipwrecked? Really? Really? Did you miss Funeral For A Friends 2007 release Tales Don’t Tell Themselves? Did that one just slip by you somehow? Did no one ever say, “Hey Guys, you know that idea you have for your next album, the whole shipwreck thing, yeah, it’s been done.”?

All that aside, the album finds Silverstein doing what they do best, rocking hard and fast and creating more of the most accessible post-hardcore out there. Songs like A Great Fire are reminiscent of Waterfront, despite Told doing his best Geoff Rickly, talking pretentiously over the track. And from there one song really blends in with the next, not really doing anything new or innovative.

The Nautical theme is there, but they don’t hit you over the head with it, and personally, if it hadn’t been sold and hyped as a concept album I’d have had no idea. Maybe I’m just a little dense, but the lyrics touch on a lot of topics, including scorned love and arson, and occasionally touch on mutiny aboard a ship.

The title track, drips intense pretension out of every pour, as the story of the album drones away in an attempt at an artistic opening. The continuing story of the mutiny doesn’t redeem that opening, but the opening riff of I am the Arsonist is when Silverstein shows a glimmer of hope that they can still kick ass. A hope, that they then dash to pieces on the rocks(Shipwreck reference, boo-ya).

I suppose that part of my problem with this album is that despite the band clearly gaining a greater level of technical musicianship, they aren’t pushing the boundaries of the genre or allowing themselves to spread, even momentarily into uncharted territory which is a characteristic that had originally made post-hardcore appealing to so many people.

A Shipwreck In The Sand, isn’t a terrible album, and it does show Silverstein as a band that for all their flaws and setbacks, are continuing to push themselves forward. True fans of the band will love it, and true haters will hate it, so in the end, I suppose that everyone will be happy. Everyone but I, who had held out hope that after the crater left behind by Arrivals and Departures that maybe Shipwreck would spell redemption and Silverstein would once again find a way to suck me in and give me an album that I could love. They did not.

Silverstein – A Great Fire
Silverstein – A Shipwreck In The Sand
Silverstein – A Hero Loses Everyday

Tags: album